Maunderings of a media mogul

A play in one act

By Joel Thurtell

The hero of our new unillustrated, eponymous comic strip is the head of a once huge media company hard-hit by an economic recession. He is struggling with the same moral issues that beset moguls in the banking industry and throughout American businesses: How to save their firms from extinction while also retaining their porcine salaries and bloated bonuses while also hanging onto some semblance of credibility, some shred of at least a PERCEPTION of integrity.

It is a hard act for a 21st-century czar of industry to maintain in the best of circumstances.

Join us now, as we peep over the transom of a magnificent office suite in a small town on the East Coast of America. Perhaps the reader will sympathize with this titan of industry as he agonizes over the sordid details of managing a media empire.

In this scene, our hero has been confronted with a request from a rival media company to appear on a television show called “Undercover Boss.”

It is a moral question and seen as such by this ever-sensitive media magnate. Join us as we observe how one individual American, though highly-placed in terms of power, influence and money, nonetheless struggles as would a fellow creature of lower standing as he tries to decide what would be  an appropriate stance in this ethically-charged situation.

CEO: sits alone in office with huge windows overlooking marvelous view of Southern United States landscape. He sits in soft, leather-covered chair behind giant mahogany desk. The captain of industry reflects on the stresses he must face as he tries valiantly to cope with an economy that is draining money out of his company in ways that were not imagined when he pretended to be listening in his business school lectures. To himself he says:

Oh for the good old days! Oh for the salad days when I was not CEO of the largest newspaper chain in America with concomitant responsibilities unimagined by common mortals! What would I give for just a day driving a truck in some tiny backwater cog of this mighty machine of which I am the driver.

Enter DOOGAN, CEO’S chief lieutenant and adviser. Doogan sees that his boss is lost in revery, which often occurs in these troubled times.  Clears throat. Boss, excuse me, Chief, but I have something here that might be of interest —

CEO: Oh my word, Doogan, what could interest me at a time like this? I am so distraught over the plight of our firm and the measures we have been forced to take to keep our ship sailing against the wind, so to speak.

DOOGAN: I have something to cheer you up, Boss. It’s TV. They want you to star on a show.

CEO: Me? They want little ol’ me on a TV show? How could my life possibly be of interest to TV?

DOOGAN: Well, Chief, you ARE the head of a mighty media conglomerate with tentacles reaching all over the world.

CEO: That was true last year, when we had bureaus in hot spots around the world. I had to cut off my tentacles to save money. We get our international news from other mighty media conglomerates now. Or, heh-heh, we make it up!

DOOGAN: I’ve always said we’re better off making up overseas news. When every nickel-and-dime news outlet had bureaus in those places, you kind of had to toe the mark where truth was concerned. But now, with nobody out there, the sky’s the limit! We can dictate the truth!

CEO: Come to the point, Doogan. You know I’m a busy titan of consequence. I need to get back to reflecting on my role in this Greater Society and how we magnates of munificence fit into it.

DOOGAN: Well, Chief, TV wants you to star on an episode of “Undercover Boss.” They want you to take off your three-piece black power suit and dress as an ordinary worker in your vast newspaper empire. You will be a newspaper carrier early in the morning. You will deliver newspapers to the tubes of our customers —

CEO: Correction, Doogan. Toss them on their driveways or into their hedges. Remember? I cut out those plastic newspaper tubes last year. Too expensive! Also, no more plastic baggies to keep the rain off the papers. That’s more money in our pocket!

DOOGAN: Duly noted, Boss. Do you want to fire anyone?

CEO: Fire someone?

DOOGAN: Usually when you take a draconian measure like axing plastic wrappers, you find a way to fire a few hundred workers, at least.

CEO: Oh yes, good point, Doogan. There’s a logical policy reason for canning hundreds of workers at least. Maybe we save a bundle of money not wrapping papers in plastic against rain and snow. So what? That is not a headline. It is not a grabber. It gets no attention. If I am going to cut costs, then I want some attention. The best way of grabbing headlines in this society is to fire people. You take away the livelihoods of hundreds or thousands of people, it sends a loud signal: This company is in trouble, but management is in control. It also tells the unions, in those few places where we still have unions, that we mean business. If we cut a hundred people today, we could cut a thousand tomorrow. Yes, Doogan, firing people gets their attention.

 CEO: Right, Sir. That is very good business philosophy. But we will need to cloak it for TV. The idea of “Undercover Boss” is that you are at heart a sympathetic person, someone who would improve the lot of his employees if he only knew how they were suffering.

