Slip of the Tongue? When We End Up Saying More than We Mean
By letterhead | August 19, 2008
Went for a sail in NY harbor over the weekend. Saw this yacht tied up to the pier…
GET A LOAD OF THE BOAT’S NAME…
Hmmm… wasn’t Utopia 1 good enough? The original “Utopia” must not have been all it’s cracked up to be.
Ditto for Utopia 2.
Clearly these people are having trouble finding happiness.
Well maybe “third time’s a charm!” Somehow I doubt it. After all, money can’t buy…
Utopia: It’s like potato chips; you can never have just one!
Topics: Language, Philosophy, Uncategorized | No Comments »
Orwellian Olympiad (II): Ministry of Truth Revises Gymnast’s Past and Gets Caught… THIS TIME
By letterhead | August 14, 2008
Following up on last week’s post on George Orwell’s 1984…
The latest Olympic development is not just that the Chinese government falsified a gymnast’s birth date on her passport, but that they went back and altered PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED NEWSPAPER REPORTS about her age!!
Columnist/Blogger David Flumenbaum has posted copies of an article from the China Daily that was altered (after publication) to reflect Chinese officials’ version of the facts.
I reproduce them here, but for David’s analysis and more documentation please read his post.
The newspaper article as it originally appeared…
And now… as it’s currently seen online….
In Orwell’s 1984, in the bowels of the enormous Ministry of Truth…
What happened in that unseen labyrinth to which the pneumatic tubes led, he did not know in detail, but he did know in general terms.
As soon as all the corrections which happened to be necessary in any particular [issue] of the Times had been assembled and collated, that [issue] would be reprinted, the original copy destroyed, and the corrected copy placed on the files instead.
This process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound tracks, cartoons, photographs — to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance.
Day by day and almost minute by minute, the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction of the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct…
All history was palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary.
Wet Noodle: IOC’s Rogge Sells Us Down the (Yellow) River
The Chinese government got caught because they did not track down and alter other official documents (posted by Dave) that contradict the falsified news reports. But you can bet it wasn’t for lack of trying.
And now that they know where their vulnerabilities are, how much you wanna bet that next time they’ll be a lot more thorough?
And what’s the likelihood that internet companies — even Western ones — will be subject to even stricter oversight and control over what’s chached and how those files are managed?
And just how cooperative do you think those revenue hungry Western companies will be?
If the IOC is any indication we might as well kiss it all goodbye. Here is what IOC president Rogge said to the Associated Press:
“The IOC relies on the international federations, who are exclusively responsible for the eligibility of athletes. It’s not the task of the IOC to check every one of the 10,000 athletes.” (story)
Gucci Blinders and an Hermes Gag
The interesting thing about self-interest, which free-marketeers tout all the time as the all-powerful saviour of humanity, is that it leads people to do dastardly things. And it leads other people, on the fringes, who benefit, to turn a blind eye.
Where is the IOC’s outrage? Where is the promise of an investigation? Where is the slap at the Chinese regime for its asaault on the integrity of the Olympics?
And where oh where is the thinking person’s absolute shock that they tried to get away with rewriting the past???
Rogge clearly sees no/hears no/speaks no evil… no matter what.
Down the Memory Hole
We are fast approaching a level of technological capability and proficiency that’ll enable the implementation, on a global scale, of exactly the kind of information and reality controls Orwell described nearly 60 years ago.
And we have seen quite clearly that:
a) there is no shortage of deft spin-masters who have no patience for facts or independent reality… (e.g., Karl Rove’s assertion that… “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors.. and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”)
b) there is no shortage of self-interested lackey’s who will stand idly by, or even enable powerful people to re-make reality wholesale to suit their interests.
To quote Orwell…
“Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy… The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
When you look at some of the BS perpetrated by high-profile PR pros these days, Orwell doesn’t sound very far off the mark, particularly in the political realm. Could it escalate to the kind of continuous rewriting of the facts that Orwell describes?
Who knows. Who ever seriously thought it could go THIS far?
Topics: Media, Public Relations, Philosophy, Politics, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Orwellian Olympic PR Deception: Are We Too Dumbed Down to Care?
