So last week we were having this conversation about engagement, and how for most companies it's window-dressing. Here's a good example, from an Ad Age story today, that shows what it looks like when companies do change their behavior in order to engage employees. Procter & Gamble and Unilever are spending millions on ads touting the ethics, the sustainability, the social responsibility of their products.

Why? For the employees!

"Though both P&G and Unilever see prospects for substantial gains from such efforts on their bottom lines and for the communities in which they operate, both acknowledge that much of the effort is for internal consumption. Simply put, it's getting impossible to attract or retain marketers without a solid reputation for ethical marketing.

"'We are seeing, particularly with the new generation of young business people and young marketers, that they are only attracted to companies that fit with their own value set,' said Kevin Havelock, president of Unilever U.S. 'And the value set of the new generation is one that says this company must take a positive and global view on the global environment. ... The ethical positions we take on brands like Dove, the positions we take on not using models of size zero across any of our brands, the positions we take in terms of adding back to communities ... these all underpin an attractive proposition for marketers.'"

Of course this raises all sorts of questions for Gen Xers and above, like: Didn't our generation have an idealistic "value set" (I don't remember anyone ever asking me about my "value set"!) Or, where did this generation of goody-goodies get its brass balls?

But if Havelock is even 1/3th right when he says that these companies are changing their business practices they can't lure good marketers unless they can demonstrate they're doing good in the world—that's pretty friggin' engaging, I'd say.

The following is a column I couldn't unload on Ragan but that still wanted to get off my chest. I'd love to hear your reaction. —David

My friend is widely curious and knowledgeable in a hundred areas I’m not. He’s a good talker, so I usually don’t mind his lectures on topics like cooking meatloaf, Indian tribes, birds, words, Web sites and natural history.

I don’t listen to him on golf, on cars or corporate communications. And there’s one other lecture I don’t appreciate. It’s about what I do for a living. I call it the “A Reporter Isn’t Your Friend” harangue.

I’ve let this lecture go before, but my pal keeps repeating it, and with escalating urgency lately. Perhaps he is hoping I’ll offer a response other than to change the subject.

He says the best advice he ever gave his kids, the best advice he ever gave anybody, is, “Don’t talk to reporters.”

Why? Because his considerable experience with reporters tells him they have their own interests and usually wind up using your comments in a way that will embarrass you by making you appear self-important, oafish, selfish, overly serious, overly glib or otherwise ridiculous.

(Have I got that about right, old pal?)

His main observation agrees with my own experience. In most of the dozen or more instances when I’ve been quoted in the paper or appeared on local TV news, I’ve felt the report subtly misrepresented my view of the situation. And in some of those situations, I’ve felt I came off looking like a hysterical fool or a grandiose boob.

But of course, I am those things at times, which leads to my first answer to my friend: If you don’t like reporters, you might not like mirrors either. Unless he or she is writing about you directly, a reporter is usually trying to get your perspective on another story and has no interest in portraying you as anything other than a credible observer. Maybe newspaper articles aren’t the only places you occasionally come off looking like a goof.

My second answer is: You’ve been painting your own little self-portrait all day, every day of your life. The reporter has been on this story for about five hours. Guess what? This newspaper sketch is bound to appear vulgar to you, this summary of your life will inevitably seem simplistic and lopsided. You see yourself as a massive intellectual, the reporter describes you as a freelance accountant. That’s because neither the reporter nor the audience cares how much you love James Joyce.

My third answer is: It doesn’t matter if your precious vanity is slightly mussed up by a story. So you’re quoted in a profile of your boss and you come across sounding like a brown-noser or a showboat and your colleagues make fun of you. To paraphrase some good advice: You wouldn’t worry so much about what people thought of your quotes in the paper if you realized they didn’t think about your quotes at all.

My fourth answer is: Of course reporters aren’t your friends, fool! If they’re any good, their only friends are their readers, a group that comprises vast and varied interests far beyond your own narrow scope. A reporter owes you nothing more than getting your quote right and honoring the basic context in which he or she believes you offered it. How could you ever be so naïve as to think that you could control the mind of the reporter to the extent he’ll write the story from your own intricately manufactured and infinitely convoluted frame of mind?