CEO: They want me to dissemble? Pose as something I am not? Not a problem. I do that every time I bargain with the unions, in those few places were we have not completely rid ourselves of unions, driven stakes through their hearts, utterly wrecked them. Carthage delicto est!

DOOGAN: Cartage is pretty much out, Boss. We got rid of our truck drivers a couple years ago.  

CEO: Carthage must be destroyed, you ding-dong! It’s from literature.

DOOGAN: It might not be wise to mention literature, Chief. We canned our book review editors last year.

CEO: So TV wants me to dress in rags and wander around pretending to be one of my peons?

DOOGAN: Right. For instance, they want you to pose as a photographer at one of your numerous newspapers.

CEO: You must be kidding! Photographers are scum, Doogan! They hang outside rich people’s houses trying to take compromising pictures of them. I’m a rich guy — that could happen to me! I know it’s what sells papers, but damned if I’ll dirty my hands. Besides, every photo staff is short workers now because we fired so many people. Those people don’t get lunch breaks. How could I pretend to be a photographer and still work in my three-hour lunch and a slew of martinis? Besides, that means I’d have to know how to take pictures. I’m a CEO, Doogan. That means I don’t have to know how to do anything. Take pictures? Out of the question! 

  DOOGAN: So, okay no photography. Maybe you could try being a reporter.

CEO: I told you, Doogan — I don’t DO things. I’m the boss. Reporters and photographers come under fire, don’t they? They could get shot by some barricaded gunman. I love barricaded gunman stories! Somebody always gets hurt or killed or at least put in jail. Sells papers. But damned if I’ll take that risk. I’m the brains of the outfit, the general who stands on the hill far away and directs the battle.

DOOGAN: Okay, okay, you can work inside. A desk job.

CEO: That’s better. A desk job? That’s what I do best. I don’t have to fake doing nothing. Now, what else will I have to pretend? That I don’t have health insurance? We’ve pretty well screwed up health insurance for a lot of our workers over the years. I’ve got a gold-plated deal. I don’t have to give that up, do I?

DOOGAN: Not at all, Sir. Remember, this is TV. Nothing about it is real. Nothing about it is honest, fair or just. It’s mere entertainment, bread and circuses for the masses.

CEO: I just want to be sure. I can’t imagine trying to live on the paltry salaries we pay our workers.

DOOGAN: TV’s idea is to elicit sympathy for the poor workers.

CEO: That’s a bridge too far, Doogan! Those people got what they deserved. If they were born to be magnates, titans, captains of industry, that’s what they’d be doing. But no, they were born to be lowly plebians, moilers and grubbers after meager livings. God’s will, Doogan! God’s will be done.

DOOGAN: Well said, Your Highness.

CEO: If I go on this show, I won’t have to take a pay cut, will I?

DOOGAN: Of course not, Sir. Like I said, it’s TV. It’s sleight of hand, illusion, in a word, media bullshit.

CEO: Just what we dish out! But wait a minute — do I have to PRETEND to be sympathetic to our minions if I find their plights to be somewhat, say, uncomfortatble or even untenable?

DOOGAN: May I repeat, Sir: You may indeed be required to dissemble.

CEO: Okay, that’s the name of the game: Big business. Lies and moral turpitude are the mortar that pastes this house together. Hey, Doogan — I have an idea. As long as this is just ACTING, a big put-on, how about I dress up as a king who goes around incognito bucking up the troops before the big battle?Yes, I would make a great king! But one thing I will not do.

DOOGAN: What’s that, Your Excellency?

CEO: I will NOT pretend to be one of those workers we fired.

DOOGAN: Why not?

CEO: You ask “why not”? Figure it out, Doogan: We fired six thousand people last year. Six thousand! I can’t pretend to live the lives of six thousand miserable, downtrodden, salary-less employees. That would tax even my ability to fake and deceive.

DOOGAN: There is one little unpleasantness, Sir. The matter of your compensation. I’m afraid TV, rabblerousers that they are, may disclose what you made last year while you were firing six thousand workers and ordering thousands more to take unpaid leaves.

CEO: What “unpleasantness” is that, Doogan?

DOOGAN: The little matter of the four-point-seven million dollars you made last year, including that one-point-five million dollar bonus. That might just play a sour note.

CEO: “Sour note”? Are you kidding? That four-point-seven million smackers is hardly “unpleasant” to me, Doogan! And I deserved every nickel of that one-point-five million dollar bonus. I fired six thousand people, Doogan! Firing six thousand people is damned hard work!