One Trick Pony

You know the world is getting smaller when your inbox begins to fill up with spam in exotic languages. I’m used to getting email in Chinese, Portuguese and Spanish, but among the 80 messages in this morning’s mail was this:

Tahukah anda tentang syarikat Sure Return Corporation Sdn Bhd atau lebih dikenali dengan nama SURECO?

SURECO adalah syarikat MLM 100% milik Bumiputera Melayu Islam yang begitu hangat diperkatakan sekarang. Ianya diasaskan oleh ahli lembaga pengarah yang berpengalaman luas di arena MLM dan berkebolehan di dalam bidang-bidang yang diperlukan bagi menjana perniagaan syarikat.

It’s Malaysian. No idea what they’re selling, though it seems to include 100% milik. Got milik?

While watching a rerun of the State of the Union, I’m running Gulf War 2, a cutting edge simulation of the war that looms ahead. Looks entirely accurate to me.

Now I’d like to see a simulation that shows where the money is going to come from that will fund all these threats and promises, and what magic is going to transform Iraq into a democracy when it’s over.

It’s all voodoo. I haven’t been this disgusted and disdainful since 1974. He even said “nuke-yu-lar”.

A full nine days after it surfaced in the blogosphere, The New York Times has written about Astroturf. Apparently Planned Parenthood does it, too.

“The editors issue alerts and queries on a 600-member e-mail list run by the National Conference of Editorial Writers. Last week, for example, an editor from Nebraska posted a questionable letter about the Pledge of Allegiance and the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Within minutes, editors from Wisconsin, Tennessee, Illinois and Nebraska responded, saying they had received the same letter.

“It’s instant communication among us,” said Lynnell Burkett, the editorial page editor of The San Antonio Express-News. “It’s extremely helpful, every day, several times a day.”

So, even without my million dollar idea, they’re networking with each other to ferret these things out. With only partial success, it seems.

Thanks to Metafilter for the pointer to Today’s Front Pages. The front pages of 154 newspapers around the globe are updated daily. A wonderful resource.

This would be a cool core to build a WebQuest around. The central question would be What Makes Something News? Years ago there was an email based classroom activity in which kids everywhere would collaborate and compile what was on the front page of all their local papers on a given day. They’d then analyze the headlines and discover patterns across regions and cultures and the fact that local stories trump global ones most of the time.

Like most telecollaboration lessons, there was a whole lot of logistical overhead required… more than most teachers have the time or patience for. This site makes it possible to take a more comprehensive look at news without all the coordination.

OK… I’m back to astroturf, but I’m doing it with a newfound positivity! Got a letter from Stephen Phelps of the Bristol (VA) Herald Courier, who just wrote an editorial titled Don’t let ‘em put words in your mouth. He received 8 identical Astroturf letters, Googled to see if there were more out there, and wrote to the submitters to investigate the source. Good spadework, Stephen!

“It wasn’t party discipline or uniformity of thought that made America great, after all — certainly not people sending in letters to the editor that they didn’t write. It was a majestic cacophony of voices, raised in perpetual argument, all counterpoint rather than harmony. It was original thinking. It was a passion for freedom, an eagerness to take part in the greatest experiment the world has ever known.”

A thought that just occurred to me: Someone (perhaps Google) should provide a service to newspaper editors. Editors would paste letters they receive into a web-based form and Google-check it against what’s already out there and what other editors have already submitted. It would be very similar to the way teachers use TurnItIn.com to detect plagiarized term papers. In fact, this would make a great sideline for Turnitin.

There… that’s my million dollar idea for the day. Now someone go do it and send me 1% of the proceeds. Thank you.

With rumbles of war, the stock market plummeting, budget cuts everywhere, it’s easy to get into a funk. Surely there’s a path that gets us out of this, I was thinking, just as I ran across the Positive Revolution Page. It’s an interesting stance to take on life, based on The Yellow Book by Edward deBono… one of my favorite creative thinking gurus.

It’s hard to put ideas forward like this without crossing over into flaky new age territory, but you can’t beat the appeal of positivity. I’m going to pick up the book. If I start acting more sunny and less crusty, that’s why.

OK… I’m going to stop posting about this right after this. Promise. The netters’ outing of the GOP’s astroturf campaign is being covered by a UK site with three articles so far: the first news (already noted here 2 days ago), then the sordid details on how it was done. It’s all automated, including printing the envelope with the newspaper’s address.

The Inquirer has even posted a satirical apology with a comparison between this and the Nigerian spam most people get daily. Funny! Thanks to Susan Jesson-Ward for the heads up.

I’m going to stop adding to this list. Gary Stock has the definitive collection of appearances of this letter. Looks as though new ones are still being printed by clueless (or at least Google-less) editors. What a cynical ploy!

As linked by Paul Boutin, Mike Magee of the Inquirer has traced the source of the Bush Astroturf (phony grass roots) letter to the GOP Team Leader site. I’m tempted to sign up to be a ‘team leader’ so that I can be first to catch the next wave, but my name is probably in some database of enemies already.

The GOP, apparently, as several bloggers and other netizens have already pointed out. It’s fair play, I suppose, to urge your fellow travelers to write letters to newspapers and even to give them talking points to guide their writing, but this goes well beyond that. Over the last three weeks, the following lettter has appeared verbatim all over the country, each signed (presumably) by a local reader. Here’s the letter:

When it comes to the economy, President Bush is demonstrating genuine leadership. The economic growth package he recently proposed takes us in the right direction by accelerating the successful tax cuts of 2001, providing marriage-penalty relief and providing incentives for individuals and small businesses to save and invest.

Contrary to the class-warfare rhetoric attacking the president’s plan, the proposal helps everyone who pays taxes, and especially the middle class. This year alone, 92 million taxpayers will receive an immediate tax cut averaging $1,083, and 46 million married couples will get back an average of $1,714. That’s not pocket change for a family struggling through uncertain economic times. Combined with the president’s new initiatives to help the unemployed, this plan gets people back to work and helps every sector of our economy.

I Googled for “the proposal helps everyone who pays taxes”, to see the extent of this spamming. Here’s what I’ve found:

They’re all identical! Either these Republiclones are completely bereft of imagination and unable to give the letter a local spin or personal voice or… more sinister… the authors are all fictitious. Either way, this strikes me as a disingenuous way to warp public opinion. They’re trying to make it look as though ordinary people support a policy that doesn’t really help ordinary people. Let’s not be fooled.

Postscript: This isn’t the first time this has happened. In November and December, another letter crowing about the midterm elections appeared in 34 papers. Failure Is Impossible has the list and some advice on how to respond. I’ve written the editors of each of the publications on the list above urging them to check Google before falling for this again.