What an insult to Pinocchio!

(read to strains of another Carly singing, Nobody Does It Better...)

So, I looked up the Washington Post article on Carly Fiorina's slam that WaPo had dissed her "secretary to ceo" story.  Far from dissing her, the article spotlights her accomplishments, from her undergrad days to her H-P leadership.  Yes, it gave her "3 Pinocchios" - for carefully cultivating a "Horatio Alger-type, up by her bootstraps fable.  

WaPo's responded with the criteria for their rating:
This column generated criticism from many readers who said that her statements were entirely factual, as she once was a secretary, and thus were not worthy of Three Pinocchios. John Sexton of Breitbart wrote a critique in which he said the column was “poorly reasoned.” Even our old colleague Howard Kurtz berated us. Fiorina herself said the column was “ludicrous” and “sort of floored me.” In determining the rating, we tried to be consistent with other cases when a politician would use words that, while on the face accurate, gave a misleading picture. A good example is the  Three Pinocchio rating we gave President Obama’s campaign in 2012 for a campaign video narrated by Tom Hanks, concerning his mother’s fight with an insurance company. That column also generated criticism, though mainly from Democrats. We strive for consistency in how we apply these ratings.  In this case, Fiorina’s career really began after she received her MBA, when she was hired as an AT&T sales representative. We did not, as Fiorina falsely claimed on “Meet the Press,” assert she was not a secretary.

Per her spokesperson, Isgur Flores disagreed that the claim inaccurately depicts Carly's actual career trajectory - "She was a secretary. Later, she became a CEO. I don’t think she’s ever claimed there was nothing in between.”

Nor does she.  Brilliant marketing maven that she is, she weaves a cloud of words around details that leaves an indelible image.  Going back to the WaPo article:
Fiorina’s description of rising “from secretary to CEO” conjures a Horatio Alger-like narrative where a character starts at the lowest ranks of an industry, pulls themselves up by their bootstraps and, against all odds, reaches the top position in the industry.

When Fiorina uses this phrase, she often pairs it with saying she came from a “modest and middle class family,” or “challenging the status quo,” which frames her story as an unlikely upstart. She also pitches it as an uniquely American experience.

But the description glosses over important details. 


The word cloud she conjures to given an unspoken yet clear image includes phrases like “modest & middle class family” (HA!) & how she was "challenging the status quo."   She depicts herself as a Great American Success Story - which she is, but the story she chooses to invoke has her rising from a lowly beginning to reach the heights of power prestige influence. 
   
FACT:  Her father's position as the Dean of Law at Duke hardly made the family anywhere near hardscrabble.

FACT:  Duke University's Children's Tuition Grant would have paid a substantial amount of her Stanford tuition.

FACT:  When her application to the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business was received after the cut-off time due to Italy's lousy mail system, she used her elite undergrad degree to get accepted.  (“So, can a liberal arts student from Stanford compete with the analytical jocks you have around here?”) 

FACT: A mentor at AT&T - where she did start her actual career - recommended her for a one-year, company-sponsored mid-career management fellowship at the prestigious Sloan School of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

 

FACT:  Through that fellowship, she earned a second master’s degree in business administration & was placed on a AT&T's senior management track


Many politicians (including some very experienced ones) often fall victim to "word salad," saying a lot of stuff that leaves your brain tossed around.  Not Carly.  She knows just how to conjure up word clouds which leave the listener hearing what was never actually said.

She got upset at WaPo giving her 3 Pinocchios?  Her "secretary to ceo" meme richly deserves so many more!