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Scruggs Nation: the Secret Lives of PR Flacks

By David Rossmiller

After a year's hiatus, I've been looking for the right time to start blogging again.  This is that time. The sun, which never sets on the Scruggs Nation, shines ever so brightly once again.

I mean, I can't pass up a moment like this one, where there is a golden cache of emails out there in the public record, a used-to-be secret horde of communications between the inner Scruggs circle and the PR firm that was supposed to stage manage his triumph in Hurricane Katrina litigation.  What could go wrong with that plan?

I apologize in advance to readers who are not well-versed in Scruggsmania, or those who have forgotten some of the names or sequence of events. In this post, I won't have the time to give a total recap and will have to assume that the reader has a background in what I'm talking about.

These emails are attached to this post at the Y'all Politics blog, and yesterday blog proprietor Alan Lange called me and said they were a must-read.  Here's a link directly to the emails. Alan said these were required reading particularly since a fair number of these emails are about me and my Scruggsblogging.  Well, I read every single one of them and my reaction is . . . what's the word I'm looking for here? Yowza! Crikey! Or maybe even Holy Cow!  

With this new information coming to light, I might have to re-evaluate. I thought at the time this was a pretty sophisticated bunch, the Scruggs PR operation, but these emails make me wonder.  Look, I'm not naive about PR people -- as a rule, to their clients' faces they are utter, shameless sycophants that would make Toadie from the Road Warrior look like Winston Churchill in comparison, but behind their clients' backs they snark on them mercilessly, Joan Rivers style. So you expect to see some stuff like that in emails, particularly when they have to deal with a rather challenging bunch like the Scruggs gang.  But I was surprised to see Dickie dissed, and my oh my but the Rigsby sisters get less respect than Eleanor Rigby.

And I do think that at the beginning of Katrina litigation the PR people in conjunction with Scruggs did a really nice job of managing the news cycle.  And I have to say that when I read things such as chief Scruggs PR flack Ainsley Perrien calling me "irresponsible and offensive," that's OK. I mean, what else is she supposed to say to her clients? It's a tough job she had.  I'm sure in person she is a perfectly pleasant professional and I wish instead of kvetching about me and assuming I was some hireling living off State Farm's payroll she would have called me up to give me her point of view, and if she asked I would have been happy to tell her why I was doing what I was doing: I found the Katrina story to be fascinating human drama and it became a hobby to blog about it. It was just a pure accident.  And I could have told her that all these hilariously Inspector-Clouseau-like schemes revealed in the emails that were supposed to silence or counter my blogging wouldn't have any effect, but I certainly would have listened to and valued her perspective if offered in good faith.  How does the maxim go? "A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still." 

Some of these schemes are: (and to be fair, not all of these were hatched or necessarily endorsed by Perrien, some of them came from Zach Scruggs or the Scruggs(less) Katrina Group)

• Serving a subpoena duces tecum for my "blog records" aimed at finding out who my sources were and intimidating people, which they refer to as "snitches" or "squirrels,"  from communicating with me.
• Creating astroturfed, fake blogs that would be pro-Scruggs and/or attack me.
• Submitting a ton of fake, astroturfed pro-Scruggs comments to my posts.
• Investigating me in an attempt to dig up dirt and/or expose me as a complete idiot or paid lackey of the ruling class.
• Complaining to media reporters who interviewed me and quoted me.

In my view, these are are all foolish and ineffectual ideas.  Let's explore the reasons:

• I would have quashed a subpoena as harassing and irrelevant to any case in which it was issued,. To be valid, the subpoena would have had to issue under the authority of the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon, and so I would have fought it in Portland. I also would have used Oregon's media shield law to keep from revealing any sources -- I was a newspaper reporter back in the day, and bloggers are every bit as much journalists as print and broadcast media. 
• I guess one man's "snitch" is another man's "whistleblower," eh? And vice versa. For folks who were so involved in promoting the "whistleblower" Rigsby sisters, you would think they would get the nomenclature right.
• Almost all my information came from public records like court filings so the sources were pretty obvious.
• You can fake all the astroturf blogs you want, but since it was a pure accident I happened along at the time I did, I couldn't be replicated or reverse engineered. 
• Swarms of pro-Scruggs comments under the posts, written by some rent-a-mob? How pathetic is that?  You think I don't know who writes those comments? I saw very few of these kind of comments, in any event.
• I guess they didn't find the dirt. Whew!!
• As someone who worked for a metropolitan daily newspaper for eight years, I can state with great certainty that telling media people whom they should talk to is a good way to make yourself look weak, weasely and untrustworthy, and goes a long way toward totally discrediting yourself. 
• The internet is a marketplace. People read what they want to read. Good and entertaining posts are in demand, mindless shilling and hack writing are not.

