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The Equaliser works his magic

There is a company in Redwood City, California, with the suggestive name of ReputationDefender. According to its Web site, “ReputationDefender was created in 2006 to defend your good name on the Internet.

Today, ReputationDefender has grown to be the world’s first comprehensive online reputation management and privacy company. We’re the most experienced and most technologically innovative company of our kind ...”

One can only imagine the correspondence they receive:

Dear Reputation Defender:

Things have proceeded from extremely bad to unimaginably worse. I have a problem with unscripted events.

A few years ago I made some unfortunate comments about Jewish people, which I tried to retract, except they appeared in a police log. Now I am again world famous, but not for my dynamic work in the field of motion pictures, but rather as a potty-mouthed Australian cad accused of striking the mother of my child.

Can we turn back the clock to a rosier time? Appreciating your guidance in this matter.

· Mad Mel in Malibu

Thank you for contacting Reputation Defender. A customer service representative will be in touch shortly to discuss your particular case. In the meantime, may we suggest suspending the use of telephonic communications, and perhaps a protracted visit to the western reaches of your native land, i.e. the Outback? As per your next few movie projects, your suspicions are correct: The studios have lost your number. In fact, they are pretending that they never had it.

Dear Sir or Madam,

We are an extremely important person: a committed environmentalist, an experimental farmer, an architectural theoretician and heir to the throne of a once-great nation.

But we are not taken seriously.

We are also starting to look a lot like our father, which is not such a good thing. And our wife is starting to look like our mother. But we suspect there is little you can do about that. The world loved our first wife, although we didn’t, which is rather more detail than we would like to share.

Thank you, and please call us Charles

Charles: Thank you for contacting Reputation Defender. Is it possible that you suffer from a Multiple Personality Disorder? We look forward to discussing your (pl.) case in more detail.

TOP SECRET

Dear R.D.:

Bill Clinton got his reputation back. It is as if he never lost it. How could that possibly have happened? Will we be so lucky?

Co-signed: B. Obama, G.W. Bush

Dear Reputation Defender,

I have been unfairly vilified by a cold and uncaring world. I am hoping you can help me.

Earlier this year, due to events well beyond my control, one of my company’s oil wells malfunctioned in the middle of a vast, deserted ocean. Of course, the ocean contained fish and some lower forms of zooplankton, but most of them fled the area thanks to a very loud explosion that presaged the unhappy events to come.

I have lost my job and there is talk of re-assignment to Siberia, which is deucedly far from the cherrywood bar of the Royal Ocean Racing Club, and from other such comforts and necessities of civilisation.

I want my life back.

T. Hayward, pariah-at-large

Dear Mr. Hayward, thank you for contacting Reputation Defender. Please be advised that some reputational damage can prove to be insurmountable. We are not in a position to offer guarantees.

Dear Reputashun Deffender,

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU. Thanx 2 u, evry1 has 4gotten about me! I am not even in jail, or in a porno! You’re the bestbestbestbest. Tweet me!

Love, Paris Dear R.D.:

I need your help. I’m good. I am really good. The guy who invented me says I’m “insanely great.” But I have trouble making connections. It’s not my fault. Please help.

iPhone 4G

ERROR 404 – Your transmission was interrupted. Please re-send.

© IHT