EMAIL SIGN UP!
Most Popular This Week
- Wisconsin Bill Would Treat Organic Milk, Sharp Cheddar, Brown Eggs as "Junk Food"
- Patent Filing Claims Solar Energy ‘Breakthrough’
- Climate Change's 'Evil Twin': Ocean Acidification
- Disaster Capitalism Strikes as Hedge Funds Circle Near-Bankrupt Municipalities Like Vultures
- Ignoring Bee Crisis, EPA Greenlights New 'Highly Toxic' Pesticide
- Patent Filing Claims Solar Energy ‘Breakthrough’
- Wisconsin Bill Would Treat Organic Milk, Sharp Cheddar, Brown Eggs as "Junk Food"
- Climate Change's 'Evil Twin': Ocean Acidification
- In 'March Toward Disaster,' World Hits 400 PPM Milestone
- Ignoring Bee Crisis, EPA Greenlights New 'Highly Toxic' Pesticide
Popular content
Today's Top News
Raising Astroturf
"Hey, Hey, what do you say? Make some noise, seize the day!"
Protests are back! All across America, angry demonstrations are popping up like mushrooms on moldy Astroturf.
Similar to the plastic "grass," political astroturf is the corporate version of grassroots — instead of ordinary citizens organizing and mobilizing themselves for political action, astroturf campaigns are well-orchestrated PR efforts that put real folks out front, but are instigated, organized and funded by corporate interests and right-wing front groups.
We've seen a surge in these plastic uprisings this year, all directed at policy changes being put forth by Barack Obama. First come the April 15 "teabag" rallies to oppose Obama's economic recovery package. Billed as a spontaneous people's rebellion against BGS (Big Government Socialism), the events turned out to have been spawned and coordinated by a corporate-financed anti-government outfit in Washington called Freedom Works, headed by former GOP majority leader Dick Armey.
Next up were this month's rancorous confrontations at local town hall meetings that had been convened by assorted congress-members to discuss Obama's health care proposals. Various groupings of red-faced, mostly elderly, mostly Republican citizens stormed these discussions, turning them into yell-a-thons. Again, BGS was the core theme of the seniors' screeds, including numerous versions of this muddled thought: "I don't want socialized medicine. And don't touch my Medicare."
Their talking points (yelling points, actually) were straight out of the litany-of-hokum that Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Sarah Palin and Co. chant daily — including repetition of the ludicrous lie that Obama intends to deploy cadres of federal death agents to show up at bingo halls to euthanize granny and gramps.
Coordination and funding of this senior-scare campaign has come from such corporate front groups as Conservatives for Patients' Rights. CPR was created and financed by Rick Scott, the multimillionaire former-CEO of the huge hospital chain Columbia-HCA.
The latest line of astroturf, however, is being peddled by an old flim-flammer: Big Oil. In a series of 20 mass rallies during the August congressional recess, a group called Energy Citizens is purporting to be a rebellion of common folks against Obama's climate change legislation. Who are these rebels? ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and other oil giants.
Energy Citizens was created and funded by the industry's chief lobbying organization, the American Petroleum Institute, which has already spent $3 million this year lobbying to kill the climate-change initiative. "We are about giving citizens a voice," declared a spokeswoman.
But, how many ordinary Joes and Jills really want to rally behind Big Oil? Practically none. No problem, though — in a memo to oil chieftains, API urged them to "put a human face" on the industry's self-serving opposition by putting their employees out front. Even API recognized the cynicism in this ploy, so it warned executives to "please treat this information as sensitive, (for) we don't want critics to know our game plan."
Call it what they will, Energy Citizen was a corporate show from the get-go. API hired an events management company to stage the rallies, put a field coordinator in each state, ran the PR campaign and served as general manager of the game plan. Attendance essentially came from Rent-a-Crowd: oil company employees in Houston, for example, were "invited" by their bosses to attend, were given paid time off for the event, were bused to and from the rallies, were entertained by corporate-hired performers, were served a free lunch, were given yellow T-shirts to wear and were asked to wave placards declaring, "I'm an Energy Citizen."