By letterhead | August 11, 2008
Stuck for nearly half a day in an airport this weekend, I was browsing the itty-bitty bookstore and stumbled on George Orwell’s 1984. If you haven’t read it in a while, I’d highly recommend it.
We are so inured to the machinations of politicians, business leaders, spin doctors, and even the media that we tend to think of their antics as tragicomedy. After re-reading 1984… mmmm, not so much.
It’s part of the reason I was so blown away by the revelation that part of the TV broadcast of the Olympic opening ceremony — the firework “footprints” — was faked, according to news reports.
Another Olympic Deception
The decision to fake the fireworks was approved by the Olympic Committee…
the same Olympic Committee that lied about open Internet access for the press and then apologized not for censorship, but that people had been “misled by what I told you”… a mealy mouthed apology if there ever was one.
This time, a Chinese “visual effects team” worked for more than a year to perfect the deception, because the Beijing Olympic Committee (BOGOC) thought it was too dangerous to film the fireworks live.
And though they may take credit for the visual deceit:
“…it was still a bit too bright compared to the actual fireworks,” he said. “But most of the audience thought it was filmed live - so that was mission accomplished.”
They point the ultimate finger of fakery at Beijing Olympic Broadcasting (BOB) , the joint venture between the International Olympic Committee, which decided to permit it.
BOB was unapologetic:
“As far as we are concerned, we let off the fireworks - that’s what’s important to us.”
How Lies Become Truth?
It may be a small thing. The fireworks in fact did go off. It’s not like they made up the event wholesale.
Filming them was problematic, so they mocked-up what it would look like if they could film them, while the real fireworks went off for the live audience.
But then again, maybe not such a small thing. The TV audience was NOT informed that it was a “dramatization,” as they say in TV commercials… (we’ll get back to this in a minute).
And what if the “footprints” did not actually look like footprints? Or what if a few of them had misfired? The visual record would not reflect the actual as-it-happened-in-real-life truth.
The visual record had already been faked. And the PR victory of the Beijing regime would have been preserved for posterity with nothing to contradict it.
To quote Orwell…
“And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed — if all records told the same tale — then the lie passed into history and became truth.”
George’s Vision for the War on Terror
I’m talking about Orwell’s vision, not Bush’s: the former predicted the prospect of “continuous war” managed for the benefit of those in power — through deceit, deception, and manipulation of perception — to “keep the structure of society intact.”
Sound familiar? It should… last week we saw, for the first time in what seems like years, an elevated “terror threat level” of Orange, which just happens to take place… in the middle of a very tight election season.
When was the last Orange Alert? It’s very hard to tell.
The threat warning section of the U.S. Homeland Security website looks like something from the Ministry of Truth in Orwell’s mythical Oceania:
DHS shows NO records of when the last Orange alert was. It might have been yesterday. Might have been last year… might have ALWAYS been Orange. We don’t know… we just have to care that it’s Orange TODAY.
You may recall that a key job of the Ministry of Truth was to change all past records every time Oceania switched its enemy from Eastasia to Eurasia, or back again.
All records would confirm that Oceania had ALWAYS been at war with that particular enemy. Every time the enemy changed, the records would be changed to suit. The real goal was to keep people in a constant state of jingoistic fury at the enemy-of-the-moment.
Point being: by depriving people of records of the past, it’s much easier to control their understanding of the present, and their behavior.
So when was the last Orange terror alert in the U.S.?
Surprise, surprise!!… Seems that it was sometime the 2006 election cycle. When the Party looks vulnerable, crank up the furor!
(Josh Marshall’s analysis of the manipulation of Orange alerts appeared in Time Magazine in mid-2006… and if anyone who knows of a historical record of these alerts… please feel free to share!)
A Lie That Became Truth
The magazine The American Conservative has confirmed Ron Suskin’s claim that the Bush Administration forged a key piece of CIA intelligence (a letter to Saddam Hussein from the head of Iraqi intelligence talking about uranium from Niger and terrorist training for Mohamed Atta). source
To quote Orwell…
“In the end, the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it.”
Nuff said.
