Does anybody know plain English?

It's pointless to isolate one's rage on these bonuses paid by AIG, the international insurance giant that went broke by doing exotic financial transactions instead of actuarially unassailable insurance business.

Then it got bailed out by politicians disbursing taxpayer dollars, because, you see, the company was too big to fail. Thus fortified, the company doled out $165 million in so-called retention bonuses to 418 employees, 52 of whom took the money and ran.

To fixate on these bonuses is to jump on the pile after the whistle is blown. We will almost always get in trouble when we are not true to the precision of our language -- when we do not mean what we say. And we long ago double-talked and empty-talked our way into this disaster.

For a ready and recent example: You have this currently operative phrase, retention bonus, henceforth to be surrounded by the ignominy of quotation marks.

Obviously these AIG "bonuses" were not "retention" devices on account of the fact that 52 people took them and turned right around and flew the coop.

To be a "retention" arrangement, acceptance of the payment would have been in exchange for not leaving over some specified period of time.

And these weren't "bonuses."

Here's what a "bonus" is, if I may quote something as archaic as a dictionary. A bonus is "something in addition to what is expected or strictly due."

AIG's chairman explains that it was more prudent to pay these "bonuses" than to invite potentially costlier liability by not paying them, since these were contractual obligations specified in employees' compensation packages.

So these payments were, in fact, wholly expected. They were, in fact, strictly due.

The chairman's solution was to ask recipients to give back half.

Try that next time you get caught robbing a bank.

The problem isn't that the company takes taxpayers for a ride. It's that the company made contracts in the first place to pay millions to retain people who weren't worth retaining, considering that their company went under, and who were actually under no legal obligation to stay.

Apparently, every failing financial institution was scared half to death that it would lose key people to another failing financial institution.

Here's what a "retention bonus" would be: Your boss calls you in -- quite to your surprise, perhaps even concern -- and says, "We had a real good year and there are three or four of our employees, you among them, who are especially responsible for our success, owing to your talent and dedication. So we'd like to give you a little something extra, because we happen to have it and you happen to have earned it. Here's a check. Don't spend it all in one place. Well, wait. Before you take the check: We so don't want to lose you that we'd like you to look over and sign this little accompanying document that describes this bonus as being in consideration for what will essentially be an employment contract under which you will agree to stay with us for the next three years."

This is what a "retention bonus" is not: "We went broke last year, but your contract says you get this million dollars, which we happen to have only because the taxpayers anted up, thanks to their congressmen, because we failed so royally that the corporate world convinced the political world that the whole world would have ended if we hadn't been rescued. Now take the money and don't let the screen door hit you, because you weren't any good in the first place, else we wouldn't have gone belly-up, and, anyway, it looks like our government gravy train may be about to derail."

John Brummett is an award-winning columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock and author of "High Wire," a book about Bill Clinton's first year as president. His e-mail address is jbrummett@ arkansasnews.com.