Friday, June 11, 2010

The CHUTZPAH of not Knowing When to Shut Up

This feels like it has been a slow week for chutzpah (which may just mean that I have been occupying myself with far more interesting matters, such as writing about music for Examiner.com). However, in reviewing this past week, I realized that what continues to stick in my craw is that use of "inappropriate" that BP leveled at the Obama Administration. It is bad enough that the prevailing reaction to their advertising blitz was that they should have been spending the money on more work in the Gulf of Mexico. I suppose that the judgment behind that decision embodied its own level of chutzpah; but, as I have observed in the past about Israel, one needs to draw the line between chutzpah and business-as-usual. Thus the real chutzpah resides in protestations against offended parties, particularly when you are protesting that you are doing the best you can to a world that knows that you just are not doing so. So, while I doubt that a Chutzpah of the Week award will have much of an impact on BP, I think they still deserve it for demonstrating that they are as inept at corporate communication as they appear to be at managing disastrous accidents.

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