Word: publicists
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...After a morning of these antics recently I came to work, dutifully shoving off such childishness, and took a phone call from the assistant of a publicist at BWR. Publicists are nearly always cheerful and helpful souls. Some of them, particularly those who represent multimillion-dollar corporations are very smart and incredibly scrupulous. Those who represent famous people, however, sometimes let the team down. BWR represents a lot of famous people...
...recently requested something from one such famous person. Famous in the Oscar-nominated sense of the word. As is customary with such requests, I put it in writing and faxed the letter through to the famous person's agent, who then passed it on to the publicist, who passed it on to the famous person, who usually takes a pass and the publicist passes that pass on to me. (I may have the actual order of the Chinese whispers back to front here, but you get the picture.) I submitted to this process even though I saw said famous person...
...know the rest. The next day I saw the famous person. I asked about the fax. My acquaintance had no knowledge of it and was sort of interested in my proposal. The feeling was familiar. The publicist's lie was so breathtakingly primitive and easily disproved. And since I had pointedly said that I would see the famous person soon at such-and-such a place in my fax, it was even more easily exposed than the untruths my son so clumsily perpetrates...
...When Rover lies, I try to explain gently what is wrong with falsehood. The Boy who cried Wolf is invoked. It's difficult to know how to respond to grown women lying. When I asked my colleagues about it they shook their heads at me sadly: ?A publicist lied? One for the ages!" But it wasn't the lying that got me. I lie. Recent news reports suggest much better writers than me have lied. Oh yeah, and presidents lie. It was the sheer stupidity of the lie. It was worse than my son saying he has already brushed...
...decided maybe just to regard it as tricking. Next time a publicist tells me something that seems implausible I'll just ham it up, twisting around and banging my head. Maybe then they'll stop all the nonsense...