Countrywide Can't Shake 'Come Hither' Ways

In fighting the good fight to keep democracy safe for wealthy shareholders, we must understand that the enemy, working alone, is pretty harmless.

After all, those who come up with press releases and corporate party lines on issues, working in the world's (second) oldest profession, are mostly doing their jobs. But while they are getting paid to present a tuned or altered truth to the public, they make it easy to turn the business media callous to the underlying truth, which is why so much of what you end up hearing is nonsense.

These days, public- and investor-relations hacks have successfully ironed all spontaneity, texture and reality out of analyzing a company. Every presentation to the public is choreographed, with press releases going through more drafts than Tolstoy ever put a manuscript through.

And the systemized nature of the process makes it so easy to produce copy. The polished utterances, the camera-friendly interviews given to hand-selected journalists all make it easy to hit deadline without much critical thought.

And the split-the-difference, on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand form of the modern corporate media culture has given the dark arts of the public- and investor-relations forces too much credence. Play a game of on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand with a hustler, and you are that much closer to being hustled.