By Luke Warm
Professor of Mendacity
University of Munchausen
What is it you don’t get about “public relations”?
I’ve lectured on this topic till my ears are blue, but I’ll spell it out for you once more.
“Public relations” is not about education.
PR is NOT a teaching tool.
If you want education, enroll in kindergarten.
Let’s examine the term closely.
We’ll break it down to its constituent elements.
“Public” — what does “public” mean? Class?
No, no, no!
It is NOT “the people”!
Come on, students, don’t behave like the public!
You are not a herd — are you?
We’re talking sheep here.
S-H-E-E-P!
Know what I mean? Mutton!
As in mutton-head!
Wool over the eyes.
But I jump ahead of myself.
Pulling wool over sheeps’ eyes is what “public relations” is all about.
They didn’t endow me as the Professor of Mendacity because I tell it like it is.
Any boobie can tell you the truth.
Telling it like it ain’t, and making it stick — stick in the minds of the public, i.e., the sheep, the mutton-heads, the suckers, saps, marks and just plain ignoramuses who constitute the people at large — THAT is PR.
Just so we understand each other, I’ll draw an example from my vast personal experience as highly-paid consultant to businesses and governments in need of professional obfuscation.
I was visited recently by a very wealthy and powerful man who was desperate, absolutely beside himself with fear.
The truth was getting out about him. He didn’t know what to do. So he came to me, the foremost generator of false images. Why, I hold a patent on the Memory Hole.
Billionaires come to me when the cat slides out of the bag.
So it came about that I received a visit from the owner of a bridge.
My high ethical standards forbid me mentioning his real name.
I will refer to him as ‘Mr. Moon.’ ”
“How can I help you, Mr. Moon?” I said as he took a seat opposite my endowed Chair in Mendacity here at U of M.
“Well, Mr. Warm,” he said, “I’m in a terrible bind. People are starting to find out the truth about me. I need to stop that fast.”
“What is the truth that worries you, Mr. Moon?”
“I own a bridge,” said Mr. Moon. “It is an old bridge, but that doesn’t matter. It makes a lot of money for me, and that is all that counts. It is a big money-maker, because we don’t have to spend money on it to suck money out of it. Oh boy! Is it a dollar machine! Wowee! People who own other pieces of architecture that make money have to answer to government inspectors who tell them to do things to make them safe, but that costs money and bring the profits down. We tell the government to go to hell! You would not believe how much fun it is to roll in the money we make and tell judges to stick it in their ear when they tell me to tear down gas pumps and my duty-free store that generate heaps of greenbacks and the judge says I did it all wrong ’cause I violated my contract with the state, but who cares about contracts if you can get away with tearing them up? And the judge says tear the pumps and store down and I say screw you, judge-my-boy! I’ve been doing that kind of thing for years and getting away with it. But people are catching on. The public is starting to become aware. A lot of people want a new government bridge, and if that happens, my rickety old piece-of-shit bridge will not be a monopoly any more. What it will be is dead in the water, a money-loser.”
I interrupted Mr. Moon here and asked the key PR question: “If I’m going to be your spin doctor, I’ll need to tell people some nice, positive things about you and your bridge.”
“Oh, yes, there are lots of positive things to tell. It is an amazing thing, this bridge. It is all dilapidated and run-down and a real piece of shit, and yet it churns out MONEY MONEY MONEY!!! That is very positive, don’t you think? Oh, yes, and because I have all that money and am a billionaire, I can hire all sorts of lawyers. So anybody who gets in my way, I just tie them up in endless lawsuits for years and laugh in their faces. That is positive! Another positive thing is that I have a family who are very loyal to me and love what the bridge brings in, which is MONEY MONEY MONEY!!! That is a lot of positive things, don’t you think?
“Oh, and this is really positive, too. You will love this. After 9/11 when the whole country was frightened of terrorists, I had my henchmen take over part of a public park that I needed for the new bridge I don’t want to build. I had my goons fence off the section of park that is absolutely essential for the bridge I don’t want to build. I had my goons put padlocks on the public boat launch at this park. I had my thugs hang up signs on the park that said “Homeland Security” so people would think I owned the park where I want to put the bridge I don’t want to build. Wasn’t that cool? Know what? My goons would even kick park officials out of the park! We acted like we owned the park, and therefore we did! We still do. A judge evicted us a couple years ago, but guess what — we’re still there! It was no problem, because I bought the mayor and he went along. Isn’t that positive?”
