The New York Observer‘s Max Abelson takes a deep look into Goldman Sachs’ PR head Lucas van Praag. The piece is perhaps less hard hitting than Charlie Gasparino‘s, which was published in The Daily Beast this past December, where Gasparino wondered if van Praag’s job security was threatened.

Abelson says that van Praag and Goldman continue to come off as too arrogant in their communications:

It isn’t just that the cooed-over firm has become the iconic scoundrel of an entire era. It’s also how much worse they’ve made things for themselves with a continuing communications and PR policy that’s basically a stiffly extended middle finger, waved in the air for all to see.

Howard Rubenstein, who declined to comment on Van praag or Goldman in particular, told Abelson, “In any crisis, the spokesperson, or the head of the company, has to proceed with modesty.”