…one day we’ll all be asking, “where were you the day the right wing blogosphere lost its collective shit over a self-important nobody named Ellie Light“?
Me, I was at home, watching football, doing my best not to act like some political hyena or wannabe investigative journalist. Unlike most everyone else.
But then, I’ve never been much of a pack animal, anyway.
outlaw. yawn.
I think the cynicism this sort of astroturfing breeds is kind of a bad thing. What the dirty socialists are doing is invalidating commentings and letters and anything else what’s too too too on target. Which is what most commentings and letters aspire to be.
It’s very trashy what our little country is becoming.
here is a song what looks back to a simpler less trashy time… it’s Australian which isn’t surprising cause of they have the luxury to indulge reminiscings, being that they have their shit together and all
Print news can’t die fast enough!
Similar things have been done for many, many years. In my area there is a small town that has been for years a hot bed for Dem Party activists. When some item heated up letters from them would appear that hit all the same talking points in the local paper. Other papers would have letters hitting the same points also from the same or other activists. Getting more than one paper you could see the wave crashing across them all.
That experience is why I always figured the internet trolls were probably an updated and electronically sped up version of the same operation. Talking points go out and the local activists march to spread the manure where they can do so.
That they accuse the right of the same thing is a confirmation since that has been a tactic used extensively since the Clinton “War-room” days of the early nineties.
The only thing exposed by this story is the sloppiness of newspaper’s staff. Even that is no surprise to anyone who reads the papers and can spell.
Yes, , the wingnuts are making too much of this isolated incident. In addition, the Republicans do it, too, only moreso.
Jen Park
Anytown, USA
I find the Ellie Light kerfluffle interesting because of what it says about how far down the mineshaft Obama’s support, his real support, has fallen.
Homey has to pay somebody to write letters in support of his policies? He may as well resign now.
I watched the disappointing loss by the Vikings.
I wonder if anyone is going to wake up and notice just how bad The Saints defense is?
A defense cannot count on turnovers. Pretty much one less turnover by the Vikings and the Saints lose.
Think about it, the Vikings turned the ball over, what, 5 times? So, the Vikings limit themselves to 4 turnovers, they most likely win.
That does not bode well for the Saints in the Superbowl.
The answer to this sort of speech is more speech. The problem with lies is that eventually the entire web falls apart. There is a real advantage to being right. (no pun intended)
That would be “lost its shit.”
Yea, what’s the big deal?
taking ownership of my sockpuppet.
Growing up in Florida, way back in the late 70’s, I remember being taught by my former hippie teachers that the local press was owned by the ‘real estate interests’ and therefore could not be trusted. Letters to the editor were especially suspect since they were purportedly the voice of the people, yet only saw print at the whims of editors beholden to the interests of advertisers.
You can learn a lot in school.
I’m not sure of the answer, but the question is whether or not this is the work of Obama’s Tracy Russo.
Yeah, Joy, I already made the correction. The disadvantage to dashing this kind of thing off before you rush out to take the kid to school.
Well, one disadvantage. Another is that you tend not to give a fuck.
This is the sort of tactic what will encourage people to delete dissenting comments. It’s really a lot not America I think, but then…
I was going to ask what you were doing up so early, but now I know.
Yeah, happy. GET OUTRAGED!
Let’s see what we can dig up on this chick’s family. And post it on the internet. For the integrity!
Obie was a tool months and years ago — his fail papers are being printed as we speak. Give it a few more months and years and we’ll have a nice comfy R establishment back in power, keeping global interconnectivity well oiled and humming.
It starts and ends with power and money. You tell some folks that and they won’t believe you.
The only thing unusual about the “Ellie Light” business is that someone in the dead tree media noticed it… and that using the same name for all of them was extraordinarily clumsy.
Other than that, meh.
It’s not a chick, Jeff.
It’s four federal employees in a cubicle down at the Bureau of Weights and Measures, all making about 100,000 dollars a year to do their part in supporting the advent of the Communist States of America.
Overwrought? Over-the-top? Hyperbolic?
I’m not interested in finding out any of her personal information. But, if she’s being paid (by me) to write fake letters-to-the editor…
And, by “she” I mean whomever – if it is Tract Russo. Or any member of Obama’s “new media specialists.”
it’s more just how gross it is than how enraging I think… and I saw this at Mr. Dan’s yesterday about how the dirty socialists are for reals hurting people who are not dirty socialists.
It’s just disappointing I think… how determined we are to run our little republic off the rails.