Since Astroturf itself is actually made up of petroleum, there's a certain poetic symmetry in having Big Oil produce the slickest and silliest astroturf campaign of them all — so far.
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
9 Comments so far
Show AllWe need to ask if there is still an authentic progressive who buys into Obama’s resolve for a robust public plan given the shifting winds of the body politic?
Two weeks ago Obama was caving into corporate and Republican forces against any plan operated by the government.
The next day one could hear the Democratic yes-men and woman (otherwise called pundits) covering the newswire like a plague of locusts, while asserting that they were progressives, but claiming we need to “compromise” to move the issue forward. (Not to mention that the "public option" was itself a compromise to a single payer system.)
So chimed in Paul Begala on CNN whose self characterization as a progressive is self serving tripe.
The day after that, the Democratic progressive caucus boldly stated they were not going there, and threatened to crush any Bill not offering a robust public option.
Fast forward one more day, Begala and Obama along with a host of other right-of-center Democrats were backtracking again using the word “reconciliation” which most likely means that Obama and his henchmen need to weigh in with a heavy hand to turn the dissidents to the watered-down version acceptable to the Republicans and both parties corporate sponsors.
When one considers health care, juxtaposed together with Obama's war escalation, covert air strikes on non combatants, and his cozy-ness with corporate CEO’s like the coal industry and mountain top removal; Obama has demonstrated that the serfs are nothing more than a side issue to assuring him a political victory is more important to getting quality health insurance not driven by profit motive.
I used to respect you Jim; but your sentiments for Obama is clouding your judgment.
You hit it on the head ...
Worse ...
Hightower doesn't realize that "Cap and Trade" is just another market for Wall Street to game.
Hightower is woefully short on insight ...
Hightower is "astroturfing" Obama using the right wing crazies ...
The answer is very simple really ...
A Carbon Tax ...
Whose proceeds are returned to the tax payer to help pay for the higher prices that the carbon tax will cause ...
Yep ...
A check per person for everybody just like Alaska. Then people can use the money to weatherize their homes, buy smaller cars and keep the savings ... all while reducing carbon pollution and energy use !
OBTW Jim ...
Obama is NO Progressive ... You are embarrassing yourself defending him ...
Chew on these :
Trillions for banksters ... more on the way
More War ... More rendition ... more torture ... more domestic spying ... and
More healthcare hypocrisy ...
~~~~
Try to find your footing man ...
I am surprised at Jim buying into this mantra. He is better than this.
"...silliest astroturf campaign of them all — so far." Mr Hightower I have learned tons of stuff from you over the last decade or so and I suspect I might enjoy dinner on the porch with you and you tend to make a lot of sense, mostly. BUT, if it's the silliest, how come they are winning so easily? It appears Mr. Obama has offered his soul to the god of greed in return for a few moments of golden sunlight where he still gets to pretend that his vacuous words have any connection to any possible reality. His moments of sunlight are now over.
Now comes the swift plummet into hell...regrettable. The implied from 40 years ago became predictable 20 years ago, and is now inevitable. Bankrupt Roman Slave Republic with nukes.
Not since 1855-58 have we been so close to a civil war. This time everybody gets freed or we all burn together. Share Cropping and Indentured Servitude were boring the first time. Brutal, savage, but ultimately boring. Not worth doing again. And yes, that is exactly the arc of our current 'trajectory', including RDIF chips inside everything including you....ugly picture....
Bad mind. Bad mind. Easy there. Just a bad dream. Not real. The world is verrry different from that, isn't it. Much nicer than all that, isn't it.
So we might have liked it to be....
Jim Hightower deserves thanks for bucking the tide of commentators in the media, and especially so since he works in the deep red state of Texas. In contrast to him, the MSM reporting of the entire right-wing shitstorm of the last decades has been a travesty altogether.
