Although we might like to think that when someone mentions the Cayman Islands it conjures up a picture of beauty, sunshine, clear skies, crystal blue seas, white sand, soft cool breezes and palm trees. This is precisely what our Islands are – all this and more.

Do you remember the oft quoted phrase which described “the islands that time forgot”? That WAS us. It’s not ‘IS’ us, anymore.

If one reads all the Google Alerts that we in the media get each day the name “Cayman Islands” pops up 9 times out of 10 with the word “notorious” in front of it and most likely referring to all the millions Mitt Romney, the Republican wannabe president of the USA, has stashed away here. Even the president, Barack Obama himself, referred to Grand Cayman’s Ugland House as “the biggest scam in the world”.

Outside the Republican Convention in Tampa, Fl., Obama campaigners were handing out “goody” bags to reporters that included anti-Mitt Romney propaganda like a passport stamped in the Cayman Islands— a reminder of Romney’s foreign bank accounts here.

Last week we had, it seemed, the whole world focusing on a yacht that was flying a Cayman flag or was it? ABC News’ Brian Ross spent the week reporting on the various private parties and published a story about a big donor bash, held on board a “party yacht” named the “Cracker Bay.” The kicker, according to Ross, was that the yacht was proudly flying a flag from the Cayman Islands. Oh my goodness. How terrible. The story mentioned Romney’s yacht, which it wasn’t, and then various media outlets announced that the Cayman flag wasn’t. They said it was Bermudian. It wasn’t. It was Caymanian after all. Phew! Bermuda almost stole our publicity – well they did a bit, but we came back strong, didn’t we?

It’s a feather in our caps that reporters were taking pictures of the Cayman Islands flag and not the attendees at the convention and the private parties.

Our country couldn’t pay for that publicity.

However, I haven’t answered my question, “is bad publicity good?”

According to the 19th century American showman and circus owner, Phineas T. Barnum, “there’s no such thing as bad publicity”. Even that is in dispute – the quote and who said it!  Bad publicity can indeed ruin your reputation and I would certainly prefer the word “beautiful” attached to the front of “Cayman” and not “notorious”.

In the January 1915 edition of The Atlanta Constitution” it said “all publicity is good if it is intelligent”. Aha. Most of the publicity surrounding Mitt Romney and the Cayman Islands hasn’t been intelligent at all. It’s been an attempt by most of the major networks to focus the American public’s attention on Mitt Romney hiding his money away in our notorious tax haven so as to defraud the country of its rightful tax money. Even though it is not against the law, shows prudence and the man has some business savvy. All this might make him a person with the right credentials to actually be able to run a country! But no!

It doesn’t matter that under Obama’s administration:

“79 percent” of all green-jobs spending in Obama’s $800 billion stimulus package went to foreign companies, with the largest payment going to a bankrupt Australian company. For example, the Obama Administration spent $1.6 billion on Chinese and other foreign wind power.

“Nearly $2 billion . . . has been spent on wind power. . .But a study found nearly 80 percent of that money has gone to foreign manufacturers of wind turbines.

“Most of the jobs are going overseas,” said Russ Choma at the Investigative Reporting Workshop. He analyzed which foreign firms had accepted the most stimulus money. “According to our estimates, about 6,000 jobs have been created overseas, and maybe a couple hundred have been created in the U.S.”

So the association the Cayman Islands has with Romney is in reality a good thing.

Oscar Wilde said, “The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.”

I prefer Irish Republican and wit, Brendan Behan’s opinion:

“There’s no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary.”