“Well,” I told the bridge baron, “It is all very positive so long as you keep it under wraps. But that mayor went to jail.”
“That’s why I came to you,” said Mr. Moron. “I need your help. The truth has kind of gotten out.”
“Mr. Moon,” I told him, “It is a bad thing when the truth gets out. It costs much less money to hold the truth back than to stuff it down a Memory Hole once it’s got loose. You know what it takes to do that?”
“A Professor of Mendacity?”
“Well, yes, that. But what else does it take?”
“Shotgun totin’ goons?”
“Cold. It will cost you the sun and the moon — MONEY MONEY MONEY!!”
“My name is Moon. I have tons of MONEY MONEY MONEY!!!”
“Good. I will need it. You have a serious Public Relations Problem, Mr. Moon. Three years ago, all of these positive things you told me — your hijacking a park, strong-arming people, bullshitting judges, all that was a mere blip on the popular radar. Now, you have a governor and practically every business interest in the state of Michigan along with the federal government, the province of Ontario and the Canadian government who want to build a new bridge over the corpse of your piece-of-shit bridge. You have just spent umpteen millions of dollars purchasing votes in the state Legislature in a most obvious and heavy-handed manner. You and your family members behaved in such a bullying, swaggering, “I’m-rich-so-therefore-I’m-right” way that you nauseated most of the news media and they in turn made clear to the reading and viewing and blog-reading public that you are in fact a greedy, unsavory, self-serving goon with a billion plus bucks who thinks money can buy everything he holds dear, and what you hold dearest is MONEY MONEY MONEY!!! You have just won a major battle by snuffing out a Senate bill that, had the whole Legislature approved it, would have built a new bridge and sent you into a financial tailspin. You bought six of the seven Senate committee members, and five of them either voted with you or abstained, which amounts to voting for you. It would be a wonderful accomplishment but for one thing: You did it in plain view. You behaved like a greedy, money-grubbing plutocrat in broad daylight. You got your way, for the moment. Now you come whining to me, begging that I, by means of my brilliant Skills in Mendacity, erase the entire history of your repugnant, antisocial behavior. What miracle do you think I can perform to make you appear like a hero and tribune of the people instead of the lying, sneaking, bullying sociopath that you are? Now, I have a question: You referred to your much-vaunted “twin” to replace your crappy span as ‘the bridge I don’t want to build.’ What did you mean by that?”
Mr. Moon let loose a loud guffaw and slapped his leg. “I have to tell you, Mr. Warm, that being a billionaire and as you say, a money-grubbing plutocrat and a lying, sneaking, bullying sociopath who is repugnant to anyone with a common sense of decency can be great fun. I know I can never build that “twin” bridge. The Canadians blocked it on their side, and I don’t even own the land for it over here. A city park sits where I would put my new bridge. The “twin” is a smokescreen and has been all along. It’s a poker chip, something to talk about, bully people over, toss it out to the media and watch the slobbering reporter rabble run with it. Why would I spend a nickel on a new bridge when my shitty old money mill of a bridge is still churning out cash? The “twin” is a big fake, a bluff in the PR game I’m playing with all those governments and the public, who as you know are nothing but a mass of mutton-heads whose good opinion toward me I’ll pay you big bucks to warp, distort and manage as long as that new bridge is never built.
“I don’t really care what the so-called public thinks of me, Mr. Warm. You see, I am a billionaire and then some. I don’t even care what you think of me, Mr. Warm. I’m going to make you into a millionaire with all the fees I pay you to lie about me. But do you think I respect you? A mere millionaire? Do you know what the difference is between a million and a billion, Mr. Warm? If you had a million bucks, and spent a buck a second, you’d be broke in 13 days. Me with my billion, it would take me 31 years to go bust. Think of that, Mr. Warm — you’d be a pauper in less than two weeks. Me — I will not live another 31 years, so I will never go broke, even if they take my bridge from me. That is the difference between me and you, Mr. Warm. You are nothing but an ant, a mere tool. You may be a useful tool, but that is all you are. I make and break inconsequential beings like you. That includes legislators and governors of the state of Michigan. In the scale of human life, you people have the stature of amoebas whose microscopic lives I can control as I desire. Compared to an insignificant speck of life like you, I am God.”
“I am God, Mr. Warm. So now, why don’t you go out into the world and work that miracle of yours. Make the mutton-heads love me, whether they want to or not.”
