Astroturfing - Say it with Me
I learned a new word today - Astroturfing. According to the article below it's "The name for mass corporate marketing disguised as grassroots efforts by individuals..." That's what their calling the "Tea Parties" that have supposedly been spontaneously popping up all over the country lately in protest against the Obama stimulus package. Interestingly enough, these tea parties have websites whose domain names were bought back in September of 2008.
Spontaneous Uprising? Corporate Lobbyists Helping To Orchestrate Radical Anti-Obama Tea Party Protests
I can understand people being frustrated with the economy and how it is being handled. Things are bad and I suspect they're going to get a lot worse as we travel further down this road. These Rovian tactics do not help in a time when conservatives should be acting as real watchdogs on Democratic policies and spending. It also obscures and nullifies actual grassroots groups that are pushing for real bank resistance against things like raising the rates of folks that have always paid their bills on time and ruining the credit ratings of responsible people by dropping their credit allotment without warning and pushing some over into default. Isn't it nice to know that the Republican "insurgency" is more concerned with making Obama look bad than it is with helping American out of this mess?
Spontaneous Uprising? Corporate Lobbyists Helping To Orchestrate Radical Anti-Obama Tea Party Protests
I can understand people being frustrated with the economy and how it is being handled. Things are bad and I suspect they're going to get a lot worse as we travel further down this road. These Rovian tactics do not help in a time when conservatives should be acting as real watchdogs on Democratic policies and spending. It also obscures and nullifies actual grassroots groups that are pushing for real bank resistance against things like raising the rates of folks that have always paid their bills on time and ruining the credit ratings of responsible people by dropping their credit allotment without warning and pushing some over into default. Isn't it nice to know that the Republican "insurgency" is more concerned with making Obama look bad than it is with helping American out of this mess?