While listening to progressive talk show host Christine Craft on Friday while she was talking about the YearlyKos convention, I heard her called it an "astroturf" convention.
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The political term "astroturf" comes from the political term "grassroots", which describes citizen activists who spontaneously come together to work for their causes. Astroturf groups are artificial groups which are sponsored by individuals or corporations with money to blow, and who hire their "activists" and pretend to be working "for the people".
I found it very odd that anyone would consider the bloggers of Kos or the many other bloggers at the YearlyKos to be "astroturf". This is doubly odd coming from someone who claims to be a progressive radio show host, as does Ms. Craft. She has been both a TV reporter and a talk show host, and wrote a book called "Too Old, Too Ugly, and Not Defferential to Men" in which she describes the gender bias she encountered in her life. More about her at Wikipedia.
In fact, since Ms. Craft is a progressive, it's even worse that she refers to YearlyKos as "astroturf" because then regressives can point to her and say "see, even she is against them".
Unless Ms. Craft misspoke, I think she's merely uninformed about how non "astroturf" Daily Kos is, and just needs to be gently better informed about how grassroots the netroots really are.
Her regular talk show is at 1240 AM Talk City Sacramento. I heard her while she was substituting for Peter B. Collins on his radio show.
jtg