Politics
« Previous EntriesThe New Policy Battlefield: All Eyes On Coca-Cola and Social Media PR
Monday, February 22nd, 2010If you want to see how future national policy wars will be fought, then keep your eye on Coca-Cola Company and the American Beverage Association. Over the next few years sugar will become the new tobacco – even as they try to quash the movement before it gets going.
"Fructose has nothing to do with obesity" [...]
Goldman Sachs About to Ditch its Golden Flack… for a bad PR strategy?
Monday, December 7th, 2009No one seems to be dancing to Goldman's tune these days. No matter how hard they crank the 'ole gramophone. But they are trying a new approach, actually publishing dance steps to Goldman's Bonus Hustle… a 14-page presentation on why they make so much damned money.
First though… who's getting the blame for Goldman's missteps? According [...]
Palin & Stalin: What Do We Believe? That PR… Thou Art a Shameful Fraud
Sunday, December 6th, 2009It's tough to pinpoint when the PR profession "jumped the shark." But it has, and in spectacular fashion.
Outsiders are seldom privy to the inner workings of the global spin machine. But every once in a while someone leaves the door ajar and you can peer in to see just how twisted are its guts.
Such is [...]
BS of the Month Award: Why I’m Not Fit For GoldmanFlacks
Thursday, December 3rd, 2009Calling the Goldman Sachs $500 million small business initiative "philanthropy" or "lending" is like saying that frosted Pop Tarts are made with "real fruit filling."
Thankfully most media types called it for what it was: BS, BS, and more BS. But it got me thinking about my career in PR… I know two people who work [...]
Fuck You Barack Obama
Wednesday, November 4th, 2009I quit you. I'm done. Last night killed it. I have been a registered independent since my first presidential election in 1980, in which I voted for John Anderson.
Yet, I marched for you. I gave money. I handed out posters to my friends. I volunteered. All for you. Because I believed, naively it turns out, [...]
The White House News War: Forget Glenn Beck. Barack Obama is “Howard Beale.”
Sunday, October 25th, 2009Teeth are being gnashed. Gauntlets is gettin' thrown down like warm beers at a tea party. Over what? Beck, O'Reilly, and Limbaugh? Seriously?
Nobody saw this coming? Not since 1976 when the satire "Network" hit movie screens and won four Academy Awards?
More than 3o years ago, the fictional network boss Frank Hackett (Robert Duvall) cringed at [...]
Brain-Dead PWC… Maybe I'm Not Cynical Enough
Sunday, October 18th, 2009After my last post on the total impotence of PR, I felt a twinge of guilt. “Am I just too cynical? Too bitter? Surely there are flacks with integrity out there. Surely someone somewhere in the dark corners of the profession cares about it. Somewhere, surely, some company takes it seriously.”
Then I did some reading [...]
Flashback: P.R. Pros on the Financial Meltdown… Impotent and Wrong
Tuesday, October 13th, 2009Flashback!
We are now just a week or so past the one-year anniversary of the financial bailout. And as I was sorting through some old files over the weekend, I came across an issue of O’Dwyer’s from October 1, 2008… the week of the TARP vote, which was held on Oct 3, 2008.
In that issue, there [...]
Taxpayers Choking on Detroit's Free Market Malarkey
Monday, November 17th, 2008
So Detroit wants a bailout. Wonderful. The question is, why?
Yeah, they’re waving the red flag of economic catastrophe to blackmail taxpayers and steamroll Congress. But let’s take a quick trip down memory lane and review the industry’s recalcitrance over the past few decades before we bite off a big chunk of what they’re now selling.
Detroit [...]
Financial Crisis for Dummies: Lies, Bailouts, and Hank “Fudgie the Whale” Paulson
Sunday, September 21st, 2008The financial crisis that’s convulsing Wall Street and Washington can be offered up as Exhibit A in what we mean when we say “Literal Mayhem.”
The situation is quite literally mayhem: economically and politically.
But there’s a bigger fish to fry here: what we might call mayhem of the literal.
This crisis is, in many respects, the culmination [...]