AOL-Time-Warner-Your-name-here

AOL-Time-Warner: it’s all about you.

I was watching Lehrer, formerly MacNeil-Lehrer. I guess PBS is the only media group moving away from consolidation and hyphens. Steve Case and Gerry Levin were talking up the new acquisition.

Here’s how you could tell that they’d come to new heights of power. The talk is all about the customer. It’s the opposite of someone breaking up with you. “Oh no, honey, it’s not you, it’s me. Don’t you worry.” There’s no responsibility on your shoulders at all. That’s the surest way to keep control when you’re emotionally involved.

When politically or financially involved..the surest way to be in control, to act the benevolent dictator, is to make sure that it’s never about you. It’s all about: who? Us. The customer, the consumer, the audience, the American people: whatever bland generic words you can muster in a heartfelt and earnest manner.

Just ask Bill Gates. You’d think by listening to his press conferences, that Microsoft never has a single internal need or strategy. No they are only there, as humble servants, of us. Mere elves toiling away in the night in order to respond to our every need. The American people. God bless us everyone. Didn’t Windows NT, make you feel special?

Ask Bill Clinton, or Ronald Reagan. It’s all about us! Nancy did that decorating for the American people, so we could pay 19.99 a month for Franklin Mint reproductions of the new White House china. Oh we’ve never felt so loved and protected. So nurtured by an Inaugural Ball.

Steve and Gerry. (Too bad Case’s name isn’t Tom), Hey what if the people want it to be Tom. Would he change his name?

Jim Lehrer questioned them about how powerful this new hyphenated beast would be. The response? I am quoting:

“This is not about size and it’s certainly not about power. This company is going to make a better world and serve the public interest.”

(Cue the AOL-Time-Warner owned song “From a Distance.”)

Tom and Gerry wake up in the middle of the night, worried about the end of the family-owned farm, and the 19 year olds they’ve sent to the front line. The American people have entrusted them with the minds of their young, and what an awesome responsibility it is.

A chicken in every inbox. An optical pipe for every crack pipe.

Friends were emailing each other between Fortune and Nullsoft, Atlantic Records and ICQ saying hey, we all work for the same company now. Each company, a thousand points of light. One acquisition, indivisible under God.

Look at the bright side, eventually, we’ll have national health care this way.

Or perhaps America-On-Line-Time-Warner-your-company-name-here will simplify its name with the grandest acquisition of all and remove everything but the first word.

Didn’t they say that this was all about serving the public good?

And there’s a real catchy song that goes with it.

Tom and Gerry, God shed his Grace on Thee.