I have long believed the best possible shelter from the senselessness of "taste free TV" came from ample use of the off button.  Even better, in my opinion, was just leaving it off except when viewing a program of know quality.   As a result, I have remained blissfully ignorant of much of what passes for entertainment in contemporary western society.

I recently peeked, partly as a result of some email correspondence from a former high school classmate, but mainly due to being repeatedly assaulted by the malevolent visage and voice of Anne Robinson bashing some hapless game contestant with "You are the weakest link - goodbye".

What I found disturbs me.  Some of today's highest rated shows, the so-called "survival" shows, are not merely "taste free TV", but are stark reflections of some of the worst human relations practices employed by contemporary western business.  The thing that makes "Weakest Link" exceptional is the extreme denigration and blame that accompanies the essential winnowing of contestants. According to TIME EUROPE, "'The Weakest Link' brings out the weakest side of human nature: in the contestants, who are encouraged to give vent to their disappointment when they lose, and the viewers, who indulge in some schadenfreude watching the losers' suffering. Unsuccessful contestants are filmed straight after they're voted off the game and leave the set, and the stiff upper lip is often nowhere to be seen. "

In the context of a game show, the employment of such concepts can be somewhat justified by the fact that all participants do so willingly.  The victims are victims by choice.

There is no such justification when these practices are employed by industry at large.  Most people do not willingly accept employment with the expectation that they will be set up for failure; that they will be assigned tasks based on impossible expectations only to suffer denigration, blame, dismissal, and sometimes incarceration when these expectations cannot be met.  Nevertheless, that is essentially what is happening behind the facades of numerous public companies.  Two recent and egregious examples are "MicroStrategy" and "Columbia/HCA".

In "MicroStrategy", overly aggressive pursuit of unrealistic expectations led to cooked books and a collapse of the company's stock price.   One of the participants was Mark Lynch, a CPA who lost sight of his public responsibility to stand up against his boss's unrealistic expectations.  His lapse cost him a $350,000 fine and a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) order preventing him from practicing as an accountant before the SEC (he can apply for reinstatement after three years).

 "Columbia/HCA" is a much larger debacle, but with similar roots.  Before this calamity is finished it will ruin the lives and careers of numerous people, no doubt including some who are employed by the outside accounting firm, KPMG.  The firm has been charged with fraud by the federal government for it's willing participation.

As late as 1997 Columbia/HCA was an industry powerhouse.  In August 1997, writing in Healthcare Informatics, Polly Schneider stated, "Of any one organization in the healthcare industry, Columbia HCA/Healthcare Corp. has become a symbol for the mass-market commercialization of healthcare. Since its humble beginnings in 1987 as a two-hospital organization in El Paso, Texas, the cunning of its founder and CEO Richard Scott has catapulted the hospital chain start-up, through an aggressive strategy of mergers and acquisitions, to its current position as the nation's largest provider of healthcare services."

So what happened?  In my opinion, the "cunning CEO", Richard Scott, managed to surround himself with people who could not say no to his unrealistic expectations.  When they were unable to meet those unrealistic expectations by legitimate means, they used "other" means.

"Columbia/HCA" affects our national health care.  It is not merely a "Weakest Link".  It is an entire chain of weak links, for which we will all pay a price.
 

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