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Rob Shuter
Posts Tagged “
Liars
”
Rob Shuter
flackery
The PR Industry Will Not Stand For These Outrageous Criticisms!
The PR industry loves to get riled up any time someone takes what might be construed as an unjustified shot at its awful reputation. This is because there are already so many perfectly justified criticisms of PR that any argument not directly linked to a huge public scandal gives the industry a rare chance to get on its high horse. That's precisely what's going on today, after CBS analyst Andrew Cohen went on air yesterday with a scathing but overbroad rant calling the entire PR industry dirty liars, in the wake of lying former Bush flack Scottie McClellan's book. How dare CBS be so mean! The Public Relations Society of America fired back with a mealy-mouthed letter declaring "truth and accuracy are the bread and butter of the public relations profession." This is the same PRSA that didn't feel the need to say anything about McClellan's admitted lies themselves. So we have an ill-considered commentary, and a hypocritical response. A perfect embodiment of PR! Video of Cohen's rant, after the jump. More »
scandals
Roger Clemens: Baseball's Eliot Spitzer
Here on day two of the Roger Clemens Infidelity Scandal And Schadenfreude Festival Of '08, it's becoming more clear that the brawny former Yankees ace pitcher and full time jerk did in fact cheat on his wife with the wild country singer Mindy McCready. Because now she's admitted it! McCready said the two did have an ongoing affair, although the sex didn't start until she was of legal age. They first met when she was only 15, (Miley Cyrus joke). But the most entertaining aspect of this scandal is how Clemens—heroic, honored, self-righteous, dismissive of critics, a King of New York—is turning into an uncanny baseball version of another recently fallen hero: Eliot Spitzer. More »
The Blogosphere
How You Fanned the Flames of Ivy Fraud Fallout
Sure, Akash Maharaj—the 26-year-old Trinidad-and-Tobagonian who lied his way into Yale and was snitched out by his jilted ex-boyfriend—is only the latest in a long line of fraudy fraudsters to bamboozle the Ivy League institution. But the big deal? He's the first one to do it in the Internet Age. Now it's a big, stinking pile of mess, and Yale blames you! More »
journalismism
Newspaper Feature, Like Story Of Jesus, Is Fiction
On March 23, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch ran an uplifting story about "Virginia Gillis," who had lost her perfect life when her husband started using methamphetamines, burned down their house, and attacked her with a straight razor, cutting her throat "almost all the way through." After a stint of homelessness, she slowly rebuilt her life, and now works as a chef at a homeless program, feeding hundreds of people a week who are stuck in the position that she once was. The paper compares her story to the resurrection of Jesus Christ—this was an Easter-themed feature. But further investigation revealed that, like Jesus, Virginia Gillis' story had a bit of mythology in it. Such as: her name, her age, her location, her outstanding warrants, and everything else about her story! It might have been easier if they just told us what was true in the original, rather than false. The entire, and truly epic, editor's note from page one of yesterday's paper [via Romenesko], after the jump. More »
fond memories
Malcolm Gladwelling at The Post
Super-famous New Yorker writer and liar Malcolm Gladwell isn't the only reporter who tried to sneak funny bits of prose into his articles for a respected newspaper. (Except didn't he not do that? I'm confused.) Anyhoo, it's a fun old game to play, and we used to play it Page Six. My fellow former Sixer Chris Wilson and I used to daydream about getting the term "Bukkake Bandit" onto the page, which, in 2003/2004, was no easy trick. In fact, it never even got past Richard Johnson. Another crusade was to get the Google definition of Senator Rick Santorum's name into the Post back when that was still new and fun. More »
margaret seltzer
No More One Source Profiles, Says NYT
Now that lying author Margaret Seltzer has made the New York Times look like useful idiots for printing a fawning profile of her in which she spouted her stock lies about her ties to the hood, the paper is pushing for some changes. Standards Editor Craig Whitney emails the newsroom today that they shouldn't run any more single-source profiles of people who aren't well known, because they could turn out to be lying schmucks like Margaret Seltzer and make the paper look stupid all over again. Makes sense. Points to the Times for doing some kinda thing, at least! The full internal email, reprinted below. More »
