Blackwater: "Let's get sissy!"

Now, Blackwater isn't a place for wussies. That goes without saying. But I still figure that it's a real wet-dream factory for GOP politicians-- with that whole Ronald Reagan, Fred Thompson ethos of pretend military service. You can just imagine how turned on the idea of ordering around a bunch of super-secret commando types makes that bunch.

But all that vicarious studliness comes at a price much steeper than a home theater system and a 300 DVD. There's the embezzling, the murders, and the tax fraud (that one's brand new, folks!). But, ever the smooth covert types, the no-nonsense businessmen at Blackwater know that when things start to go sour, there's just one thing to do: go all Jack Nicholson "You can't handle the truth" and give those lily-livered whiners a harsh dose of reality!

No, wait. That's not it. When things go sour there's just one thing to do: hire a PR firm to give you a teddy-bear image and pretend the public unveiling is a complete coincidence.

[Blackwater's] well-armed men remain, but the company’s roughneck logo — a bear’s paw print in a red crosshairs, under lettering that looks to have been ripped from a fifth of Jim Beam — has undergone a publicity-conscious, corporate scrubbing.

The company said the decision to update its logo was made long before Sept. 16, the day a Blackwater team guarding a State Department convoy in Baghdad fatally shot 17 Iraqis near a bustling traffic circle. But the new logo did not appear on Blackwater’s Web site until after the incident, a Blackwater spokeswoman said. . . .

Blackwater also began the process of altering its name to Blackwater Worldwide.

The author doesn't come right out and say it, but the idea is pretty clearly "now that we're in the public eye, it's time to break out the camouflage." I would've gone with a unicorn on a rainbow, but that's why I'm not earning six figures as a business consultant.