Today in CEOs Behaving Badly: We understand why AOL chief Tim Armstrong was a little upset at the unfortunate struggles of Patch, his well-meaning $300 million experiment in hyper-local news content. He promised AOL that the venture would turn a profit by year’s end, and in order to bring this about he seemingly had no choice but to fire hundreds of the writers, editors, and managers at more than 400 individual Patch sites around the country.

But this hardly excuses the commission of a cardinal PR sin: letting his temper get away with him during a 1,000-strong conference call and firing an employee for taking a photo during his speech. It was mild as outbursts go, but it was recorded for the ages and distributed to every media outlet around.

This wasn’t just any employee, by the way; it was Patch’s creative director Abel Lenz. The fact that such a Trump-worthy incident was terrible PR should be obvious to all, but we’ll go into a bit more detail:

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There is simply no other place to begin this post except in outer space, but the truth is Paula Deen’s decisions wouldn’t make any sense in any galaxy anywhere. This is interstellar bat crap crazy.

The meteoric (yes, we’re running with the space metaphor) decline of Paula Deen’s empire after the eponymous Queen of Butter admitted to using racial slurs was stunning itself; however, the all-consuming PR black hole that developed afterwards was as equally shocking and sad. Ms. Deen’s maudlin and muddled series of dubious apologies and explanations pushed the public beyond feelings of anger, sorrow and disappointment. The public became cynical. Yes, the public took to social media and penned some of the funniest and most creative tweets, posts and memes in a while.

Social media is the house of horrors for celebrities experiencing a PR crisis. So it is absolutely unfathomable that Paula Deen (who just fired her legal team), or someone in her camp, would send out of the following tweet:

My favorite potluck dish is ______ RT me your answer!

— Paula Deen (@Paula_Deen) July 11, 2013

That massive exploding sound you hear is the collective force of everyone in the public’s mind being blown. The tweets below are just a taste of what is to come over the next few days. Kaboom.  Read more

Slate writer David Plotz is calling a recent email he received the “most offensive marketing pitch of all time.” After reading it ourselves, we’d be hard pressed to disagree.

On Tuesday morning, Plotz received an email from someone at Rightster, a London-based video distribution company, proposing that the recent beheading of a Brazilian soccer referee could prove to be a “great AD REVENUE generating opportunity.”

The email read as follows (bold/caps were in original email):

Disgusted, Plotz attempted to contact the person responsible for the email, but instead received a response from a Rightster spokesperson, saying: “We regret deeply and are very sorry for the email and the offense it has caused. The individual involved will be disciplined and we will review our policies and procedures to ensure this does not happen again.” Read more

Life isn’t fair. Some people are born smarter, better looking and more talented than others. It stinks, but that’s life.

So the hard-working public naturally experiences a certain level of Schadenfreude when a beautiful woman with enough confidence to appear in the Miss USA pageant goes down in flames because she flubs a question about the underlying issues of why women are paid less than men. That is an important cultural and economic question, and one that even experts struggle to explain.

But Miss Utah handled that question like a flying squirrel in the cockpit of an airborne plane. She just didn’t know what was going on or what to do. She freaked. It was painful to watch, and riveting, of course. We’re human after all. In less than a minute Miss Utah’s bungled answer to such a complex question underscored the pageant’s rocky relationship with the American public. Read more

The rendering by Diller Scofidio & Renfro via The New York Times

The Municipal Art Society (MAS) invited the press to an event Wednesday morning in which they would be able to take a look at four renderings of the new Madison Square Garden. They’re just ideas at the moment since the actual building of the facility is more than 15 years away, but still. If you’re into this, like the architecture and design press who were invited to the event would be, this is pretty exciting stuff.

Except the MAS had already given the story and the images to The New York Times the night before.

Journalists working for smaller outlets are used to playing second fiddle to top-tier outlets. But really, don’t rub salt in the wound by pulling this kind of stunt. Especially when those other journalists can wound you and do a little salt rubbing in return.

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It seems the only people who can upstage their own bizarre antics are the ones who initially staged them. It turns out that infamous reality TV food show couple Amy and Samy Bouzaglos, co-owners of Amy’s Baking Company (aka ABC Bistro), have both served time in prison for different offenses. Their restaurant, the subject of a surreal episode of Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares show, recently reopened amid ongoing controversy, with curiosity seekers as patrons and full waitstaff turnover.

