Free Delwin!

I got a kick out of this column on a student who is being sued by the RIAA. They want $5K and now there is a website built by his friends and is dedicated to raising money for Delwin. T-shirts for sale and donations are accepted. The lesson: have smart friends if a lobbying group holds your feet to the fire and tries to make an example of you.

Yet more PR was given to US to go to war... and you didn't even know it, did you?

So my student, Claire Marshall, sent me a link to the NPR story on Joh Rendon and "an effort to sway public opinion that Rendon dubs "perception management."" I like euphemisms for the words like "lying" don't you? Anyways, this is an piece that broke in Rolling Stone of all places. I may hate that magazine for having bad taste (don't get me started), but at least it has journalists who investigate, uh, you know, stuff, unlike Faux News. Anyways, here's a snippet about John Rendon and his PR factory

It is a belief John Rendon encapsulated in a speech to cadets at the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1996. "I am not a national-security strategist or a military tactician," he declared. "I am a politician, a person who uses communication to meet public-policy or corporate-policy objectives. In fact, I am an information warrior and a perception manager." To explain his philosophy, Rendon paraphrased a journalist he knew from his days as a staffer on the presidential campaigns of George McGovern and Jimmy Carter: "This is probably best described in the words of Hunter S. Thompson, when he wrote, 'When things turn weird, the weird turn pro.'"

Indeed... one of his major coups? Getting Judith Miller to take much of his information from a disgruntled Iraqi.

So when do you think Roger Ailes hires Judith?