What has stirred the news cycle turd bowl is the caption below Kobe Bryant that takes the war metaphor farther, claiming he'll never leave his "clip empty." An innocuous (a perhaps uninspired and unoriginal) piece of creative, that is if it appeared any other month of the year. January just happened to also be when two other NBA players (Javaris Crittendon and Gilbert Arenas) were suspended for bringing guns to an NBA arena. 

The piece will get pulled. The negative attention, in my opinion, is not at all good, but not terribly bad either. What I'm left wondering is how much blame can be left with the creative team (I assume cam from W+K), specifically the copy writer. I'm sure it was approved by a CD, by the agency's legal, by the client's legal, the publisher's legal, and everyone in between. And it's not always going to be so easy to stay up to date with the product/client you're working on, but the issue at stake is how involved is enough? How immersed in lady's underwear, bar soup and the like do you need to be a good by your client? The CW on this piece may not be very interested in NBA basketball, or sports in general. But somewhere in between reading every applicable trade and being totally uninformed lies a happy medium.

With all the advantages of modern communications, some steps should be taken. Set up a Google Alert and maybe start following one or two sources on twitter, just so you don't totally miss the big story that everyone in the world you're talking to is talking about.