Open Mouth Insert “Footprint”
But are American’s too stupid to care? Just like the “proles” of Oceania?….
“And even when they became discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontent led nowhere, because, being without general ideas, they could only focus on petty specific grievances. The larger evils invariable escaped their notice.”
Strong evidence of our “prole” nature appeared on MSNBC’s website a few days ago: an article by someone named Helen A. S. Popkin (which sounds suspiciously like a pseudonym).
The sheer stupidity of Ms. Popkin’s piece makes you wonder whether she is like, for reals, or just like, having a joke on us… she has a total “freakout” that the guy in the “freecreditreport.com” commercial is like… NOT FOR REAL!
Like OH. MY. GOD.
“Any shock associated with FreeCreditReport.com doesn’t come from any practices that might be construed as misleading. The freakout occurs when viewers learn that the guy in the commercial isn’t actually The Guy. That isn’t his band. He was never half of a marriage doomed by his dream girl’s heretofore unmentioned defaulted credit cards. He and the wife didn’t make their first (and last?) home together in the same place he conducts band practice — her parent’s basement.
“In fact, identity theft never forced his employment at a pirate-themed seafood restaurant or that due to his willful ignorance regarding his own credit score, his automotive choices were limited to a used subcompact which caused his legs to stick to the vinyl and his posse getting laughed at.” [emphasis added]
Repeat After Me: “TV Commercials Aren’t Real. TV Commercials…”
When I am watching TV, I intuitively know that:
scrubbing bubbles don’t dance and sing
bears don’t use toilet paper
the guy in the white coat isn’t really a doctor
and the guy with the guitar is just an actor; those bad-credit things didn’t really happen to HIM; it’s fiction; it’s a sales pitch; it’s not REAL
I read the piece from pundit Popkin a dozen times, looking for the tell-tale wink-wink-nudge-nudge of an Onion-style spoof, but I just can’t find it.
I think this chick really was shocked to find out that the guy in the commercial wasn’t real. And I am triply dumbfounded that an editor at MSNBC (… MSNBC for God’s sake!) found her freakout newsworthy, rather than a cringe-worthy self-disclosure of abject stupidity.
Do they really think that they have to reduce the quality of prose — in a national news outlet — to up-speak tween jargon in order to appeal to Audience 2.0? The writer comes off as just plain moronic:
“He’s the FreeCreditReport.com guy, and you are so totally in love with him you want to have like, 10 million of his babies…”
Yikes! PLEASE don’t have ten million babies!… the world is stupid enough already!
The fact that this kind of dreck appeared on a reputable news site makes one wonder whether the next generation(s) will have been so dumbed down and lacking in judgment as to… well… Orwell says it best:
“In a way, the world-view of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it.”
A World Without Kittens
Popkin’s article reads like an Orwellian nightmare come true.
She has no shock whatsoever for the fact that the product being advertised is a scam — i.e., she takes for granted that the substance of the pitch is fraudulent.
“Any shock associated with FreeCreditReport.com doesn’t come from any practices that might be construed as misleading.”
She is like Orwell’s Julia:
“Who cares? It’s always one bloody war after another, and one knows the news is all lies anyway.”
Her shock comes at the fact that the beloved scruffy guitar-guy isn’t real. Nor is the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fair, or Santa.
Meanwhile, the BOCOG and BOB are painting pretty — but fraudulent — pictures for the viewers at home. And while the White House is caught red-handed fabricating evidence to push us into a state of constant war, MSNBC can’t get over the fact that they feel duped by a guitar-playing slacker.
They can’t tell the difference between fact and fiction; and they aren’t even ashamed to display this ignorance to the world. Presumably because the world shares it.
Wholesale fabrication is less and less of an outrage. We are less and less able to detect it. And the fabrication we care least about relates to substance. What matters most is retaining the credibility and power of fantasy.
At this rate, there will be no more kittens in America in my lifetime.
Just Be Happy Meal
In his 1961 afterword for Orwell’s book, Erich Fromm writes:
“It is one of the most characteristic and destructive developments of our own society that man, becoming more and more of an instrument, transforms reality more and more into something relative to his own interests and functions.”
