It is a time of freedom and fear, of Gaia and of borders, of many paths and the widening of a universal toll road, emptying country and swelling cities, of the public bought into privacy and the privacy of the public sold into invisible data banks and knowing algorithms. It is the time of the warrior's peace and the miser's charity, when the planting of a seed is an act of conscientious objection.

These are the times when maps fade and direction is lost. Forwards is backwards now, so we glance sideways at the strange lands through which we are all passing, knowing for certain only that our destination has disappeared. We are unready to meet these times, but we proceed nonetheless, adapting as we wander, reshaping the Earth with every tread.

Behind us we have left the old times, the standard times, the high times. Welcome to the irregular times.


 
Last year, the Republican Party started getting its followers to send text written by GOP staffers to newspapers across the country, with authorship deceptively claimed by people who live in the area. This unethical practice was quickly dubbed "astroturf" for its ability to generate the fake appearance of grassroots support for the Bush agenda.

Earlier this year, the Bush Campaign embraced astroturf as part of its dirty tricks toolbag, allowing thousands of letters to be sent to newspaper editors' pages in support of Bush's education policy. (The John Kerry campaign doesn't use astroturf as a tactic, in case you were wondering.)

Now George W. Bush and the Republicans have yet again managed to take astroturf to new lows. At the official campaign site officially authorized by George W. Bush, seven tabs appear at the top. Under each of these seven tabs, there's a box with the title "TAKE ACTION ON ________". In that box, there's a link called "write editors," which takes you to a DIFFERENT PIECE OF PLAGIARIST CANNED ASTROTURF for each of the seven subjects. That's right, George W. Bush's astroturf monster has been morphed into a seven-headed hydra.

It's going to take everyone's concerted effort to cut all seven heads off the body of Bush's synthesized, amoral publicity machine. Here's what to do:

1. Hold your nose and click here to visit George W. Bush's campaign web page.

2. Click on one of the seven tabs at the top of the page, each with a theme.

3. You'll be taken to a new page. Ignore the propaganda and look for the box that says "TAKE ACTION ON _________", and click the link that says "Write Editors."

4. You'll again be taken to a new page, one that shows a bunch of local newspapers and newsletters. Click on the box next to each and every one.

5. Scroll down the page a bit and enter the appropriate information in the "Write your Newspaper Editors" section. I suggest that as a subject, you enter a phrase of warning. To be maximally effective in the "Letter" section, let the newsrooms know that plagiarized material is on the way from the Bush campaign and include the canned text (which is in the window to the right) so the editors of these papers know what to look out for. I've included the letter I wrote to newspapers in my area over to the left, but FOR PETE'S SAKE write your own letter -- nothing would be worse that astroturfing in an effort to stop astroturf.

6. Enter your contact information, make sure "email letter" is selected, then click the "Send It!" button.

And that's it! Now you've done your part to shut the Seven-Headed Bush Plagiarism Hydra down and restore integrity to the journalistic enterprise in your neck of the woods. Doesn't that make you feel a bit better?

UPDATE: In case you were wondering, among the seven canned letters George W. Bush asks his followers to send with their names as authors, there's one with a subject of the environment. But even that canned letter, written by the Bush campaign, cannot manage to mention even one environmentally-friendly Bush administration policy by name. The astroturf letter on the environment is the shortest of all seven, and that's pretty telling.



Posted by James Cook at 7:45 PM. # (permalink)




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