Fun With The Flacks: 4.18

I know a lot of you think I don't think very highly of public relations professionals. While that's only somewhat true, there's nothing I like more than playing with PR People. Except maybe totally selling out to them for a facial, massage and a chance to hang out with your celebrity doppelganger.

Not that I'm jealous of Perez Hilton. . .

Fine. I'm totally jealous. Therefore, I'm going to make fun of PR People since they apparently aren't ever going to love me, not like they love Perez "Holy God Look At His Traffic" Hilton, anyway. Maybe I'm just too unpredictable. Anyhoo, this email arrived in my inbox perhaps two weeks ago, but I've been a bit busy and such, so sorry that I'm just now gettin' round to it now:

Check out the “Copycat Killers,” an online, interactive game inspired by the movie that your users can access directly by clicking on this link: http://www.lifetimetv.com/movies/originals/littlething_game/index.html
It would be great if you can promote this on your site.
Thanks!
Angela

Well, gee, Angela, since you asked so nicely, I'll share the press release you dropped about a great new Lifetime special movie event thing with all my readers. (count the oxymorons in that sentence) The art of the press release is certainly an evolving one, and as my favorite proper British magazine The Economist recently pointed out-- PR spending is set to rise. So in order to cope with what is sure to be the rising trend of flack-hacking. Flack-hacking is when bloggers or any other media people (yes, even TV journalists count here) are sent targeted emails by PR people in the hopes of inducing a story. As my good friends at The Economist point out, this is actually much more effective than buying advertising-- hence the forecasted increase in PR spending.

The point is- we're just gonna have to get used to press releases, and become adept at the art of deciphering them. Assistants, this means you.

So in the interests of learning and media development, here's Angela's lil slice of PR heaven, with my comments in bold:

A LITTLE THING CALLED MURDER:
Lifetime Television’s A Little Thing Called Murder, premiering January 23 at 9 PM ET/PT, and starring Golden Globe® and Emmy® winner Judy Davis (Look At What Poor Judy Davis Has Been Reduced To!) (Husbands and Wives(good); Life With Judy Garland(Um?): Me and My Shadows(Yikes!) and Jonathan Jackson (“General Hospital”; Tuck Everlasting; Deep End of the Ocean)(And lest we forget, Camp Nowhere) as mother and son serial killers. A dark, yet campy (read: with a muddled tone) retelling (read: over-melodramatizing) of the events that would lead to one of the most bizarre crime stories in criminal history,(at least OJ had a car chase.) A Little Thing Called Murder feaures Davis as Sante Kimes, a charismatic (unlikely) con artist who built a fraudulent real-estate empire, and with the help of her obedient son, Kenny (Jackson)(Mud), committed a string of murders across the country. At their recent trial, Kenny, free of his mother’s psychological grip, revealed the sordid and disturbing details of their crimes, leaving many to wonder how a woman like Sante was able to manipulate her son to commit the unthinkable act of murder. (just guessing: incest?)

Now repeating endlessly on Lifetime, "Television for Golden Girls re-runs!"

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