I'm sure Mattel's PR team and agency are in full damage control mode. No doubt at the conference they will try to equate their recall with the famous J&J Tylenol scare, although this one feels a little more like the Exxon Valdez.

Okay, here's something that occurred to me when all these recalls started (my question has nothing to do with whether Mr. Eckert is good in front of a camera):

Are lead Barbie accessories really a health crisis for our children?

From what I can understand from FDA articles and other articles, it's next to impossible to get lead poisoning through the skin. Eating or breathing the stuff over time is what kills us. Are little girls who are old enough to play Barbies going to put the accessories in their mouths? And might they not be old enough to be told, "Don't put that in your mouth, Caitlyn/Brittny/Makayla--it'll make you sick"?

I'm just saying.

Yeah, if it makes us feel better, let's get tougher standards for manufactured stuff here and abroad. Let's not let any more tiny lead-painted high heels or panties or whatever they are into the country. But from where I sit it looks as if a good toy company is going down the tubes for something that may not--I say MAY not--be a bone fide health hazard.

Kids living with heavy smokers and being driven around unbuckled are at worse risk. Hell, kids going to McDonald's twice a week are at worse risk. Let's save our righteous indignation for stuff that matters.

I agree with you Jane, and if Eckert had said what you just said (or perhaps a slightly softer version, given our society's current propensity to get offended at the slightest word) I'd be behind him. But going on TV and then not answering questions is just plain stupid and virtually guaranteed to get him the kind of attention he's getting from venerable pundits (you know like that famous David Murray guy?)

If you're not gonna talk, then don't do interviews, cause, um, that's what people are expecting when they book you for an interview, duh!

Jane, I agree it's possible people are getting overly up in arms about nothing--they tend to do this when kiddies are involved. And of course there are many other things to be mad about. But seriously, it's the 21st century and I don't think Americans are going to have the stomach for lead. In short, the Chinese are going to have to get the lead out.

I wasn't interested in this story until I saw the interview with Eckert. And I'm not criticizing his on-camera media skills. I'm criticizing the fact that he's a wooden puppet who, instead of grabbing the camera time to tell his company's side of the story, seemed to have been marched in front of the camera by his PR people and told: Here's what you say, no matter what questions they ask.

I don't trust a company whose leaders act like third-graders told to apologize to Mrs. Crabapple next door for throwing a baseball into her vegetable garden.

Okay, your link wouldn't work for me so all I had was the partial transcript at ABC. I agree that it was horrendous.

There's a guy named Tripp Frohlichstein in St. Louis whose thing is "message mapping." He's very smart and very good; in fact he's been the featured video at MyRagan.com. I've attended his workshops twice and they're full of common sense: know what message YOU want to put out there and keep finding logical ways to bring the interview back to your message. (Keyword: LOGICAL) He teaches people how to do that while NOT being evasive. Good PR is being honest about your weaknesses but reminding folks of your strengths.

That, however, is NOT what Eckert was doing. What he was doing was creating non sequiturs.

Cuomo: "How much do you save by manufacturing in China?"
Eckert: "Kids are our primary concern."
Cuomo: "But don't you manufacture in China to save money?"
Eckert: "We do lots of testing and improving."

This is what little children do when they're confronted with wrongdoing and can't escape or lie their way out of it. It's pathetic.

I do, however, disagree with Kristen that Eckert could have brought up the issue of what a tiny little sin lead-painted Barbie accessories are. I think that would have clinched the lynching. Neither Chris Cuomo nor any other news person that I know of has questioned the sudden American jones for child safety.

We all agree that Eckert made the very worst of this situation. What could he have said to make the best of it?

Argh. Now I can't make the link work either ....

Jane, he could have said WHAT HE THINKS in order to make the best of it.

He's a daddy. He's an American. And he's not a satan-worshiper. We can assume he's genuinely upset about what's happened here, and not just because it's making his phone ring more.

I think he said mostly the right stuff regarding safety, though we could have used a few more details. But I think he also should have told the truth about the company's outsourcing philosophy--how it was developed how preposterous it would be to bring manufacturing back to the U.S., etc.

But just as important as WHAT he should have said is HOW he should have said it: In the first person singular. "I have kids of my own. ... I understand how parents feel. ... I am personally traveling to each of our Chinese factories .... I will report back to you ..... I can assure you."

If you're going to use "we" all the time, you might as well send a polished spokesman to do it, rather than a cotton-mouthed stiff like this guy.

But my argument is that this isn't about crisis PR technique. It's about the soul of the organization. Southwest Airlines, no matter how badly it had screwed up, no matter the proximity its screw-up to American hypocrisies (safety and kids are a bad intersection), would never in a million years have such a PR disaster follow.

Why? Because it's a healthy organization run by mostly self-actualized human beings. Not true, in my estimation, of Mattel.

David: are you basing your estimation of Mattel--that it's NOT "a healthy organization run by mostly self-actualized human beings"--on Eckert's ineptitude?

Does Southwest have, as you believe, a great soul because it has a great leader? Does Mattel NOT have a great soul because its leader goes catatonic in a crisis?

Yes, I am, and so is everyone else. That's kind of the point of putting out your leader as the spokesman. He's supposed to speak FOR your whole organization.

Now, I suppose it's possible that there are 12 SVPs—and 40,000 employees reporting to them—who would be perfect in this situation and who are champing at the bit to go on Good Morning America and demonstrate how thoughtful and caring and upset and introspective the company REALLY IS.

I do not think that's likely, however. And much more importantly, neither, I think, does anybody who watches a CEO "go catatonic" in a crisis.

Southwest doesn't have a GREAT leader right now. I saw Gary Kelly when the 737 crashed in Chicago and killed a child. He struck me as as a GOOD leader and a good man doing his goddamnedest on behalf of a good company.

The difference between these two guys and these two companies is NOT all about media training.

I agree wholeeartedly that the difference between the two GUYS is not "all about media training," but what makes you so SURE that there's a big difference between the two COMPANIES?

See, I'm not convinced that any CEO is the soul of a company. And I'm pretty sure that when the heat is on and the guy's in front of a camera, he's nothing more than the FACE of the company, and he's trying to make that face look good.

The soul of a company is its people and the culture they've developed over time. The world apparently knows a lot about Southwest's culture, but what do we know about Mattel other than that their CEO--who is not their soul--isn't up to the job?

We could go around and around for awhile on this, Jane, but I think (hope) that if you saw the video (I think ABC has taken it down since I posted it), you'd be two-percent more inclined to see it my way, to see behind this appearance:

• A roomful of lawyers on the right, a roomful of PR creeps on the left.

• An institutional instinct to ass-cover (as opposed to a collective human instinct to self-evaluate and explain).

• A feeling of "you can't handle the truth." You being, all of society. (Granted, he may be onto something here!)

He didn't strike me as a guy who'd been through a bunch of meeings where lots of people gave him lots of good and interesting and relevant and reassuring information to share with the public. He'd been in meetings where all his cohorts had said: Say these three things and nothing more, no matter what the jagoff asks you.

Again, that's all speculation. But it's the same speculation every other viewer made, more casually.