1.
The New York Times today publishes a highly interesting article (a quick Google visit indicates that this is not an exclusive..) relevaling that, in the summer of 1920, Boston public relations professional William McMasters publicly denounced his then client Charles Ponzi.
In an article on the Boston Post he wrote ‘as a publicity man my first duty is to the public’.
Mr. McMasters was a pre-eminent public relations man when he took on Ponzi as a client in July 1920. A lawyer who had served in the Spanish-American War, he had handled publicity for the campaigns of several Massachusetts political figures, including Calvin Coolidge, John F. Fitzgerald (President John F. Kennedy’s grandfather) and James M. Curley. Mr. McMasters himself ran unsuccessfully for governor in 1938, wrote a play produced on Broadway and exposed a baseball betting scandal.
2.
In his 6am blog dated May 4, Richard Edelman advises IBM’ Ceo Sam Pamisano on what he should have said in a recent speech at the Atlantic Council in Washington DC.
This is all good news for us.
I wrote a post about Ponzi and McMasters in 2007:
http://greenbanana.wordpress.com/2007/06/09/theres-one-born-every-minute/
Ponzi was clearly a huckster – in his last newspaper interview before dying a pauper in 1949 he said:
“Even if they (the people of Boston) never got anything for it, it was cheap at that price. Without malice aforethought I had given them the best show that was ever staged in their territory since the landing of the Pilgrims! It was easily worth fifteen million bucks to watch me put the thing over!”