In many ways, this is stuff lawyers and professional PR people should know.  It's kind of odd that they didn't, don't you think? They didn't know what to make of blogging, like it was a completely alien life form. It's kind of like when the Aztecs first saw Cortes and his crew on horses, they couldn't figure out what they were looking at.

Let's look at a few of the things these people said:

• Page 238 of the pdf, a July 29, 2007 email from Zach Scruggs to Ainsley Perrien. "What do you think about setting up someone to blog against him directly, refuting statements he makes. I will write the blog if someone else can actually do it. I don't want to do it directly because it drags me down to his level, but it should be done."  I have always liked Zach Scruggs, I wish he had only sunk as far down as my level.
• Check out page 337, a heated email from Zach to Perrien dated November 12, 2007, where he says "we need someone else (a lawyer) who dedicates his life to attacking Rossmiller's blogs on us," and demands that Perrien come up with a concrete plan to stem a flow of bad publicity from a variety of sources that is "making us look like criminals."  Remind me, how did that plan work out?
• Look at page 240, Perrien's response to Zach. She talks about chewing out the Associated Press reporter who interviewed me, bemoans the fact that Zach won't blog and talks about putting another blogger on the Scruggs Katrina Group website that is "very aggressive like rossmiller w our side of the story. We could do that today."  She had to know it wasn't that easy. I mean, she had to, right, she was just shining him on? If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.
• Same email, she says to Zach: "We were just meeting Friday and Saturday over the rossmiller blogger issue and decided to implement our own person to go after him. Once ap started quoting him I hit the roof." Come on, two days of meetings about me? I don't believe that for a second. This is all a pose, this roof-hitting. And who is this person they implemented to go after me? Whoever it was, someone forgot to tell me, I never noticed and apparently neither did anyone else. In any event, this plan either never materialized, was attempted but FUBARed up beyond all repair, or happened but failed in spectacular New Cokeian fashion. 
• Page 350 has another November 12 email from Zach to Perrien. I really like this one, Zach is a good writer, if he had blogged more like this it would have been something to behold.  The email is a long rant about how unqualified I am and yet the media is giving me all kinds of credibility, and then there is this great line: "Other than staying at a Holiday Inn express last night he has no basis to be able to opine on any of this stuff . . . . EXPOSE HIM!"   One reason I like this so much is about four months before this email was written I was back in the small town in North Dakota where I grew up at a school reunion and a girl I went to high school with introduced me to her husband. She mentioned I was a lawyer and he said, "Yeah, and you stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night too." He thought we were putting him on, didn't believe I was really a lawyer, I mean, it's natural, not that many lawyers from a small town, right? It was a pretty good laugh. I guess he expected that lawyers wear a suit at all times.
• Page 375 has a January 3, 2008 email from Perrien to someone whose name is not familiar to me (maybe he stayed at a Holiday Inn Express the previous night). Speaking of me, she says, "FYI -- this is the blogger that is driving us nuts."  She talks about training some blogger who was going to take me on.  In one of the earlier emails, there was some reference to "Anna Marie" and "Cottonmouth," whom I take it were in some way being encouraged to indulge in pro-Scruggsianism and possibly take me on. If I ever knew, I no longer remember who these people are.  Can anyone help me out?
• Starting on page 378, there is a lot of interesting stuff, from February 2008 and there is an entire post I wrote about Mississippi AG Jim Hood testifying in court.  This was my favorite post evah and I see it drove the Scruggs Katrina Group, to quote Ainsley Perrien, "nuts." I know these are just private musings and people under pressure blowing off steam, so I don't take it personally or that seriously, what they are saying.  These things they are talking about like "pop[ping] this jerk w a subpoena," subpoenaing my "ass" to see who was paying for my "poison," delving into my firm's internal records, shutting down my "ass" and my "little snitches" too. Page 397 contains a plan that was ill-thought-out and I'm sure after emotions cooled the author realized its flaws.
