Rule No. 1 from the Hollywood Flack Guide Book: Disavow Any Association with Ron Jeremy
Remember lovely Cher Tenbush [right], SMU grad and winner of "Beauty and the Geek II"? Well, she's trying to make it in Hollywood now and has hired a publicist -- and that publicist is already on orange alert. From the NY Post:
Tenbush's flack has fired off a breathless note to newspapers and magazines "respectfully" asking that all photos of [porn star Ron] Jeremy holding onto her at the Reality Remix Really Awards show last week not be used.
The rep said Tenbush "was surprised and appalled" when Jeremy - star of such classics as "Boobs a Poppin' " and "Colossal Orgy 2" - "imposed himself on the photos, grabbing her waist" as paparazzi snapped away.
"She does not respect his career and wishes to discourage publication of any photos which make it appear that she condones pornography. She particularly regrets that, when she realized who had grabbed her, her response was one of those so-horrified-that-all-you-can-do-is-laugh reflexes that so ill reflect the revulsion one feels."
Jeremy, a former teacher with a master's degree in education, says, "Does she have a problem with teachers? Does she have a master's? She can kiss my dissertation!"
PR tip for Cher and her hired hand: For future reference, this is one of those times when it's better to just let it go.
When I started Media Orchard back in March 2005, I had no idea what I was doing -- or what I was getting myself into. I tried the conventional route of talking about how PR people should pitch to bloggers, whether a given PR campaign was sufficiently "transparent" to appease the blogosphere, blog this, podcast that, wiki wiki wiki, blah blah blah. I got really bored.
When I started blogging about the PR and marketing implications of things I actually enjoyed -- pop culture, politics, TV and movies, viral videos, women in bikinis, etc. -- I started having fun and kind of got addicted to it. And that's when people started reading my blog as well. So it worked out pretty well.
Lately though, I've been so busy with client work that it's been difficult to keep up with Media Orchard as well as I'd like. In particular, I'm disappointed that I haven't been able to spend as much time digging up the kind of media, marketing and PR nuggets that I enjoy reading so much on the Web.
So I've created a new, easier way to keep up with the news -- for me, and hopefully, for you, too. It's called Spin Thicket.
Spin Thicket, as should be apparent, is patterned after one of my favorite Web sites, Fark.com, along with similar sites like Fazed.net and others. The difference is that it's specifically geared to people with an interest in the image-making professions -- advertising, PR, marketing, journalism, and politics.
Spin Thicket has no agenda. It's as much for people who read PR Watch as PR Week. It's as much for fans (or haters) of Michelle Malkin as Kos. It's as much for people who see bias in the NY Times as Fox News. Throw it all in the wash and turn on the spin cycle; that's the idea behind Spin Thicket.
Of course, I can't do it alone -- at least not indefinitely. So I encourage you to add links. It's as simple as can be; just register, bookmark this page and submit at will.
In fact, I encourage you specifically to add links to your own blog posts and those of your friends -- as long it's not boring stuff about RSS. Did you know that of the thousands of links submitted to Fark each day, as many as half are submitted by the person or media organization who wrote the post, according to Fark's founder, Drew Curtis? So there's no shame in it; don't be modest.
Of course, a link from Spin Thicket won't get you 20,000 referrals like a link from Fark -- at least initially. But in time, who knows?
It's all about whether there are enough people interested in the same kind of stuff that I am, and that, I assume, you are. With your help, maybe we can create something cool.
If you like the idea and want to get involved, here are two things you can do right away to help:
PR, Media and Ad Bloggers: Send Us Your Logos -- Now
We've got a new secret project we're planning to unveil Monday (fingers crossed), and if you'd like to be part of it (no questions asked), we need you to send us a small file with your blog's logo (stat).
RUSH: I want to make an apology here. You have number seven from the audio sound bite roster ready to go? All right, let her rip.
FOX: The symptoms that I had in the ad that I did, that's called dyskinesia, and that's actually from too much medication.
RUSH: Okay, I need to apologize, I was wrong because I speculated either he didn't take his medication or he was acting. I never said the word faking. Now, if you people on the left want to equate acting with faking, I mean, go ahead, George Clooney would be a faker, all your favorite actors, we'll call them fakers. I never used the word. But I was wrong. He did take his medications. Now he took too much medication.
The point is, he did something differently to appear in this ad than when he appears on Boston Legal. And that was my first human reaction. "Whoa! I've never seen this. I have not seen this before." Now I gather, from the past three days, that we are to believe that this is the normal condition that poor Mr. Fox has to live with each and every day. That's the impression that they're leaving, is it not? That this is how his life is now, but he himself said he took too much medication. He didn't do that when he went on Boston Legal, but it happened for the taping of this ad. I think the reason for that is so you would really, really hate Republicans, because Republicans don't want to cure it. Jim Talent doesn't care. Michael Steele doesn't care. No one in the Republican Party cares. They don't want to cure these things. They're happy, in fact, to see people suffer like Mr. Fox is in this ad.
You've convinced us, Rush. You're obviously very caring.
Sharesleuth.com Investment Already Paying Off for Cuban
Tampa-based UTEK Corp.'s stock has plunged after a report by Chris Carey at Sharesleuth.com this week. And Sharesleuth benefactor Mark Cuban stands to cash in big time, if he hasn't already:
Disclosure: Mark Cuban ... has sold short 75,000 shares of UTEK's stock at an average price of around $20 a share.
