Several days ago, Kim Krause wrote here on the topic of Is SEO a "Black Art"? where she links to a blog entry by guru marketer Seth Godin. Since then a lot of discussion has been taking place in the SEO/SEM forums. Danny Sullivan, editor of Search Engine Watch shot off an email to Seth Godin.
After receiving Seth Godin's response, Danny's reaction was "Personally, I'm rather tired of the entire SEM industry being tarred with the same brush. I'm giving a lot of thought to what I'll say about this in my keynote for the next SES show. My feeling is that something needs to happen to clean our image up. We can reopen the whole "ethical/white hat" debate, but I don't see that as the solution."
Danny has been discussing this topic at Cre8asite Forum and Search Engine Watch Forums.