My final answer is a question: What if everyone took your advice and nobody talked to reporters? Look: Reporters are not Unbiased Portrayers of Reality. Far from it. But even in this age of general journalistic decline, reporters—and the dumb jamokes who talk to them—are the only reason the world ever hears about interesting people who are not running for office or acting on TV. And their investigations are often the only way a community has of exposing corruption or bringing a social injustice to the fore. And their papers and TV news shows and Web sites are still the only common areas where the town, the state, the nation and the world meet to exchange information and agree upon a version of reality.

Should everyone be more cautious talking to a reporter than talking to a friend? Um, yes. But a society full of sadder and wiser girls like my friend is a scary prospect to this reporter—and a dim prospect for civilization, to boot.

If you don’t want to talk to reporters, don’t talk to the reporters—and for heaven’s sake, don’t keep talking to reporters between your quarterly harangues about the un-wisdom of talking to reporters!—but don’t tell your kids not to talk to reporters. I might want to interview them about you when you’re gone.

“Now, I think I remember your dad had a certain philosophy about talking to reporters ….”

I’m sitting here looking down at my feet, down at my new pair of writing boots.

They’re brown leather Redwing work boots, as close as I could get to the model I wore for the last 10 years. (I resoled those once, and discovered that the most agreeable errand is picking up a pair of boots that are old and resoled.)

I bought these in a shoe store in Cleveland over the weekend. Last night I followed the instructions: I preheated the oven, I stuck the boots in, and then I then melted the Sno-Seal on them.

I need boots to write because writers need material and boots collect material—dust in the cracks from beside the Great Wall, gas in the seams from when my old truck exploded an hour after I’d bought in Albuquerque, bits of dirt from all over the city of Chicago. Beer, oil, spit. Blood, mud, shit.

I’m almost 39. By the time I go back to Cleveland I’ll be almost 50.

And a better writer, with more material.

A couple of roofers are here today. In my usual mid-morning state of dishelvelment, I stumbled, squinting, out the back porch to say hello.

"Whaddya, work nights?" says the fat old roofer.

"N-no," I begin to stammer. "This is just how I look."

I don't normally go in for the "social media changes everything" stuff, because I don't want everything to change and the stuff I do want to change, I won't trust to social media jaggofs anyway.

But boy: Yesterday I was trying to send a friend who half-supports Hillary the now infamous red-phone ad she ran in Ohio and Texas, to suggest she's the one most qualified to protect us from a global emergency at 3:00 a.m.

I wanted to show it to my friend because I think it's creepy and I thought maybe she'd agree that we don't want to vote for anyone who would fear-monger like this.

I literally could not find it! I still can't! It's buried in YouTube somehwere underneath all the parodies:

• A parody of the Hillary "red phone ad" (shorter version)

• A parody of the Hillary "red phone ad" a little shorter to tighten it up a bit....parody

• Hillary red phone Batman '66

• A parody of the Hillary "red phone ad" (shortest version)

• Obama Answers the Hillary Red Phone at 3am ad

• hillary's red phone ad satire

• Hillary Clinton Phone Ad: 3 AM Pantsuits! Spoof.

• Red State Update: Hillary's Phone Ad

• Hillary Clinton Red Phone Call Satire

• Response to Hillary Red Phone Moment

• Hillary Clinton Red Phone Commercial - Bush Edition

• Children pt. 1 Hillary Clinton Campaign Commercial Ad Parody

• Hillary Clinton ad Children: Barack Obama responds the phone

• Children Pt. 2 Hillary Clinton Campaign Ad Commercial Parody

• John McCain Red Phone TV Ad

• Hillary and her "Red Phone"

• Hillary Clinton "Children" Ad: The Jack Bauer Edition!

So, to sum up: The original ad is a week old. I'm trying to find it on YouTube to send to my 43-year-old friend, and I can't find beneath the dozens and dozens of parodies.

If I'm feeling a little old and out of step, imagine how the Clinton campaign creeps who spent all the dough on this ad feel!

I'm wrapping up a magazine story about this wretched case surrounding Drew Peterson (the Bolingbrook, Ill. police sergeant, for those who only listen to NPR and read the Economist, whose third wife is dead, fourth wife is missing). It's been quite a journey, but a little dark! I believe for my next story, I will focus on golf, or maybe daffodils.

Anyway: I'm set up for Google news feeds for Bolingbrook, so I get every story or blog entry relating to this suburb. I've been working on the story for more than three months. Boy, do I know a lot about Bolingbrook! Ask me anything!

