Shooting Down the Flacks

This morning MediaBistro.Com posted an article by public relations executive Richard Laermer, Hack vs. Flack, that was so irritating on so many levels that I had to write to the editor.
Dear Ms. Oxfeld:

I worked in PR for ten years, and even I loathe flacks: there is no way to be an ethical, responsible liar. You can call it “putting your client’s best foot forward” or “leveling the playing field” or whatever you want, but the reality is that once you accept money to tell one side of the story–whatever that story is–you’re prostituting yourself and the language. Richard Laermer’s article is no more than an extended plug for his agency, his book, and his self-respect, none of which deserve much consideration.

This apologia was a particularly galling one, by the way. Laermer writes “The “flacks” (the origin is unknown, Webster’s says, for this slang for PR people)…”

First of all, if you’ve graduated from high school and you’re still using dictionary definitions as a rhetorical device in your writing, you need to consider another line of work. Secondly, the derivation of “flack” is neither ancient nor obscure.”Flack” is derived from a German wartime acronym: FLieger Abwehr Kannone (FLAK) for anti-aircraft cannons. During World War II, Americans began using the word to describe the weapons, and the shrapnel they produced, adding the letter ‘C’ in the Anglicized version. PR types were originally called “flack catchers,” for their role in deflecting criticism of their clients. Gradually the expression was shortened to “flacks.” We still use the word in its almost-original meaning in the term “flack jacket,” for armored vests.

Laermer, of course, need not have gone into such detail. He could have disposed of the origins of the word “flack” in one sentence not much longer than the trite reference to Webster’s that he did use. I think his intellectual laziness is especially egregious in a website by and for writers, and undermines his conceit that we’re all writers, after all: “(People who choose to work as writers, believe it or not, tend to value clear sentences and words with real definitions. Imagine.)”

So please, give us a break from the self-promoting flacks.

Best Wishes,

Bob Howe