Of Liberace and potshots at bloggers

You might call it the 'Liberace Effect'.

Back in the 1950s, when Liberace's career was on the rise, his flamboyant eccentricity drew a lot of barbed gossip about his sexuality. (I'll never forget the crude joke my father brought home one day from the shop floor -- Q: What is Liberace's license plate number? A: R-U-1-2.)

To his credit, the master of glitz turned the gossip into a marketing opportunity. After winning monetary damages in a libel suit against a British newspaper, he famously remarked, "I cried all the way to the bank."

Maybe Assemblyman Green and Mayor Robinson-Briggs, who of late have made bristling remarks about the blogs, could learn a lesson from the sequined pianist's tale.

I don't know about Bernice's "Plaintalker" or Maria's "Crescent Times", but every time something disparaging is said about Plainfield Today, the blog's stats go off the chart.

Far from 'breaking my bones', these tossed stones only interest more people in checking out what's going on over at the blogs -- AND signing up for the daily "CLIPS" newsletter.

The only thing that tops these readership spikes is if I have a headline in the daily postings that includes the words "Assemblyman Green" or "Mayor Robinson-Briggs".

So please, Assemblyman Green, and pretty please, Mayor Robinson-Briggs -- don't stop criticizing the blogs.

Maybe "the city has taken on [the Mayor's] personality", as Bernice quotes the Assemblyman, but if the deadly duo will only keep it up, the bloggers will soon be crying all the way to the bank.

-- Dan Damon

View today's CLIPS here. Not getting your own CLIPS email daily? Click here to subscribe.

ARCHIVED POSTS OF PLAINFIELD TODAY FROM 11/03/2005 THROUGH 12/31/2006 ARE AT
http://plainfieldtoday.blogspot.com/