Occasionally, such quirky devotion to a random town is rewarded with a news story you might not otherwise have read. Like this news brief, from today's Joliet Daily Herald:

"A Bolingbrook man was found guilty Thursday of firing a gun into a crowd of men last year, Will County State's Attorney James Glasgow said. Christopher Gunn, 25, faces up to 14 years in prison when he is sentenced May 8 before Circuit Judge Amy Bertani Tomczak. A Will County jury found Gunn guilty on one count of unlawful use of a weapon by a felon, according to a release from Glasgow's office. Gunn fired between five and six shots into a crowd of men standing outside Bolingbrook's Jamestown townhouse complex on Nov. 8, according to the news release. No one was injured, but several witnesses said they saw Gunn fire the weapon."

Nothing the judge can do will punish this fellow more than the embarrassment of being named "Gunn" and somehow emptying your revolver into a "crowd of men" and injuring no one.

Dare I speculate, maybe Gunn was loaded?

Southwest is embroiled in a public and ugly dispute with the FAA over a $10 million fine. The thing will play out, but here's a statement just released by Southwest CEO Gary Kelly that I think models a tone of candor:

***

We've got a 37-year history of very safe operations, one of the safest operations in the world, and we're safer today than we've ever been. In this particular situation, we identified a gap in our documentation. We voluntarily reported that to the FAA. We worked out with the FAA how to fix that problem, and we fixed it.

We were surprised yesterday to get that notification (of a proposed penalty) by the FAA as well. The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that as late as last month the FAA said that it had no safety issues with Southwest Airlines. So, I've ordered an investigation as to exactly what happened with this event. It occurred in March of 2007. These aircraft are inspected inch by inch, and in this particular incident over 99 percent of the inspections were completed according to the documentation. When we discovered the error, we went back and re-inspected those aircraft, and we did that in a matter of 10 days.

We've called in, as part of our review of this situation, outside experts.

And Boeing issued a release yesterday saying that Southwest Airlines acted responsibly and at no time were the aircraft operated in an unsafe manner.

There were 46 aircraft that needed to be reinspected. We found cracks on roughly half a dozen of those aircraft. They were repaired properly. With respect to those cracks -- the expert -- the Boeing Company said that at no time were those cracks unsafe. Cracks do occur, and that's why we do inspections. We do inspections on those airplanes roughly every year and a half. When we found them, we corrected them.

Again, our interpretation of the guidance that we got from the FAA at the time was that we were in compliance with all laws and regulations. I think the FAA has a different view of that today. That's something that we're investigating as well, but the important point is that at no time were we operating in an unsafe manner, and I think our history proves that.

I think what we've got with the United States of America is the safest aviation system in the world.

Of course, we completely agree that our airplanes need to be well maintained, and I think any expert will tell you that the Southwest Airlines aircraft are the best maintained in the business. So in this particular case, there was not a safety issue because the problem was found. It was voluntarily disclosed. The fix was agreed upon with the FAA, and it was executed properly.

We're disappointed, obviously, with the fine. It is unprecedented, and we think it is unfair. So we are in the midst of doing the investigation that I mentioned, and we will be preparing our case.

We have an unprecedented 37-year history at Southwest Airlines. And our Employees, I am very, very proud of. They are proud of what they do at Southwest Airlines. Our number one priority, number one priority is to operate a safe airline, and then also provide outstanding customer service, and that's what we've done, and that's what we'll continue to do.

***

Okay, that last graph missed the runway. Still, a pretty good statement, wouldn't you agree?

Back in 2002 I wrote a piece for the Chicago Reader about an old house I tried, and failed, to save from the wrecking ball. For the story I did some research about some of the early owners of the house.

Along the way the Higgins family, and especially its matriarch, Jane, came alive for me, and I began to empathize with them. Lately the way the economy seems to be going, I've been thinking of Jane again. Here's her story, pulled out of my 2002 story:

***

William and Jane Higgins bought the house in 1880 for $3,000. Records indicate the money came from Jane. Perhaps she had an inheritance, since it's hard to see how they could afford such a monstrously big house on William's earnings as a passenger agent on the Illinois Central Railroad.

The Irish Catholic couple—he was born in New York, she was off the boat—had seven children: Nelly, Jenny, Frances, Flora, Stella, Gertie, and William Jr.

I have a map showing all of the buildings in the neighborhood in 1886. Even at that late date-after an influx of immigrants had caused the city to swell westward-the neighborhood was still spread out. There was no building on the lot next door to the Higgins house.