Fabrications large and small, perpetrated every day, with fewer consequences and even less awareness… a scary reality, but one that is increasingly common.
A little ketchup and mustard with that kitten?
Topics: PR 2.0, Language, Public Relations, Philosophy, Politics | No Comments »
BS of the Month Award: Gray Lady Calls Out Freddie Mac CEO Syron for Being Two-Face
By letterhead | August 5, 2008
As the new movie The Dark Knight is breaking box office records and capturing the popular imagination, it’s only fitting to riff on the theme for this month’s award… and yes, it’s only the 5th of the month, but I can’t imagine that anyone will top this one in the next few weks (political surrogates aside).
A NYT article today calls out Freddie Mac CEO Richard Syron for a sin that’s been all too common among the insider set in Washington D.C. over the past 7 years: not listening to anyone except your political dark angels.
It got us into a war. It’s what put us over a barrel (literally), on energy. It’s what busted the budget. The current Administration has left dozens of bodies in its wake. Smart, dedicated people who were pushed out of their jobs because they did not toe the line. (Remember Paul O’Neil… anyone?)
Ideology got in the way of rational policy and now… all you have to do is pick up a newspaper any day of the week to see the consequences.
HOLY SUBPRIME BATMAN… THAT TALKING POINT IS SUB-PAR!
What Syron told the Times is quite astonishing in its brazenness:
“If I had better foresight, maybe I could have improved things a little bit,” he said. “But frankly, if I had perfect foresight, I would never have taken this job in the first place.” [Emphasis added.]
Come again? It’s the job’s fault?!?!?!
YOUR $38-MILLION JOB?
Oh yes, it was the job that was a runaway train. You just happened to be on it… in the caboose of course, not at the controls.
The clear implication here is that Syron now believes he was a condemned man from the start, and he wants your sympathy.
It was a lost cause; the job is thankless and undoable. He’s just the fall guy. That’s the reason he was paid $38 million in just under five years, because it’s the worst job in the world… a helluva lot worse than:
gutting fish
working in a steel mill
being a dairy cow midwife
digging wells
cleaning dump trucks
or even inseminating turkeys…
and a whole lot of other dirty jobs.
Poor Mr. Syron.
Just Plain Batty
A Freddie Mac spokesman said in a written statement:
“There is little to nothing that Freddie Mac could have done to prevent the losses that it is now incurring. You’ve got the worst housing crisis in U.S. recorded history, and we’re the largest housing finance company in the country, so when one goes down, the other goes with it.”
Um… reality check. The housing market would not be “going down” if is had not GONE UP so much in the first place. And what enabled the run up (i.e., bubble)?
Cheap, easy money lent to people who could not afford it, at terms that posed a future risk of default, on properties that were overvalued.
Exactly the kind of risky practice Syron was warned about.
And for this bubble we can thank Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae… and let’s not forget Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, formerly of Goldman Sachs, which made a killing selling more than $100 billion in crappy CMOs (collateralized mortgage obligations) and then making another killing when it shorted mortgage securities in 2007 while dumping the rest of its CMO portfolio.
BLAM!! … Pow!!… ZAP!… ZOWIE!!
So now it seems that underlings tried to convince Mr. Syron to be more cautious… screaming “The bridge is out! The bridge is out!” as he directed engineers to toss more wood onto the fire… all from the comfort of his cozy caboose.
In response he claims:
“This company has to answer to shareholders, to our regulator and to Congress, and those groups often demand completely contradictory things.”
Yet the Times quotes his defiant refusal when he was told to raise capital; he said to a group of investors:
“This company will bow to no one.”
Wow!… That was pretty damned forceful! Why couldn’t he be that damned forceful when pushed to compromise underwriting and risk management standards?
Now there’s an interesting riddle…
Riddle Me This MacMan… Whom do you answer to?
So he many not “bow” to anyone, but whom does he serve? Could it be Capitol Hill?
Prior to the 2006 midterm elections, Mr. Syron gave almost exclusively to Republican candidates, presumably because they were in charge.
