Lewis Lazare is the first (I think) to see the emperor’s nudity in the matter of that pesky Olympics logo that has to be removed, and along the way cites mayoral-office heavy-handedness in public relations:
So, Chicago, how does it feel? We’re still nearly nine years way from possibly hosting the 2016 Summer Olympics, and already we have a huge gob of egg to wipe off our collective faces.
On Wednesday, the powerful International Olympic Committee reminded the Chicago 2016 Olympic Committee what it should have known: that cities bidding for the Olympics may not use Olympic colors or symbols (the torch) in their logos
The mayoral clumsiness?
Do [Pat] Ryan and Daley need to shake up their staff after this logo setback? And before going any further, perhaps these two 2016 committee leaders, if indeed that is their role, should rethink the fascistic (how very Richard M. Daley, right?), hamfisted approach to public relations that has characterized the committee’s efforts so far.
It’s the Second City way, I fear. Some years back, doing an advertorial for Forbes, I was instructed by the Hall apparatchik, eager to burnish her credentials, to interview Bill Daley, then pres. of Amalgamated Bank. I was happy to do, having taught him all he knows (I bet) about creative writing at Ignatius a long time ago. But the Forbes contact was appalled.
“The mayor’s brother? Why?”
In due time Chicago and New York went head to head on the whole tone of the piece — hamfisted, you see — and NY/Forbes knuckled under, at the expense of readability and credibility.
Blithe Spirit 