...and the whole thing blew up in my face!"
"LEAVE 0BAMA ALONE!!!!!"
Posted on 01/26/2010 3:21:45 AM PST by Man50D
Obama supporters are flooding unsuspecting newspapers with pro-Obama letters purportedly from average citizens – with duplicate messages appearing in more than 70 publications across the nation.
One writer identified as "Ellie Light" has published identical form letters in newspapers around the country. Sabrina Eaton of the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported Light claims to have different hometowns within the respective newspaper readership areas. Each letter is nearly identical in grammar, style and subject.
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
Doubtless planted in fertile soil, imbued with ample loads of manure.
Joseph Goebbels would be proud.
Even the Clinton’s didn’t think of this!
How do we know that ‘Even the Clinton’s didn’t think of this!’????
The real story is that the newspapers all rush to print a glowing pro-Obama letter, while negative ones - even if written in a far more eloquent prose - are summarily tossed in the trash.
We get those in our local paper’s “Letters To The Editor”, supposedly from private individuals, but obviously from party-line spokesmen.
PING!
Aside from Light’s messages, duplicate pro-Obama letters have been submitted to dozens of publications by writers identified as “Jan Chen,” “Gloria Elle,” “Cherry Jimenez,” “Janet Leigh,” “Earnest Gardner,” “Jen Park,” “Lars Deerman,” “John F. Stott,” “Gordon Adams,” “Nancy Speed,” “Sheila Price,” “Clarence Ndangam,” “Vernetta Mason,” “Greg Mitchell,” “Ermelinda Giurato,” “J. Scott Piper,” “Robert Vander Molen” and “Terri Reese.”
Just as news of Light’s duplicate messages broke, readers began finding various letters written by “Mark Spivey,” a man who simultaneously claims to live in San Diego, Calif., and Naples, Fla. His pro-Obama letter, “Considering Afghanistan,” was published by the Minnesota Daily, the Baltimore Chronicle, the San Diego Union-Tribune and Naples News.
Patterico’s Pontifications also shared this letter from a Jan Chen of Seattle, published in Seattle’s Northwest Asian Weekly:
As one listens to the Republican anger over health care reform, one can imagine an anti-government protester cheerfully paying premiums on insurance policies that drop you after you make a claim, or happily sauntering out of an emergency room that denied them treatment because of a coverage problem. One can imagine a town hall sign-waver enthusiastically forking over most of their pay to bill collectors after suffering a catastrophic injury, thinking, “Wow, the free market system is great.”
Meanwhile, a woman identified as Gloria Elle wrote a nearly identical letter to the editor published by the Baltimore Chronicle:
As one listens to the Republican anger over health care reform, one can imagine an anti-government protester cheerfully paying premiums on insurance policies that cancel you for making a claim, or happily sauntering out of an emergency room that denied them treatment because of a coverage problem. One can imagine a town-hall sign-waver enthusiastically forking over most of their pay to bill collectors after suffering a catastrophic injury, thinking, “Wow, the free market system is great.”
http://patterico.com/2010/01/25/newspaper-editors-begin-to-address-pro-obama-astroturfing/
First, courtesy of SarahW on Twitter, we have the editor of Ohio’s Chillicothe Gazette.
Interestingly, he appears to understand the significance of the issue, and has implemented procedures to prevent Astroturfing. But they didn’t work, because of the dishonesty of “Light”:
By now, much is being made of the letter-writing campaign of “Ellie Light”, who apparently had her letter defending President Obama published in the Jan. 17 Gazette and — both before and after — a lot of newspapers and with different local addresses.
I’ve written several times on Astroturfing — a way of sending form political letters to multiple news outlets with a few key strokes — and authored a column on Jan. 17 on how the Gazette was bolstering Opinion page procedures to make sure the opinions submitted were true and accurate.
Yes, the irony of having a letter to the editor situation blow up in your face just days after saying the newspaper is following new procedures isn’t lost on me. It’s embarrassing and regrettable.
But if we hadn’t followed those procedures, I’d feel a lot worse.
In this case we did follow them and were lied to about the local nature of the opinion and the address used. In short, we were duped.
Just how he was duped is fascinating, and I think deals a blow to the idea that Light is an unsophisticated grandma:
We received Light’s letter via e-mail (sent from a Yahoo! address) on Jan. 6. The letter did not appear to have the telltale signs of Astroturf (framed a specific way, key phrases, etc.). One thing the original letter did not contain, however, was a street address or a phone number, which is required for our verification purposes.
So, on Jan. 7, we wrote her a reply e-mail and asked her to provide both. She provided a street address on Cherokee Road in Chillicothe and a phone number and verified both her opinion and her street as local.
Please tell me that picture is photoshopped. No one can be that stupid - can they?
I wonder if these people teach their kids that cheating is wrong..
Well, there's a blast from the past. Back in the 60's, my college professor in History, Stanley Plastrik, was on the staff of that commie rag for a while. He also was co-founder and editor of Dissent magazine, another socialist/commie rag.
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