But since late 2006 he has given (he & his wife) almost exclusively to democrats: $22,500 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and just shy of $14,000 to Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-CT). As well as another $20,000 to FREDDIE PAC, his company’s political action committee, which splits its donations about evenly between Dems and GOPers. (Stats provided by Open Secrets.)
So, we know he gives to those in power… a total of about $46,000 to the Democrats in charge, just in the last year and a half. But what else did he give?
It seems he defied common sense fiscal practice and gave open access to the coffers of Freddie Mac, to achieve a political goal of supporting the housing market… er, bubble… which made a lot of people look really really good… for a relatively short period of time… at a very very high price to the nation, and great profit to himself.
The New Supervillain Weapon: Hyperbolic Hypocrisy
Syron claims that he had no warning, no insight, and no control. Whoah! That’s some super-duper cloaking weapon he’s got. Makes him invisible and removes all responsibility for everything.
According to the article:
Others, however, dismiss [Syron’s] explanation. “Sure, it’s hard to deal with the pressures of Congress and shareholders and regulators,” said a former high-ranking Freddie Mac executive. “But that’s why executives get paid so much. It’s not acceptable to blame those pressures for making bad choices.”
BLAM! Take that! Your super-weapon talking points have no power here!
Get Thee To A… Batcave!
So we honor his impeccable performance as a two-faced villain: the powerful, heavyweight, money-slinging CEO when times are good; and a lame, evasive, dog-ate-my-homework 8-year old when times are bad.
And he now has the honor of writing a new chapter in the long Freddie Mac legacy of irresponsibility… adding to the $5 billion accounting scam, and political fund raising scandal with the destruction of $80 billion in (admittedly inflated) shareholder value and a potential taxpayer bailout as icing on the cake.
So we offer Richard Syron this month’s BS AWARD: a bat cave of his very own, where he can sit and ponder his role in the biggest taxpayer swindle since, well, since the S&L fiasco of the 1980s.
We hope you spend the rest of your days ankle-deep in guano, praying that some light will one day enter your cave… the light you refused to see when it really mattered.
Topics: B.S. of the Month Award, Public Relations | No Comments »
Cock-a-Doodle-Doo-Doo: PR’s Secondary Lies and Tacit Approvals are Lies All the Same
By letterhead | July 31, 2008
Less than two weeks ago, International Olympics Committee (IOC) head Jacques Rogge said:
“For the first time, foreign media will be able to report freely and publish their work freely in China. There will be no censorship on the Internet.” (AFP)
According to Reuters, about two weeks ago Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain said:
“Right now, we believe we are in a very comfortable spot in terms of our capital.” (Reuters)… And about a month ago he said: “I think that where we have marked these CDOs we are comfortable that we are in very good shape looking into the future.” (MarketWatch) Back in April he said: “The goal is to maintain our current ratings. No more capital raising; I’m sure we have enough capital.” (Reuters)
Just a month ago (in front of a Congressional inquiry about the electrocution death of a US soldier in Iraq) Pentagon Inspector General Gordon Heddell said:
“Our review has not found any credible evidence that representatives from KBR were aware of imminent, life-threatening hazards in Legion Security Forces Building #1 at the Radwaniyah Palace Complex prior to SSG Maseth’s electrocution on January 2, 2008.” (Gov. doc)
In the same hearings, Kellog Brown & Root (KBR) official Thomas Bruni said:
“Though we cannot be certain who installed the water pump [that killed Maseth] we do know that KBR did not do so.” (ThinkProgress)
A New Game: Cluck, Cluck, Woops!!!
Ah… it’s amazing to see how fast the fowl come home to roost these days. Rather than just one “duck-duck-goose,” it’s looking like a whole lot of business and public “leaders” are getting their gooses cooked.
(Yeah OK it’s a mixed metaphor, but if it walks like a duck and clucks like a chicken then you can be fairly certain it’s foul.)