In this case, as in most involving corporate-party-spin-lines, there is no real groundswell phenomenon. There is instead a shrewdly guided-and-goaded dog-and-pony show of disruption/distraction put on by right-wing regressive elements fighting for power and profit, and using what stupid pawns they can in the 'game.' These are hugely magnified out of all proportion by the willing tools/whores of the MSM, bought-off as they are.
The fact is, the MSM have propagandistically focused on the 'town-hall' disruptors like they were some huge groundswell against 'socialized' medical care. All these people amount to are a bunch of nasty, dimwitted Rush Limbaugh dittoheads who are stupid enough to fall for the right-wing drivel and be the riled-up shock troops for the corpo-kleptocracy and fascism.
Back when there REALLY WAS a huge and spontaneous, popular groundswell from the roots, not from corporate instigators, when MILLIONS and MILLIONS marched in the streets, against the start of the IRAQ BUSH-WAR, the MSM just DISMISSED these millions, and treated them with disdain and as of no consequence.
But now, a handful of propaganda-inspired boorish idiots have been given a grandiose importance and vastly-overhyped size by that same bought-off Corporate MSM, and their right-wing editors and owners. And then this 'reportage' is used as some kind of 'evidence' by rightwing politicians that they are on the side of the 'public' -and of course that Reagan their Christ was correct as usual.
How disgusting. How despicable. How degenerate. How depraved.
And no matter how unhappily compromising Obama is with the right-wingers, they give him no quarter. But come on people, forget Obama, first DESTROY the Republican Party and Corporate Fascism. After that, not having to drag the evil Neo-Con-federate Party towards progress will lighten the load significantly. After that, no compromises need to be made or tolerated.
Anyway, thank you, Jim Hightower, for trying to move a more progressive agenda forward, now as always.
The rallies on April 15 were in response to BHO giving 10’s of BILLIONS to his campaign contributors, the ones that got the 8 figure bonuses, at AIG, Country Wide and all the other banks that got the bail out money. The other big contributor to the tea bag protestors is the stimulus money that was to stop the unemployment at 8% we are now at 16% with it going up to 20% by the middle of next year. When people are showing up with hand painted signs to protest the 2000 BILLION deficit that Omama is going to have this year they are not bought and paid for.
Who is advertising for a mob, craigs list at $600 a week, to show up and yell “Health care now!” Obama. Who is giving sweet heart deals to the unions so they can show up at meetings with pipes and baseball bats to keep the local citizens out of the town hall meetings, Obama. Who has directed the Dept of Ed to give class room credit for supporting the nationalization of the heath care industry, Obama. Who has his thugs beating cancer victims and minorities to the point of a black man put in a wheel chair, Obama. Who has is wing nuts damage and deface DNC offices to blame those that oppose nationalized heath care, Obama.
When the protestors that are against HR3200 read from the bill and ask pointed questions of their congress-members about rationing heath panels that decide if you are worthy of heath care, useless eaters need not apply. We have seen that Obama is not above using his office to punish citizens that do not “Pay to Play”, the selection of dealerships to close based on campaign contributions. Or, the breaking of laws that he supported, the firing of a independent inspector that found one of Obama big contributors embezzling government money. In just 7 months Obama has made Bush look like a honest man with a ethical government.
Jim if you are that afraid of being found at Fort Marcy Park to print the truth, get out of the kitchen.
@ cupera1 August 28th, 2009 12:47 pm: you are just a spinning top of crazy, aren't you?
Just one thing, re: your Fort Marcy Park reference where Vince Foster was found dead. Think about this logically for a minute, if that's possible for you: If Vince Foster was murdered by Bill Clinton, or if Clinton was complicit in any way, don't you think Ken Starr would have impeached him for, at the least, conspiracy to commit a homicide?
BTW, the facts are Bush started the bailouts of AIG and Wall Street, not Obama; Countrywide Financial failed before the 2008 election; and Obama inherited from Bush most of the current deficit.
Your other 'points' are equally easy to shoot down. Stop being a sucker for millionaires like Limbaugh and Beck who have a vested interest in lying to you. They are well-paid propagandists for the corportions who are making average Americans miserable.