And I'd Like To Thank - Maybe Fire - My Publicist...

Poor PricewaterhouseCoopers. They get their annual plug at the Academy Awards and Slate Magazine prompty publishes a hatchet job detailing the financial scandals some of its clients have been involved in, going so far as to ask:

But if there were a problem with the votes, or if there were a security breach, could we rely on PwC to detect it?

Writer Daniel Gross goes on to catalogue goings-on at various clients, from Tyco to Yukos, before concluding:

Should all this disqualify PwC from being involved in an event so central to popular culture and the entertainment industry? No. One could assemble a similar catalog of doubts for any of the major accounting firms. (Although the firm's enormously cheesy corporate anthem should disqualify it from being involved in popular culture.) And everybody in Hollywood—agents, producers, studios, distributors—plays games with numbers. In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed auditor is king.

He's trying to make a point about accounting, really, and just using Hollywood and PwC, as his hooks. It struck me as kind of a cheap shot, though.

Can PricewaterhouseCoopers be trusted to count the Academy Awards ballots? [Slate]