Mark Woods: 'BS Dictionary' is what it is — a handy book for 2020
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OK, let’s cut to the chase, pick some low-hanging fruit and say that without even knowing just how much bandwidth this year would require, Bob Wiltfong took a deep dive into the origins of business-speak and wrote a book that seems made for 2020: “The BS Dictionary.”
Wiltfong, 51, is a former TV journalist who left that career to become an actor and comedian. He’s perhaps best known for playing a correspondent on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” circa 2004, although if you bumped into him in Nocatee and tried to figure out why his face looked familiar, it also might be because he starred in a Nationwide Insurance campaign long before Peyton Manning, playing “The World’s Greatest Spokesperson in the World!”
Not that I met face-to-face with Wiltfong. In the new normal of 2020, we were e-introduced, circled back and pivoted to a type of communication that still works when you lean into it. (Translation: We talked on the phone.)
Wiltfong and his wife, Jill, and their three children (ages 14, 13 and 12) moved from Los Angeles to Northeast Florida last year because of his wife’s job: chief marketing officer for Korn Ferry, a global organizational consulting firm that became the sponsor of the PGA Tour’s developmental tour.
Long before the pandemic made it more routine for spouses to be sharing home workspaces, Jill Wiltfong sometimes worked from home — and Bob Wiltfong sometimes would be home because, as he explains, being a comedian is “basically unemployment interrupted periodically by work.”
He recalls one day in particular, about six years ago. They had just finished a conversation where he understood everything said by the woman he’d known for 25 years, going back to when he graduated from the University of Kansas, took his first TV job in Lake Charles, La., and met her.
Then she started the business call. On speakerphone.
He heard his wife confidently using words he’d never heard her use before. Words like “table stakes," "straw man" and "SEO.” And he heard the people on the other end of the line, responding confidently with other words he’d never heard before.
He felt like he was listening to a foreign language. This moment was the spark for “The BS Dictionary: Uncovering the Origins and True Meanings of Business Speak.”
“It was almost like discovering that your spouse is a spy after being married to the person for years and never suspecting,” he wrote a few years later in the introduction. “I envisioned confronting her after she hung up: ‘Who are you, woman?! I want answers now. No more lies!’”
At the time, just out of curiosity, he started researching the origins of some of these words, collecting more and eventually, along with co-author Tim Ito, writing what one Amazon reviewer described as “a bit like a hilarious dictionary version of ‘The Office.’”
My review: It’s probably the most fun I’ve had reading a dictionary since I was about 12 and realized that the old Merriam-Webster included some racy words.
For each word or phrase, Wiltfong and Ito give the definition, followed by the “BS definition” — such as “influencer” defined as “a person you’ve never heard of, but your kids look up to” — and that word or phrase’s origin story.
Wiltfong points to the origin story of “steal one’s thunder” as an example of one of his favorites.
In 18th century London, a theater critic named John Dennis invented a machine that could mimic the crackling, low rumble of thunder for plays. The fake thunder was used for a play that closed quickly at a famed West End theater. When the theater then staged “Macbeth” and used the same method for creating the sound, Dennis proclaimed that the theater stole his thunder.
“I think that one speaks to me because it’s regarding the theater, the arts and spite,” Wiltfong said.
The story of how he went from real TV journalist to parody TV journalist goes back to when Wiltfong — who grew up in Nebraska and had never even been to New York before a job interview — got that job with News 12 Long Island, hated it most days and lost a friend on 9/11.
Glen Pettit was a co-worker, a cameraman who left the TV station to become a police officer shooting video for the NYPD. After Pettit died running toward the Twin Towers, camera in hand, Wiltfong put together a memorial piece, interviewing loved ones who repeatedly said, “He died doing what he loved.”
“That was sort of the final wakeup call,” Wiltfong said. “About six months later, I quit TV news to pursue comedy and acting.”
Even before 9/11, he’d finish work as Bob Butler — his on-air name at News 12 — hop on a train and head to the city to do improv and sketch comedy at the Upright Citizens Brigade.
One of his teachers was Amy Poehler, before her “Saturday Night Live” or “Parks and Recreation” days. Some of the people he shared a stage with, like Ed Helms, became household names.
His own breakthrough came when Dave Chappelle was casting for the pilot of his show, looking for someone to play a TV newscaster. He figures that role helped him land a spot as a correspondent for "The Daily Show," the show’s first to come from a real-life newscaster background.
An example of one of his correspondent reports: After Oprah did her famous “you get a car” giveway — and one of the couples who won mentioned that they’d have to pay taxes on the car — Wiltfong did a bit making it sound like Oprah had punked her audience.
He interviewed the couple (who played along), commiserated with them and told them to look under their chairs for a box containing a gift from "The Daily Show" — which turned out to be a tax form and a consultation with a CPA.
“You get a 1040 form! You get a 1040 form!” Wiltfong yells about as excitedly as Oprah did about cars.
When he describes his Comedy Central experience now, he talks of the challenges of a workplace full of comedians. It isn’t as fun as you might think.
“The headline of my experience — and this doesn't have to do just with The Daily Show — is that some of the most miserable people I’ve met in my life are people who do comedy,” he said. “They’re angry and upset and frustrated. And they’re needed for society. But they aren’t the most fun people to hang out with. … But the flip side is I feel like I got a degree stamped from the Harvard of comedy.”
While in Los Angeles, he continued to work in film, television and commercials. A demo clip of some of his work includes some scenes from “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” “Superstore" and “Modern Family."
He says that these days one of his primary roles is Dad — and that the book ranks right up there on his list of proudest artistic endeavors.
It came out in April, just in time for a year defined by politics and pandemic.
“The joke answer is that it’s about BS and what better year to have BS come out than 2020?” he said. “But I do think we are probably working with our spouses more and more, and hear more of their specific business-speak than we ever have before. I’m sure I’m not alone.”
He’s so spot-on. At the end of the day, it hasn’t been a banner year. Plainly put, it is what it is, hands-down a dumpster fire where our spouses sound like spies. Thankfully those of us still working in journalism, particularly with corporate ownership, don’t fall into these cliche traps. I mean, this isn’t our first rodeo.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Bob Wiltfong's 'BS Dictionary' is what it is — a handy book in 2020
