Earlier this week we gave you a brief history of Rob Shuter, the shameless former celebrity flack whose various transgressions have reduced him to editing OK! Magazine. That post brought back some memories for Michael Lucas, famous gay porn performer and impresario (pictured, on the left). According to Lucas, he once snubbed Shuter's request for love, which sparked a neverending campaign by the uberflack to exact his revenge! Worst of all, Lucas says, Shuter even used poor supermodel Naomi Campbell for his own nefarious ends. Lucas' full, telling letter is below.

OK! is the celebrity magazine that is the most willingly manipulated by celebrity flacks, which is really saying something. So it's perfectly appropriate that the magazine just promoted sleazy former celebrity uberflack Rob Shuter to its executive editor position. That's because Shuter is skilled at doing the two things that OK! is most famous for: lying on behalf of celebrities, and losing other people's money. Even he, the great fabulist, couldn't write a more sickening script than this.

A lawyer named Jeremy Pitcock got fired last year, and his firm put a fine point on his dismissal: they issued a press release attributing his firing to "extremely inappropriate personal conduct." That's, uh, not considered a good thing to have on your resume in the legal world. Turns out that the law firm crafted the release with the help of Sitrick & Co., the super high-powered PR firm run by shadowy, high-priced crisis guru Mike Sitrick. Now Pitcock is suing Sitrick and his old firm for $90 million, charging them with ruining his reputation over what he says was simply a misguided and consensual kiss after a drunken night at a bar. The bigger question is, doesn't Sitrick have more important things to do than get embroiled in a petty sexual harassment dismissal? Answer: not really!

Back in 2005, two activist groups—Wake Up Wal-Mart and Wal-Mart Watch—launched campaigns to kick Wal-Mart's ass in the media. Which they did quite successfully for a while. The soulless retailer spent untold millions on a huge, political-style PR campaign from our friends at Edelman to fight back against the criticisms of them for everything from poor health care to union busting. But the Times reports today that Edelman's Wal-Mart war room shut down months ago, and the torrent of news stories about the company's flaws has died down. Why? Because Wal-Mart has adopted a philosophy of working with critics, and made their enemies their friends. This is either evidence of progress, or cause for despair. Since the company is still a horrible union buster, we'll go with "despair."

The PR industry loves to get riled up any time someone takes what might be construed as an unjustified shot at its awful reputation. This is because there are already so many perfectly justified criticisms of PR that any argument not directly linked to a huge public scandal gives the industry a rare chance to get on its high horse. That's precisely what's going on today, after CBS analyst Andrew Cohen went on air yesterday with a scathing but overbroad rant calling the entire PR industry dirty liars, in the wake of lying former Bush flack Scottie McClellan's book. How dare CBS be so mean! The Public Relations Society of America fired back with a mealy-mouthed letter declaring "truth and accuracy are the bread and butter of the public relations profession." This is the same PRSA that didn't feel the need to say anything about McClellan's admitted lies themselves. So we have an ill-considered commentary, and a hypocritical response. A perfect embodiment of PR! Video of Cohen's rant, after the jump.

So, who's the latest shady character being represented by incompetent superflack Ronn [sic] Torossian's PR firm? It's Pastor John Hagee, the John McCain-supporting zealot who's currently under fire for saying "in a late 1990s sermon that the Nazis had operated on God's behalf to chase the Jews from Europe and shepherd them to Palestine." Hagee—a strident supporter of Israel, to the point of insanity—argued that Hitler was a "hunter" sent by god to help get the Jews back to the promised land. It's a good thing that he's retained the steady hand of 5WPR to help him through this controversy:

Intrepid Jennifer 8. Lee has defied Google's blackout on photographs of the lego sculptures at its offices in New York's Chelsea. The New York Times reporter, stymied by Google's publicists, obtained images from a brave insider-who will no doubt soon be sweeping the floors at one of the internet monolith's server farms.

As a matter of policy we leave celebrity cellulite photos to sites such as the Daily Mail's, which specializes in premature wrinkles, embarrassing guts and other physical evidence that decrepitude is inevitable—even for stars. But Mischa Barton's idiotic publicist has decided to turn an embarrassing photograph of the actress' rumpled behind into a fully-fledged photoshop scandal—which gives every gossip site the excuse to run the otherwise stale photographs. And Team Barton can't even get its story straight.

What's the word on the street these days? "Word on the street is that Brian Anthony is also fighting hard to open for Madonna on her upcoming "Hard Candy" tour." This Brian Anthony, who is some type of music maker, did a mashup of his music with Madonna's and put it on his Myspace page. Now, "The 'Worked Up!' mash-up is being passed around the Madonna camp and the buzz is BIG on it." How can we be so sure? Because we got the information firsthand, in a hilariously inept press release from Jim Strzalkowski, fantabulous PR man—and fan—to the D-list stars!

This email has been floating around for a week or so, but we're going to run it as a public service. It was first circulated by a PR guy named Peter Shankman as a classic "How Not To Pitch A Reporter" lesson. In this case, the email pitch below was sent to a hedge fund reporter. That is to say, a professional journalist who spends his days chronicling the ins and outs of the secretive high finance world. So one might have expected that a PR firm would cull its email blast list just a bit before it went to work on behalf of its "Long Island based car shop" client. But no! Pitches like this are why reporters hate PR people. CAN YOU GUESS WHICH PR AGENCY THIS CAME FROM? The full pitch (to, again, a hedge fund reporter), and the stunning reveal of the agency's identity, after the jump.

Famous Paris Hilton impersonator Natalie Reid is getting so popular these days that paid publicists are spontaneously sending out emails celebrating her overwhelming popularity. Along with photos generously marked "for public display," such as the one pictured! We received this bit of fan mail from Jim Strzalkowski of Xtra Public Relations: "Wow! Natalie Reid was all glammed up on the set of the Wayans Brothers' 'Snowflake.' Natalie was beside herself as she was bestowed the superstar treatment on the set. She had her own trailer, a stand-in and even fans asking her for her autograph" Fans you say, Jim? INCREDIBLE. But what did she tell her close friend?

Edelman, the massive Wal-Mart-touting PR firm with the blog-watching CEO, has hired Katie Levinson, who is fresh off her gig as the communications director for the wildly successful Rudy Giuliani presidential campaign. She's also worked in PR roles for the Republican National Committee, the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign, and the Bush White House [PRNewser]. Levinson will doubtless be a valuable addition to Edelman's stable of well-connected Republican operatives who have built careers serving the public through the promotion of neoconservatism. And CEO Richard Edelman (pictured) should be commended on his evenhandedness, since he's a committed Democrat!