Anyway, in the past few days…
The IOC was forced to admit that officials negotiated Internet censorship/restrictions with the Chinese regime. (ABC News)
Merril Lynch was forced to take a $7.9 billion write down and raise $8.6 billion in capital by selling new stock. (Bloomberg)
IG Heddell and KBR exec Bruni were forced to backtrack when indisputable documentation (work orders and sworn testimony) surfaced, indicating that both the Pentagon and KBR had been told of the electrical problem months in advance of the death of Army Staff Sergeant Ryan Maseth. In fact, another soldier had suffered (and reported) electric shocks in the same facility. (ThinkProgress)
Crock-a-Doodle-Doo
When Scott McLellan’s book came out several weeks back, it provoked a torrent of criticism of the PR profession, including a rant by CBS news analyst Andrew Cohen.
PR pros were spitting mad, and among the first responders was CBS communications director Gil “Stanley Bing” Schwartz.
Gil stated in his on-air rebuttal that if PR people are guilty of anything, we are guilty of “secondary lies.” His reasoning: we assume our bosses tell us the truth and if our bosses lie to us, how can we possibly not lie to you? We just report. You decide.
Presumably he is referring to just the sort of lying we have seen over the past few weeks from Rogge, Thain, Heddell, Bruni, and a fifth character, IOC press chairman Kevan Gosper.
Frankly, I think Mr. Bing is full of it. And his claim of passive failures runs directly counter to the “C-suite advisor” postioning that pr pros love to tout as our singular value.
Merill Full of Bull?
Just look at the implicit logic of it the Merrill announcement: the firm negotiated a 20-cents-on-the-dollar deal to sell $30 billion in securities to another fund company. That CANNOT just happen in two weeks.
That kind of deal requires a full accounting to the purchaser of the value of the securities, which takes a lot of time, especially given that valuation of CDO securities is a complex task that has bedeviled Wall Street for more than a year.
Backing up from the announcement date of July 29, this valuation process HAD to be taking place (or could even have been finished) exactly as Thain was making his original statement. There is enough reason to assume he knew quite well that this huge loss/transation was pending, as well as the capital measures required to shore up the firm’s finances.
So where were the senior c-suite communications advisers? Where was “truth and accuracy [that] are the bread and butter of the public relations profession?” (According to PRSA’s response to Cohen anyway)
The conversation should have gone something like this:
Yes, Mr. Thain, I understand, but can we really say that? Banks have been making incorrect pronouncements about their quarterly results for more than a year, only to be embarrassed when the numbers come out. We’ll be hammered if we are wrong. I’d like to double-check these with accounting… and with trading… and the M&A people… and the head of our fixed income team… and… where exactly are we with the effort to shop around our CDO portfolio?
Either all the C-suite comms advisers had been quarantined in the hen house, or they all had their heads up… under their wings. It looks like they just sat by and let their CEO make one blatantly misleading statement after another.
How to Look Like a Four-Star Ass, in One Easy Lesson
When you’re preparing for Congressional testimony about the death of soldier in wartime, it’s hard to believe that a senior Pentagon press officer would not be there to vet your comments. Especially given this Administration’s proven aggressiveness in spinning the press on military matters.
You might imagine the PR person saying:
Are you sure Mr. Inspector? We’ve had 16 electrocutions so far in Iraq, and the three newest ones just leaked out this week. It’s looking really ugly. Do we have all the reports? Have we talked to the guys in the field? Are we sure we can count on KBR to be accurate? What did the investigation uncover? Have we reviewed the depositions in the civil suit?
Now, the geeky Senator from California could easily lay his hands on incriminating evidence – including sworn testimony in State District Court in Pennsylvania, in the lawsuit filed by Maseth’s widow.
How the hell can the Pentagon IG claim he did not have access to the very same documents?? And how are we supposed to believe that the crack Pentagon communications team was also unaware of the publicly available evidence in the very case he was testifying about??
The IOC: Vile, Bile, and Censored with a Smile
The most egregious and villainous bit of dissembling came from none other than the chairman of the IOC press commission, Kevan Gosper.
Originally, IOC president Rogge issued blanket assurances that Internet access would be free and unfettered. Well… not so much. Once reporters got to China, they found that Internet access was indeed restricted. Say it ain’t so!
Then, yesterday Gosper told the South China Morning Post:
“If you have been misled by what I have told you [over the months and years] about there being free internet access during the Games, then I apologise.
