There's Gotta Be Something Better Than This
by Norman Horowitz
There's gotta be something better than this,There's gotta be something better to do.And when I find me something better to do,I'm gonna get up, I'm gonna get out.I'm gonna get up, get out, and do it!There's gotta be some respectable trade;there’s gotta be something easy to learn.And if I find me something I halfwit can learn,I'm gonna get up, I'm gonna get out.I'm gonna get up, get out and learn it!
Corporate management. Congress. Presidential candidates. There’s gotta be something better than this.I grew up in a middle-class Jewish environment naively believing that the world was an orderly place run by those who knew what they were doing and that there would be peace and prosperity for all because we were led by brilliant people. It was not until I spent four years defending my country in the Air Force that I began to understand the true reality of "managements" in that the military was run by gross incompetents. They were great pilots, of course, but they mostly failed as leaders and managers.Following my Air Force career, I graduated as an electrical engineer from the RCA Institute in New York and went to work for Screen Gems/Columbia Pictures. In 1960, I had the same expectation of "management," and I quickly learned that the company was managed as the Air Force was: by gross incompetents (usually lawyers and MBAs).When I was at Polygram in the early '80s, I was making a budget presentation to management -- every single one of them a lawyer -- when one of them said, "Norman, I've never understood why you need salesman. If you make good content, the buyers will seek you out." That person had previously been the president of two major Hollywood film studios.At Columbia Pictures Television, I escorted the president on a tour of our television distribution offices. Following the tour, he said, "Norman, you really don't need all of these people do you?" I replied, "No, we didn’t, but we were doing very badly in the softball studio league, so I hired a bunch of ringers."A while ago on "Fox News Sunday," Bret Baier asked Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell if he stands by his previous statement that "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term President." McConnell confirmed that his goal remains unchanged.I understand that he wants to prevent the President from being re-elected, but he had the opportunity to say that his number-one goal was to have America and all Americans prosper, and to bring all of our wars to an end, and have all of our sons and daughters come home -- and in order to do that, we must not re-elect President Obama.Here's the lineup the Republicans have come up with: Michele Bachmann. Herman Cain. Newt Gingrich. Jon Huntsman. Ron Paul. Rick Perry. Mitt Romney. In a country of more than 300 million souls, this is the best that they can come up with?There's gotta be something better than this.[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wGgfYJoZts[/youtube]