By 1900 William had died, and Jane had apparently also lost two children-Flora and Gertie don't appear on the 1900 census. ...

By the early 1900s, West Town was no longer the sylvan setting in which Nathan Huntley had built the house. In 1910 the neighborhood's population, teeming with working-class Polish and German immigrants, peaked at 220,000. The house at Paulina and Pearson was full of Poles and Germans too, because Jane Higgins was sharing her home with 16 renters. The house had been cut up into apartments.

The Siemieniewski family lived in the front. Husband Anton was a shoemaker who'd emigrated from Poland in 1881; his wife, Mary, came over the following year. In 1910 they were in their mid-40s and had ten children, the oldest 21-year-old Kasimir, the youngest a small child named Gertrude.

Another boarder was Costas Sarelas, a Greek widower who'd emigrated from Germany. An elevator operator, Sarelas also had two grown children living in the house.

No matter how cheerful and even-tempered I imagine Jane Higgins to have been, it's hard to believe she relished sharing her house with so many.

Alone at 61, she was surrounded by strange languages, smelling strange foods, putting up with all those children.

Jane was suddenly in the wrong neighborhood.

***

We all have a Jane Higgins in our life or in our heads—a person who shows us that, despite our optimism, it is indeed possible to lose what we have, personally or professionally. And, just as importantly, that it's possible to go on living.

When foreclosures, job losses, market setbacks dominate the business news, whose story of misfortune and survival do you reflect on?

Dear Eliot,

When I saw you lounging in the hallway at the Mayflower Hotel, just down the way from the Speechwriters Conference registration desk on Valentine's Day this year, I remarked to myself, "Strangely, he looks more relaxed, somehow more satisfied in person than on TV."

Little did I or any of the dozens of conference attenders who also saw you know it may have had something to do with what you'd been up to the night before up in room 871. We're all e-mailing one another in shared titillation!

I know you must be busy lots of media requests, but quickly, I'd like to get your permission to use this recent development as a chance to promote our conference as an annual melding of "one, and sometimes two, of the world's oldest professions."

Would this be okay with you?

David Murray, Chairman
The Speechwriter's Conference

"Surrogates"—allies of candidates who say things the candidates themselves can't, for whatever reason—have become so pervasive during this campaign, so openly acknowledged that we almost expect the campaign to issue a photograph, with a caption:

"Barack Obama, left, meets with his surrogates to tell them all the horrible stuff they're supposed to say about Hillary Clinton during the next six-weeks."

Since we're all becoming so accepting of the legitimacy of politicians having surrogates, it occurs to me that it might be handy to have some surrogates myself.

I'd like to informally recruit Tiger Woods to casually remark during his next press availability that if he could write like me he wouldn't bother playing golf, and to add that if I weren't constantly up to my ass in gerunds, I'd be his stiffest competition at this year's Master's.

I'd also like to get Tribune Company president Sam Zell to do an op-ed in his own paper about how the Trib would be so much better if more of its freelancers were like David Murray. Furthermore, he would admit that he'd do anything to trade places with the publisher who gets the lion's share of my contributions, Mark Ragan.

I'd also like to get Steve "Bombasticals" Crescenzo to go a little overboard on my behalf, so that I could disassociate myself from him publicly and secretly buy him beers, regularly.

Oh. I already do that.

What surrogates would you choose, and for sending which messages would you buy them booze?

Shades regular Ron Shewchuk used is For Your Approval blog to review John Smythe's new book, whose title is something about how "CEO" stands for "chief engagement officer."

Better Ron than me.

It's a really good review.

Ragan stopped paying me to write this blog about a month ago. This really frees me up to write about days like today, when it was sunny and the temperature got over 50.

This morning, with a round of golf planned, I felt that first leap in the throat.

And this afternoon, after the golf and a little work, I walked the mile to get Scout at school and we walked home together, over the little black remnants of giant snow piles she was climbing over three weeks ago.

At the top of my lungs, I sang James Taylor's song "One Man Dog" while Scout skipped and danced to the tune down the sidewalk.

I sang sincerely, "All I need is a little girl to be walkin' at my right hand," and Scout asked if she could take off her coat. "It's easier to skip and stuff with your coat off," she observed.

