At one time in our no-so-distant past the term ‘CEO’, meaning ‘Chief Executive Officer’, was invented to replace the perfectly good word ‘President’ as the title for the person heading up a company or corporation.
For some reason, some bureaucratic gerbils somewhere decided that acronyms were better than names for describing institutions, treaties, corporations and other entities of importance because it made them sound cooler and more authoritative. Unfortunately it also made them harder to remember and a person today has to carry around a special dictionary of everyday acronyms to even understand what a person is saying.
There is a song from the rock opera ‘Hair’ that in the 1960’s already recognized this dread literary disease called ‘Initials’: “LBJ took the IRT down to 4th Street USA. When he got there what did he see? The youth of America on LSD!” That was almost the entire song. You can see why it didn’t make it to the top 40.
The financial upheavals of the last decade have exposed CEO’s as tending to be a Caesar-like bunch of extremely greedy, unpatriotic selfish hogs who have no social conscience and no limits as to their self-indulgence even at the expense of the very companies they are running.
The term ‘CEO’ has changed in meaning to something of a negative image, much the same as what has happened to once proud names like Enron, AIG, Watergate, Halliburton, Walmart and George Bush. It is apparent that the meaning of the term for ‘Chief Executive Officer’ must be altered to reflect the changing times. Below are a number of possibilities for the new meaning of ‘CEO’:
Craven Eunich Ogre
Cannibalistic Evil Oppressor
Creep Eviscerating the Organization
Cutthroat Enslaving Oaf
Chieftain Endlessly Overstuffed
Class-conscious Economic Outlaw
Cretin Extremely Overpaid
Contemptible Emasculating Oaf
Capitalist Engorging Opulence
Copiously Excreting Ooze
Con artist Expounding Obscenely
Conducting Economics Offshore
Cabalistic Extorting Oldie
Controlling Eagerly Organization
Cadaverous Emetic Orifice
Cantankerous, Envious and Obdurate
There are also many other, more colorful and obscene yet accurately descriptive words that we cannot print here.
OK, I’ll take that challenge! Gimme a minute er three.