After coming home to central NJ earlier this week from a great trip to Austin to see friends and attend Netroots Nation, I am spending this weekend back visiting my parents in the Philly suburbs. My parents are registered Republicans, but aren't frothing wingnuts and don't like the situation in Iraq, etc. They are still suspicious of Obama, though, especially his "plan to tax Social Security" (which, being retired, is the main thing they talk about).
This morning, my mother shoved a copy of "The Bulletin" under my nose, and insisted I read the editorial by Herb Denenberg about "Reasons Not to Vote for Obama".
It's filled with garbage that makes it clear Denenberg is doing nothing but recycling GOP talking points (Obama wants to increase the "death tax", is "tax and spend liberal", and it's wrong for him to object to scurrilous attacks on his wife, etc.)
Mom tells me that she doesn't even subscribe to, nor even wants to receive, the Bulletin. She says it just started showing up in her driveway a while ago. She actually wants it to stop, mainly because she's worried that if she and dad go on a trip, she knows how to get the Inquirer (the main Philly paper) stopped for the duration, but she has no idea how to stop the Bulletin -- and she fears that a pile of undelivered papers in the driveway would be a signal that they're out and invite burglars.
When she told me this I took a closer look at the paper. It's thin, with only 1 news section and a thin entertainment insert. Its nominal price is $0.25! It contains no ads whatsoever, and seems to publish only right-wing columnists (beyond Deneberg, there's not one but TWO pieces by Jonah "Doughbob Loadpants" Goldberg in this thing!) I also noticed that it contains no news article from wire services like AP or Reuters, only by Bulletin staff writers. I wondered how such a thing could exist -- it can't be making money if it is being given away to people who don't even want it, and has no ads!
I looked at their online paper, linked above, and grew even more suspicious. The website has an awful layout and most of its "letters to the editor" are many months out of date. All the opinion pieces are scurrilous right-wingnut crap, from Daniel "Crack" Pipes to Walter Williams (the "John Olin Professor of Economics at George Mason U."!)
I grew up in Philly and remember the Bulletin as the other major daily paper in my youth before it folded, leaving the Inquirer the only large metro newspaper (though we do also have the Daily News, which features Will Bunch). It dawned on me that the only way this Bulletin could exists is as a right-wing propaganda organ paid for by some rich wingnut donor, trading on the old Bulletin name to make folks who might remember the real Bulletin from years ago think "Oh, the Bulletin's back!" and take it seriously.
I haven't found much about the real powers behind this paper, save some mentions in this diary about another anti-Clinton wingnut taking point published in this paper some month back.
So, is there a good reference online for who the real powers are behind this thing that I can point out to my folks, to prove to them my "conspiracy theory" that this whole "newspaper" is a sham?