Ok, so you say my "weak" double entendre is a weak stab at lame humor. But, that’s kind of the point, isn’t it?

How has your week been? Are you sick of the holidays yet? Have you done your civic duty by shopping the nation back to economic health? In the past month, I think I have raised the national GDP a basis point or two.

This end-of-decade holiday season has been pretty interesting from my vantage point, which focuses on media, marketing, culture, politics, technology. Let’s consider some of these standout items from recent days:

• Tiger Loses It — In more ways than one! Dude, if you are going to self immolate, at least do it with some class. Tiger Woods has handled basically none of his personal nightmare well. I was surprised to see one lackey commentator even claiming that Accenture was an ingrate to drop Woods. Ingrate? I am surprised they stood by him for as long as they did. If Tiger eventually returns and wins as usual, he will still have a career — even a lucrative one. But the Tiger Woods brand is tarnished forever. Of course, Nike doesn’t care. That is part of their bad-boy ethos, anyway.
• Facebook Shoots Self in Foot Again — Facebook is getting terribly good at that. Now, they have drastically changed their privacy policies, and pretty much everyone is mad as hell about it. Just yesterday a coalition of privacy groups petitioned the government to force Facebook to change back to its old privacy settings. I thought Facebook had a privacy Czar whose job it is to avoid these blunders? Bad move, FB.
• Healthcare Reform — Well, the president has managed to alienate almost everyone with his administration’s weak handling of the big healthcare reform issue. I don’t think President Obama’s political and media handlers yet fully understand how much of a debacle this is going to be for the president and the Democrats, if they don’t put real reform back in the bill now being considered. It is amazing and dispiriting that it is all come to this, especially given the urgency of the need for better healthcare options for all Americans. I think Joe Lieberman will go down in history as being one of the most vindictive politicians who ever played the game. He may think he is being either principled or cute, but no one else thinks that way.
• I’m Gaga Over the Lady! — I sort of discovered Lady Gaga late in life. But, I am really enjoying every aspect of her nouveau Madonna act. The difference is, she does not take herself so seriously, like Madonna did (and, unbelievably, still does). Lady Gaga is a wonderful, over the top, self knowing and totally ironic Madonna, but with more intelligence and talent, too. And I particularly love the fact that Ms. Gaga is really just a nice Italian girl from the NY burbs. Go Gaga Lady!!

Those are some undeniably weak observations regarding the current state of play in the world of Idea-Driven Marketing. Would love to hear your comments on what stood out for you.

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