Richard Edelman, CEO of Edelman PR, the largest independent public relations company, has started a weblog. I noted that fact on Nov. 23, and also disclosed that I’ve done a little work for the company and know Richard a bit. Recently I’ve become a consultant to the company on how the Internet and PR intersect.

Jay Rosen today posts a good piece that expresses surprise and dismay that the blogosphere — and particularly, the part that blogs about PR — has ignored Richard’s posts excoriating Ketchum for betraying the PR code of ethics in the Armstrong Williams propaganda scandal. And before you say, “PR code of ethics? Isn’t that an oxymoron? Heh heh,” meet Richard.

So, here’s the odd thing. I would have linked to his posts but Edelman PR is a new client, and Richard was personally involved in engaging me, so it felt too shill-y and suck-uppity to suddenly start pointing to his posts, even with a disclosure statement. Then there’s the fact that I didn’t read his posts until long enough afterwards that I felt embarrassed about tacitly acknowledging it; that was a failure as a consultant. (Just to be clear: I had nothing at all to do with the content of Richard’s posts.)

On reflection I think it was a mistake not to have blogged them. As Jay says, Richard’s posts fulfilled “the public service promise of CEO blogging” and deserve more than close to zero linkage.

[Richard’s posts are here and here; the links expressing the permalinks on Richard’s page are broken at the moment, so for now use the ones I’ve provided.]

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Johnny Carson apparently thinks of five new jokes every time he reads the paper and is frustrated that he doesn’t have a stage on which to perform them.

Blog, Johnny, blog!

Technorati tags: carson

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I wouldn’t bother you with this, but I’d like to get it off my chest:

I spent too much of yesterday trying to install Symantec WinFux WinFax Pro 10.03 which, upon looking to the Web for help, I discovered is the biggest piece of unstable dog crap software ever to reach a double digit rev number.

Thank you. I feel better. Now I only wish I could figure out how to use my scanner to prepare multi-page faxes.

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ThereIsNoCrisis is a social security resource worth noting. It maintains — guess what? — that the Bush administration is trumping up the Social Security crisis.

Metaphilm has a bunch of whacky film interpretations. For example, did you know that in The Fight Club, Edward Norton plays grown-up Calvin and Brad Pitt plays grown-up Hobbes?

Rebecca Mackinnon has posted an excellent FAQ about the conference on blogging, journalism and credbiility being put on by Berkman, American Library Association and the Shorenstein Center. Bonus: A photo at the bottom of Berkman Fellows eating a kitten for breakfast. (Very funny comments on the Kitten Breakfast at EthicallyChallenged.)

Technorati tags: social security, metaphilm, berkman

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Larry Lessig surprised at Bill Gates’ clarification — in an excellent Gizmodo interivew — of his “You’re all a bunch of freaking communists!” remarks. I’m more frustrated than surprised.

Gates says that we need DRM so that artists and scientists will create and innovate, and to ensure privacy of stuff like medical records. E.g.:

Gates: …Take medical records: is it your position that rights management for medical records is evil? … We remind people that, like if there’s a medical record that has somebody’s AIDS status in it, we have software—which is identical software—that says, ‘Hey, if you’re trying to forward to someone,’ that, ‘No, this is restricted. You can’t forward this to someone. They don’t have the right to see this.’ It’s the notion of ‘should there be confidential information?’

Gizmodo: I think that’s a different question.

Gates: It’s not different. It’s identical technology. It’s the same bits!

Gizmodo: No, no, no. I think in calling that evil as opposed to whatever, I think that still basically comes down to, ‘Do you feel like things should be able to have passwords on them or not?’ And of course the answer is ‘yes.’ I do think that’s reasonable. So I don’t think anybody is trying to say ‘DRM is evil.’ I think what people are trying to say is that DRM, as sanctioned by the big players, may be holding back culture as a whole.

Right on. It doesn’t have to be evil to be a bad idea. Gizmodo is right to raise ask about the likely overall outcome of mandating (through legislation or market forces) the ability of “content producers” to lock us out of using products we’ve purchased in the ways that we want, within the limits of the law.

Gates is using AIDS to nuke the conversation, and it’s a trick. “Is it your position that securing your house against burglars is evil?” No, we want our houses secure. “The very same automatic weapons you’d like to ban protects houses. ” Yes, but the security of my house is not the only thing affected by allowing the sale of automatic weapons. Of course the analogy isn’t exact, especially if you drive it further than where I’ve left it, but I think the point is right: We should not be expected to pay any price to achieve any particular goal, even if it’s something as positive as protecting medical privacy. We need to look at the range of options and make the trade-offs.

Further, Gates is disingenuous when he says:

We’re the guys of empowerment. We want these things [creative stuff like personal slide shows with music added] to be out there everywhere. But it wouldn’t serve anyone’s interests to go out there and say, ‘Hey, by the way, there’s no way to remind anyone at any time about any rights boundaries.’

Microsoft’s DRM is way overkill for “reminding” people about rights boundaries. It does everything it can to prevent it, at the cost of Fair Use.

