Lance Stinks (And It's Not From Riding Bikes)!!!!

In Dr. Lambiase's Article in the Sunday paper, I gained a lot of insight into Proposition 15, when I really knew nothing of it.
Link:
What really stood out was the fact that Big Tobacco, a known cancer causer, was one of the main contributors to the "live strong" organization. Though I feel bad for Lance Armstrong that he had to endure cancer, I have never enjoyed or particularly agreed with the yellow banded wrists popping up across college campuses and high school gyms across America.

Here's why: this is a man that has not been living well.

Yes he has won the Tour de France a record breaking number of times, but he cheated: he took steroids (by some speculation that has been hushed by now). He had a devoted wife who stood by him through his fight with cancer, and he dropped her like a hot potato as soon as "All I Wanna Do is Have Some Fun!" crooner Sheryl Crow merited him a big enough celebrity to don the yellow band as well. Endorsements from Mr. Armstrong mean nothing to me, and to a lot of other people I imagine too.

Dr. Lambiase is absolutely right: living well is going to help in prevention of future cases more than anything, and the financial backing behind this proposition does not suggest healthy living!!! CIGARETTES KILL MORE PEOPLE EVERY YEAR THAN ALMOST ANYTHING ELSE!!! Yet, this is one of their contributors. Of course they want more research done, so they can get a few more puffs out of these nocotine addicted lung cancer patients.

In Crazy Sexy Cancer, Kris Carr, a level 4 cancer patient, has managed to keep her tumors from growing larger for some time, which is a wonderful accomplishment!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmjcKqXHJSM
She talks about the value of eating greens and practicing yoga-taking the time every day to get positive and be happy. Wouldn't someone like this have a more powerful message to send? Wouldn't this be more helpful and meaningful for a lot of people? Phillip Morris isn't going to help the cancer cause, but Whole Foods might...I think there are tons of inspirational stories out there from other cancer survivors who live with integrity every day, not just when the cameras are rolling.
Throwing money at a problem never solves a thing, but education never hurts. I hope lots of people read that Sunday article and it made them think.

Glengarry, Glen Ross: Lie. Cheat. Steal.

In David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross at the Dallas Theater Center, the audience got to enter a world of backstabbing, lying, and competitiveness as a group of salesmen try to claw their way to the top. The only character that merits any sympathy is Lingk, a customer who is almost hoodwinked out of his money by Roma, the Gordon Gecko of the office. There are elements of the characters of this play that make the viewer's skin crawl, not to mention gain the realization that sales is not an industry one wants to enter, or at the very least enter blindly...What was really interesting to hear was David Sauer's explanation after the play of where the title probably came from: the swamplands in Florida that are named after Scottish Highlands. So, this sales group in Chicago is selling swampland and using every trick up their sleeve to get the customer's check. Ultimately, they are doing something morally atrocious: selling land of virtually no value to people, and showing brochures to people that we can imagine are probably glossy and filled with photos of beauty. These characters fight over the leads, the fight over the phantom Cadillac, and ultimately, they are fighting over who can screw over the most people, the most thoroughly. We don't see any warmth or depth in any of the characters really, except when Levene starts to mention a daughter, but we never get to hear anything more about her. Mamet isn't trying to sugar-coat. In a play that seems like a hyperbole of the sales scene, it was almost disheartening to hear a fellow audience member mention in the Q&A after the play that the sales world is, in fact, like the one portrayed in Mamet's play. He mentioned how people will fight over leads, and how some people lie to get their way. In an industry that is commission based, people will do whatever it takes to get paid. The ethical problems with this logic are infinite. This is not fair, this is not just, it is not Honest, it is not humane, one could go on and on....In this play, for a couple of hours, we enter a world where we see the ugliest aspects of human nature, and the business that requires it.

Kairos in Apologies

In class last week we talked about how the timing of an apology is almost as important as the apology itself. Some examples of this: Countrywide and their faulty mortgages, and more recently Southwest Airlines and their brush-off from corporate in regards to their throwing a mini-skirt wearing passenger off of a flight. At first they ignored the media attention it was getting, then at the last minute, they did this sort of "aw shucks" shoulder shrug off. They tried to make it into a big joke, but the passenger surely isn't laughing. Then there was the issue with heavier passengers: they issued a policy that passengers over a certain weight have to purchase 2 seats. In a country that is riddled with obesity (latest studies have shown over a third of the population of the United States is obese) is it really a good idea to alienate your plumper clientele? There also seems to be a real rise in the trend of companies having fake blogs, or flogs, in order to promote their organization. Morally, this seems atrocious: it is dishonest and tricky puffery. Now, in perhaps a last minute dash to get some good spin out there, Southwest has announced this week that they will be changing the way they do business in a good way: they will now make it easier for passengers to hop on flights at the last minute without standby hassles. So, the kairos of Southwest reveals just how badly they are botching their relationship with the public: they need to deal with the "shit" as it hits the fan, or perhaps even beforehand, so their apologies don't seem half-hearted and vacuous.

PRSA Ethics

In the PRSA Code of Ethics, they list their values as Advocacy, Honesty, Expertise, Independence, Loyalty, and Fairness. The 5 Principles we have been discussing in class are: Truth, Humaneness, Stewardship, Freedom, and Justice.

These ideas are very similar, if not synonimous.
Stewardship= Loyalty
Justice= Fairness
Advocacy and Honesty=Truth
Freedom=Idependence
and perhaps Humaneness would go with Expertise, because arguably being a good PR professional means treating people in a human manner.

We talked a bit in class about service versus substance, and short term goals versus long term goals. In doing the case study on Apple, I noticed, that service very much took a back seat to substance, and that long term goals played second fiddle to short term goals. This being said, I wondered how many other organizations are the same way. Apple has been fairly successful, in spite of their lack of respect for their consumers. It seems to be about the bottom line, about selling products. This brings up a reasonable hypothetical: what if the ethically correct thing to do goes against your boss? For example Stephanie Baycock or whatever the iPhone spokesperson's name is had a really bad attitude in regards to slighted customers. Instead of echoing the Steve Jobs mantra, she could have said, "Steve, I really think this is going to make people mad, and I think the arrogance is inappropriate, and you can take this job and shove it if this is what kind of company Apple wants to be." Instead, she drank the Jobs kool aid and decided to be a bully too. So this brings up another question: do you leave personal ethics at the door when you join an organization? I don't think so. It is not necessarily so that you have to decide between having a job or having scruples. There are lots of organizations that know that dignity and integrity matter, even if Apple isn't one of them.

Lead Toys

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlsvfXAQ5v8
In just the latest in a litany of Chinese product bashing, the American toy company Mattel has been in hot water lately for selling products manufactured in China that contain lead paint. Mattel, with super-products like Barbie, has had international media frenzy on their hands. But where does this leave China? They were also blamed for the pet food scare recently, and according to the above youtube reuters video for selling toxic fish and toothpaste. Is China the fall guy? Or are there really serious problems over there with the quality of exports? If Mattel knows that quality is a concern, should they still be manufacturing their products in China, and at what point to they directly take the responsibility? Some media outlets think that Mattel has used efficient public relations in this catastrophe, as the link shows: http://au.news.yahoo.com/071001/3/14kcb.html, but it will be interesting to see how Mattel, and China fair after the recent fumbles.