When a team is a mob.

“Team” is a wonderful euphemism beloved by corporate BS artists. There are no longer employees or workers or staff or laborers or help or wage-earners. Everyone is part of a team. Sounds like we are all working together, pitching in, the CEO and everyone else, all teammates.

And now the team description is echoed by reporters and editors. What brings this up is an Apr. 20, 2018, Washington Post story, which was the top page 1 story of The Boston Globe, with this headline: “Giuliani joining Trump’s legal team.” The Post story starts: “Former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and two other former federal prosecutors joined President Trump’s legal team Thursday following weeks of turbulence and struggles to find attorneys who would agree to represent the president in the ongoing federal probe into Russian election interference.”

Wait a minute. Those guys are joining a “team” following “weeks of turbulence and struggles.” What kind of a team is that? How about describing the White House bunch as a gang, mob, stable, pack, scrum, a cabal of wiseguys, a house of hustlers? After all, the Washington Post’s reporting makes the Trump administration into all that, and nothing close to being a team.

File under: Corporate BS becomes journalese.