Charlatans.

Gail Collins has a column in today's "New York Times" about the phonies and scoundrels that infest our political scene.

People who have plagarized, abducted coeds, started porn sites, borrowed children as props, lied about military service, the colleges they went to and so it goes.

Rushing for a plane this morning so not a lot of time. But even cursorily the parallels to our industry abound. People whose accomplishments are heralded for ads that never ran, for campaigns that never built a business, for work they never did.

Politics and advertising. These failures of judgment are endemic because we prefer to make decisions about people based on snap judgments or spurious efforts at PR. Basically we buy these people because we want to believe. Most of their lacunas can be identified in one half-hour conversation.

But we have no time for that.

We're rushing to another meeting.