Customer Reviews

Lipstick on a Pig: Winning In the No-Spin Era by Someone Who Knows the Game

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I enjoyed the book and I read it in three days. It was easy to read and the best parts are the stories she tells about her life in the Pentagon and other high profile jobs.

The story of Senator Mc Cain's actions around the Keating scandal were informative and the chilling recall of the events at the Pentagon during 9/11 kept me reading when I should have been working.

Clarke's style is irreverant (she says she is a "smart-ass" but this is after all a high class review) and she is direct. The stories of background on the process of embedding journalists in the military during the Iraq conflict are history that I'm happy to know about. The concept of putting journalists in combat and its effects are historical and this author was at the center of the decisions and the events.

The story of the Pentagon on 9/11 (Clarke was there) is told in an emotional manner. she brings home the destruction and the bravery and dedication of the Pentagon people. she brought it home to me, a guy from the Midwest who only watched the events on TV.

A fair amount of the book involves the author's work with Sec of Defense Donald Rumsfield (SecDef as she calls him in the book). She worked with him during pretty tough times and she still admires and respects him. Since the book was published after she left his employment, I think the opinions expressed are valid. Like Rumsfield or not, he is an important and powerful man and it was interesting to learn about him from someone who saw him function on a daily basis. Personally, I think he is pretty scarey on TV but he serves the country. He is not in the job for financial gain (I read he is loaded) and it is not a springboard to the Presidency or vice-presidency. He evidently works long hours because cares about the Country and the military. I like him a little better after reading the book but still don't plan on sending him a Christmas card (or getting one for that matter).

There are plenty of high ranking military people (actually men) mentioned in the book. Clarke has high praise for most if not all of them. I found it surprising that a woman serving in a high position in a men's world, during high stress times has such universal good things to say about the military and its leaders. She describes them as intelligent, talented and most of all dedicated.

Either she just wrote about the good ones or our military commanders are generally high quality. My guess is that if there was dirt to spread it would be in the book since it does help sell books and this is a Washington DC insider. Besides, she has no trouble taking dirty shots at lawyers in the book.


There are parts of the book that serve as advice for communications professionals and much of that was lost on me. I did understand the message of tell the truth and tell it quickly. Further, if you know you have to tell the truth when you mess up, you are less likely to mess up on purpose. She also advises people in power to stay in touch with the common person. Great advice and now we just have to import some common people out to Washington so that our leaders could get in touch with them.

Enough of my editorial. I like the book and I am glad I read it. In a sense of true disclosure, I read it because while I do not know the author, I have met her a couple of times. She was interesting and down to earth. In a true spirit of candor, the book is much better than I expected. I think you would enjoy the reading.

I read the other reviews of this book, and I must admit to being confused by the negativity in some of them. This is a really terrific book: honest, helpful, insightful. Torie Clarke has worked in some of the most difficult public affairs positions in this country--cable industry, Sen. John McCain, Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon--and she has learned her lessons well. What she says may not be totally original thoughts on how to represent your organization, but she has presented her observations lucidly and in entertaining style. Her advice to confront the bad news immediately is not often done here in Washington. We see every day politicians of every stripe who think it will just go away if they ignore it. Senator Trent Lott and his pronouncements on Strom Thurmond come immediately to mind, but there are many others. I was struck by Ms. Clarke's many tales of those who had owned up to their faux pas and the many others who did not. As a former public affairs officer myself, I can only echo Ms. Clarke's advice to get the principals out front and let them be the face of the organization. No one much wants to hear a flack speak for a group in a time of crisis. CEOs and generals and secretaries of cabinet agencies who hide behind their public affairs officers are never going to be as effective as those who don't, and Ms. Clarke has given plenty of reason for those high-ranking individuals to step forward and take the heat--just as they take the salary and prestige that goes with their position. This book is not big on theory; it is a very useful summary and guide for the practitioner.

This is a very disappoining book. It comes across as if Torie Clarke dictated the whole thing in one go with no planning or preparation. There is no in-depth analysis of the subject, the whole book is very self-congratulatory and the writing style is casual and loose. On the plus side, it is a quick read and has some common sense observations on communications and public relations.

Is this a "how to" book on corporate communications? Is it a tell-all book on government PR strategies and heartless spin? When halfway through, I still couldn't figure out what Clarke was getting at. From pages and pages of lite references to Starbucks and Saving Private Ryan...from bin Laden to the Bishops' Conference...from the Pentagon to Prime Cable, she's all over the board in a listless (almost boring) effort about media, government, corporate people and corporate places, all of which she apparently had some kind of hand in image-shaping.
-But it's less a step-by-step primer on "spinless" ways to embrace the public's good graces than a strangely woven tour of her own career successes. If the reader wants an extended resume about how one former government media-meister "made it," this cute (but surface) read's an excellent work. If, instead, the goal is finding riveting insight on slippery PR, tough opinion on the media, out-spoken analysis of crooked business and of failing government...plus solutions to the accompanying problems (something other than the continuous drone about her own vague public relations strategy of "transparency." "transparency," "transparency."), forget about it. I certainly tried to "get into" the beat of the book; but I could not, constantly expecting to find the book's real substance as the pages turned. One star, but that's generous. -For effort.

She's the mastermind behind the Pentagon's hiring of retired generals and colonels and paying them to back up the Bush administration's Iraq invasion on major news outlets. The New York Times broke this shocker in a piece called MESSAGE MACHINE; Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon's Hidden Hand, written by David Barstow, published April 20, 2008. SourceWatch reports that the Pentagon military analyst program was launched in early 2002 by then-Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Victoria Clarke. The idea was to recruit "key influentials" to help sell a wary public on "a possible Iraq invasion." Former NBC military analyst Kenneth Allard called the effort "psyops [psychological operations]on steroids." This is scary stuff that the media is afraid of talking about (so far, anyway). It's like 1971, when the NYT broke another Pentagon-gone-bad story, but that one wasn't buried by the media. Back then, I guess reporters didn't bury their heads in the sand. How things have changed.

So much for the Straight Talk Express. It's all spin and all explained in this book. How telling that McCain's own advisor wrote a book with this name, and then he had the audacity to acuse Obama of using it against Gov. Palin. Sounds like he read this book pretty well. But America needs unity, not more smear, not more blurring of the truth, not winning at all cost.

I closely followed her news conferences during early Iraq Invasion. It's so sad that "integrity" has no place now a days. She is no where on the substance starting from the title.

As Torie's interview on the Daily Show highlighted, Torie has a logical dilemma. On one hand she claims that Spin is everywhere, yet she titles her book Spin is over. Which is it? The book never settles this basic point.

A few years back, I read a book by Mark McGlinchey that had almost the exact same title... Let's put some lipstick on this pig. It also had a picture of a pig on the front cover. It was the best book about sales that I have ever read... Torie Clark must have read it too. Torie's pig book is a good read. It was interesting to understand the inside workings of the defense department. It's amazing that war and military actions have to be packaged like a product then sold to the public. It's too bad we now live in a world where we just can't trust the judgement of high ranking government officials to do what's in the country's best interest.

No spin era? Please. I supposed it's possible that this book concerns politics and media relations on a different planet. Maybe I should give Ms. Clarke the beneift of the doubt on that.