[Newspoetry] smokin'

[Sam Markewich 2]

Dear Fellow Employees,
	It should have become apparent to all of us by now that our rights are
being infringed on.  Employee Lehman has already outlined some of the
issues at stake, such as union representation, enough line breaks to
feed our families, etc., &c.  Additionally, Employee Wendling has
astutely realized the covertly impending rash of drug testing we likely
will all be subject to if we don't stand up and take action.  I,
Employee Markewich, should like now to address three further issues of
grave importance to our own secure futures.  I believe we are indeed on
very shakey ground.
	First, I ask all of you not to gloss over the comment concerning
smokin' addressed to us by our new editor and CEO, Mssr.  Joe Futrelle. 
As many of us know, Mssr. Futrelle's last name is really not Futrelle at
all but Fewtral.  He is related to one Wiley Fewtral, a greedy man of
great and unconstrained avarice, in short, a thief.  Apparently the gene
pool does not mutate so easily, for our very own CEO seems to be telling
us we're "smokin'" so as to set us up with a smoke screen!  This, and
other kinds of regularly scheduled (probably by a computer program,
which may well even be composing these letters to us) letters from Mssr.
Futrelle are nothing more than the worst side of what is known in the PR
business as Total Quality Management.  In short, Futrelle strokes us
with his own brand of false sentiment so that we will feel like "one big
happy family" and produce more product.  The increased profits to the
Newspoetry consortium of companies, and to Futrelle himself, of course
is seen by none of us in our less-than-minimum-wage pay checks.  Worst
of all, we all feel so good for being stroked by the management that we
don't even think about this stuff!  I say it's time we do!
	Of still more concern is what is beginning to show itself as a kind of
"false benevolence" with a very smelly underbelly.  As Newspoets we all
remember the stunning display of Mr. Boris Yeltsin on top of a tank
taking back Russia for Gorbachev (or however you spell that guy's name).
 Of course, none of us, nor any of the Russians, suspected for a minute
that what Russia was actually in for was a despotic crazy man with dirty
politics and capitalistic inclinations to match those of Robert E. Lee! 
We all thought Russia was moving towards freedom, not drunken
irrationally planned free market terrorism against the Russian
citizenry.  Are we, the Newspoetry assemblyline workers, not now seeing
the very same thing in our own work place?  Did we not think that
Futrelle was our Gorbachev, a man of reason, peace and foresight?  And,
are we not now seeing former CEO Mssr. William Gillespie slowly
infiltrating the ranks in seemingly inoccuous acts of heroism, like
Yeltzin standing atop that tank?  What else would explain Gillespie's
recent "friendly reminder" concerning our employee handbook?  Were he
not now in power why would he send out such a thing?  I believe he may
well be greesing the wheels of our own sentimentality in order to make
it that much easier to sneek back into the ranks and impose his own
brand of despotic rule!  In fact, I believe he never really left his
seet and has been the man behind the curtain even as Futrelle has played
the perfect puppet.  Many of us thought back when the Yeltzin-Gorbachev
thing went down that it had been planned from the beginning of
Gorbachev's presidential rein.  It appears something similar has
happened here.
	Finally, if it's true that we're all smokin', it's true too that we're
all supporting the tabaco lobby/industry.  I do not believe this
reference on behalf of CEO Futrelle was an accident.  I think he is
being paid off by the tabaco lobby and that his seemingly stroking
message to us was actually an attempt at subliminally censoring us by
making us feel good about our selves through a linkage of self-image to
smoking.  This, of course, would make it hard for any of us to critique
tabacco in a poem, for we would feel that we were really saying
something bad about our self, that to be "smokin'" was a bad, rather
than a good, thing.
	If Futrelle's pockets are being greesed by the tobaco industry it seems
quite plausible that the Gillespie-Futrelle coup could be a means to get
us all to subtly support the industry through silence.  It would work
like this:  Since Gillespie started the whole Newspoetry consortium and
gave us our jobs we hold him in positive regard.  Yet, we also know that
he smokes.  When does he ditch the Editorship and hand it over to
Futrelle, a non-smoker? He does it as the debates on tobaco start to
fade out of the news.  In other words, he gets out of Newspoetry just at
the time that we Newspoets might start to become disgruntled at tobaco
since so much of what we had hoped might happent to the industry fell
through.  He got out, then, just as we might start to say to ourselves,
"Hey, Gillespie smokes".  Then Futrelle the non-smoker steps in and
starts stroking us with his TQM stuff.  The result: we feel great about
the management, we feel great about smoking because of Futrelle's recent
compliment to us vis-a-vis smokin', and we will thus feel great when
Gillespie COMES BACK INTO POWER.  Little would we suspect that both
Futrelle and Gillespie are sitting in the same chair smoking together
the finest Cuban cigars supplied to them by none other than Joe Camel himself!
	In closing, I encourage all of us Newspoets to stand up and fight
against this mockery of freedom of the press and progressive news
coverage!  I have planned a meeting so that we can come together and
rally for our rights as workers.  The meeting will be held at 7:30 p.m.
this Saturday in Switzerland.  Come one, come all!  Fight the Power!!!

peace and solidarity,
Employee Markewich