Next to the food factory there were a bunch of workers playing mariachi music out of their boom box and chugging Coronas next to their pick-up truck. Scout was a little scared, and the Mexicans saw it and we all laughed.

Mom pulled up and then we all had dinner in the Irish joint and I explained what all those green decorations were for.

And spring doesn't even start for another week.

All—

I've heard enough about Twitter. Time to test it out. I'm going to Twitter my—nevertheless, busy—day away. And I'm going to write a column about the experience.

While I'm out there I'm going to try to grill the Twitterers about why they tweet—and how Twitter fits into their lives (or how they've made their lives fit into it).

Open to, and desperate for, any comments, insight, or questions from Shades readers. Fire away about Twitter—here, via e-mail (dmurrayil@earthlink.net), or by following "The Murr" on Twitter.

David

Dear reader, what if I turned to you at a cocktail party and said, "Hey, you know that discounted prescription program Wal-Mart started a year and a half ago? No? Well, they did. And guess what? The dadburned program has saved Americans $1 billion dollars!"

Would you move closer and ask to hear more? Would you ask me for a state-by-state breakdown? Or would you politely raise your eyebrows and look into your beer and start debating whether it would be rude to excuse yourself to get another even though the it was more than half full?

A billion dollars means nothing to most Americans. (Don't we spend a billion dollars in a day in Iraq? Or is it in a second? Or was that a million? A trillion, maybe? Whatever!)

And a billion dollars spread out over an unknown number of prescription refills by an unknown number of Americans .... it's pretty much a study in meaninglessness. And yet, late last week Wal-Mart announced it and every newspaper and TV news outlet in the U.S. repeated it as if they were on Wal-Mart's payroll.

Well, 44 of them at least, according to Google News. Here some of the stories, which don't exactly show lots of editorial judgment:

***

Wal-Mart: Prescription deal has saved Arizonans $18 mil
Bizjournals.com

Wal-Mart: Customers Saved $1 Billion Due To $4 Prescription Program
Bizjournals.com

Wal-Mart says generic drug discount saved $1B
Toledo Blade

Prescription for savings
Fort Worth Star Telegram

Wal-Mart says drug plan saves customers millions
The Patriot-News

Wal-Mart says $4 prescription drug plan has saved customers $1 billion
The Star-Ledger

Wal-Mart: $4 Drug Program Saved Arkansas Customers $32.7 Million
ArkansasSports360.com, AR

Wal-Mart Says $4 Drug Plan Saves $1B
Forbes, NY

***

Wal-Mart's attempt to lower health care costs is a big story. This billion-dollar milestone is no story at all. No wonder lots of people would rather get their information from blogs. Bloggers, at least, don't feel compelled to print useless corporate press releases.

On St. Patrick's Day, a Catholic joke with a point:

Married guy goes to a priest to confess his sins, which, he explains, involved three-way sex with two of his office-mates.

Confused because he doesn't recognize the sinner's voice, the priest asks, "Sir, are you Catholic?"

Guy says no.

"Then why are you telling me this?"

"Father, I'm telling everybody!"

A CNN producer called this afternoon to invite me onto Nancy Grace's show to talk about this Drew Peterson story I'm doing for Chicago Magazine.

Not wanting to scoop myself, and loathing Nancy Grace for the fear-mongering opportunist she is, I turned the producer down with barely a moment's hesitation.

Why am I telling you this?

Well, you know ....

I call him the most influential person in the history of employee communication, and he demurs. But I challenge you to name someone other than Roger D'Aprix who has taught so many so much of what they think they know about what it is we're all supposed to be doing.

I'm also lucky enough to be able to call Roger a friend—a close enough friend that he'll send me a casual correspondence like this recent one, in which he compared the social media enthusiasts to the right-wing Neocons.

"NeoComms," as D'Aprix dubs them, "are dead wrong in their passion for using technology as the universal solution to all communication problems and social media as the ultimate democratic device (reminds me a bit of Bush claiming that he went into Iraq to bring democracy to the Iraqis). In both cases there's more than a little self-interest and hidden agendas."

Woah!

And there's more coming from the intense place that came from: D'Aprix is working on a book called The Credible Company: Communicating with Today's Skeptical Workforce. It'll be out in October. I've had a sneak peek and I think this book will be a doozy.

This speech is 37 minutes long—long for a speech. But anybody who is trying to make up his or her mind on whether they want this man to be president can save a lot of time in front of MSNBC talking heads by simply sitting down and listening to this speech.

