Don't know if you read last week's New Yorker. It had a long article about Wal-Mart's big PR operation.

The piece attacked Wal-Mart's PR operation from every angle, with writer Jeff Goldberg saying, implying or attempting to demonstrate it is at once overlarge (56 people staff the company's "Action Alley" PR war room), sneaky, boorishly stupid and ineffective.

It focused on Leslie Dach, a former Democratic political operative known for his work on environmental issues, who moved from Edelman to Wal-Mart. The piece accused Dach of selling out his environmental idealism for Wal-Mart money.

The article came off as a hatchet job. But it was a pretty thorough, entertaining and well-crafted hatchet job on a company that's been under constant attack for half a decade.

How to respond? If I were Richard Edelman, CEO of Edelman Public Relations--Wal-Mart's PR agency, which has 20 staffers at Wal-Mart's Bentonville HQ--I think I'd feel I had two options: No response at all, on the old saw that you don't fight with people who buy ink by the barrel, or a vigorous response, attacking Goldberg's article point by point and strongly stating the case that Wal-Mart is a good company that deserves the best public relations.

He chose a third route: Adding a P.S. to a light item on his blog about going to an Allman Brothers concert:

"I also take exception to the article by Jeff Goldberg in this week’s New Yorker Magazine on Wal-Mart, because it is biased and hopelessly one-sided. His characterization of my former colleague, Leslie Dach, now a senior executive at Wal-Mart, is fundamentally flawed. Leslie is a gifted PR man, with a genuine commitment to the environment and social equality. Goldberg depicts our profession as based on spin, hardball tactics and messages, an Orwellian world of mind control. In fact, the best PR is premised on truth and that is why Wal-Mart’s leadership on environment, prescription drug prices and affordable products is getting favorable coverage."

That's it? The New Yorker's piece is thousands of words, dozens of quotes and specific examples, statistics, hard facts and well-told anecdotes. Edelman's defense is 103 words with no factual backup.

Sticks and stones will break my bones but words--you're "biased" and "one-sided," we're "gifted" and "genuine"--will never hurt me.

Edelman, if you're going to defend your firm, your client and your old colleague against an unfair writer, then get out the sticks and stones. If you're not, then don't let out what amounts to a little public sob.