Dear Amanda,

Writing to you is like writing a letter to Santa Claus. Neither you nor he actually exist. Santa does seem to be a jovial person of goodwill and generosity, an evangelist of kindliness. Writing to Santa is done in the expectation that I'll be rewarded with gifts. writing to you is done in the fear of an angry and ugly broadside of a retort.

Don't get me wrong Amanda. I have enjoyed your show for a good percentage of the recent months that you character has been on the scene, but always with ambiguity. First off, I admire talent, and you Amanda are a talented writer. I also believe that any industry needs its gadflies, whistle blowers and insiders who reveal underhandedness and hypocrisy.

On your best days, Amanda, you achieved this, but Amanda, you seem to be having fewer and fewer best days, and I suspect you know this.

There's also something else about you that has always disturbed me. I am co-author of a book that urges honesty, humanity and transparency in blogging, and Amanda, you are none of these things. The book was about the power of the conversation, and the best conversations, are spoken not shouted, don't you think?

I've been watching you for a while. I've been drawn to your superior writing skills as well as you apparent knowledge of large PR agencies. I've been ambiguous. On one hand, I co-authored a book that argued against character blogs and on the other you have written on occasion points worth hearing and discussing.

In the end, I have come to the conclusion that you are a study in self-loathing. You hate bloggers, but you blog, you hate PR because of it's paucity of ethics, yet in your very first post you boasted about sleeping with clients to get what you want. You seem to be precisely what you rail against and this must cause you great unhappiness.

You stand on a virtual soapbox calling for transparency. In fact, you are so transparent that you are but a shadow. You are not there. You are only a pigment of someone's imagination. You are a fantasy blogger, probably giving a strong voice to an essentially meek person.

You claim to be a fresh voice in a stale and self-congratulatory industry, a voice of truth. But you have willfully abused truth more than any other blogger I know. A few months back, your "webmaster" posted a phony AP story that claimed you were in a car accident. The pseudo wire release was not only bogus, the article inserted a photo of acrashed out Porsche, which had been in a real and fatal accident, not in Chicago where you say you live but in San Diego. This has to get the tasteless Award for the year.

Why did you cheapen yourself with such a stunt? My guess is yo wanted to show how bloggers are empty-headed fools, who will post any load of crap because we don't check out facts like "real journalists" do. There is some evidence that such a contention has been occasionally true some of the time. But not this time. This time three bloggers immediately dug in and showed you to be a willful fraud.

You have an amazingly wide hair across your butt when it comes to one agency, Edelman PR, an agency that is certainly at the center of more than a few controversies. Like nearly all large organizations there is much to be said about them, both good and bad. But for some reason they are your Moby Dick, this great shadow of a whale into which you seem obsessed with placing your harpoon.

As but one example, was your reaction to a recent post I did on a presentation by Edelman executive Phil Gomes, whom you've attacked previously in language that borders on the slanderous. I don't know Phil very well and, in fact, he and I have previously crossed swords. But during a "slow news" conference last week, I thought Phil made a good point or two on the issue of captive and open online communities. I live blogged his talk and as usual, flubbed a couple of facts, which Phil saw fit to correct.

The funny twist was that as I wrote that entry, the thought crossed my mind: "Shit, Amanda's going to come after me, because I'm good-mouthing Phil." I considered not posting for that reason, but then I figured, I should be no more afraid of you than I should Marley's ghost or any other work of fiction.

Sure enough, by the time my plane had landed home, there was your nasty little barb implying I had some secret agenda and that I lacked transparency. Amanda, how can someone who writes nastiness day and night under an assumed name attack the transparency of other people?

In fact, Amanda, in the name of transparency, I would suggest you tell other people just who you are and what happened between you and Edelman to cnduct this steadfast vendetta? You've written about screwing clients, but is this really a case of you trying to screw an agency or did they screw you. C'mon Amanda, drop the tantrums and the shouting and come clean, what is this all about and why are you aways shouting and pouting?

In fact, Amanda, I have concluded you are not one person but several. there are too many gaps in style between your posts. there are too many inconsistencies for one person.
You, in fact, are a cluster of independent snipers amalgamated into one snarling, angry, accusatory collective shrew.

Amanda, I was 19 years between wives. Your relationship with the blogosphere reminds me of a few of the relationships I had during those times. They were passionate and at first surprising. But over time, the passion evolved into just plain, boring bickering. I wasn't always the one who caused the break up.

But I was always relieved when she went. Amanda, I can only speak for myself here. You used to be provocative as Hell, but you've started to become predictable and uninteresting. Frankly, Amanda, I'm bored with the relationship. I suspect others feel the way I do.

Why don't you just hang up your stiletto heels and come back as a new person, a real one. Tell us who you are and where you are coming from. Come out of your self-constructed closet. You may find it liberating to just be yourself.

Sincerely,

Shel