America is angry. So as we've always done throughout our history, when we get angry we look for a scapegoat. And our scapegoat now is those no good scoundrels at AIG who had the nerve to award bonuses to the same managers that got us into this financial mess in the first place.

I was born in Brooklyn, so I know from anger and it doesn't really bother me. It seems like a healthy way to blow off steam. Mostly I get angry when the Mets play like bums or the driver in front of me is an idiot or the pundit on TV is so incredibly dumb. I may get loud but I never get violent.

Watching the CEO of AIG squirm before the venom directed at him by Congress, and listening to him explain to an angry mob of Americans dying to tar and feather his bonus babies that he couldn't release their names because he feared for their safety, I was struck with just one thought. If this guy had only listened to his PR people, he wouldn't be in this mess.

No self-respecting public relations counselor would let a client go before a hostile audience with a message like, "I've asked them to return half their bonus." The PR pro's response to that hypothetical answer in the Q&A prep session they surely did before the hearing must have been, "Are you nuts?"

AIG got in this mess because of bad corporate financial decisions, but they keep digging the hole deeper by making bad corporate communications decisions. Maybe the CEO didn't anticipate the hostility of the public outcry, but their PR team surely did. And that team was probably counseling the CEO to say something like "I don't care about contracts, I don't care how many managers quit rather than give back their bonus, there is no way that any of us will accept another dime from the American taxpayers until we right this ship and make things square with the taxpayers for showing so much faith in us."

Maybe it's hard to swallow for someone so used to having all the answers, but sometimes even a CEO needs to realize that it's time to shut up and listen. The bottom line is, it is not the American people that need anger management; it is the management at AIG.