Common Sense PR

The Jaffe Joust Continues

by Eric Eggertson on May 30th, 2008

I tend not to criticize enthusiasts and optomists. I think the world needs as much optimism and positive energy as possible.

So it was not without reservations that I cranked out my rant about the paid editorial content that for 10 recent Jaffe Juice episodes have been a sizeable part of Joseph Jaffe’s exploration of “new marketing.”

Jaffe responded. In his latest episode, no. 109, the garrulous Jaffe talks about how personally touched he was at the American citizenship ceremony he and his wife took part in, how touched he was by the gestures of appreciation and friendship he has recently received from others involved in social media, and how enriched he feels to be part of such a community.

Then he segues into a response to an audio comment by Jay Moonah, which mentioned my rant.

At this point, Jaffe was well positioned to hoist me on my own petard.

Against the background of the warmth and goodwill of his social network, all he had to was point to my ungentlemanly critique, and let his listeners draw the conclusion that I was an unpleasant bastard, who lobs hand grenades at innocent podcasters like him.

Instead, he managed to fill 12 minutes responding to Jay’s comment and explaining how deluded I am:

1) Mocked my blog profile description of “communications professional.”

2) Called me “a little confused” for criticizing both the length of time spent on his podcast talking about the topic of the day for his paying sponsor, while suggesting he wasn’t honest with his audience about his deal with the U.S. Postal Service’s Deliver Magazine.

3) Said I wasn’t listening to his podcasts or I wouldn’t have made such outrageous claims: “I think he was actually being a lazy communications professional, because if he had been listening, he would have known that his allegation or at least his critique was unfounded.”

4) Questioned why I didn’t send an audio comment, and take part in the conversation on his podcast, instead of showing cowardice with “a long stinky blog post.”

You get the point.

For the record, my criticism was that transparency about the source of an infomercial doesn’t magically transform it from an informercial into something being offered to the audience on its own merit.

If anything about my post suggested that I think Jaffe was acting unethically, I apologize, That certainly wasn’t my intention.

As for my criticism that Jaffe drags topics out too long, well, he has already supplied a 12-minute confirmation of that!

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