Did you hear? the Obama administration has allegedly been engaging in...gasp...secret efforts to shape public opinion by placing op-eds in papers. Some might call it common sense public relations that are widely used by everyone. To the rightwhing blogosphere intent on proving that Obama is worse than Nixon however this is "astroturf".
Apparently we taught them a new word in our critique of the tea party movement.
This story is gaining traction in the right wing blogosphere and is likely to become the outrage du jour amongst the right wing chattering class before long (beware this is a Malkin link):
A Cleveland Plain Dealer blog first broke the story over the weekend of a "suspicious" letter-writer named "Ellie Light" who submitted more than a dozen pro-Obama letters to the editors in recent weeks using addresses from Philadelphia to California and all points in between. Open-source-optimizing blogger Patterico has added much more information on both "Donald Trump Astroturfing" ("a letter published in multiple places from one person claiming to live in multiple cities") and "David Axelrod Astroturfing" ("identical letters published in multiple places claiming to be from different people").
Kudos to the Plain Dealer for smoking out the initial ringer and Patterico and his readers/tipsters for delving deeper. But so much for the rest of the vaunted gate-keepers of the Fourth Estate, eh?
Nevermind that the story is less than credible. There is absolutely no evidence linking the supposed astroturfer in chief, Ellie Light to the Obama administration and she has dissavowed any connection to the administration:
"I'm flattered, and I must give the Tea Partiers credit for even knowing who [Power] is," Light's e-mail said. "But what I want to point out is that, if I were a person trying to imply this huge groundswell of support for our beleaguered president, then I would have signed the letter with different names. However, as you may have noticed, my main point is that absence of support for the president.
"I am not surprised that an article that tends to discredit a pro-Obama letter-writer has lots of readers. I understand that there are 10 million dittoheads that daily scour the airwaves, print and online press for something nasty to say about the president, so I'm sure your article will get more hits," she wrote in another e-mail later Sunday. "I'm not sure why you would write me that people would probably be interested in what I have to say. My impression is that my letter could contain Chinese food recipes with a Pro-Obama subject line, and the event would be interpreted as fodder for that same highly-motivated, but narrow class of people."
(Might I interlude and say that if she isn't already a member of a democratic PR team, this statement indicates that she has some talent! Sign her up!)
Who's to say she's not an amateur op-ed writer who gets off on getting her letters published? I certainly know the type, I was one in college.
But let's not forget the real point here, namely how comical it is that the same group of people who have no problem being part of a tea party movement that is spearheaded by lobbying firms with ties to corporate america, would call out anyone else on charges of astroturfing with a straight face and expect to be taken seriously.
I mean honestly you can't make this stuff up anymore.
Moving forward the rules of astroturfing are as follows:
Having a corporate lobbying firm bus people in from all over the country to town hall rallies to make it look like the representatives constituents are against health care reform--NOT ASTROTURFING
Allegedly Having a PR person get a letter to the editor in a local paper however will get you labeled the Astroturf Administration