Ever seen the 2002 movie Minority Report?

Characters in this sci-fi flick are barraged with virtual display ads as they walk through public places. Six years ago this concept was crazy, like hovering skateboards; seems we’re now a few years away from it actually happening.

Companies will begin targeting you with personalized ads on digital screens, reports The Wall Street Journal. Marketers are tailoring these ads based on your previous purchases and soon based on your appearance. WSJ said Dunkin Donuts is among the first to try the concept.

Forget the creepy, sci-fi aspect of these ads and instead consider the potential embarrassment. One morning you have a bear claw craving. You dash away from the office, buy four and greedily gobble them in a bathroom stall.

Months later you’re at Dunkin’ Donuts with an attractive co-worker and standing before a digital screen an ad appears for six packs of bear claws.

“Ha, ha, that’s weird,” you mumble. “Why would I want six bear claws?” Then, as your stomach rumbles, you order a glass of water.

Now imagine this scenario. You just gobbled six bear claws and your self-esteem is fluttering. Out for a stroll you pass a digital display that creates personalized ads based on your appearance. What pops up? Dog food.

“So your marketers think I look like a dog?” You complain.

“No, no,” a company spokesman says. “You look like a dog owner.”

“Why do I look like a dog owner?” You reply. “Because you think I’m needy?”

I like arugula. It’s my favorite leafy green. A few slices of tomato with balsamic dribbled over it, maybe a sprinkle of pepper, and mmm mmm good.

So why won’t John McCain leave arugula alone?

What did this plant ever do to him, beside tickle Barack Obama’s taste buds? Take this recent example of arugula bashing from McCain staffer Brian Rogers.

“Does a guy [Obama] who worries about the price of arugula and thinks regular people ‘cling’ to guns and religion in the face of economic hardship really want to have a debate about who’s in touch with regular Americans?”

Mr. Rogers, I worry about the price of arugula. What's wrong with that?

So, on behalf of arugula—not Obama—let me do a little pro bono PR work for the brow beaten plant. This isn't about politics; this is about my favorite leafy green getting a bum rap.

Arugula is no elitist; it is a survivor. Although native to Mediterranean areas, the plant is more akin to hard scrabble, pull yourself up by the bootstraps American ideals than almost any other vegetable—potato included.

After more than two thousand years of cultivation, arugula remains a difficult plant to domesticate. That’s right brother, don’t tread on me. But if you do tread on me—often the case with arugula since it grows on dry disturbed ground—there’s little need to worry because this plant is tough.

Also, the average person can easily grow arugula in a backyard garden making it the people’s green plant. However, getting it to seed, and therefore domesticate, is tricky; that means arugula is a plant of the people, but no socialist. It is an individualist.

So to hell with iceberg lettuce. Given all arugula's American traits, it might as well be red, white and blue. In fact, I propose we rename arugula “Patriot Leaves.”

Enough about China and its public relations. From Newsweek to the Baltimore Sun, China’s PR for the Olympics has been one hot news topic.

There are reporters seemingly obsessed with China’s public relations campaign. The ones covering it must feel awfully proud; they’ve revealed Red China’s insidious PR effort.

Oh the naivety. China and its PR firm of record, Hill & Knowlton, have pulled off the ultimate shell game. These reporters and editors are so interested in covering the nation’s PR that they are stealing attention from the issues that seem to infuriate them so much: China’s human rights abuses, pollution, Olympic ruses.

If you are China, coverage of your public relations campaign is better than images of beaten monks and smoggy skylines. Plus, the Beijing Olympics are as much about Michael Phelps as they are about China’s emergence as a modern nation—and modern nations have PR representation.

So if China and Hill & Knowlton are the clever grifters enticing lost tourists to play the shell game, then the media are the lost tourists certain they have the scheme figured out. And we all know how that turns out—the tourists make everyone dumber, or was that the media?

I hate it when I get lost in my own metaphors.

Olive Garden has a problem worse than its food*—Hugh Hefner’s girlfriend loves the place. Loves, loves, loves it. And that, The Wall Street Journal reports, makes execs at Olive Garden’s parent company and ad agency uncomfortable.

“I don’t feel comfortable talking about this … because it is a complicated issue for the brand,” Michele Kay, executive vice president of WPP Group’s Grey advertising firm, told WSJ. WPP oversees Olive Garden’s ads.

Poor Kendra Wilkinson, Hefner's girlfriend, the beautiful, busty, blue-eyed blonde—and Playboy model—who just wants to show her love for Olive Garden’s artichoke dip, salads and, of course, breadsticks.

Items she calls her “soul food,” WSJ reported.

(I’m going to let that comment hang … momentarily … so you can really soak it in.)

