Headlines

The president of Hillsdale College, described once by William Buckley, Jr. as "the most prominent conservative college in the country," was ousted from his job following a messy sex-and-suicide scandal. The college responded with what the Weekly Standard calls "clumsy attempts to cover all this up. ... It may have been the most inept attempt at damage control ever produced by an academic institution."

The food industry used an absurdly contrived "experiment" to prove that parents should let their kids eat junk foods in a study published in the June 1999 issue of The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. The food-industry researchers taunted preschoolers by displaying an item of junk food while forbidding them to eat it. After five days of this treatment, they found, the kids' desire for the food item had increased.

A scathing item by Tony Seideman ravages Microsoft's PR tactics, arguing that "the company's internal story is so far from what others are seeing that it is enraging members of the media who would rather be friendly, straining people's credibility and ultimately harming its own interests." Through its media relations operatives at Waggener Edstrom, Microsoft has tracked its press coverage with "spreadsheet precision and wooed select tech reporters for key media outlets via command audiences with Bill." The result, Seideman says, is a cult-like atmosphere within the company: "There is a point b

Greenbrier high school senior, Mike Cameron was suspended from school for wearing a Pepsi shirt at a Coke Day rally at his school. The Coke Day rally, dreamed up by the school's student government, was part of a marketing contest that offered $10,000 to the high school that does the best job of distributing Coca-Cola coupons. At Greenbrier, students were encouraged to dress in Coke's red and white and lined up to spell out the word "COKE" while more than a dozen of the company's executives looked on.