The Lindsay Lohan saga elevated from curious farce to surreal tragedy this week as three guys who say they were hijacked by Lindsay and led on a demo derby, high-speed, drunken, probably drug-fueled chase through Santa Monica, went to Tmz.com and told their story on video for all the world to absorb. Then, of course, they hired a lawyer. The real news here is that as of this writing nobody has seen Lindsay for three days and nobody (meaning the paparazzi) knows where she is. Lindsay’s parents, Dina and Michael of Long Island, are locked in a bitter divorce battle. We don’t believe there is truth to the rumor that they are auctioning off Lindsay’s severed limbs from her most recent bad movie “I Know Who Killed Me” to pay for legal expenses. We believe that the limbs that showed up on eBay are most likely from Courtney Love, who recently had her lips and nose replaced with the face of a rare pygmy camel.

In mid-week Amanda Chapel issued a challenge on Strumpette for the heads of the top PR firms to have a conversation about the conversation they all insist we should be having. This led to a universal, tacit decision to instead take a vow of silence and for the High Head of PR of Poobahs to issue a therapeutic White Paper called “What is the Sound of No Voices Speaking? – A Call to Non-Action.” Like all good therapists, PR firm CEOs have decided to take August off to recover from their great spate of non-speaking. This leads us to decipher the silence as a passive aggressive statement that Edward Bernays’ mother, who also exerted great influence on Sigmund Freud, is responsible for the current social media contagion infecting the industry. We must look deep within for insight into the social media dilemma because apparently little or no dialogue will occur publicly.

Speaking of talking about not talking, it has now been two months since MWW CEO Michael Kempner has posted in his blog “Straight Talk, right from the source …” Kempner’s last two posts were an impassioned defense of his firms’ blogola program and an announcement of his appointment as one of the Chairs of the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign in New Jersey. We are hoping that Kempner will weigh in on the Hillary cleavage brouhaha when he returns from the August PR CEO hiatus so he can continue his current trend of five to six blog posts per year, proving that social media is a vital tool for public relations leaders to convey timely news and opinion.

Actually Kempner is more prolific than Aedhmar Hynes, CEO of Text 100, who has not posted since May 3, 2007. Paul Holmes, the guy who charges good money for his insights into the PR business and gives out awards for the best PR this and that, has not posted to his blog since February 3rd. Harold Burson has not posted to his blog for nearly two months when he told us that the best way to get good PR service is to give him more and more money.

Are there signs of intelligent life in this PR new media wasteland? Thankfully, yes. Jim Horton of Robert Marston and Associates in New York has been compiling Online Public Relations for 10 years. It is a thorough, up-to-date source for PR and media contacts. More remarkable is Jim’s Online Public Relations Thoughts, filed religiously every day between 4:31 AM and 4:47 AM. Jim has been giving us no-nonsense, original, brief, thought provoking snippets since the dawn of the digital age. Also, Ike Pigott penned a piece on Strumpette last week and proved that although he only has 45 readers (according to his Feedburner badge) on his Occam’s RazR blog his intelligence and influence far exceeds that of a certain A-list, mega, uber blogger who apparently spends the bulk of his days diddling his Twitter.

Mark Rose is editor of PRBlogNews - a web publication focusing on public relations practices in the digital age.