Tom Alderman
2 min readFeb 22, 2022

MORE BIG LIES & OTHER IRRESISTIBLE FRIPPERIES DISAPPEARING WORDS -In most circles today, we no longer hear words like dig it, cool, groovy or far out. How long before some youngster asks you, what’s a woke, who is Karen and why is she saying Let’s go Brandon?

CLIMATE CHANGE NEEDS CHANGING -No ambiguity about it, our increasingly warming climate is gravely threatening our planetary existence. And we call this coming catastrophe ‘Climate Change.’ Really? “Change?Seasons change, tastes change, jobs, people, minds and diapers all change with great regularity. We are familiar with change. It’s imbedded in us. Calling our looming planetary death a change is like calling death a life change.

How about scary words like climate emergency, peril, even the over-used crisis could help. Any ideas before things change for the worse?

THE BENEFIT OF SHORT-TERM MEMORYWe geezers understand our aging memory is not so short-term as it is tiny-term. But that means everything we forgot we said earlier, is so refreshing when we say it again — for the first time.

WHY TRUMP’S BIG LIE IS SO VERY DANGEROUS — “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” — Voltaire

THE BIG LIE AT YOUR BOOKSTORE — If you still have a bookstore near you, perhaps you were looking for a Tom Clancy or Vince Flynn thriller. Easy to find. Near my store’s check-out was Target Acquired with TOM CLANCY’s name in big bold type, larger than the book’s title. Ditto VINCE FLYNN’S Enemy at the Gates. But wait.

A closer look reveals that not one word of these two books is written by either Clancy or Flynn. Huh? They are not even collaborations such as Louise Penny and Hillary Clinton or James Patterson and Maxine Paetro. The so-labeled CLANCY book is actually written by Don Bentley. The Flynn by Kyle Mills.

The crackerjack marketing mojos at Random House Audio and Atria/Emily Bestier Books must think we are dimwits. Imagine movie posters with Tom Hank’s or Denzel Washington’s names in bold face, above the titles. But in smaller type, nobody by the name of Hanks or Washington is in either movie.

This is dishonest marketing by these book publishers and an insult to all readers.

Tom Alderman
Tom Alderman

Written by Tom Alderman

Tom Alderman is a thirty year veteran media analyst, trainer and founder of MediaPrep.