Language and accent:
I'm all for ceo's with thick accents, stuttering, tourette :-) If they have the goods, eventually it won't matter.
Yes it does. It matters in the short term and the long run.
Little struck me as a greater illustration than some side comments by a reporter visiting a refusenik couple under house arrest (officially or de facto) in the bad old days of the Soviet Union. The couple had so many visits from the high and mighty of the U.S. that one might have wondered how they could possibly handle the ordeal but they nonetheless remained isolated from news of outside doings.
The couple asked the reporter what sort of position their previous visitor, Ted Sorenson, held. In short, the refuseniks couldn't understand how somebody that dumb could be important.
Ted Sorenson, of course, wrote the empty slogans that propelled another dullard to the very peak of world renown that could only be topped by an assassin's bullet.
Try to imagine the current dunce saying the same words and you should get the picture.
"They just hate him because he's an Israeli," my informant told me about David Platt (CEO of PRW).
I don't think many care.
The double whammy, however, of a glycobiologist stumbling through a second language lecturing on an arcane science that even few biologists know much about is a terrific challenge for someone like myself without a growing hearing impairment. Mix in an intolerance for fools and you have a problem.
The handicap can be overcome a lot more easily than Ted Sorenson's problem but it is a grave handicap nevertheless.
Nothing at all has been more costly to me over time than underrating the ability of snake oil salesmen to push their potions and fixes, genuine or fraudulent. I took a quick triple in IMCL long ago and found a loser to stash the cash in when I thought Sam Waksal was selling too much snow.
Dr. Ferro has an easy out. Any Italian here in Rome excels at hand signals.
Best, Terry
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