 black execu- tives in top positions. Consequently, our pool of goodwill with African Americans was broad but not deep, and it evaporated in the heat of the controversy. Leaders at the organizations we supported did little more than express surprise and sorrow at what had happened. Among our own employees of color, the incident ignited flames of discontent because SO few of them were moving into the higher ranks of manage- ment. The furor did not die down until the company enacted a new diversity program with specific goals for promoting people of color, and only after we stopped publishing the employee magazine entirely and transferred the editors to other jobs. An interesting corollary to this incident showed that the contro- versy was about more than a thoughtless cartoon, that it was the result of our failure to address the legitimate needs of one of our most criti- cal groups of stakeholders. At about the same time that the cartoon ran in our employee magazine, a similar drawing by the same artist appeared in the alumni magazine of Rutgers University, illustrating a story about graduates working around the world. The IO4 Rutgers alumni in Nigeria were represented by the same, now-pennant-waving monkey. There was no public outcry. Indeed, as far as I know, no one even complained. The PR counselor's role is to help bring the company's policies and practices into harmony with its stakeholders' needs and expectations. Sometimes that means winning public agreement or, at a minimum, acceptance. At other times, it means getting the company to change its plans. But it always means having acute antennae and anticipating where interests might collide. One of my predecessors described it as "seeing around corners." That's an apt description, because for the senior PR counselor, the world is all corners, all roads are narrow, and all bridges have tolls. This page intentionally left blank Don't Confuse Politics and Public Relations Politics is all about parades, creating the impression that hordes are on the march in sup