The PR industry anony-blog Strumpette is making fun today of Villaraigosa press deputy Matt Szabo. He came up in Steve Lopez's recent Los Angeles Times column on Hummer-driving transportation aide Jaime de la Vega, trying to tell Lopez that he could not question de la Vega about said Hummer. Lopez, of course, blew off Szabo's warning and made his first question to Jaime: "What's with the Hummer?" Strumpette's L.A. alter ego posts:
So, a reporter has the audacity to ignore the “ground rules.”The BIG question is "what would any flack worth his salt do?" Would you freeze out the Los Angeles Times? Stop answering their calls? Ban their reporters from your boss’ press conferences? That’s if you had one functioning testicle. Here, how ‘bout sending the building inspectors over that rat-trap on Spring Street? Ah, surely they’ll find something. Might be time for some street maintenance – right in front of the employee parking lot, too. Hey, your boss has friends in organized labor, say no more.
The PR industry is watching. C'mon Matt, the man has checked your cajones, what are you going to do?
Strumpette's blog home is Chicago, so maybe they don't know that out here we spell it cojones. Unless they really meant to impugn Szabo's chest of drawers. * Partial fix: They fixed cojones, but still say "la vita loca" and also erroneously imply that Lopez agreed to the ground rules. Not in my read of the column. I see Lopez say "no way." By the way, Lopez now has the Bottleneck Blog on the Times website.