DRM lets Microsoft go up to the next level in our economy, becoming the platform required by Hollywood to view its products. If that means we have to shut down the way in which culture is absorbed and advanced, Microsoft doesn’t care. This bullshit about medical records and AIDS may well be what Gates tells himself as he falls asleep. It fits so nicely in a universe in which software is either good or evil. But the whole point about copyright and Fair Use is that culture is complex and art is the discovery of new shades of gray. That’s why we need the right to exercise our judgment and to build new visions based on the old.

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A stray trackback brought me and my giant ego to Julie Leung’s site, a blog I hadn’t visited recently enough. In the course of the current post, she talks about how the ferry ride to Seattle is calming. I felt the same way reading the spread of posts on her page. In her blog we seem to hear the mix of the public and personal curiosity that buoys her while she’s ferried to and from the city. After a few days in which the blogosphere has felt more like a colliseum, it was good to join Julie in the space of in-between that’s essential for ferries and blogging.

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“How do biological differences in the sexes affect abilities, behavior and social position?” is a totally legitimate research question. Let the evidence fall where it may. And if the president of Harvard wants to be “provocative,” heck, that’s a lot better than the fund-raising drone emitted from most college presidents’ orifices. But (according to The Globe):

”Here was this economist lecturing pompously [to] this room full of the country’s most accomplished scholars on women’s issues in science and engineering, and he kept saying things we had refuted in the first half of the day,” said [Denice D. ] Denton, the outgoing dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Washington.

It’s true that “innate differences” were only one of three possibile explanations Summers gave for why there are fewer women than men in science and math. But from the reports it doesn’t sound like he was simply laying out three logically-possible hypotheses. For one thing, he cited his daughter’s playing with trucks as if they were dolls despite raising her in a gender-neutral environment. Of course, no environment that has people, windows or a TV in it is truly gender-neutral, so the anecdote seems to expose where Summers’ heart lies; he could equally well have used the story to show the pervasive influence of gender socialization. But we can’t tell because Pres. Summers is refusing to release a tape or transcript of his comments.

What could it hurt?

Here’s the Harvard Crimson report on the presentation.

Here’s Summer’s official statement about the incident.

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Over at Worthwhile I’ve posted a rumination – including a short play! – about why tech marketing-speak goes so wrong.

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The Zephyr affair is, let’s say, complex. And it calls for upfront disclosures:

Disclosures

I am a friend of Zephyr. I like and admire her. I also like and admire Joe Trippi. I was an Internet advisor to the Dean campaign; it was an unpaid position. I didn’t know about any money changing hands with bloggers and would have advised against it. I have chatted socially with Kos and Jerome a couple of times, and Jerome sent me a brief email yesterday in response to a comment asking for details. For what I think about the need for disclosure statements, see the button perpetually at the top of the left hand column of this blog.

Ok, that’s out of the way. So, what happened? Imagine the range of plausible narratives. At the extreme negative end of the narrative range, Trippi and Kos explicitly contracted for Kos to continue writing enthusiastically about Dean and not to pump up the other candidates; it was that non-directed. At the other end the narrative goes like this: Trippi hired two enthusiastically pro-Dean bloggers as tech consultants. One resigned as a blogger in order to take the gig. The other put up a disclosure statement on his blog. The range of narratives is way narrower than two episodes of Leave It to Beaver.

Even the most negative narrative registers about 0.8 on the 100-point sleaziness scale, a peccadillo that any political group except the Quaker Action Committee would laugh away. Taken at its worst, this “scandal” doesn’t come close to selling influence to big contributors, discouraging African-American voters from voting, or knowingly lying over and over about your opponent…the stuff of the Republican campaign. Please! I mean,Kos had a statement on his blog saying he was getting money from the Dean campaign and Jerome stopped blogging while he was a paid consultant. This entire “scandal” should be on our list of “Ways we could make a remarkably ethical, people-based campaign even better.”

Jerome, Kos and Zephyr all work hard for our shared cause. I’d hate for any of their voices to be stilled. Let’s move on to a real issue.

Put aside for the moment what you think of the current incident. I want to tell you what I know about Zephyr.

I’m proud to have her as a friend. I count it a privilege to have worked with her during the Dean campaign. As a volunteer, I “reported” to her when it came to tasks to be done. So, while I certainly don’t claim to be her bestest friend and to know everything about her, my perception of her has been tempered by seeing her in a variety of settings, some of them high stress.

Zephyr amazes me. She just assumes that it’s the role of each human to make the world better. She stays focused on the practicalities of what needs to be done while working towards a vision. Many of the great ideas tried by the Dean Internet campaign came from her, although in my experience she always deflected credit onto the team. When I disappointed her during the campaign, it was because I was relying too much on her and wasn’t taking enough initiative; that’s a value she embodies. Zephyr is serious and seriously upright. She is also funny and delightful. Even assuming the worst of her in this incident, the hatred coming through in some comments and blogs is vile. Zephyr has contributed too much to deserve it.

PS: Check Z’s FAQ on the incident.

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My home office shares a wall with a guy who smokes a whole lot of cigs. Particles are getting through even though the rooms are sealed. My room smells faintly of smoke and my throat is scratchy. He’s not going to stop, and it’s fine during the months when we open our windows. Any suggestions for aggregating, deflecting or dispersing the particles?

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