“We negotiated [with Bocog] terms and conditions that would allow journalists access to the internet that was unimpeded and uncensored, and would allow them to report on the Games, but not necessarily on Games-related activities [or] about what else happened elsewhere in China.”
Ok so NOW we get to the hair-splitting reality. What he meant was that Internet access would be free and open for reporting on “the Games.”
He’s so terribly sorry if you thought that meant total access… which was actually one of the conditions of bringing the Games to Beijing… and one of the goals of elbowing open the doors of a closed society. That would never happen. He says sanguinely:
“You are dealing with a communist country that has censorship. You are getting what they say you can have.”
So, he knew from the get-go that China would be censoring internet access. But the truly mind-blowing thing is… What the hell did he think was going to happen when thousands of reporters showed up in Beijing and found their web access censored???
Didn’t he think they’d call him on it??? Didn’t he realize that every single one of those reporters would write about it???
Talk about blowing off your own foot with a bazooka. That is truly the most moronic miscalculation I think we have ever witnessed in the history of press relations.
Lies, Damned Lies, and Getting Caught
These examples, though they number only three, give some insight into why people assume PR pros are all liars. And we do ourselves, and our profession, no favors by either perpetrating or tacitly condoning conduct like this.
We run off at the mouth about how we are “strategic advisers to the executive suite,” how we “add value to the organization,” how we promote “integrity and authenticity.”
Well, these three organizations (IOC, Merrill Lynch, and the Pentagon) represent the pinnacle of global professionalism in their respective fields. And there is no way you will convince me that their communications teams are not similarly endowed.
Which is why the steady drip-drip-drip of high-profile public misrepresentations like these reveal us to be either ineffectual or complicit. Either way, it’s not the kind of professionalism that wins us any points. And it happens all the time, in big ways and small.
So while we may not be guilty of “lying” – the big, flat-out, honking untruth – if we practice communications at the level we claim, then all this hemming and hawing, and failing to remember, and massaging of the facts happens in our full view.
Crowing about PR’s ethics and integrity don’t make it so. And let’s not pretend that we don’t know, or at least suspect that something’s amiss.
That really would be a lie.
Topics: Public Relations, Politics | 2 Comments »
Press Releases We’d Love To See!!… “Scientology Acquires Kabbalah to Form World’s Most Famous Secret Religion”
By letterhead | July 9, 2008
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE…
Los Angeles, CA – July 9, 2008: The Church of Scientology announced today that it has agreed to acquire The Kabbalah Centre in a “merger of equals” to create the world’s largest, most powerful, most famous double-super-secret religion.
The name of the combined religion will be The Scientific Unified Church of Kabbalalology – abbreviated as SUCK. [More]
Topics: PR 2.0, Public Relations, Religion | No Comments »
Girl Power vs. Feminism: An Interesting Juxtaposition at the Brooklyn Museum
By letterhead | June 4, 2008
Recently, I was at the Brooklyn Museum to see the exhibit of Japanese pop-artist Takashi Murakami, and found that it made an interesting comparison to the Ghada Amer exhibit in the museum’s “feminist wing” next door.
More important, I was there with my dear friend Cindy — a marketing whiz extraordinaire who is one of the savviest most down-to-earth people I know.
She manages to walk the finest of gossamer lines: being completely immune to hype and intolerant of contrivance, while being totally earnest and not the least bit jaded. (She is from the Midwest after all… as she says… “Get with it baby! It’s all happening in the Prairie!”)
After seeing Murakami, we walked across the hall, and as we entered the “Center for Feminist Art,” she rolled her eyes and just said, “No, no, no, no.”
Then, when we saw the big “HERSTORY” emblazoned on the wall, she let out a groan, followed by, “I. hate. this. It. is. such. bull. shit.”
Then, she related to me the following (her)story…
You Have Tits? I Have Tits!
Cindy told me:
So this woman colleague comes into my office and sits down, and she says: “Do you believe in women helping women?”
I told her that was a really bad place to start, but go ahead.
She said that she’d had this project on her desk for months, but that she’d been pulled in a dozen different directions, and she’d been traveling, and bla bla bla, and the project “got away from her”… and now her calendar was totally jammed, but she was up against a deadline and needed someone to take over pieces of the project to get it finished. And she knew I was really busy too… but could I help?… you know, because we’re both women and we should be supporting each other.