If you're inspired by what he says, if you agree with what he says and the care he takes to say it—and obviously took to write it—you should vote for him. If you do not react that way, you should not vote for him.

This sounds like an oversimplification and it sounds naive. And it would be so, if I said it about almost any other political speech I ever heard in my life.

But in this speech Obama pretty much shares his whole philosophy, every relevant bit of it—and he shares it with every American who might possibly be curious about his point of view. He says it, with great subtlety—but he says it.

This is what communication is supposed to be. And whether you disagree or agree with the content of this message, every communicator can learn a great deal from the sheer communicative-ness of this speech.

And if Barack Obama became president, it might or might not be good for the economy, it might or might not be good for our standing in the world, it might or might not be good for healthcare, but it would be good for communication.

I'm not sure how effective this speech will be; I'm not sure how many people will listen to it—or whether those who do will agree with it.

I won't try to hide it: I love Barack Obama's political philosophy, and I agree with not only its gist but with most of its ideas, right down to their subtlest proportions. But I urge you as a fellow lover of communication--of using words and inflection to get what's in one mind into another--get a cup of coffee. Make a two-cup pot. Settle in and listen. I think you'll be inspired.

... there's an entry on you in dickipedia.

Thanks, all who helped me think (and get) through my gonzo Twitter story a while back. Here it is.

This is a column I wrote for The Ragan Report. But I scrapped it because I thought it made me look: A. Loony and B. Obnoxious. And, because my wife agreed. "Who's asking you to get a cell phone?" she said. But Shades readers are my work wives; and since you already know I'm loony and obnoxious, I thought maybe you'd find the column a kind of comfort. —DM

Lately I have been thinking about getting a cell phone. Thinking about it, do you hear me?

Most people, of course, were thinking about getting a cell phone in 1994, thinking about getting a Palm Pilot in 1998, thinking about getting a Blackberry in 2001 and waiting in line for an iPhone whenever—there is such a thing as an iPhone, right? I’m not making that up?

If I have for this long miraculously avoided the monthly expense and the nagging anxiety of a cell phone—how many bars do I have left? better put it on vibrate! oh God, what does she want on a Sunday?—why am I suddenly consumed with this dilemma in 2008?

For a number of reasons. Reasons, Steve Crescenzo, which do not include your recent rant about how I should have a cell phone so you can, at a moment’s notice, switch the tavern where we're meeting. Just sit your ADD a-s-s down and wait. I'll be there, and I'll be right on time. (As people without cell phones have to be.)

And reasons, my dear friend Tony, that do not have to do with your insinuation that my refusal to carry a cell phone is a kind of pose. My poses are much more obvious and much more inconvenient—a 1964 International Harvester truck is my personal car, for example—than the blessed absence from my pocket of a beeping bar of soap.

No, my recent cell-phone consideration has mostly to do with the changing nature of editorial work. Communicating for a living, for almost all of us, is becoming more immediate, more event-driven, more spontaneous and less based on deadlines and predictable production schedules.

In my regular freelance work for Ragan, for example, I'm writing fewer pieces for print and more for Ragan.com. Ragan.com frequently runs stories with same-day turnaround—instant analysis or quick reporting of a communication-related news story. I’ve been called in the morning with requests for stories in the afternoon—and I expect that to happen more often in the future.

I can't always be available when a Ragan editor calls looking for a story, but I do feel responsible to at least be able to instantly tell the editor—or, gasp, the Ragan fellow himself—when I’m not available, so she or he can find another writer quick.

If I’m at a doctor’s appointment, a parent-teacher conference or drunk in the bar without a cell phone, I can’t give her that courtesy. So far, I’ve relied on my m.o. as a chronically quick getter-backer: My colleagues know if they don’t hear back from me in 30 minutes, I’m either out for the day or dead.

But maybe—maybe—that’s not good enough anymore.

If I do get a cell phone—and I did say if, you safety-mad worrywarts who can’t believe I don’t have a cell phone since I have a child (hey, have daycare death rates plummeted since the advent of cell phones?)—I know this: I’ll hand out my phone number only to a tiny handful of people. I’ll buy U.S. Cingular’s little-known Family, Friends & Editors Plan.

I’ll give the cell number to the people who pay me my money and those with whom I share my money, or would in a pinch.

