When I die and go straight to my seat next to the Red Man with Horns down below, my eternal punishment is going to be that I have to do PR for Wal-Mart and that I will be about as effective as the PR people working on the case in the here and now today. 

Wal-Mart has sunk so low this time that when I think of their executives and PR people these days, an image comes to mind of reptilian creatures in neckties slithering down the linoleum aisles of their stores.

A fired Wal-Mart security worker confirmed a newspaper interview Wednesday in which he said he was part of a large surveillance operation that spied on company workers, critics, vendors and consultants. The company defended its security practices.

That's from this AP story April 4, 2007.

How does a company that big succumb to institutional paranoia and across-the-board bad judgment? How does mistrust become pan-organizational?

See, this speaks to my beef with those who want us to think of public relations people as advisers to senior management. Wal-Mart has tremendous PR resources. Where are they? What are they doing? When it comes to ethics, do these PR experts leave the room or worse, do they just not know any better? Third option: They didn't know? That's possible, but if so, that's no ringing endorsement of them either. Not to mention, they know now, and this is the result? "The company defends its security practices."

If you ask me, it should be: "The company defends its insecurity malpractices."

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A  thing appropriately and regularly pruned will thrive longer and produce more than something left to grow inefficiently of its own volition.

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