Can’t the recipients do some of that Kung-fu that tells you where the emails originated?
If Ellie didn’t bother to change her name from email to email it is likely that she/he/they didn’t bother to cover her digital tracks either.
I smell the pungent odor of Federal Campaigning.
Add me to the list of “concerned” not enraged. Certainly not “outraged” since I think I lost that ability months and months ago.
ACORN! Your tax dollars not doing jack…
My bet: Probably not an actual Fed agency, just a grant recipient. Got to keep that one degree of separation for the plausable deniability.
oh, my bad, then.
Made it to The Corner.
Now you KNOW it’s important.
Huh. I thought the editorial desk wrote all the letters themselves anyway.
At first blush, perhaps because my outrage-o-meter has long since broken, I don’t think this is that much of a story, mostly because letters to the editor are often from cranks anyway. It is somewhat interesting, though, and probably worth noting in passing, at least.
I’m sure this is just an “isolated incident” and not evidence of some orchestrated conspiracy.
More likely, it’s an O-bot that just decided that Mean Old Tea Partiers were soiling the name of her Messiah, and she needed to correct the record.
FOR THE SALVATION!
Isn’t this just one of the jobs “created or saved” by the stimulus?
I’m getting emails saying I’m being coy here, and that my real reason for posting this has to do with… uh, well, hard to say, really. Something about a Hot Air byline, and HIM, who is at least doing more than writing “wow” from time to time and posting it on the front page.
Who HE is I don’t know. All the info I have on this story I got from a couple of Joy McCann emails directing my attention and outrage.
This post was intended to note that I have no particular interest or outrage to offer on the story. In the past, I might have written a post about what this all “means,” from a semiotic (and so epistemological) perspective, but we’re way beyond that now. Nobody much cares about any of that stuff. On blogs (and in newspapers), it’s all about playing political gotcha, getting your particular OUTRAGE linked by Instapundit (or maybe Hot Air, or the Corner, or whomever), ginning up traffic, playing pretend journalist, etc. Ego, self-righteousness, validation.
I am not a journalist. I write on a blog. Ellie Light is likely a douchebag, if she even exists. If she doesn’t, well, the story, then, is that newspaper letters-page editors are gullible partisans, most of who lean left and most of whom are swayed by selection bias. Or about campaign workers sockpuppeting.
Not really a groundbreaking revelation in either case — but hey, there’s a WILDING, and I NEED ME SOME FROTH!
gghah.
I’m bored to fucking tears. Sue me. Or get back to me when it’s linked to Obama, at which point I’ll have something to say.
But as for ulterior motives? I haven’t any. Because like I said, I spent yesterday watching football, not tuning in to the latest partisan outrage.
I am lobo. I hunt alone.
It can work on making them, though, which the Saints defense plainly has.
Some of those turnover instant replays were a thing of beauty.
Bring on the Taints. Did you know the Taints have never been in the Super Bowl? And, Katrina. That is all.
Did you happen to catch Bill Kristol’s intentionalist analysis yesterday of the Obama administration’s (in Kristol’s gist of Gibb’s interview with Wallace at the outset of the show) account of the Mass. election?
Sdferr – was that the Gibbs interview where he essentially asserted that Brown’s election proves the popularity of Barcky’s agenda? Gibbs is the only person that could make Scottie McClellan look competent.
Well, out IRL, people don’t care about Hot Air or Puppyblender links. Such things never (gonna) happen for me, so I don’t much care. But I do care about whether or not our little socialist president is going all Goebbels on us. So, Ellie Light may be a real person – but the White House IS participating in bullshit like this.
I also wanna wipe it in the newspapers that they all suck so the next time one of ’em tells me I need to subscribe to keep the venue alive in the USSA, for Democracy and all that – I can point to this incident. They’re responsible for our downfall.
Gibbs is a tad more slick than people give him credit. I would have been sweating like a mutha-fucker if I had been lying on the tv like he was with Wallace yesterday.
Oh, I just followed the Corner link. I had no idea HE was involved.
“Ever-enterprising” he is! When he’s not lying about you or trying to brand you a violent racist, they probably mean.
Nice to see the clique is still as strong as ever, and that no one’s reputation was hurt for the manufacturing of false and defamatory indictments (other than those on the receiving end, whose reputations were negligible to begin with; and you’ve got to break a few eggs, etc., etc…)
Recommence circle jerk!
There is a telephone listing for Eleanor Light in New York. Or maybe New Jersey; what’s the diff?