Wilkinson is co-star of the reality show, “The Girls Next Door,” which is about Hefner’s girlfriends. On the show, Wilkinson not only expresses her love for the restaurant but also sent a call to Olive Garden waitresses: Who’s the hottest? The winner gets a spread in Playboy magazine.

That’s a huge celebrity endorsement—for free! I imagine the company behind Steven Seagal’s Lightning Drink pays the actor (for lack of a better word) a fortune for his name. Olive Garden could save a bundle on its B-list, sorry, D-list celebrity endorsements.**

Problem is Olive Garden goes for that family-friendly atmosphere (“When you’re here, you’re family”). Imagine how uncomfortable dad and teenage son will be when the centerfold from that Playboy they unknowingly share is their waitress.

So what is the restaurant chain doing? Not talking about it, WSJ said. They want to maintain the family-friendly vibe without offending Wilkinson.

Apparently this is a problem for brands: what do you do when you don’t want the endorsement? Some political candidates, the biggest brand names of all, have balked at celebrity endorsements.

For instance, Hillary Clinton undoubtedly appreciated OJ Simpson’s primary vote, although she probably wished he’d kept that to himself. When MTV reality star Heidi Montag endorsed John McCain, the candidate probably cringed given his Obama attack ad comparing his Democratic rival to celebrities like Paris Hilton and Britney Spears—oh wait, no, McCain has actually welcomed the Montag endorsement. Never mind.

In an interview with WSJ, Pete Blackshaw, of Nielson Online Strategic Services, called these unsolicited endorsements the “double-edged sword of brand advocacy” insisting such a thing is difficult to manage.

While WSJ offers no true solution to this conundrum, it illustrates what Starbucks does: Don’t say anything, good or bad. Whether it’s the Dalai Lama or Vladimir Putin clutching a venti latte and appearing on magazine covers, the company’s policy is to stay mum.

And that, too, is Olive Garden’s approach, where “when you’re here, you’re like the disgraced relative no one wants to talk to.”

*I have no idea if Olive Garden food is good or bad for you and today I’d probably enjoy a meal from the restaurant; however, my college roommate served at the restaurant and after every shift brought home leftover bread sticks. I ate my weight in those delicious treats and one night grew violently ill—no doubt from my own lack of self-restraint—which soiled future experiences at the eatery.

**Just for fun, I searched both Wilkinson and Seagal on MySpace and learned Wilkinson has a whopping 728,646 MySpace friends, while Steven Seagal registers only 8,269 friends. (As a point of reference, Barack Obama has 448,400 MySpace friends.)

The Free Download on MyRagan this week explains why communicators should teach their executives to say, “I don’t know.” But what happens when communicators don’t understand the importance of these magic words?

They do gymnastics with the truth.

Take this recent example. On Aug. 1, news reports said comedian and actor Bernie Mac had been hospitalized for pneumonia. Mac’s publicist, Danica Smith, said the comedian was “responding well to treatments and should be released soon.”

Got it; he’s hospitalized, doing fine, we’ll see him soon.

Two days later, Aug. 3, sources told Chicago newspapers Mac was in “very, very critical condition.” His condition had worsened, the media reported. And Smith’s reaction to the development?

“Absolutely untrue,” she said, calling the reports “horrible rumors” and insisting “nothing has changed.”

Mac passed away Sunday, Aug. 10, of complications due to pneumonia.

Mac and his family deserved privacy and discretion during his final days—no doubt about that, but why did Smith have to fib? Why not tell reporters, “I don’t know the exact extent of Mac’s condition,” or simply, “I can’t comment on those reports.”

Danica Smith is a high-powered Los Angeles-based publicist so maybe she knows better than me—I don’t know.

So it turns out John Edwards did cheat on wife Elizabeth, the brave cancer victim he didn’t mind parading across the country mid-chemo treatment during his run for president.

Seems The National Enquirer, which broke the story last October, should be vindicated and celebrated for its intrepid reporting, but no, the rag took it on the chin by mainstream media outlets. CNN, ABC and others failed to adequately give National Enquirer its due and instead snickered at the grocery store weekly for its suggestion that Edwards actually fathered the child.

And why shouldn’t CNN, ABC and others take him at his word? It’s not like he lied about this before?

I say well-done National Enquirer (makes you wonder what else the paper got right—does Oprah get her weight loss ideas from aliens after all?); mainstream press should congratulate the rag and now concentrate on the real story: did Edwards’ use campaign cash to shut up his mistress, Reille Hunter?

Edwards’ PR plan of attack, from October until now, was deny ‘til you die (Elizabeth, by the way, was complicit in the deceit). A former FOX News staffer, now a Ragan employee, speculated Friday that Edwards appeared on Nightline because a news outlet was readying a bombshell story that would prove his guilt—or perhaps Hunter was taking it public.

