Okay, if you decide to play, there are some key factors to consider:

-- Opinions at Edelman had better be Richard's. Word in the industry is that strong guys don't last long at Edelman.

Ummm... I am fairly certain that testosterone is not too much an issue with Steve. Call it strumpette instinct. Call me ditzie all you want, my loins are never wrong.

-- Rubel threatens the big dog. The Stever now reports to Rick Murray, general manager, Edelman Diversified Services. Note how quiet Murray has been, unusually so. The guess is that he's figured out that he just may be grooming his own replacement. However subtle, that surely will undermine Steve's tenure. Last year Murray said something fairly prophetic. Last April, when Edelman released their white paper on blogs, Murray said, "There's a right way and a wrong way to think about and approach the blogosphere, and public relations professionals who get it wrong will get burned -- it's that simple." I think Murray is giving Rubel a lot of rope. When Steve hangs himself, Murray gets to say, "I told you so." It's that simple.

-- Rubel has two masters and is sure to betray one. The day he makes an honest independent critique of Richard... he's history. Bottom line: that's just a matter of time. Rubel's true master is blogging and he will ultimately have to make that choice. He will betray Richard.

Listen to his words on March 8 in "Silence Happens... Temporarily": "Something that is becoming more transparent is the process of public relations. Yesterday, the blogosphere exploded in commentary over Edelman's outreach to bloggers on behalf of Wal-Mart. Some of it was pro-Edelman, others were against. Several of you emailed me yesterday why I didn't post on the story. Others more posted it on blogs. BL Ochman even asked if I am sorry I went to Edelman."

Indeed, he was silent. But he certainly gave Edelman due warning: "Our actions will inevitably bubble up to the surface as they did yesterday. PR professionals now live in glass houses. This makes it incumbent upon us to adhere to the unwritten rules of the blogosphere - to the letter. It also means that as this new form of common law shifts, so must we."

-- Rubel is the poster boy for the Loose-Canon Club. Just last Wednesday his post "Who Should Speak?" he said, "All of this leads to a larger issue. Who is a corporate spokesperson? Is it any employee who blogs, the CEO, who?" Certainly, the lion share of Micropersuasion is pretty lightweight RSS stuff, but occasionally there's "danger speak." If Richard didn't scratch his head after reading last Wednesday's post, a lot of his clients sure did.

-- Rubel's uncensored words are an indelible tattoo on the Edelman institution. A few years from now, when some CEO is giving a thumbs up or down on spending $500,000 a year on Edelman, he'll Google one Steve Rubel, Senior Vice President. He's going to find things like, "Marketing today is much more like sailing than driving. Your boat is the brand. If you point your boat in the right direction, follow the winds/currents and steer, you will get the boat to go where you want it. Marketers should become the wind, but accept that they're at the mercy of the currents and weather. Word of mouth marketing, when done right, is the wind." You just can't pay for that kind of counsel.

Seriously, if you are going to hire a counter tenor as corporate spokesperson, he'd better be able to hit the all high notes. Apparently, there are times when Steve opens his mouth and all that comes out is "wind."

-- But, all that said, the single-most important factor is that the bean counter's clock is ticking. Richard bought questionable fame expecting Rubel to convert it into new business. Richard bought Rubel as a lure, simple as that. If he doesn't catch anything, he's going to change bait. Richard said it simply in Steve's announcement: "In short, we want to persuade our corporate clients to commit to the blogosphere."

As to timing from a CFO's perspective... I am guessing Steve upped his salary to about $175K a year as a Senior VP at Edelman. In the agency game, that means he needs to bring in more than $800,000 just to justify his existence. No way. I've a better chance of waking up with bigger boobs.

Add to that, Edelman is notoriously cheap. If Richard isn't thinking it, his old man is saying it: "That's $15,000 a month for 'wind'." Surely, they could get a blow job for less than that.

Anyway, I am in. I put down $50 and bought Friday June 16 and 23rd.