THIS IS the golden age of the bottom line. When you're out of work, don't scowl and whine. Unemployment's good for the bottom line.
So smile, be happy, flash the "O.K." sign because you're doing your bit for the bottom line. Being unemployed, that is.
Six percent is just about right. Keeps Old Man Inflation at bay. Away from the bottom line. That sweet-smellin', ever-lovin' bottom line.
In the golden age of the bottom line if your pension fund's suffering a steep decline, don't fret and storm. It's merely part of the grand design to improve things down on the bottom line.
Ah, bottom line! You are the wonder of the age! You old sweet-smellin', ever-lovin' bottom line.
Money!
In this golden age of the bottom line it would be so nice if you'd just resign and spare your boss the cost of an anodyne.
Aspirin, that is.
Poor fellow, why make him feel like a swine for booting you out when it's so easy just to resign? So good, too, for the bottom line.
Bless you, bless you, bottom line! You sweet-smellin' bottom line! Love it the way you stun Wall Street, you wonderful old thing, you! Money!
In the golden age of the bottom line-a, we all wear clothing made in China.
In the golden age of the bottom line, Mickey Mouse becomes Frankenstein.
Disney, that is.
Rules the world.
For 50 years we struggled to save ourselves from communism, that -ism malign, too dumb to see the beauty of the bottom line. But the ironies of history are serpentine. Now we hail the triumph of mousemanship. Gigantic ears overshadowing the bottom line that is civilization.
Mickey, that is.
Those who mourn the death of refinement just have to accept that bottom-linement can't put up with stuff what's fine on account of stuff like that don't do no good at all whatsoever for the bottom line. Not at this point in time on the bottom line.
Doesn't the sweetness of that nethermost line just make you pine to stand up and sing? All together now, something asinine:
Oh, my darling, oh, my darling, oh, my darling bottom line! You're the one I'll love forever. Not a cost-ineffective human like Clementine.
Here in the golden age of the bottom line, the few will be upright and the rest supine. Yes, it may be hard on the multitudinous supine, but their supininity nobly serves a cause benign; namely, maintenance of robust health in the bottom line.
It's no use to be prickly like the porcupine about the golden glory of the bottom line. No use being bestial -- feline, canine, leonine -- toward the porcine nature of the bottom line.
So lift a glass of the noblest wine to the stuff that dreams are made of. Money, that is. Money. Money. Money.
For all of us in the long run, supine though the most may be, a good sturdy bottom line -- a bottom-line just raring for a crack at the bottom lines of other countries out to kick our nation's bottom line's butt -- that good sturdy bottom line of ours will be our best friend in the long run.
And as the economist John Maynard Keynes has pointed out, in the long run we are all dead. What could be a more appropriate condition in which to savor the rewards of our devotion to the bottom line?
Oh, bottom line, thou sweet-smellin', ever-lovin' heart of mine. When will America build churches to thee?
Russell Baker is a columnist for the New York Times.