Gibbs is a tad more slick than people give him credit. I would have been sweating like a mutha-fucker if I had been lying on the tv like he was with Wallace yesterday.
He was a soccer goalie in college and for a limp-dicked progressive that’s almost like having been an athlete. I suppose it prepared him for handling pressure.
THE PARTY HAS SPOKEN!
I think two minutes of hate is in order. Just so long as you don’t hate me ‘cuz I’m beautiful.
JD, this one, though this clip in truncated somewhat it has the “…that may be what he [Brown] campaigned on but that’s not why the voters of Ma. sent him to Washington…” phrase which Kristol took up. RealClearP will usually have a transcript up by Tue/Wed.
You’re bored by Ellie Light? Who isn’t?
But with the Scott Brown euphoria played out (and the incredulity at the Dems Not Getting It [or pretending not to] duly registered), what else is there to chew on?
Wolves, I hear, will chew on their leg should it be trapped in a snare. That probably a myth though, eh?
I haven’t actually bothered to check out the Ellie Light thing much because, well, I think it’s rather inconsequential. And because I know that Frey will continue to beat it until it’s long past dead, without ever having understood it.
So I guess I’m pre-bored.
Who cares, dicentra? I’m a violent racist crackpot pseudo-intellectual. I know this because Google tells me so — and because my accuser is a Serious Journo-blogger and Man of Social Import Much Admired By Movers and Shakers on the Right (and, if they were smart, the left, as well).
And talking about that is almost as boring as reading about this.
We had a gerbil that chewed off half its tail after said half was skinned when my mom grabbed its tail during a cage cleaning.
Does that count?
Yeah, When I heard this story, my reaction was a yawn along the lines of hearing breaking news that the sun was going to come up tomorrow, or the latest troll was really RD with a new name.
I think the only concern here is that this kind of thing has become so un-noteworthy, truth and reality are in danger of becoming unexpected.
Alinsky is the white rabbit leading us down a hole…
I’m a violent racist crackpot pseudo-intellectual.
Which is why we love you so. Don’t ever forget that.
We should invent a neo-logism fit to the case. Hows about “chomputation”?
Ugh, that sucks, I know. Do better (please, please do better).
Oh goodie. David Plouffe is writing the Organizing for American letters. He wants me to find a “State of the Union Watch Party.”
True.
The SJBMABMASOTR seems to be expending an awful lot of energy on something that is, at best, pathetic and amateurish.
:^þ
Chemical Ali took it in the neck today, his head ensnared. Good. The Iraqi people thank Mr. Bush, quietly, in their homes and in days to come no doubt, in their history books.
Is he fuming?
“SJBMABMASOTR”?
I wish I knew what that meant.
Somebody just sent me a very interesting article on how our “Hidden Brain” does the thinking for us. This is an article I can really sink my teeth into and probably draw out into a rather useful essay that ties back into concerns I have with ideas about interpretation.
But were I to write that piece, I’d merely be accused of being “coy” and going after “him” — and in the end, no one would much care anyway. Well, except insofar as they could marshall the insights, (predictable and pseudo-intellectual though they be) at some later date for their own essays.
Yes. I am feeling rather empty these days.
It’s in here, though he left out an “I”, at least…
It’s a game of Discover the Network. Just good clean fun for the disempowered.
Mr. lobo also there is to think about how different the world would be today if this had happened with wingnuts supporting Bush’s wars or his evil tax cuts… NPR would be screeching for the investigatings.
I think this is something to think about with respect to outrage. It’s also a good time to start thinking about lunch.
Jeff G.
But you coined it: Serious Journo-blogger (and Man of Social Import) Much Admired By Movers and Shakers on the Right.
I shortened it a bit, but perhaps more trimming might make it a useful acronym…
;^)
Ah, got you, Spiny.
Happy. Is it tied to Obama? Did he order it?
If not, it’s no different from any other astroturfing campaign.
How much credence do you give letters to the editor? Do they sway you?
There are more important issues; but we don’t discuss them, because this is so much sexier. LOOK! WE CAUGHT THEM! YIPEEEEEE!
Letters to the editor are from cranks much like myself. Sometimes I can’t sway me, and being the arrogant jerk I am, very few others can sway me either.
It a good and fun story.
Probably not being run out of 1600 Penn. but still amusing.
The rw-osphere is probably making too much of it, as the left would have in Bush’s term, but like a decent slice of pie, its just a neat little story.
