Greasy limb ripping bears later … First there’s Strumpette, proving once again that she is the best thing going in the PR Blogosphere (is that a dubious sub-genre, or what?) with the inside info on the imminent demise of Edelman’s Me2Revolution, complete with juicy details like salaries for Steve Rubel, Phil Gomes and others in the Edelman PR Blog Mob. And there’s more …  is King Richard Edelman’s $1 million investment to fund the start-up Revolution all but dried up? The end of the big-hype PR blog era is nigh and Richard is faced with the big question everybody wants the answer to: Can you make money at this new media PR 2.0 stuff?  And, incidentially, whats is this PR 2.0 stuff, and is PR even capable of doing it, whatever it might be? What is King Richard to do, queries Amanda in Is the revolution over? 

Classic Strumpette – decidedly satirical, anchored in serious investigative journalism, coupled with a dash of bravado and a lot of daring. She’s out to eviscerate and expose the “lying profession” of PR and some established PR bloggers clearly don’t like her insinuations or her methods. A couple of weeks ago she skewered Ronn Torossian of 5WPR, now King Richard, bankroller of the Social Media Revolution. Oh, Amanda, you are such a tough mistress. 

I got hip to Strumpette from a headhunter in Peter Luger’s in Bklyn a couple of months ago. We were blabbing business at the bar until we could be herded with the other carnivores into the meat troughs, and he basically said, after a few Bloody Mary’s, that I was an idiot and completely out of the loop because I did not read Strumpette. Why did he like it? “I don’t know what’s real,” he said, as if finally, in the world of NY PR, you could find a no bullshit zone that was built on absolutist illusion that approaches art that should be the highest order of our profession. What’s real and what isn’t? How do you define and justify the “greater truth”? Initial readings of Strumpette were a revelation. Wow – we really are capable of creativity and perhaps even change within the industry, and a PR blogger is leading the way.

I was going to make Strumpette a “Blog We Love” but that would trivialize it because because Strumpette really defines and domiantes its own space. Strumpette is a free fire zone where you want to spend time. That in itself is incredibly valuable and a virtually unique experience – to want to spend time at a blog. I am a natural speed reader and the Internet lends itself to the quick consumption of information and the proliferation of blogs spewing nonsense on the web is dispiriting. Strumpette is like The New Yorker of PR blogs – something brilliant is going on here even if you don’t know what it is.

I could go on and on with Amanda’s great lines but do yourself a favor and spend time there. Mix it up. This really is a conversation and sometimes the give and take gets ugly. She forces issues the industry would sooner forget or gloss over. When you come to Strumpette come heavy. Unless you happen on the weekend and get the new somnolent, frou-frou guest blogger Shel Holtz sprinkling the dust of old school  elitism on a weekly roundup. Amanda undoubtedly tapped Shel to be inclusive – keep your friends close but your enemies closer – but Shel is like ether in the blogosphere. Does he have something to offer besides indignation at some perceived slight or a chivalrous defense of our fine upstanding profession? Come on, Shel, Strumpette is like a schoolyard pickup basketball game. Sometimes elbows fly. Might as well get loose and have some fun. 

Volatility, baby, hang on for the ride. Tremblors are radiating through the world financial markets, finally, and the  broker bloggers are digging it.  FlyonWall Street is unrepetent, profane and absolutist: “If you don’t sell your stocks or hedge now, the big greasy bears are going to rip your arms and legs off, then use your torso as a fucking surf board.” You think this guy eats too much meat and drinks too much scotch?

Birinyi Associates ingenious Blogger Sentiment Poll turned decidedly bearish this week – jumping from 30% t0 42% bearish – in a survey of 53 Wall Street bloggers. TickerSense by Birinyi, with common sense postings and plenty of supporting graphs, is welcome relief from the plethora of staid, professorial Wall Street blogs. The methodology for the Blogger Sentiment Poll is questionable but the concept is solid and the results entertaining. And it’s good online financial services PR.

Finally, something all bloggers agree on: Big uproar over Vets’ Care comes from liberal bloggers, conservatives and all in between. Countercolumn is outaged on the right. Bush Administration push for privatization may have helped create Walter Reed ‘disaster’- on the left in RawStory - the headline says it all.