Is Flack a Bad Word?

Is it ok to use the word flack when talking about PR professionals? Is it even still relevant in this new world? Steve Baker posed this question to me during our recent podcast interview and I wasn't sure how to answer it. I am personally not offended by it. It's part of our legacy. That said, I don't throw it around to be politically correct. Some folks are more bold. They use it as the title of their blog.

Comments

[Ian O'Neill]

Flack is an evolving word, less in use today. Somehow it's import has diminished as ever fewer people label someone a 'flack'. Perhaps because it's connotation seems attached to memories of World War Two and air wars in particular, events otherwise forgotten by a majority born too late to remember all that anyway. Strictly post war stuff. And when did the post war era end? Sometime during the Reagan Administration. Still, it's a strong word, which is why it's evolving, and not dead. What will it become? Who's to say? It's inference is concerted attack with a potency capable of causing sudden death (Ostensibly of ideas) at great heights, on behalf of powerful paymasters.