Out of Spin

A friend of mine posted this article, "Out of Spin" by Lloyd Grove, on a different, non-political email discussion group. I'm normally loathe to post entire articles, but it's too good to pass up.

It's about the immense loss the the world's Public Relations industry in the disappearance of former Iraqi Information
Minister Mohammed Saeed "I'll Take You To The Airport" Sahhaf.

Grove says:

All over Washington, public relations professionals are distraught at the sudden disappearance from television screens of Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed Sahhaf.

"Many of us turned to his daily briefings just as people in this town look forward to their morning Starbucks," said veteran Democratic operative Dale Leibach, a principal in Prism Public Affairs and a man with an antic sense of humor. "We need to bring him over here to practice his amazing public relations skills. He has taken our profession, such as it is, to a level that is as inexplicable as it is humbling. I would hire him in a nanosecond."

In recent days, Sahhaf has dazzled professional spinmeisters here with his irrepressible optimism -- "The infidels are committing suicide by the hundreds on the gates of Baghdad" -- and his uncanny gift for the
mot juste, at one point referring to the United States, Great Britain and their supporters as a "gang of bloodsucking bastards."

Some of Sahhaf's greatest hits:

• "There is no presence of American infidels in the city of Baghdad."

• "We butchered the force present at the airport."

• "Iraqi fighters in Umm Qasr are giving the hordes of American and British mercenaries the taste of definite death."

• Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is "a criminal dog." Rumsfeld and President Bush "only deserve to be hit with shoes."

• "After we finish defeating all of those animals we will disclose that with facts and figures."

Leibach, a veteran of the Jimmy Carter White House and the offices of Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and former senator Robert Torricelli (D-N.J.), told us: "There was great concern on Monday when we heard that his office was bombed. In all my years in this business, I have never seen
anyone handle himself with such 'skill' as he demonstrated during his press briefing yesterday -- with his Ministry of Information building literally on fire, causing him to move his news conference to the sidewalk, and with the flames visible behind him, saying with a straight face that they had 'the infidels' on the run, that the Iraqis are winning this war. They just don't teach you that in college. This is a
PR guy who may give new meaning to 'knowing how to take a bullet' for a client. Literally."

This piece is a treasure.

Posted by Mitch at April 11, 2003 07:40 AM