Oh dear 

Just saw the CNN piece showing Mike Stark, the blogger/heckler/law student getting strongarmed by George Allen's bouncers. Sixties echos again.

Here are today's comments on Stark's blog, where he hasn't posted today. Probably he's taking calls from reporters. He could probably use a good aggressive PR person to do battle with the equally aggressive news show bookers.

Of course, the question of whether the fight was one-sided or mutual is a partisan matter. Seems like I remember red and blue eyes seeing the Rodney King video differently too.

Making sure it doesn't happen again.  

New Edelman podcast is a training session for firm employees on ethics in social media. It's good (if we have to have pitchers in the sfere).

Value for whom -- isn't that the question? 

You know, I'm sure Richard Edelman is a decent guy, and the firm in general gets new media better than most PR firms. I don't know first-hand, just a sense I get. I can also totally see how the flog project got greenlighted locally without the brass in a big national agency having much awareness of its tactics. And it looks like, from the training Edelman describes in this ITworld.com interview, they've put in a fix for that in the future. All good stuff. It's probably time to stop piling on Edelman for the misdeed.

Except, there's this more meta question of what PR adds to the blogosphere. In the same interview, Edelman says, "... there's a group of bloggers who don't like PR people being in the blogosphere. I fundamentally disagree with them. I think we add value. I think we are a good bridge to companies who are either newbies or don't want to be in it at all."

Am I missing something, or how does the bridge add value to the blogosphere? Isn't the value add for the companies? I suppose you might argue that clueless companies stumbling into the world will pollute it worse than they would if they had counsel. But I can't buy that either, because bloggers will give clueless companies a wonderfully quick brutal education about how to market to the wired, without the benefit of intermediaries. This way it happens all above board, with no art of the finesse in the mix.

Tempted to tell 

I'd almost like to tell about an astroturfing project I worked on a long time ago before deciding PR wasn't for me.

Evolution of an opinion 

I've been following with interest Jeff Jarvis's quandry about his invitation to appear for WOMMA on the Edelman matter. Neat how he put the question out there and reports on how he's leaning. Latest wrinkle is he's considering accepting, but starting off by telling why he thinks the organization shouldn't exist -- the whys to be listed by Jarvis later. I know I'll stay tuned.

Blog plugin idea 

Wouldn't this be useful? You want to link to related posts, either somebody else's or your own (what made me think of was wanting to repoint out my own posts on WOMMA). So, in this hypothetical tool, you enter links to the posts and out poofs rendered OPML with collapsible nodes showing the text of the posts. Like the use of Grazr as a blogroll, but intended as a coda to an individual post, and built right into the blogging platform at the post publishing level.

I'm home sick with a sore throat. Maybe I'll mock it up manually so you can see what the hell I'm talking about.

RSS everywhere 

Hil couldn't resist the color connection.

It's happened to me, too. Ever since Dave pointed to orange things a few weeks ago, calling them RSS this or that, I've been seeing it all over, too. Not hard in my case, since they've been painting at work and we now have an RSS elevator bank and various other accent walls here and there making an RSS reception lounge and an RSS backdrop to the electrical closet.

Hil's neighbors 

I took a peek at Hil's Flickr stream to catch up on what crazy thing she's making now. The cool new big flower cross-section is shown in her yard, and I had to wonder if she has a Gladys Kravitz-type neighbor who can't wait to see what's going to be hauled out of that workshop to be photographed next. A giant espresso cup, Dave Winer's face, John Howard's head?