Shirley Sherrod, GTTFP! (and your 15 minutes are up)

So, we’re not going to say Shirley Sherrod deserved to be smeared, chopped to pieces, and edited to be a racist Ag official. Almost.  Her biggest flaw, of which she has many, was her long-winded 45 minute speech that just meandered on and off topic.  If you want a case study in crappy speechmaking, this is Exhibit A.

Imagine the ease with which Andrew Breitbart merrily hacked and reanimated her speech to the exact opposite of what her point was (what was her point exactly?).  Oh yeah, that she helped out white farmers when many wouldn’t help black folks out.  In other words, she did her job.

But GTTFP has to say.  Her speech was painful.  Excruciating.  Her point is unclear, to say the least.  And, when she was given the national spotlight – she really didn’t have much to say.  Now what is she up to? Who cares!

She had a chance to capture our imagination with some powerful messages about understanding, tolerance, racial tension in America.  Instead, she continued to drone on about herself, how unfair it was, how she “doesn’t know what” she’ll be doing next (other than boring us on national TV).  There might be a book deal, and we fear it will be 3,000 pages long.

Shirley Sherrod, you should have gotten to your f*cking point! America would be a better place if you weren’t so long-winded.

Zzzz... what? Oh, nothing....zzzzzzz

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56 million Americans are annoying you on Facebook

Mashable’s latest update is that 56 million people are now involved in some form of social gaming.  The king of these companies is Zynga – responsible for all those stupid FB updates about sad cows and unwatered crops.

The study was commissioned by the NPD Group (full press release can be found here).  Some key stats:

- 53% of players are women (I’m looking at you Farmville and Cafe World)

- 60 million Americans over the age of 6 have played a social game at least once

- $2.2 BILLION in virtual goods have been bought through social gaming

100 years later, Bill Strunk is still a genius

If you don’t know about The Elements of Style, by Strunk & White – you are wasting time.  Yours and everyone else’s.  It was first published in 1918 and given to me in my first journalism class in college.  It is the Bible for brevity, clarity, and correct English usage.

Buy it yesterday and use it everyday.  The world will thank you.

Welcome!

This blog is meant to accomplish two things:

1)   Get you to your fucking point

2)   Save the world from inefficiency

See?  Now you know immediately whether you want to read on or not.  You are welcome.

A lot of personal and professional time is spent dallying while we could all be better at getting to our point faster, and allowing more time for REAL conversation.   If we all spent more time hashing through the topics and issues we really want to discuss, we would live in a more productive world – and frankly, save us from some inane bullshit we’d rather not suffer through.

In the coming weeks and months this blog will investigate our need to waste time, why we do it, and how we can stop it.  And stay tuned for the forthcoming book, Get to the F*cking Point!