If Mark happened to cash in when the stock hit its low of $11.30 after Chris' post, his proceeds would be about $650,000, if we're calculating correctly. Not a bad return.
Admit It, New York Jets: You Have Cheerleaders Now
Probably because folks in New York never like to admit they borrowed an idea from folks in Dallas, the New York Jets haven't fielded their own cheerleading squad for decades.
Until now; the squad was quietly unveiled at the Oct. 15 game against Miami.
Indeed, the girls are officially called the "Jets Flag Crew," and in the official announcement on the Jets' Web site this week, their non-cheerleading role is made clear:
A new squad of female flag carriers relieved their male counterparts last week -- and things haven't been the same since. It's all in good fun. The new crew of female flag carriers, as well as some well-timed pyrotechnics, will make going to a Jets game even better this season.
The announcement is accompanied by 11 pics of the girls doing one thing -- carrying flags.
So they're flag carriers -- not cheerleaders, get it?
But you can't fool the blogosphere. Sasha at the Professional Cheerleader Blog found some pics of the girls waving something other than flags at the game. Could they be .... green-and-white pom-pons?
Sasha has responded with an open letter to the duplicitous Jets:
Dear New York Jets,
There is no shame in admitting that you want a dance team of your own. I promise you no one will say "I told you so." The Celtics have seen the error of their ways and nobody's making fun of their dance team, are they? So come on over and join us. We'll take it one baby step at a time.
Mark: "I think BlogTalkRadio's really cool. We may try to do something with it with Boing Boing. It would be a fun way to communicate with our readers, I think."
Yep -- even in politics, there's nothing wrong with a good old-fashioned "yes" or "no" once in a while. If Patrick Murphy doesn't understand this, his opponent apparently does.
This post by Media Orchard is to promote an upcoming event on BlogTalkRadio. BTR is a client of the Idea Grove. We hope the following post contains sufficient disclosure to keep all you whiny babies happy:
Through the magic of BlogTalkRadio (disclaimer: OK, OK -- it's not "magic," technically speaking), you can talk live (disclaimer: actually, we're sure there's some kind of millisecond delay) with respected pundit, entrepreneur and author Arianna Huffington (disclaimer: she's not respected by some people) on Tuesday, Oct. 24, at 4 p.m. Central (disclaimer: maybe, if your call makes the cut).
In 2000, a certain presidential candidate we'll refer to only by the initial "W" had to admit that he hadn't the slightest clue about Kazakhstan.
Now, everybody's heard of Kazakhstan -- thanks to a fellow we'll refer to only by the initial "Borat."
Unfortunately, the Kazakhstan government has chosen to look their gift horse straight in the mouth. As Paul Holmes recounts,
After the Kazakhstan government attempted to counter the Borat offensive with an advertising campaign designed to highlight its pro-western policies, economic growth, and enormous oil reserves, Borat responded by denouncing the ads as misinformation planted by agents of neighboring Uzbekistan and threatened to "commence bombardment of their cities with our catapults," if they do not stop. At some point, the best response is probably a sense of humor.
Yup. And here's a new reason to play it cool. Headline:
Kazakh bank gets own name wrong; Kazakhstan's central bank is to issue new banknotes despite a spelling error.
PR advice to Kazakhstan: Lay low. Smile. Laugh a lot.
Believe it or not, Borat will help you more than he hurts you if you just let him be. Why do you think Dallas is one of the best-known cities in the world despite being less than a tourism mecca?
All journalists are shaped by their worldviews, and the only way to bring true objectivity to journalism is to be shaped by the worldview of the Bible, Marvin Olasky said at the Baptist Press Excellence in Journalism Banquet...
"The only true objectivity is biblical objectivity," World magazine editor Marvin Olasky said at the Baptist Press Excellence in Journalism Banquet culminating a three-day conference for college journalism students ... Olasky is editor-in-chief of World magazine, a syndicated columnist and a professor at the University of Texas at Austin...
Journalists frequently make two errors regarding objectivity, he said. Sometimes they claim to be completely objective and not bring any presuppositions to their reporting, Olasky said, noting that such claims are wrong because everyone has presuppositions and a worldview. He said others wrongly bring their presuppositions to bear on a story so much that they fail to report the facts accurately.
The right way to do journalism is to let the Bible teach reporters how to view any event and report on it accordingly, he said...
"We're in the middle of the story," he said. "We don't know how it's going to end up. Each of us has a narrative of our lives. It may end well. It may end in temporary defeat. But in either case, running the race as journalists helps us feel God's pleasure."
The Bible is indeed the Good Book, but another pretty good book called Merriam-Webster offers this definition of objectivity: "expressing or dealing with facts or conditions as perceived without distortion by personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations."
One of the things that really bugs me about political bloggers (not to mention fundamentalist Christians) is that so many of them like to take potshots at the very idea of objective journalism.
Listen: objectivity in journalism is an ideal. When I was a journalist, it's something I'm sure I didn't always achieve -- but I at least always strived for it. Once you say objectivity based on the facts is unachievable, and so it's OK to be blatantly biased, or to base your reporting on faith, you've lost that ideal.
If people are sometimes jailed for crimes they did not commit, should we give up on the ideal of justice?
If countries sometimes go to war, should we give up on the ideal of peace?
If we sometimes get cheated by others, should we give up on the ideal of fairness?
When it comes to journalism, objectivity remains our best proxy for fairness. We shouldn't forget that.