I said: “So let me get this straight. You think that because I have tits and you have tits, somehow that makes me obligated to cover your ass? I’ll tell you the same thing I’d tell any man who walked in here with the same question: NO”
Topics: Art, Uncategorized | No Comments »
PRSA Gets it Wrong Again: CBS Rant Against PR Wasn’t an Attack, It Was an Obituary
By letterhead | June 2, 2008
What to make of this latest broadside against PR — by CBS news analyst Andrew Cohen… ? In which he says:
The reason companies or governments hire oodles of PR people is because PR people are trained to be slickly untruthful or half-truthful. Misinformation and disinformation are the coin of the realm.
Oh there’s sooooo much. Too much, in fact, to cover in just one post… So as we were getting all geared up to dig into the self-destructive habits of the PR profession in general, we’ll just consider this an opening gambit.
PUBLIC RELATIONS… IN THE HANDS OF PRSA:
Topics: Public Relations | No Comments »
Going Out on a Limb, I Predict: Joe Lieberman (R) CT
By letterhead | May 27, 2008
OK. Usually this site stays clear of politics because it’s just so darn ugly. And there’s so much lying, pandering, obfuscation, mealy-mouthing, hyperventilating and just plain spinning that its’ too much to keep up with.
But the more I watch Sen. Joe LIE-berman jockeying for the kissing-spot closest to McCain’s ass, and hear him burbling Republican talking points on TV, the harder it gets to keep the following prediction to myself:
Based on all his right-wing rhetoric (e.g., bombing Iran, Obama being a Marxist, Obama being the Hamas candidate) and his constant stumping as McCain’s “answer man” and officially joining the McCain campaign, acting as an apologist for Pastor Hagee, his willingness to appear at the GOP convention, and campaigning for GOP candidates in his home state, bla bla bla…
I WILL GO OUT ON A LIMB AND BE THE FIRST TO PREDICT THAT IF THE REPUBLICANS LOSE CONTROL OF THE SENATE, JOE LIEBERMAN WILL JOIN THE GOP. (AND THERE’S BETTER THAN A 50/50 CHANCE HE WILL ANYWAY.) Let the recall petition begin!
(And for the record I am a registered independent and I wish someone would please tell Bill Clinton to sit down and shut the F*K up. The whole victimology rhetoric kept his ass from getting impeached because it was basically true. As far as Hillary goes… not so much. She is her own worst enemy where truth, transparency, and authenticity are concerned.)
OK. That’s it for politics… for a while.
Next up… we will be exploring the issues of stealth and disinformation and how they are destroying the PR profession from within.
(Happy belated Memorial Day)
Topics: Politics | 5 Comments »
Jim Abernathy Gives China a Big Sloppy Kiss, Gives PR a BIG BLACK EYE
By letterhead | May 19, 2008
Just when you thought the PR profession could get no more immoral, unscrupulous, or just plain asinine, along comes Jim Abernathy to take us down to a whole new low.
O’Dwyer’s re-ran quotes of Abernathy’s interview with Business Week about how to deal with China’s PR woes surrounding Tibet, and its overshadowing of the Olympics.
Ever the statesman, Abernathy said he’d “find attractive, English-speaking Chinese women and a ‘couple of sweet little 19-year-old gymnasts’” and put them on the talk-show circuit. Direct from Business Week:
“We’ll have the Chinese version of gymnast Mary Lou Retton do flips on camera but provide only noncommittal answers about the conflict. We’re here to talk about little Mary Lou’s flips, not geopolitics.” The idea, of course, is to change the subject. “You want to make people like the Olympics because it’s sweet little girls and athletes doing what athletes do best,” Abernathy says. “That way it becomes a personal thing and less of a geopolitical issue.”
Ok Jim… and while you’re at it, why not go ahead and pinch the stewardess’s ass when she goes by with the drinks cart.
Sailing Without a Moral Compass
If Abernathy had been skippering the Ark, our freezers would no doubt still be stocked with frozen giraffe steaks to this day. [More]
Topics: Public Relations, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »