I have to confess that, before an article referencing her turned up in my feeds, I’d never heard of Nina Garcia. Based on where Garcia’s name is turning up, she’s probably much more familiar to my daughter, who is 19 and pays attention to these sorts of things.

Garcia recently left her job (some say she was fired) as fashion director for Elle magazine, which (according to the gossip sites) put her future as a judge on the cable TV show “Project Runway” at risk. The reason this bit of pop culture got sucked into my feeds, though, was this line, from a gossip blog called Jezebel:

WWD reports that Garcia hired Rubenstein PR to speak for her. And! A little birdie tells us that Rubenstein has handed off some of the Garcia damage control work to its interns, deploying legions of them to comment on sites like Perez Hilton and TMZ. The minions leave encouraging and kind remarks, complete with stats on Nina’s many successes while at Elle in the comments.

Rubenstein Public Relations is the PR arm of Rubenstein Associates. The PR group has a website, kinda, which currently features a home page and an under construction notice, which shows about as much online savvy as having interns pretend to be fans contributing comments to blogs on behalf of a client. (I read through the comments to posts at Perez Hilton cited in the Jezebel article and didn’t see one in which the author disclosed that he or she was a Rubenstein intern.) In a world where authenticity is prized, this behavior, if true, is the opposite of authentic.

I say “if true” because “a little birdie tells us” is hardly conclusive and I’m too busy to play reporter and call Rubenstein. With any luck, though, somebody from the agency is monitoring the blogosphere and will leave a clarifying comment here.

Oh, and don’t fret for poor Nina. It appears she will be back judging next season. I’ll be sure to not miss avoiding a single episode.