Public Relations

The topic today is public relations. Everyone can use them. Most of the kids in my class could use a team of public relations people to help steer their behavior patterns come report card time. I could use a little help now and then when I'm talking to parents about their childrens' progress. "Perhaps you should start with a compliment - like 'Abner's personal hygiene has really improved this semester!'"
I'm just saying that public relations is an honorable field and should not be dismissed out of hand. Tom Cruise, I'm not talking about you, specifically. Here is what I am talking about, specifically: Two Saudis and one Yemeni hanged themselves Saturday, the first successful suicides at the base after dozens of attempts. Colleen Graffy, deputy assistant U.S. secretary of state for public diplomacy, told the BBC that the deaths at the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba were a "good P.R. move to draw attention."
Oops. Now who needs the P.R. firm? "I would just point out in public that we would not say that it was a P.R. stunt," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said, using the abbreviation for public relations. "We have serious concerns anytime anybody takes their own life." Because a P.R. stunt would have to include some kind of cash prize or souvenir T-shirts?
President Pinhead expressed "serious concern" in his modulated comments regarding the suicides. Military officials said the suicides were coordinated acts of protest, but human rights activists and defense attorneys said the deaths signaled the desperation of many of the 460 detainees held on suspicion of links to al-Qaida and the Taliban. You say "to-may-to," I say "to-mah-to." The camp commander at Guantanamo, Rear Admiral Harry Harris, told reporters Sunday that the detainees "have no regard for human life, neither ours nor their own."
"I believe this was not an act of desperation but an act of asymmetric warfare against us," Harris said. Is it too late to try to teach these folks about hubris? "Asymmetric warfare?" I think you've got to be pretty desperate to see prisoners committing suicide as an act of war. Again, Tom Cruise can breathe out again. These guys are nuts.