Inevitably, the PR guy gets blamed. It's incredibly short-sighted in many cases. But when a company gets drubbed in the media the way Goldman Sachs (GS Goldman Sachs news) has, a drumbeat starts up internally and the target inevitably is the PR guy. You can count on the fact that insiders at Goldman Sachs are grumbling about their PR guy, Lucas van Praag, who has generated a lot of media attention as of late.

When the PR is getting ink, something is wrong. Trust me on that. Indeed, the reports have not been flattering. The New York Post writes that criticism of the firm "points directly to Goldman's silver-tongued spokesman, Lucas Van Praag. [He] has responded to criticism in a ham-fisted way, further ostracizing the firm. Indeed, over the course of the crisis British-born Van Praag, who has an uncanny facility with the Queen's English, has become the embodiment of the view of Goldman as an elitist institution."

The New York Observer notes that people are stunned at "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." While the likes of Charles Gasparino has called for Van Praag to lose his job, CEO Lloyd Blankfein seems to support him. At some point, however, the needs of the company come first. I do not think some sort of transition is necessarily out of the question.

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