Democrats have also copiously revised history, promoting Harry "The Buck Stops Here" Truman instead of the "To Err is Truman" of old. And despite the revelations of JFK's extra-marital peccadilloes, the myth of Camelot continues to be fondly mis-remembered. More recently, John Kerry (who desperately wanted to appear Kennedyesque) failed in his attempt to revise history when he proclaimed "I voted for it before I voted against it."

Of course, there are any number of unpersons to be dealt with, or rather deleted, these days as their fortunes wane. Jack Abromof's list of friends and acquaintances has dwindled greatly while Sen. Larry Craig's MySpace circle shrinks by the hour.

In the corporate Ministry of Truth, our revisionistic agenda is more mundane. We just need to spruce up the past a little to fit current realities. A drop in actual versus projected sales becomes "a anomaly caused by unusually turbulent market conditions," the shipping date for the software release that crashes automatically every 17 seconds is "rescheduled to better fit the needs of the user community," and the guy who was sacked for fondling every female within arms' length "has left the company to pursue other interests."

Every now and then, PR is called upon to revise contemporary reality to stave off erosion of the corporate image. When the HQ of my former employer was gutted by a fire, the VP of Communications immediately assured Wall Street that the fire was "a minor inconvenience" and the company was operating on a business as usual basis. A colleague of mine spent the next several years telling those who came to him looking for certain documents, copies of brochures, videotapes, and other items, that they were "lost during the inconvenience."

Bruce Pilgrim is the CEO and janitor of Bruce Pilgrim Marketing Communications, LLC. He recently published his first book, Talking to My Cats: A Small Business Journal.