Strumpette continues to rail against the PR blog establishment and their reaction to that blog’s satirical, sarcastic and often biting commentary. The latest jab, Championship PR Midget Toss Sets Record, apparently hit a little close to home, prompting a critical backlash (in the limited volume only possible in the insular world of PR blogging).

Among the attacks: Strumpette’s volume cannot be as strong as claimed. Why do PR pros always concentrate on the size of the splash, not the duration of the ripple? I’d rather have one good hit as a feature, not a mcnugget of news in USAToday. After all, for most campaigns it’s the motion of the ocean that’s important, not the size of the ship.

” … See… their dig is just an immature ad hominem attempt to discredit us. They are trying desperately to discourage readership. Like the Edelman Gang at the onset, they have a vested interest to take us off line. Their “Me2Revolution” is a load of hooey and they’re afraid that we will continue to point that out.” (Strumpette)

The blogosphere is still enough of a juvenile and amateurish playground that readers are unlikely to be dissuaded and repulsed by accusations of illegitimacy and sensationalism. If anything, public relations counsellors should have the capacity to judge for themselves how to read blog posts, interpret their meaning and evaluate their repurcussions for their clients (and maybe their own organization).

It’s evident that Strumpette is having a good time tilting at some windmills and knocking over some apple carts, all the while injecting some humour into a community that is rushing to adopt an increasingly doctrinaire approach to preaching the books of Long Tail, Web 2.0 and the old testament of Conversations. After all, what’s a blogging practice without catchphrases, eight point action plans, the reflected glow of big agency approval and oversized ambitions for business development?

Still, the sniff of righteous indignation hanging over Strumpette’s retorts smells a little funky to me. The claims that “the man’s trying to keep me down” ring hollow. You want a true voice for the oppressed and under-represented? I present Public Enemy’s Don’t Believe the Hype:

Yes/
Was the start of my last jam/
So here it is again, another def jam/
But since I gave you all a little something/
That we knew you lacked/
They still consider me a new jack/All the critics you can hang’em/
I’ll hold the rope/
But they hope to the pope/
And pray it ain’t dope/
The follower of Farrakhan/
Don’t tell me that you understand/
Until you hear the man/
The book of the new school rap game/
Writers treat me like Coltrane, insane/
Yes to them, but to me I’m a different kind/
We’re brothers of the same mind, unblind/
Caught in the middle and/
Not surrenderin’/
I don’t rhyme for the sake of of riddlin’/
Some claim that I’m a smuggler/
Some say I never heard of ‘ya/
A rap burgler, false media/
We don’t need it do we?/
It’s fake that’s what it be to ‘ya, dig me?/
Don’t believe the hype…

(Don’t Believe the Hype - live on YouTube)

Strumpette even tries to appropriate some of the “voice of the common man” mojo:

” … They’d like you to believe that being dis-ed by the PR bloggers and the “Nobodies Club” matters. No. It just doesn’t. They, by-an-large, are a group of self-important PR juniors and empty Shels. They are PR people whose power, and credibility for that matter, is a total fabrication and not real. We are more credible as a character than all of their resumes. (Strumpette)

And that is really quite weak, if you consider that Public Enemy was singing about political and social empowerment in the face of continuing societal oppression, and Strumpette is mad that three or four white guys are ganging up on him/her/them/the collective.

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