Bring Me The Head of Amanda Chapel
Oct 12th, 2007 by Mark Rose
Mercy mercy mercy. The hurt, the betrayal, the horror, the madness. The jealousy and rage. You would have thought that the Wicked Witch of Chicago was finally slain, her corpse paraded through the blog square, and the oppressed villagers were finally free to once again dance in the streets. I am talking of course of the resignation of Amanda Chapel as Managing Editor of Strumpette earlier this week. continues after 1938 Media video below…
Over at the VeryCommonSensePR blog they formed a virtual support group of blubbering bloggers who were deeply injured by the slights of a fictional PR critic known as Amanda. This post on InfOpinions drew comment after comment of hurt bloggers ready to come out again now that Strumpette cannot smack them. I haven’t heard such kvetching since Con Ed raised its rates again.
The prevailing driver in all this Strumpette-bashing is jealousy, the big green monster. Strumpette had the numbers, not their blogs. PR leaders wrote stories for Strumpette, not their blogs. Strumpette went for the jugular, when we are all supposed to be a collegial circle jerk of accomodating links, mirroring each other into common banality. Now they can all assuage each other into somnolence and irrelevance without some bitchy watchdog. But, hey, Halloween is coming. Maybe some goblins are popping around. Strumpette is a blog pirate ship, drifting outside the clutches of PR plunderers. But I don’t see any white flags flying.
Going so soon? I wouldn’t hear of it. Why my little party’s just beginning. - Wicked Witch of the West
Mark, you left our circle before we had a group hug.
Mark,
You do realize that there’s a chance that some of the animosity/anger/etc was driven by…say, harassment of colleagues, legal threats towards critics, threatening emails (and not from a ‘fictional character’), don’t you?
Thick skins are fine, hell - make it two days in politics without one…but being a jackass is just that.
(btw, fan of your week in review regardless of topic. one of the better features of the site - the columns with real bylines)
Wait a minute Mark. Not every commentor blubbered.
Eric did one of the better jobs at offering a reasoned round up. Amanda was a fine adversary and possibly needed at times by the public relations industry. I didn’t mind mixing it up with them now and again, expect when the discussion broke down into boorish name calling, much like Eric’s comment section (the post was spot on). AC also took it too far at times, from what I have heard, threatening legal action and writing to have someone accreditation revoked.
AC could have been better, anonymous or not. As I once wrote, the better brand would have been the a mysterious and provocative foil for the online public relations community. But that is not what AC. So it’s all easily solved, pick up where she left off if you care that much for her memory.
Best,
Rich