Maybe you’ve heard of Steve Rubel. He’s this smarmy PR guy from Edelman PR who thinks he’s Mr. Know It All when it comes to blogging. He’s always talking about “radical transparency” even though, let’s face it, he makes his living telling friggin lies. I mean, it’s what he does. He’s the business equivalent of a three-card monte dealer. For him to talk about honesty and transparency is like having Penn and Teller saying they’re going to give out programs to the audience that explain how the tricks are done. The truth is, all this “radical transparency” and “naked conversation” horseshit from Rubel and Shel Israel and Robert Scoble is just a way for PR flacks to feel more important than they really are. It’s like when people who teach English Composition at universities try to make a big field of study out of what they do, when basically it’s just teaching remedial grammar. But I digress.

I just had a meeting with some of our PR team and they mentioned, in reference to my earlier post about PC Mag’s Jim Louderback, that Louderback recently has been involved in a kind of funny to-do with Steve Rubel. Apparently Rubel blabbered on Twitter that he doesn’t read PC Mag and in fact tosses his copy into the trash when it arrives. Smooth move for a PR guy right? Louderback blasted back here saying that since Mr. Bigshot PR man and blogger Steve Rubel of Edelman PR has so little respect for PC Mag, then he would start ignoring pitches from Edelman clients.

That in turn prompted this hilarious groveling open letter from Rubel to “Mr. Louderback” and everyone at Ziff Davis, which owns PC Mag. It’s really a must-read, if only because Rubel is one of these guys who’s been going around saying how the mainstream media doesn’t matter anymore, and how blogs are displacing all the big newspapers and magazines, blah blah blah … but here he is taking one deep down the windpipe on behalf of his clients, who no doubt carved him a new one for pissing off PC Mag.

What’s really admirable is the ease and style with which Steve Rubel handles the fellatio. No attempt to defend what he wrote. No pretending to have any integrity. Just “whoops, the boss says I gotta reverse myself, and also I have to blow you, so down on my knees I go.” Watch the way he handles Jim Louderback’s beef bayonet with his lips and tongue, while skillfully tickling the back side of Jim’s scrotum and even reaching back with a pinkie finger for the dirt chute. Junior PR people, learn from this. You’re seeing a master PR professional at work. This, kids, is how you get to have a title like “svp/me2revolution.”