The business of businesses is to make profits. But, checking the mission statements of a number of large companies, you would never know it. Nike talks about bringing inspiration and innovation to athletes. CACI (the company contracted to carry out interrogations at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq) says they provide innovative solutions for, among other things, information and intelligence services.^{Footnote 3} I’m sure they do, but maybe we should have asked for their definition of “innovative.”

McDonald’s 2004 annual report tells us the company is “a leader in social responsibility”! Furthermore, McDonald’s mentions that it manages its business by serving one customer at a time. That makes it unique, I suppose?

TV commercials assure us the next program is all new. I’m glad to hear I’m not going to watch something that is only half new.

Military bafflegab
We can find some of the best bafflegab experts in the military. Collateral damage means dead civilians; fire may be friendly fire but you are still dead, which is a mistake and not the normal action of a friend; ethnic cleansing— once again, dead bodies, with the added twist that cleansing is usually a positive term. An uncontrolled landing by an aircraft is actually a crash, probably with injuries or deaths, but neutralized to sound as if the aircraft may just have landed without permission from a flight control tower.

US military staff say extraordinary rendition when they mean outsourcing prisoners to countries with weak judicial systems, where torture could be used to extract information. To render means to hand over, hand down a judgment, or give a performance. The term is less familiar than hand over and most of us would not immediately interpret extraordinary rendition as meaning handing over a prisoner to another country. The term is being used to obscure the act and its sinister purpose.

And outsourcing is itself a bafflegab term for laying off permanent workers and using cheaper workers instead. These euphemisms are picked deliberately to lull the public into thinking nothing very bad is happening.

Smoking bafflegab and so on
What about the signs that read “For the convenience of smokers, smoking is permitted on the east side of the building behind the bicycle racks.” It is not for their convenience at all. In fact, it’s usually very inconvenient for them. Why not be honest and just say it is for the comfort of non-smokers. Or don’t give any excuse. We all know why smokers are limited to certain areas.

Bafflegab, even when it is not hiding something grim, is becoming unwelcome, as more people begin to resent it. Either they don’t understand it and are confused, or they do understand it and understand also that the speaker or writer is trying to bamboozle them. This annoyance is beginning to make itself felt and the demand for straightforward, simple language is growing.