Dale Carnegie Goes Orwell

While looking at Dwight Garner's evisceration of “How to Win Friends and Influence People in the Digital Age,” it became clear to me (since I'm always someone slow to pick up on the obvious) that Orwellian doublespeak has become the language of prestige in contemporary discourse, that it sings for the people who work on Wall Street and Pennsylvania Avenue.

This new adaptation seems to have been composed using refrigerator magnets stamped with corporate lingo: “transactional proficiency,” “tangible interface,” “relational longevity,” “continuum of opportunities,” “interpersonal futility,” and “our faith persuasion.” The devastation, in terms of Carnegie’s original charm, is nearly complete. Were Carnegie alive to read this grievous book, he would clutch his chest like Redd Foxx in “Sanford and Son,” smile wanly for a few minutes (he didn’t like to make others feel bad), then keel over into his cornflakes.

The following sentence, which appears on Page 80, is so inept that it may actually be an ancient curse and to read it more than three times aloud is to summon the cannibal undead: “Today’s biggest enemy of lasting influence is the sector of both personal and corporate musing that concerns itself with the art of creating impressions without consulting the science of need ascertainment.”