As a television executive, I have realized the value of selling things with more or less “catchy” or previously used titles. There were programs called “Poltergeist: The Series,” “The New Sea Hunt,” and “American Werewolf in London: The Series.” Words used to describe movies and television content matter, and they matter a lot.

I was on a cable panel about 30 years ago when I suggested that the television series “Happy Days” lived in the consciousness of the American public and that everyone who watched television at that time knew what it was. Names of things mattered then as they do today. Television people and politicians have long understood this.

I just loved it when the White House apologized for the President’s description of the campaign against terrorism as a “crusade.” For an encore, they renamed the campaign “Operation Infinite Justice,” a name that seemed to some Muslims to promise what only Allah could deliver.  

It has always amazed me that rape, incest, and murder are ho-hum events, while at the same time the media and the public go ape when what they consider to be an inappropriate word is used.

We redesigned the buildup “Operation Enduring Freedom,” a name that manages to be both grandiose and dangerously ambiguous. It’s also fascinating that we’re using “lovely words” to describe our intention, which is, as a rule, to kill people.

During World War II, operations bore names like Avalanche, Market Garden, Mulberry, and of course Overlord, the name personally selected by Winston Churchill for the Normandy invasion.

After the war, names like Overlord and Avalanche became household words, in addition to the names of many movies, from Operation Pacific to Operation Petticoat.

President Eisenhower sent the Marines to Lebanon in 1957 under the name “Operation Blue Bat,” and the military operations in Vietnam tended to have names like End-Sweep, Pocket Money, and Abilene.

One Korea operation was named “Killer,” and fifteen years later in Vietnam, General Westmoreland was forced to rename Operation Masher when President Johnson objected that the name didn’t reflect the administration’s “pacification emphasis.”

Reaching a new level of chutzpah, the Reagan administration dubbed the invasion of Grenada “Operation Urgent Fury,” exemplifying how important a name can be in determining the public perception of a military action.

When the US sent troops to Panama in 1989, the Bush Administration named the operation “Just Cause.” While I can’t be certain, I think that they took the name from an issue of Batman comics.

Next came operations Desert Shield, Desert Storm, Restore Hope in Somalia, Uphold Democracy in Haiti, and operations in the Balkans that went by names like Shining Hope, Determined Force, and Provide Promise. (“Provide” is a favorite element in these names. Since 1989, we have had operations called Provide Promise, Provide Refuge, Provide Hope, Provide Transition, Provide Comfort, and Provide Relief.)

Of course the broadcast networks struggle to find a unifying theme for their coverage: Assault on America, America Unites, America Rising, America on Alert, America Fights Back.

Words matter.

Many years ago, I lived happily with Carol Harrison, the daughter of a Fundamentalist Church of Christ minister.  She picked up a few Yiddish expressions like kin ahora, which means something like “knock on wood” or “don’t jinx it.”

We were driving somewhere on a freeway. There was no traffic at all, and I commented on it. Carol replied: “Norman, careful, don’t give yourself a kinda hurry…”

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Many have called for Haiti to be rebuilt earthquake-proof, and you might as well throw in hurricane and flood-proof as well, since the country sits in such a disaster-prone location. While this will probably be done for municipal buildings and other publicly funded buildings like hospitals, airports, schools and the like, the chances that the slums around Port-au-Prince will be rebuilt to withstand earthquakes are virtually nil. Most of them (most of the buildings in Haiti, probably) weren’t constructed to any building code, or even by an engineer or architect. Once the world’s attention gets distracted by some other crisis, most of the new buildings probably will be just as vulnerable.  

Much of the problem is due to the corruption and poverty endemic in Haiti, but I’ll leave the politics to my much more learned friend, Anthony. I want to ask: What can be realistically done, given Haiti’s current political problems, to reduce the loss of life in a future disaster?

Unfortunately, many of the easy answers, such as not building on high-risk sites such as hillsides or floodplains will not happen because of poverty, overcrowding and lack of government control. However, there could be a lesson to learn from a country that has suffered earthquakes and other natural disasters for millennia: Japan.

Currently, of course, Japan uses some of the most advanced building technology available. However for a long time, Japan embraced the unusual strategy of designing their buildings to fail.

While we usually consider buildings made of brick, concrete or stone to be strong and safe, in an earthquake they are among the weakest structures. While these materials can carry a large vertical load, allowing buildings to be sturdy, they cannot withstand even moderate horizontal forces, as happen in earthquakes. If you ever built towers from blocks when you were a little kid, you would know that it’s easy to make something strong enough to sit on but that nothing could save it if your baby brother gave it a small push.

The Japanese recognized this, and designed their homes from wood and paper. While many of them still fell down when an earthquake happened, they were so simple that they could often be rebuilt in a day. In addition, their lightweight construction meant that those inside had a much higher chance of survival and rescue.

The final irony is that another earthquake will probably not hit Haiti for a while, and that instead of trying to build buildings that can survive Armageddon, Haitians should focus on buildings that can shelter all the displaced during the next hurricane season.

Nevertheless, my (probably naïve) idea is this: provide an IKEA-like kit with instructions and materials (or just instructions) for building a simple, lightweight home that can be built and rebuilt quickly and won’t kill you when it falls down in an earthquake (or hurricane). Perhaps they could be modular or stackable, so that apartment buildings could be made instead of the heavyset concrete ones that collapsed. It will be a while before Haiti will have enough professionals to do construction; this would make life easier and safer for the amateurs.

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