liars
Esquire Writes Heath Ledger's Fake Memoir
What were the last moments of Heath Ledger's life like? Esquire doesn't have the exclusive! So their reporter Lisa Taddeo added a gimmick to her story about the actor's final days: She wrote her story in the first and second person as the late actor, using Chuck Palahniuk's dramatic narrative style (which is pretty close to Esquire's default). The magazine cleverly introduces the piece as "reported fiction," which means we don't get to know which details of Taddeo's piece are true. So why didn't she just invent the whole thing? That seems easier. [Photo: Getty]
robert irvine
Famous Lying Chef Properly Canned For The Winter
Celebrity Food Network chef Robert Irvine, revealed to be a big fat liar recently by a St. Petersburg Times investigation, has been let go by the network. He spent his last day as host of "Dinner: Impossible" in Washington, DC, cooking Japanese food for a party of 250. Maybe he can go back into the Army, they always need fast cooks like that. [TMZ]
mavericks
'Newsweek' Calls John McCain a Liar
Reporter Michael Isikoff's story of John McCain's unethical relationship with lobbyist Vicki Iseman is up at Newsweek! It's been speculated that news that Isikoff was working on the story is one of the many factors that prompted the New York Times to "rush" their version into print earlier this week. Isikoff's story comes with a nice little mini-bombshell: proof that McCain already lied in his "sweeping denial" of the Times story! More »
robert irvine
Massive Celebrity Chef Also Massive Liar
Robert Irvine, the nerdy, crewcut, heavily muscled celebrity chef who rose to fame with his show "Dinner: Impossible" on the Food Network, may be suffering from a serious case of pants-on-fire. Irvine had big plans to transform the fine dining scene in St. Petersburg, FL with two new fancy restaurants. He ran around town entering partnerships, hiring consultants, and generally proclaiming himself to be a food VIP. But the local paper noticed that, three months after the scheduled opening date, the new restaurants are still unfinished construction sites. So they did some investigating [SP Times], and it turns out that most of Irvine's big-shot credentials are just a huge pile of unseasoned poop! More »
It is the greatest story of the year. A six-year-old girl who won tickets to a "Hannah Montana" concert by beginning an essay "My daddy died this year in Iraq" may not get to see Miley Cyrus live and in person after all—her dad didn't die in Iraq one bit! Awesome. [AP]
James Frey Is A 'Rockstar Vampire' On Facebook
Fun fact #1 about lying memoirist James Frey's Facebook profile: he is a member of the group "I Love 'A Million Little Pieces' and James Frey Even if It's Not All True."
Fun fact #1 about lying memoirist James Frey's Facebook profile: he is a member of the group "I Love 'A Million Little Pieces' and James Frey Even if It's Not All True."
survivors
Rudy Giuliani Is A Welfare Queen!
Rudy Giuliani, the Mayor of 9/11, began running a radio ad in New Hampshire this week that's all about how he survived his prostrate cancer without any help from the government. "I had prostate cancer five, six years ago. My chance of surviving cancer, and thank God I was cured of it, in the United States, 82 percent. My chances of surviving prostate cancer in England, only 44 percent under socialized medicine." Of course, because Rudy Giuliani is saying those things, each sentence contains its own egregious lie. Even the first one! More »
it's hard out there for a pimp
James Lipton Is A Lying John
James Lipton, who takes time off of his busy schedule of being a horrendous bore to ask actors dumb questions on Bravo's "Inside the Actor's Studio," wrote a memoir called "Inside Inside." We'll visit it in due time. In the interim, to answer the question, or rather the degree, of Mr. Lipton's pretentious hideosity, we'll have to rely on a recent New York magazine interview conducted by ex-BlackBook editor William Georgiades "on the deck of of Lipton's Bridgehampton home, where he also sang in Latin." More »
James Frey's new publisher Jonathan Burnham tells the Observer that the $2 million we heard he sold James' third novel for is "far off"—but he didn't say in which direction. Whatever, liars. [Observer]
liars