And when I do give out my cell phone number—and this is only if I get a cell phone, you haughty nerds who would call me a dinosaur even though I blog, e-mail and YouTube my workaday life away—it will be written atop a note.

That note will say:

Before you dial this phone number, please consider that doing so will cause my cell phone to ring at some moment in some place where your intrusion may not be at all welcome.

If not—if you merely want to know if I saw the walk-off home run last night, feel like telling me something I wrote last week was dumb or just want to “touch base”—send me an e-mail. I’m sufficiently Internet-addicted that, unless I’m stuck in wreckage or on vacation, I’ll get back to you in a matter of hours. And I’ll be a happier correspondent when I do.

Oh, who am I kidding? This is ridiculous. I’ve put off getting a cell phone for a decade and a half. I’m not getting one until someone tells me I have to.

Which, I realize, may be any minute.

Readers, do you have any advice for me? I’d love to hear it: dmurrayil@earthlink.net

And, by the way, the early results are in: I ran this column past my sister, three years my junior. She seemed flat-out mystified by my point of view on cell phones, and when I explained my stress over being interrupted at inconvenient moments, she said with a shrug, “Just turn off your phone.”

And I e-mailed a draft of this column to my dear friend Tony, and asked him if he didn’t think readers of this column would think me a bit of a hothouse flower. He wrote back, “You can’t help that now.”

Can someone explain to me why 28-year-old Chelsea Clinton gets to go out and stump for her mother but is "off limits" from reporters and acts like a snot when a student dares to ask something that would have been mean to ask a 13-year-old but is perfectly natural to ask a grown-up political animal?

On what basis is she getting away with this act?

Slumping out my front door to go pick up Scout at the end of a perfectly shitty day, I found a slovenly, stringy-haired middle-aged handyman working on our faulty front-door buzzer.

"How are you?" I ask in the moderately cheerful way a Midwesterner asks, whether it's a funeral or a wedding.

"Totally miserable. But at least I'm not in Iraq," he added without a chuckle.

And I did have to laugh.

Last night lefty MSNBC "Countdown" anchor Keith Olbermann named Wal-Mart his "Worst Person in the World" for its treatment of a former employee.

Today Wal-Mart did not respond to the story.

Tonight Olbermann named Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott his "Worst Person," and indicated that he would do so every single night until the company responds, presumably to his satisfaction.

With Olbermann, who has reminded us every night for almost five years how many days it's been since George Bush declared Mission Accomplished in Iraq, the threat might not be empty.

This'll be interesting to watch, for nuts like us.

They heard the term for the first time yesterday, gee, I wonder where: John McCain is embarking next week on a "biography tour."

And today, Wolf Blitzer and every other cable news nitwit are repeating it as if it's a tradition as old and time-honored as the aboriginal walkabout.

"Gee, I was wondering when he'd embark on a biography tour!"

"You know why she lost the race, don't you? She didn't take a biography tour!"

"Life—it's not a journey, as much as it's a 'biography tour.'"

How do reporters with such a lack of self-respect muster sufficient morale to get dressed for work in the morning?

To me there's no lamentation sillier than one over the public relations industry. PR is a business that, despite some gigantic and brilliant practitioners—I have spoken to Aaron Cushman, I know Chet Burger, and have spoken to both men about Eddie Bernays—had no glory days and never will have any.

PR is PR. Great PR pros can give the work a sense of grace and morality and personality; but most PR pros merely reflect the personality, or lack thereof, of their client. And ain't nothing wrong with that.

All that said, I caught myself indulging in a little nostalgia for PR's impish roots in publicity as I read, this morning, this Chicago Tribune piece about Rick Berman's search for the 10 worst teachers in the U.S., and his offer to pay each of them $10,000 if they promise to retire and never teach again.

"What I really want to do is jump-start a conversation," said Berman, whose campaigns against Mothers Against Drunk Driving and other sacred institutions have earned him the nickname "Dr. Evil."

"There are lots of kids who can't read or do math and are well behind in science. ... I've interviewed teachers who say their colleagues are not competent to teach kids."

As the husband of a teacher I do not believe teachers' unions are the the disease that our education system suffers from. They're only another symptom. On the other hand, I cheer anybody who can get people talking lively about education, a subject many of us avoid because conversations about it usually amount to goody-goodies playing liar's poker.

And, by golly, I like Berman's style.

I mean, just a little teeny weeny bit.

Don't you?

(Just a little teeny weeny bit?)