It’s been nearly three weeks since the meltdown during the show, where the owners exhibited such severe dysfunction that the celebrity chef threw in the towel. The couple fought with each other and with patrons, denied the waiters’ tips, and fired a waitress on the spot. They also provided slow service and offered questionable ingredients, such as frozen ravioli. But that didn’t stop the owners from acting out further. In response to rampant social media criticism, the couple responded with profanity laced tirades, and later said their social media accounts were hacked.

Now the twists in the tale continue. The restaurant recently re-opened, but they haven’t been able to retain any employees. There have been so many gawkers and reporters attempting to gain access that the couple have hired security guards. According to the Arizona Republic, Amy has served time in prison for misusing a social security number when she applied for a bank loan. Samy may be deported after covering up a past history involving drug distribution in Europe.

Samy, an Israeli citizen born in Morocco, recently had an immigration court hearing, continuing a removal process lasting more than two years. He is under ICE investigation for failing to disclose his past history involving drug distribution, threats and extortion on his U.S. immigration petition. International records show he’d served time in prison and is banned from entering France and Germany.

This PRNewser contributor paid a brief visit to the scene of the action in Scottsdale this past Sunday, while spending Memorial Day weekend nearby. After all, one of Samy’s posts urged people to “come to Arizona”, and here’s what we found. The bistro is located in a shopping area in a residential section of Scottsdale. The temperature neared 100 degrees. It was midday and the restaurant wasn’t open yet, so there were no guards on the premises. Still the signs in the window and other passers-by provided clues.

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Why, for the love of all that is decent, human, and empathetic, haven’t brands figured out that it is never okay to exploit a tragedy that irreversibly altered and ended human lives?

In the hot seat for today’s installment of who the hell let this company near a Twitter feed, is food website Epicurious. In the wake of the horrific events at Monday’s Boston Marathon, the company tweeted this to its 385,000 followers:

As a lifetime Massachusetts resident, I was particularly appalled and offended by this gross, clumsy, and unfathomably insensitive attempt at self-promotion. The suggestion that a recipe for cranberry scones or a bowl of cereal could somehow alleviate the sense of fear and loss that swept Boston, Massachusetts, and the country after the explosions would be laughable if it weren’t so terrible.

And then, instead of making real, human apologies or taking any meaningful steps to backtrack or make up for their offense, Epicurious chose to simply tweet the same cookie-cutter mea culpa over and over again: Read more

Today in No, You’re Not a Company Spokesperson news: last week some gamer blogs let their readers know that the new Microsoft Xbox, scheduled for a reveal in May, will require users to maintain “an active internet connection” at all times. Now get ready for a shocker: some people who own Xboxes do not have access to an “always on” connection — and the geeks voiced their disapproval online.

Now for the PR Fail: This outrage irritated creative director Adam Orth, who took to his personal Twitter feed to let the world know it. This message started a conversation in which Orth told the concerned parties that they were just out of luck:Orth made a couple of mistakes here: first, he commented on a story that his employer had yet to announce publicly. More importantly, he effectively told members of his own fanbase to stop complaining.

Microsoft didn’t care for that one bit, and we’ll let Brad Pitt tell you why:

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There is no greater evidence that a public relations debacle has become part of the cultural consciousness than making Saturday Night Live — so today we offer our very bittersweet congratulations to Rutgers University for finding its way into the zeitgeist via a big old PR fail.

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OK, this isn’t funny anymore. Yesterday the Carnival Triumph — the very same cruise ship that tempted many journalists to turn the phrase “poop deck” into a horrible pun — broke loose from a dock near Mobile, Alabama, and knocked two people into the Mobile River. One of the men is still missing. Thankfully, no passengers were aboard and all staffers have been accounted for.

The ship drifted for several hours before being returned to its dock position and surrounded by tugboats for good measure. The cause of this incident was “hurricane-force winds” in the gulf that had nothing to do with Carnival — but of course that doesn’t matter a whole lot to the public.

We honestly don’t know what Carnival can do to combat the cascade of bad news beyond what it’s already done: issuing sincere public apologies, offering refunds to everyone involved and getting ready to defend itself from a class-action lawsuit. Last month New York Senator Chuck Schumer proposed a “bill of rights” for cruise passengers that would give them more power in the case of such technical failures and require every ship to have both a backup power source and a team trained in emergency response.

We have a strong suspicion that the cruise industry doesn’t like Schumer’s proposal. But it’s not like they have any other options at this point.