I think he wanted to take control of the story; that is some aggressive PR. Go on Nightline, tell the public how much you love your wife and what a terrible mistake it was; then deny the child is yours and that you gave your mistress hush money. The news lead becomes: “John Edwards admitted and apologized to having an affair, but denied fathering a child with his mistress …”

Bam! He seized the story.

Great timing for that announcement, by the way; it coincided with opening ceremonies of the much ballyhooed Olympics. Everyone’s talking about the games, China and who will take home gold. Not to mention Nightline is an ABC program, not NBC—home to the Olympics—the station everyone will watch over the next two weeks. By giving ABC exclusive rights to the story NBC news won’t have a chance to drop its own bomb.

What Edwards had to pray for—and he sure claims he’s praying—is early Olympic gold for the Americans. Get the limping country whooped up about its athletic prowess and come Monday everyone in America is chanting “U-S-A” and not burning effigies of John Edwards.

Sure enough, the women’s fencing team pulled through for Edwards, capturing gold on Saturday. The American weekend breaks with news that … we already won gold! It’s going to be a great two weeks. Maybe, just maybe an influx of gold to the nation will help stabilize the housing market.

Now that’s some deft PR on Edwards' part, although it’s probably too little, too late.

But let’s now forget about Andrew Young, Edwards’ top adviser who claims he fathered the love child. Never mind Young has a wife of his own and, if it’s true, the Edwards campaign is less champion of the common folk and more like the cast of “Swingtown.”

For Young, there's also the 18 years of paternity payments. Makes me think of the Kanye West song, “Gold Digger”: “18 years, 18 years; She got one of yo’ kids, got you for 18 years … 18 years, 18 years; And on her 18th birthday, he found out it wasn’t his.”

If the child isn’t his then Young actually made the best career move anyone in Washington ever has; his peers are green with envy; Capitol Hill interns are taking notes. Young fell on his sword and told the public: “It’s not my boss who fathered this child out of wedlock, but me, I am to blame.”

That’s hara-kiri of the highest (actually lowest) sort. Politicians coast to coast (as well French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Russian leader Vladimir Putin) were on the phone Saturday morning offering this guy a job.

Despite the last-minute PR trick, Edwards killed his political career; Young pushed his adviser credentials into hyper drive. And the US Olympics fencing team, unbeknownst to them, gave this story its pretty little bow. The whole thing is pure gold.

Editors at The Chicago Tribune are facing the same problem corporate editors began tackling years ago: how to integrate print with online.

Seems Tribune editors are struggling with integration—perhaps downright ignoring it— as they plan a reportedly drastic redesign of the paper. Someone at the Tribune told a Chicago columnist that no one overseeing the redesign has even mentioned print and Web integration.

Corporate editors are deeply concerned with integration, so much so they have an acronym for it, IPO. In fact, creating a quality print publication that works seamlessly alongside a strong intranet is the goal of most, if not all editors. And many of you are reaching that goal.

Maybe you should work for Sam Zell, the billionaire real estate mogul and owner of the Tribune Company.

Zell is laying waste to Tribune-owned newsrooms and slashing the amount of actual news in his papers. To accommodate the diminished news, he ordered redesigns at his papers.

The bright side is he’s letting newsroom staff from each paper handle the redesigns. No meddling from the front office.

At the Chicago Tribune a team of about 30 editors and reporters are mapping out the redesign with an eye on Great Britain’s The Guardian, explained Michael Miner, a columnist for the weekly Chicago Reader. His column focuses primarily on the Chicago media world.

Miner’s information comes from an anonymous source at the Tribune. This paragraph appears near the end of Miner’s July 10 column on the Tribune redesign:

“‘The most troubling thing about this process,’ my contact added, is why no one’s ‘talked about how this new print product will integrate with the Web. These committees are focused solely on the paper, which I think is a futile exercise, because in order to survive we have to figure out how the two complement each other.’”

Scary, isn’t it? In 2008, editors and reporters at one of America’s largest newspapers are not focused on how to integrate their print newspaper with their Web site.

If Miner’s information is correct then I’d advise selling your Tribune shares, but don’t worry, Zell took the company private. He’s the one who should be worried.

Maybe corporate editors should lend a hand—for a reasonable fee, of course.

Have you ever played a sport marred with bad officiating? The referee, umpire, line judge—pick your sport—constantly botches calls.

Then recognizing he has missed a penalty, the official starts blowing his whistle at the slightest hint of contact. These are makeup calls. The official is overcompensating—making up—for the calls he missed earlier in the game.

Makeup calls ruin a contest.

The media are bad officials who rely heavily upon makeup calls. Just look at poor Tony Snow. His death made headlines. He was, after all, White House Press Secretary. Many media and PR pros insist he was even one of the best.