• Page 405 has a great email from Perrien to the Scruggs Katrina Group people, it's part of the same thread. This is a classic instance of someone trying to act like they are going along with some kids who are going to TP the teacher's house or Dippity Doo his car door handles while actually saying stuff that will tend to get them to think twice about it.  This email is so great the only way it could be any better is if it was covered in chocolate. Remember now, Ainsley Perrien has been in the PR business for decades, deals with the media all the time, and she says goofy stuff like "would it be a freedom of speech issue? Would he try to take that stance? I don't think there is a lot of precedence on this.  Going into unchartered territory can be time consuming.  On the other hand we need to show our teeth.  This would certainly get coverage and raise the issue of how bloggers impact litigation. They are not journalists and can't be protected as such, I would think, given the obvious bias."
• Wow! She is totally putting these guys on, right? I mean, this is a seasoned professional, she knows you don't need a little "press" tag in your hat or a government-issued badge to be a journalist, right?  She knows that opinion columnists write obviously biased pieces and that they are protected just the same as the "neutral" people, correct? She's aware of the First Amendment, state media shield laws, anti-SLAPP suit laws, not to mention the fact that she thoroughly researched me and knew I know media law very well and am also a litigation lawyer by trade, right? And she knew this would have been a total fiasco and about the last thing this bunch needed at the time, right? I mean, secretly she is thinking, this gang doesn't need to be taking anyone on, they need to be running for the tall grass, isn't she?  In reading through these 400-plus pages of emails, I really liked this lady, I'm sure she knows what she is doing.  Like when she asks whether they are going to serve me with a subpoena when I arrived in Mississippi for the Mississippi State Insurance Day forum, that was only to point out how stupid it would have been and how I would have stood on that stage where I spoke waving that subpoena, and how they would have been the laughingstock of the (Scruggs) nation. I like how at the end, right after giving this half-hearted line about how they should call her if she can be any help putting the flaming bag of dog poop on the teacher's porch, she pretends to be one of the cool kids by adding, "Rossmiller is irresponsible and offensive to me." Well played, Ainsley!
• Page 425 has this great plaintive all-caps wail type of thing going on, and page 428 more fantasizing about subpoenaing my "blog records," whatever that is. 
• Page 434 has about the first sensible thing I read in these emails, it says "Be prepared for him to come at us with both barrels if we do that.  Those guys are dangerous and we might be walking into a lion's den." To which I say, Amen! You don't know the half of it, brother.
• Page 438 has this thing from lawyer Don Barrett that says "We must be very careful here," and essentially shuts down Operation Ass Subpoena. 
• However, page 442 has some more foolishness about how some guy they were training up was going to go after me on some blog, some guy named Norm.  Whoever this was, I'm sorry, but I don't remember this happening. If you actually went after me, Norm, no offense intended by not remembering.
• Near the end of the emails, Perrien asks someone, in response to a post I wrote about the Trailer Lawyers, "What are the Trailer Lawyers?" (This, by the way, was after I had been to Mississippi, where I noticed my ass was not served with a subpoena while there).  This sudden lack of enthusiasm for the fight, this lack of attention to detail, disappoints me.  Ainsley, my friend, it is not "what," but "who," for the Trailer Lawyers you know well by their given names, but the names the rest of us know them by are these: Trailer Chip and Trailer Tony, Trailer Todd and Trailer Mary.  It says so right here.  And, Ainsley Perrien, let's close this post with this requiem that brought me great sadness to write, for with this the Trailer Lawyers slowly pulled their double-wide off into the sunet. Sing it with me, to the tune of Don McLean's American Pie:  (I admit it needs updating, it was written two years ago).

Bye bye Trailer Lawyer pie,

Drove my trailer to the courthouse but the judge said bye bye

Them Snake Farm boys was laughing while we cried

Singing this will be the day your case dies,

This will be the day your case dies. 

Now for five months, we've been on our own

Since Scruggs got knocked off his lawyer throne.

But that's not how it used to be.

When the Rigsbys sang for ABC,

With some quotes they borrowed from Dickie,

And some files that came from piracy.

And as we reached the motion stage, 

My hands were clenched in fists of rage,

No story we could tell,

Could break that Snake Farm spell.

And as our briefs climbed higher in the fight,  

We just couldn't seem to get it right, 

I saw bloggers laughing with delight,

The day the Qui Tam died.

And they were singing,

Bye bye Trailer Lawyer pie,

Drove my trailer to the courthouse but the judge said bye bye

Them Snake Farm boys was laughing while we cried

Singing this will be the day your case dies,

This will be the day your case dies. 

 

 

 

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Full post as published by Insurance Coverage Law Blog on July 13, 2010 (boomark / email).