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Potemkin

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(pronounced puh-tem-kin or poh-tem-kin or puh-temp-kin)  adjective

Definition

1. having an impressive but false or deceptive appearance, as in a façade; giving the impression of being solid and imposing but actually lacking substance.   2. designed to conceal or mask something undesirable or embarrassing. [From Field Marshal Grigory Potemkin who, to impress Catherine the Great of Russia, had elaborate fake villages built for the empress’s tour of the Crimea in 1787.]

Other Forms

Potemkin village  noun

Main Example

• The recent NTSB report on the horrific air crash a year ago near Buffalo involving Continental Flight 3407, which was operated by an outfit called Colgan Air and killed everyone on board, and a PBS Frontline documentary “Flying Cheap,” have together shone a fresh light on commuter airline safety. We now know that the series of errors in the cockpit that led to the Buffalo crash were a result of sheer incompetence and pilot fatigue. For instance, the captain had previously failed multiple FAA tests and, prior to joining Colgan, had logged less than 50% of the flying time required by major airlines. And this is how the first officer, who was living with her parents in Washington state because of her niggardly annual salary of under $16,000, had spent the 24 hours prior to the ill-fated flight: commuting from Seattle to Memphis the previous night; staying in a crew lounge in Memphis from midnight to 4 a.m.; commuting to New York; and finally, “hanging out” in a crew lounge in Newark until 1:30 p.m. show time. The reason why such shoddily operated airlines exist in the first place is perhaps best summed up in what Donald McCune, a former commercial pilot, told ABC’s Charlie Gibson last year: “Quite frankly, I lay the blame not on the regionals but on major airlines. They’ve outsourced their flying to the regionals to the lowest bidder and that lowest bidder may not have the money it needs to ensure the safest operation.” In other words, some of the commuter airlines are, in essence, Potemkin airlines, flying under the brand name of the majors even though their operations are far below the standards of Continental, American, Delta, etc.

Workplace Examples

• Of late, I’ve become thoroughly disillusioned with the huge relief agency I work for. Their staging of high profile events from time to time, such as that jazzy annual fund-raising ball, give the organization a nice façade, but thanks to continuing infighting within the top management, and an exodus of our most talented employees, very little is getting accomplished in the field. We’ve become a shadow of our former selves; a Potemkin relief agency.
• My understanding is that every major decision taken by our CEO, Robert, is really at the behest of the company’s largest shareholder. Robert seems to be a CEO only in name, a Potemkin CEO if you will.

Other Examples

• in January 2009, while visiting a critically ill relative in Chicago’s Northwestern Memorial Hospital and driving on downtown streets that were rife with potholes and seeing rusty bridges and other images of disrepair, this author remarking to his fellow passenger with disgust: “Looks like the supposedly great metropolis of Chicago is, in reality, a Potemkin village.”
• in a speech in Sept. 2008 at the height of the financial crisis, this author saying indignantly: “The fact that we suddenly and inexplicably find ourselves on the brink of what some experts have labeled Great Depression 2.0, with several major banks facing collapse, makes me wonder if all that regulation enacted in recent decades to prevent dangerous risk-taking in the world of Wall Street was hollow and superficial, a Potemkin village of sorts.”
• Somalia--a Potemkin nation, what with no effective government, an impotent military that will not take on the scourge of piracy, and an ongoing humanitarian crisis which the U.N. has described as the world’s worst
• some political analysts, including conservative columnist George Will, referring to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev as “Russia’s Potemkin president” because key decisions in that nation seem to be made by the former president and now prime minister, Vladimir Putin
• amid the scathing worldwide criticism it was receiving for its inaction and callousness in the wake of the devastating May 2008 cyclone, Burma’s ruling military regime hastily erecting “relief camps,” which were all show and in reality Potemkin villages, to impress visiting U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon

© 2010 V.J. Singal
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