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This, again, is a novel way to describe public relations. But Singer still gets to do what he loves, and now does so in a field in which success puts one into a tribal art tax bracket.
In this and other ways, Singer's life has not gone according to plan. He has, on several occasions, had much personal damage to control. But perhaps never more than that day some 15 years ago when his then-wife walked past the room he would later befoul with a bottle of beer, and into Singer's office.
His then-wife had previously learned that Singer had reconnected with a former girlfriend (who is Singer's current wife and company CFO. At the time, both she and Singer were married to other people). What followed would lead to an intriguing newspaper item.
A number of Singer's possessions were jettisoned into the street and, in a none-too-subtle allegory, all of his neckties were sliced into pieces. As if this couldn't be any more awkward, Singer's then-wife worked alongside him (and Kamer, and Kamer's wife) at Kamer-Singer.
All of this was leaked to the San Francisco Chronicle's Phil Matier and Andy Ross. Singer, as he would for a client, dutifully returned their call. The self-styled "fixer" and "master of disaster" earns his keep by spinning away others' tragedies with "Who are you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?"-type chutzpah. But, confronted with his own misdeeds, then and now, he's alarmingly frank.
Sometimes, that's the best strategy: "If you admit what you've done wrong quickly, you can make things go away and get a lot of credibility with the press and public because you're not bullshitting."
So, Singer copped to it all. But, he implored Ross, do him one favor. His twin boys were in grammar school. It would be hurtful for them to read about this. They'd be belittled. Keep his name out of it.
Ross agreed. Also, he tells SF Weekly, Singer wasn't so big a name back then.
Well, that worked out grand for everyone. "It was a good story for Matier and Ross," Singer says. "It didn't hurt my kids. It didn't hurt me professionally." His former wife "is better off without me. Of that I have no doubt."
One week after being symbolically castrated, Singer arrived, intact, at the Public Relations Society of America luncheon. The incident was all anyone talked about. No one had any idea the victim was walking among them.
Singer, presumably, bought a new tie for the event.
Asked his MO, Sam Singer quips that perhaps the most important element of damage control is "throwing the Molotov cocktails back at 'em." He has built his career on this strategy. That's how he turned a $19 billion judgment against Chevron for befouling pristine Ecuadorian rainforests into an assault on that nation's legal system and the character of the plaintiffs' legal counsel.
But playing with fire is a dangerous game.
Singer insists he didn't crash the December 2013 press conference held by the grieving family of Jahi McMath. The 13-year-old's survivors were imploring Oakland's Children's Hospital, a Singer client, to not pull the plug on the girl after a botched surgical procedure left her brain dead.
He is rather lonely in his assessment. Singer's colleagues in the public relations world say he absolutely did crash the McMath family's presser. And they applaud him for it.
Whatever the case, a vituperative back-and-forth broke out between Singer and McMath family attorney Christoper Dolan, as herds of media members looked on. "I backed him into a TV truck," Dolan crows.
But a diversionary brawl is just what Singer wanted. He portrayed Dolan throughout the case as a charlatan preying on the hopes of a distraught family unable to cope with the finality of brain death. Dolan, for his part, has since claimed he won't participate in or profit from any subsequent McMath family suits against the hospital. But the Molotov cocktail had been launched.
Singer came off as the heavy. He conspicuously referred to McMath as "the body of Jahi McMath." It was not always a good look for him. But for his client? That's a different story.
"Oh, that could have rolled on for months and months. Sam had to get into all of those stories and he had to do it right away," says political consultant Ace Smith, a Singer adversary turned friend. "It was Sam's job to take the bullet on that one before it reached his client. The wrong response wouldn't have killed him so much as the long response."
And that may ultimately mark the success of Singer's narrative. It's par for the course that happy announcements are reserved for company spokespeople, and tragic or controversial ones fall upon Singer. And there's nothing happy about Jahi McMath, who remains brain dead, purportedly in a New Jersey facility. But McMath has faded into memory. She has been reduced to one more thing that went bump in the night.
In Singer's professional life, he does, on a grand scale, what we all do personally: We construct narratives to portray ourselves in the best possible light; to buttress our strengths and ameliorate our shortcomings. He certainly does this for his clients; he doesn't mind being the villain, if being the villain pushes the narrative where he wants it to go. But does he do it for himself? Is this story, the one you're reading, the true tale of Singer's life? Or is it the truth as Singer, his own first and last client, wants you to see it?
"Singer says what he thinks regardless of truth," snarls archenemy Dolan. But Singer's truth wasn't the same as Dolan's truth. And, in the end, Singer is playing by a different set of rules: He traffics not so much in truth but the perception of truth.
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