WorldCom humor round-up

--I sent Little George a share of WorldCom stock. I was thinking, "this is my two-cents about you stock-fraud criminals". Of course, today it turned out the share was worth *six cents*, so I was way off.

--"At MCI-WorldCom, we make money the old-fashioned way: we bribe politicians."

"That's so quaint. At Halliburton, we have no need to bribe politicians. We bought the whole damned government outright."

--sul-li-van n. A financial obligation not tallied against the score, granted in informal play after a poor performance, especially from a large accounting company. (dictionary.com)

Example: WorldCom, off by 3.6 BILLION DOLLARS.

Licentious Radio reports:

Kenneth Lay comments on WorldCom.

Bush to investigate WorldCom.

And the favorites from SatireWire:

REMAINING U.S. CEOs MAKE A BREAK FOR IT [satirewire.com]: El Paso, Texas -- Unwilling to wait for their eventual indictments, the 10,000 remaining CEOs of public U.S. companies made a break for it yesterday, heading for the Mexican border, plundering towns and villages along the way, and writing the entire rampage off as a marketing expense.

Supreme Court rules earnings should be protected as "art" [satirewire.com]: "Yes, well, a man with a concretized view of the world may only be able to see numbers that 'Don't add up,'" said a haughty Sullivan. "But someone whose perceptions are not always chained to reality -- a stock analyst, say -- may see numbers that, like the human spirit, aspire to be greater than they are."

Finally, a note to PR firms: please coach the remaining CEOs and board members in *advance*. We don't want any more auto-satirization like "Our senior management team is shocked [-- shocked! --] by these discoveries."

This kind of thing hurts the punditry business -- who can recite the Casablanca line ("I'm shocked -- shocked! -- to discover gambling...") if management does it first? Consider it a professional courtesy from PR flaks to pundits. (You need us as much as we need you.) Thank you.