Casual
Casual Mau-mauing the Flacks What is the most despised profession in America? Judging from the amount of public scorn its practitioners receive, you might think the answer would be the law. And...
...When Hayley, or Tracey, begins her tap dance, you just have to say, "I'm too busy to hear a pitch" and get off the phone before she can schedule a time to call back...
...And yet being a lawyer is still a position of high status in American society, a job that still gives a lawyer's parents some bragging rights in exchange for the $75,000 it takes to get that law-school diploma...
...The consequences for your sanity could be disastrous...
...The flack lives by the unsolicited call...
...control freaks who make it difficult, if not impossible, for a journalist to do his job...
...Soon it became clear what was going on...
...That would be like letting the world of unsolicited telephone salesmen know that you just love getting their calls in the middle of dinner...
...The same is true with the "media," even those local TV people who thoughtlessly tromp all over the lawns of the homes of the recently bereaved and are made out to be villains in movies and on episodic television shows...
...Hi, this is Hayley from Flack and Flack Public Relations...
...they might ask...
...Is John there...
...On the other hand, there are the flacks whose job it is to function as gate-keepers...
...During the recent snowstorm here in Washington, a friend who works for a local news station told me he was picked up and brought to work by citizen volunteers...
...I would reply, for the word "deadline" had some mystical power over them...
...You mean" I asked, "that people volunteered to shuttle the employees of a hugely profitable TV station around town for free...
...It's really special, you know-it deals with issues, like this week, Foofur learns to recycle...
...John Podhoretz...
...Yes, yes, on deadline...
...These are the ones who control access to celebrities or material that is in demand...
...When it comes to dealing with flacks, all rules of decorum, politeness, even simple courtesy are off...
...All the flack had to do was assure her boss that she had made contact with journalists, especially when peddling some impossibly boring material...
...You really have no choice...
...Foofur itself is going to be appearing at the mall in Paramus, N.J., next weekend, and we'd love to set up an interview...
...after their names, even though the designation "Esquire" is simply an antiquated way of saying "Mister" and is not conferred by a body of experts, like a doctorate...
...Usually there was one escape hatch offered you from a long and agonizing pitch for something no rational person would actually be interested in...
...For some reason, they're usually named Hayley or Tracey or Stacey, I don't know why...
...Politician...
...Hey, you know what...
...Call them "flacks," like we do, even though the very term is an act of disrespect...
...Later she would write a report in which my name, among others, would appear as someone with whom she had successfully "followed up," even if no article actually came out of it...
...A friend of mine who works for a newsmagazine wanted to write a favorable piece about a television comedienne who would, six months earlier, have died with pleasure to get his call...
...When I was working as the television critic for the New York Post, my phone would ring no fewer than 20 times a day...
...Always," he said...
...Are you on deadline...
...By the way, you always know lawyers of the second rank because they add the "Esq...
...if you're too pleasant about it, word will get around, and flacks will look forward to calling you...
...Comedians have long told jokes about those intrepid souls who peddle insurance for a living: In Woody Allen's Take the Money and Run, for example, a prisoner on a chain gang who tries to escape is punished by being locked for three days in a hot-box with an insurance salesman...
...That's not the sign of a profession people hate...
...And instead of the wheedling insistence that characterizes their Foofur brethren, they turn obnoxious and regal, taking on the character of celebrity itself...
...But targeting door-to-door bell ringers is a little like saying "groovy" or listening to the musical stylings of Mantovani...
...Instead, the flack put him off for a week before finally explaining to him that she "isn't really interested in print these days...
...Well, then, I'll call back," they would say, and release the line...
...I'm just calling to follow up on some material I sent you about Foofur, the Saturday morning cartoon show...
...The most comic use of it is with a woman's name: "Yours sincerely, Tiffany Rosenberg, Esq...
...Again, disliked as a collective, but admired individually...
...After a while, you begin to learn that the only way to deal with flacks is to hang up on them, almost literally...
...There is one category of professional that those of us who write and edit for a living despise above all others-those hearty men and women who work in the field called "public relations...
Vol. 1 • March 1996 • No. 25