If this chick turns out to be real, well…
Even if…
Will the next President following Obama take Obama’s own lead and obsess over Obama’s failures and imputed faults for the first year of that new Presidency? Jen Rubin:
Or, as many folks do with this temporary diversion on Ellie Light, find that there are simply better, more pressing matters to attend to?
Frank J. (IMOA) says “We should have someone named Ellie Dark write letters trashing Obama to tons of local papers.”
Since we’re not feeling the outrage, I’ll ask about the paywall. How’s it going? Any ETA? I’ve managed to save some meager capital and want to know what the fee is.
Mr. Steyn says “Whenever aspiring writers ask me for advice, I usually tell ’em this: Don’t just write there, do something. Learn how to shingle a roof, or tap-dance, or raise sled dogs. Because if you don’t do anything, you wind up like Obama and Fineman — men for whom words are props and codes and metaphors but no longer expressive of anything real.”
ONE! DAY! STORY!
baracky’s “my pet goat” moment i think is more fun
(wipes sockpuppet funk off hands)
Indeed. We wait with bated breath. Well, baited too, but only because I had sushi for lunch.
Instapundit linked something last night about the White House and associated groups changing/reinterpreting the stimulus package & job loss numbers over the past few month to (as any administration would do) put the most positive spin on the billions of dollars spent. One of his readers e-mailed in with “One of the crimes McCarthy is still attacked for (60 years on) by the Left is making up the number of communists as he went along. NPR would have a fit if a conservative did this.”
There was this moment about 5 years ago when all of a sudden I realized my friends were making really stupid statements just to show how much they didn’t like Bush. I’m getting the sense that moment might be coming for me again w/ my more conservative friends.
It is not that they astroturfed, it is that the self-important Lords of Enlightened Governing, having lost all their deluded followers, needed to astroturf.
They have created a national party made up of Coakleys.
LBascom: That article is filled with some delicious Steyn-pith:
“Presumably, the president isn’t stupid enough actually to believe what he said. But it’s dispiriting to discover he’s stupid enough to think we’re stupid enough to believe it.”
“All those cool kids on his speechwriting team bogged him down in the usual leaden sludge. He went to the trouble of flying in to phone it in.”
“He was wafted ever upward, staying just long enough in each “job” to get another notch on the escutcheon, but never long enough to leave any trace.”
“America is becoming a bilingual society, divided between those who think a pickup is a rugged vehicle useful for transporting heavy-duty items from A to B, and those who think a pickup is coded racism.”
letters to the editor always displace other letters to the editor I think. Maybe the displaced ones were very very compelling.
I think mexican again.
This just further proves the point that some bloggers have an unhealthily heightened sense of self-importance when it comes to the latest OUTRAGEOUS OUTRAGE OF THE DAY, yet in the real world blogs are still a fringe act that has no more relevance than say, a Facebook account. In some cases, a Facebook account is wayyyy more relevant, like the recent Brown/Coakley election.
Seriously, most people know what blogs are now, but they still don’t consider them as important as the people who write them do.
I think blogs are incredibly important. They’re right up there with lunch and fiscal responsibility.
“Yes. I am feeling rather empty these days.”
Son that’s just weakness leaving the body! What you need is to get back out there on the front lines making the G-d Damn enemy feel like his cause is hopeless.
“There are more important issues; but we don’t discuss them, because this is so much sexier. LOOK! WE CAUGHT THEM! YIPEEEEEE!”
DARN SKIPEEEEEE! So back to front lines Goldstein! Dont’t make me lampoon you again soldier;)
Tman, one blogger in particular may be getting unfortunate self-reinforcing feedback, fluffing up what ought not to be any further fluffed in the least.
Dont’ make me spell Don’t again either mister!
The words “Andrew Sullivan” and “tweet” should never be uttered in the same sentence by a president, nor by anyone who works for a president.
At least not without snickering.
sdferr,
Fluffing and excitable Andy should never be used together in the same comment. At least not until after I’ve had my lunch.
Anyone ever seen Tman and McGehee in the same room? How about with Ellie Light? Cause I’m sensing an outrageous coincidence!
Jeff:
Why isn’t the president reading your Twitter feed?
There’s gotta be an app for that.
Tman, at least Obama has finally found a job he can do with some aplomb.
Obama and Sullivan?
Cue Happyfeet in 3.2.1….
Either that, or that creepy three-way the roofies never did quite erase from my memory.
sdferr,
I think pretty much any discussion involving St. Andrew is to be avoided pre-lunch. It’s much safer that way.
St Andrew is still pissed that he was passed over for for the Head Fluffer position with the Jeff Gannon GAYCOCKPORNOFLIES !!!
