Oops, you did it again.  I’m not talking about sending snazzy new laptops loaded with Vista to certain influential bloggers.  Except for the fact that you didn’t send me one, that was a great idea.  Bloggers don’t have some ancient ethical code about accepting gifts like real journalists do.  Most of us can be bought for a cap or a tee-shirt and those that can’t use Macs anyway. 

Your mistake is caving at the first sign of dissent and sending out a stupid e-mail asking the “reviewers” to return the machines which, of course, nobody is actually going to do.  Asking for them back makes it look like the whole thing was a mistake in the first place.

Didn’t your flaks learn anything from the Dick Cheney quail-hunting example?  So you shoot somebody in the face.  Just don’t talk about it and pretend like it never happened and in a couple of days the whole thing goes away.  That’s pretty much how Edelman handled its phoney Wal-Mart bloggers scandal so I’m surprised they caved on this one.  Somebody internal must have blinked.

And pay no attention to that Jeneane person with her “mostly male” crack about who got the the laptops. Jeneane didn’t get one for the same reason I didn’t get one–not enough eyeballs.  If she (or I) had Scoble’s traffic, we’d be on John Edwards’ plane this morning playing with our new Microsoft laptop instead of the Scob. 

Finally, if I may make a suggestion for the next time you do something like this:  do a little research in advance.  If you know certain bloggers are hard-core Mac fans, (like, say, Marshall Kirkpatrick) don’t send them a machine because they’ll just use it to trash you as a comparison.  Send Marshall’s laptop to a loyal Windows user (like, say me) who has crashed and re-installed Windows at least a dozen times over the past decade.  That’s real customer loyalty.

Your friend,

Jerry