Karen Hughes and Mark Penn Claim They're Out of the "Just Making Stuff Up" Business @12:05 PM
An exciting and phenomenally unintelligible press release went out this morning from Burson-Marsteller, the challenged PR and lobbying outfit that represented Blackwater, Colombia, Argentina and Union Carbide, as well as other extremely-challenged institutions. They are announcing that they have a new "methodology" which is "evidence-based"! I have no idea what this means. Your translations of this heaping pile of crazy are very welcome. READ MORE 10
Mark Penn: Not Fired! @12:25 PM
The Wall Street Journal gave Gawker a statement today, about their columnist Mark Penn, whose firm uses his column there to get clients! "Obviously when you have a contributor, they use a column to market themselves. Clearly what was done is not something that we liked. But we're pretty sure that it's going to stop." I am… amused? Angered? Skeeved? No wait: unimpressed. 2
The Mark Penn Getting Fired Watch: We're Waiting! @4:32 PM
There's two shocking things regarding this news item about how political operative and "pollster" Mark Penn's company sprang into action to pitch to new clients on the back of the topics mentioned in Penn's Wall Street Journal column. One: that it's been up for two hours and the Journal hasn't fired Penn yet. Two: is that it's been two hours and it only has 2446 pageviews. I guess Gawker is sort of working on the HBO model—like how HBO documentary films head Sheila Nevins is always explaining how "Cathouse" and "Real Sex" essentially pays for documentaries about Iraq and poor people and stuff. So: their no-sex sex tapes pay for actual real things! Yay, I guess! Go read it! Which leads to another question: Why are a bunch of us running around saying that "news is the killer product" as a business model if actually maybe it's not? Ruh roh. In conclusion: Mark Penn sucks. 4
Mark Penn Says What If? @1:00 PM
Mark Penn, chief pollster for Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign, tells ABC that had John Edwards chosen not to run because of the whole affair-and-babymaking thing, "it would have been a very different race," because Edwards voters were "focused on demographics" and Hillary would have been their other white meat. "We will never know for sure," says Penn, for whose sterling services Clinton still owes $2.3 million, "but it will be the woulda, coulda, shoulda of this race." Or, you know, one of them. 7
Mark Penn Has Something To Say About Blogging! Crowd Round! @7:56 PM
Mark Penn, publicist and pollster for corporate murdering outfits, dodgy mortgage companies and Hillary Clintons, strikes again in the Wall Street Journal—on the topic of blogging. Do not look! He is trying to make you blog about this—using the tactics of PETA and Aubrey O'Day! Okay, but did you know that nearly 1% of Americans earn income from blogging, according to Mark Penn? I do not believe that factoid for one minute. And yet it is still fewer than the number of Americans in prison. 9
