bloggedy blog: the personal weblog of a music lover and aging punk wannabe

:: Thursday, June 05, 2003 ::

Great moments in public relations: The Bimbo Awards
Spaeth Communications is a public relations firm that sends out a great, free monthly electronic newsletter called The Bimbo Awards. Each month, the newsletter "recognizes dumb public comments made during the year. The criterion for nomination is that the speaker causes the listener to believe exactly the opposite of what is said. The award is a reminder that repeating negative words only reinforces the negative message as well as misses the opportunity to convey the right message to the reader or listener." Why the name Bimbo Awards? To memorialize the words of Jessica ("I am not a bimbo") Hahn, whose tryst with televangelist Jim Bakker brought down the PTL empire back in the '80s. The newsletter's lesson for PR practitioners: If you're a bimbo, don't try to deny it publicly. No one will believe you.

This month's Bimbo Award nominees include:

"To apply the word ‘censorship’ to it is probably too strong,” said Tom Adams, California’s education official defending guidelines which resulted in stripping material from a wide variety of classics in an attempt to make comply with ‘social guidelines.’ As the breadth of the changes has become public, writers have been appalled at finding the Jewish content from Isaac Bashevis Singer’s work, making the Little Engine that Could female and rewriting a famous Chicano activist’s memoirs with the word ‘American’ instead of ‘gringo.’ Faced with mounting criticism, Adams added, “I would not go so far as to call it censorship.” (Does the word ‘censorship’ come to mind?)

Discovered using EPA security agents to do personal business, former Administrator Christine Todd Whitman replied, “I’ve never used them for personal errands.”

“This is not a sales pitch,” said the fax from WBA Medical Market Research asking a physician for an opportunity to ‘interview’ him about office products he might be interested in. The doctor sent it on to us with a note saying, “WBA must stand for ‘Worst Bimbo Award.’” (We agree.)

“This is not a squabble,” claimed Senator John Kerry (D-Mass) at the first meeting of the nine Democrats running for the Presidential nomination. (The problem: the ‘debate’ wasn’t anything but boring, and the self-proclaimed candidates’ comments – name calling and flag waving – were only designed to attract the TV cameras and be the chosen sound bite.)

And, from the "wrong thing to say" department:

Mike Price, now the former football coach for the University of Alabama, said he was “too drunk to know” whether he had sex with exotic dancers in a Florida hotel room but was quite sure he hadn’t brought alcoholic drinks for students. University President Robert Witt’s first response was that Price had not done anything illegal. (To make the story perfect, one of the dancer’s names was ‘Destiny.’)

Mike Tyson can’t stay out of the news. In a TV interview, he denied raping a woman in the early ‘90s, but said, “I really wish I did now. But now I really do want to rape her.” (Not surprisingly, Tyson’s advisors did not return phone calls.)

:: Andrew 07:56 + ::
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