But his death couldn’t rival that of Tim Russert, who, I think was sainted—or was it martyred? I can’t remember. The media did this hilarious thing with Russert coverage. They broke it as if it were news the moon had exploded.

A couple days later the backlash arrived. And the press were backlashing themselves. Too much Russert coverage, they screamed. As if they never give meaningless events—at least in terms of the world—too much coverage.

And Tony Snow is the victim. He was a makeup call, an easy one too. Coverage of his life and death would be respectful, but pundits and columnists wouldn’t spend too much time on it. They don’t want the Russert rap again, plus Snow was just a shill for Bush, right? And Bush is so 2003 anyway.

If only Snow had some connection to Obama—or that new Batman movie.

Poor, poor Tony Snow, I don’t even think I remember who he is anymore. Isn’t he that motivational speaker with the big smile? That guy died? Man, I loved that guy.

Co-workers chide my “man crush” on Barack Obama, and it’s true—I’m a fool for this candidate. His suits and stoic eyes, oration style, lean stature, the timbre of his voice, largesse of his ears, hope, change, blah, blah, blah.

But lately Obama’s inept and shady communications team is souring my infatuation, and endangering his candidacy. Here’s the most recent—and obvious—example of this ineptitude.

You’ve all heard it. Bill Burton’s response to The New Yorker cover depicting Obama and his wife as Muslim extremists:

“The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Senator Obama's right-wing critics have tried to create. But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree.”

Wow! This is a PR disaster, cleverly obfuscated by the press. The New Yorker “may think” it is satire? So Burton, and in turn Obama, believe a venerated magazine that firmly supports the candidate actually believes he and his wife are Muslim extremists.

Burton just lent credit to every e-mail string and news commentator’s suggestion that Obama is a Muslim extremist. Instead of chuckling at it, or having no reaction, the campaign tucked its tail between its legs, cried foul and tried to get the public whooping mad and horribly offended.

Reminds me of allegations of fear-mongering that Obama’s camp leveled against President Bush, John McCain and Hillary Clinton.

With the cartoon, Obama’s communicators tried to shift public skepticism of the candidate onto The New Yorker and its tasteless cartoon—stupid move guys. Seems like you can’t take a joke.

Here’s what the response should’ve been, according to Jon Stewart.

“Obama is in no way upset about the cartoon that depicts him as a Muslim extremist, because you know who gets upset about cartoons? Muslim extremists, of which Barack Obama is not. It’s just a f****** cartoon.”

Blame a perfect storm of publicity. This summer and fall you will notice—if you haven’t already—a renewed interest in virtual worlds.

Despite what you hear, remember: The idea that real companies will conduct business in virtual worlds like Second Life is utterly ridiculous.

My opinion runs contrary to that of many intelligent, forward-thinking people; in fact, it runs contrary to some Ragan.com articles. But I cannot, in sound body and mind, think that we will one-day live part of our lives in virtual computer worlds.

Think about that. Living part of your life in a virtual world. Did anyone else just feel real, real creeped out? The idea is so utterly ridiculous it falls somewhere between the marketing disaster that was Coke II and the human disaster that was Terminator II.

Rest assured my conviction goes beyond gut feeling.

Last summer, many brick-and-mortar companies with Second Life presence shuttered their virtual shops. Communities without viable economies often get overrun with sex and drugs. Welcome to Second Life, a hive for sex and drugs. Of course, that duo actually precluded its economic downturn.

Before the stores shuttered, a Second Life terrorist organization—yes, you read that correctly—was carrying out virtual penis bombings. Uh-huh, you read that correctly as well.

And then there’s the proposed federal legislation to protect kids from possible pedophiles in Second Life.

Sex and drugs … fake penises … pedophilia … are there any rational-thinking people out there who really—and I mean really—believe this will take-off?

I hope not.

Unfortunately, attention will fall upon virtual worlds this summer and autumn thanks to a perfect storm of publicity. Here’s what I mean:

• Second Life celebrates its fifth birthday July 20 and Linden Labs will launch a PR blitz.

• Recent news of a breakthrough allowing Second Life avatars to teleport, or transfer, to an IBM created virtual world will continue its slow ripple through the media and blogs.

• Google quietly launched its own virtual world called Lively. When Google does something people notice.

• $345 million was invested in virtual worlds in the first two quarters of 2008 combined as more worlds are burbling to the surface.

Journalists, bloggers and Silicon Valley reps will insist we are at the dawn of the virtual Web; that we will soon browse the Internet using our virtual selves, called avatars.

But that’s a crock.

Despite the hullabaloo, virtual worlds will never have widespread appeal. They are too weird for Main Street, too explicit for children, too risky for corporations.