I really did figure that after a weekend of some posts about this drama between Shel Israel and Loren Feldman that the story would fade away – and today we’d be talking about something different – like say why iTunes has most George Michael videos up for $0.99 or some other important dribble.

But instead, the story seems to have caught on after our post this past weekend entitled How a videoblogger from NY Outsmarted a so-called “Social Media Expert”. Arrington blogged it on TechCrunch the following day and the spread of discussion around the topic has accelerated since then.

Most interesting I believe is that Loren has secured a sponsor for his puppet show while FastCompany has yet to secure a sponsor for Shel’s real show.

It’s also clear that neither FastCompany nor Scoble know what to do about this other than try to laugh it off – which appears to be the approach that Scoble has been taking gauging by his comments in other sites – and as covered eloquently by Paul Scrivens over at 3by9:

Alright, time for the Scoble part of this entry. Arrington breaks a story that the puppet show gets a sponsor when Shel’s show can’t. That’s a blow no matter how you want to look at it if you are Shel, Scoble or FastCompany. In fact, that is just plain insulting. So what do you do if you are Scoble and you run this ship? Well you tell the world how much you love the puppets of course. Wait, what?

And where is FastCompany’s leadership on this debacle? According to Tyme White over at Tyme Said – they’re nowhere to be found:

Well, they’ve been pretty quiet about this publicly. Perhaps because they are unsure how to deal with the issue as well. Perhaps they thought it would die out on its own. It’s not that I expected an official statement or anything, but more like an iron fist. You know like:

• Scoble, we’re sending someone else to Israel, get the footage you need, while you straighten this mess – you created – out.
• There is no point in shooting more footage when things are backed up
• Why is there a work-flow issue? How can it be resolved?
• Is there a better way to shoot the videos so the editing process is easier?
• These videos are NOT up to our quality standards. Fast Company has a brand to maintain, never forget that.
• Shel, this is how you deal with Loren….

But we’re not seeing any of that…

And now we’re reduced to reading things like this again from Shel:

@1938Media You’ve had your fun at my expense. Why won’t you just give me the domaine? Why are you doing this?

Shel, I love ya man, you’re one of the nicest guys on the internet, but I don’t think you get it… Loren’s own twitter response says it all:

@shelisrael – Don’t beg. It’s unbecoming to a man, a puppet or even Hoot the Owl. Think of a plan. Think Shel, there IS a way out of this.