Hey, It Worked for NCIS!

ICE is rolling out a spiffy PR campaign to gloss over the fact that they run black-site Constitution-free prisons within the United States. Their new motto is along the lines of "ICE: We Do More Than Abuse Immigrants."

It might work. It took only one hit TV show for NCIS to build its reputation though, to be fair, it was pretty much only in the Navy that people had known of NCIS or its reputation of being the Navy's master workshop of cover-up artists (which they are still very good at).

On the other hand, even having a huge `60s TV hit series didn't help the FBI when it later came to light that, under their long-time closet-case of a director, the FBI was little more than a fascist goon squad that worked to entrench him in power. The TV show was kind of forgotten once it came out that the FBI had little regard for the Constitution and the FBI paid the price for it.

Hell, the FBI still, from time to time, engages in trying to frame innocent people for high-profile crimes and some of their ancient fuckery, such as the decades' long imprisonment of innocent men in Boston in order to protect Whitey Bulger (and covering up for him when he killed people), is still coming to light. Where the FBI looks good is only because their agents refused to get involved with torturing people.

TV can't always help; the Department of Homeland Stupidity was involved in a show, "Homeland Security", that sank faster than a bar of lead tossed into a pond.

PR campaigns are a sign of inability to fix structural problems, which is why BP spent over $50 million in PR after its well began spewing crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico. ICE's attempted makeover is putting lipstick on a very large and very ugly pig.