No JD,
Although he wont admit it (even to himself) Randy Andy is really cheesed at Reille Hunter for steeling his DreamJohn;)
“It is not that they astroturfed, it is that the self-important Lords of Enlightened Governing, having lost all their deluded followers, needed to astroturf.”
Mr W (no relation, I don’t think) has the essential delicious point.
Is SarahW!!!
you are here!
Jeff,
TOTUS is disturbed by your selection of issues worth discussing
Oh and speaking of DreamJohnny:
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Trainwreck-gets-worse-John-Edwards-sex-tape-82605517.html
Can I get a Good Allah, JD?
Allah ain’t going to say nothing good about that sleezefucker getting his willie on tape, Danger.
OK I’ve had enough of you trivial persuitists (especially this Goldstein fella what enables you;). So I’m outta here.
Try and sharpen up before I get back people.
Like the press hasn’t already been doing this?
Manufacturing consent. Elect you some Obama, get you some Chomsky.
Really. I’m amazed at the pretend amazement.
bye Danger I didn’t have anything on Sullivan and Obama… they’re both so wrong… the thing about Obama is he’s making a fool of himself… him and all his gay spending…
people are just appalled.
It’s not amazing it’s depressing. We’re opposed to be better than this.
Danger: Good Allah, Good Buddah, Good Great Spirit!!!!!
The fun never ends with Johnny boy these days. He and Sanford should collaborate on a retreat of some sort.
dicentra, I think I’ve found the answer. h/t David Thompson
oh, and somewhat belatedly, the Kristol analysis begins at 5:30 in, here.
Crap, sdferr, I saw that the other day (from David’s site) but I didn’t link it up with anything.
Thanks a bunch.
If this were a real, professional, Axelrod brand astroturfer one would hope they would know to use different names.
Don’t you think?
If I was merely amused about Ellie Lightworker, can I likewise be amused at whatever outrage/hysteria/witch-huntery over Ellie Lightworker I happen to see? And also over such counter-outrage as might be backlashing against the initial outrage?
I wouldn’t want to waste a good crisis.
Others wish to chase this little piece of astroturf down. It is their time and effort. You, Jeff G., do not wish to expend effort on it.
Your choice.
Their choice.
And I get to sit back and watch the fireworks. What would the world be like if such chases were not to be done?
Less entertaining, I think.
Hmmm, dicentra, then I’m made to wonder whether you never saw this?
I wrote an letter to the editor once at the Atlanta Journal and Constitution.
Bill King, who was the ombudsman, responded to tell me that I was an angry man.
sdferr: It looks like something that should have been on MST3K but wasn’t.
In which case I definitely didn’t see it. No Joike and the ‘bots, no B movie. Sorry, but those are the rules.
I had the nightmare inducing misfortune of seeing it when I was an impressionable little kid. Scared the bejeezus out of me, it did, which maybe is why it popped back into mind as soon as I saw the first picture of meat hand. 8^)
I am going to go off topic here (I am sorry but Ellie Light sounds like a failed chick beer and there are football issues to discuss that are not getting enough attention).
The Saints are going to the big show. I emailed a friend about the Saints Vikings game (unfortunately I had to work the entire day and missed it) and here is his response on loyalty:
Which family Jeff? “She” has dozens of homes, That can’t just be for one family.
I seriously doubt that there’s an actual person behind Ellie Light. If there is I don’t want to know her real name or address or those of her family members. I’ll settle for is/isn’t a real person. Not that it matters that much. Mikey NTH at #110 has it right. It’s just entertaining.
“But then, I’ve never been much of a pack animal, anyway.”
You know…except for that whole Pajamas Media kerfluffle…
What were you saying about the subsconscious and conscious, again?
“High intelligence is no protection from conceptual blindness. Sometimes it
only makes it worse.”
– Al Fin
“Building a Conscious Machine.”
10 June 2009
http://www.alfin2100.blogspot.com/
#96 Happyfeet! Thanks for noticing me. :)
101. Heh. Don’t put “amazement” in MY mouth. It’s already full of bitter reality.
Apparently no one real can be trusted to say anything usefully supportive of Obama. Hell, even in his recent townhall with “real people” his supporters are more interested in getting a wave of O’s healing wand. It must be a problem.
Cool, sporklift driver.
I’m just saying it helps if you don’t publish every bit of wild speculation.
Irony, a performative
Warren Bonesteel now:
Warren Bonesteel then:
Warren is a limp cock. That is all.