October 8, 2006

The Twinkie Defense

Crisis communications is an integral part of our business. Something bad happens, and your client calls and asks how to handle it.

Whenever speaking about this kind of situation, professionals inevitably cite the Tylenol case and say how brilliantly the company handled it be addressing it head on, taking the product off the shelves, committing to securing the product before it was back on the shelves, and then living up to that commitment. Pretty straight forward.

While everyone agrees with the wisdom of that scenario, surprisingly few follow it.

The most preposterous defense used to be "the Twinkie defense," the classic case in which a criminal claimed that eating too many Twinkies hopped him up so much that he was driven to commit criminal acts.

The 21st century equivalent is the alcohol dependency defense. Regardless of the misdeed, everyone's rushing to rehab...and saying with a straight face that the liquor made them do it.

Who's advising them? Who do they think they're kidding?

Psychologists were asked where the despicable words Mel Gibson spoke came from. One noted expert replied, "His mouth."

But would Gibson cop to the fact that he had some real issues around his attitudes toward Jews? Oh no...he just said he had a drinking problem and needed rehab.

Ditto with that rotten egg Thomas Foley. His lawyer states emphatically, "He is not a pedophile. He's an alcoholic." OK...let me get this straight....I thought an alcoholic was someone who drank too much, and a pedophile was someone who hit on kids. Not much question as to which Foley was/is. So why doesn't he admit it and get treatment for the true illness, instead of hiding behind the pathetically weak rehab defense?

Whenever we're faced with these situations, we always have the same three-word answer to our clients: tell the truth.

No matter how painful or even despicable the truth is, it sure beats the alternative. And, oh how refreshing it is for people to hear.

Also, speaking the truth permits the problem to be solved directly, rather than trying to solve everything but the problem. Congress is now re-examining the page system. They're spending our tax dollars to do that. This has nothing to do with the page system. It has to do with one sick puppy and the fools who swept his sickness under the rug. Those fools aren't pages. They're elected officials, many of whom are up for re-election next month.