Astroturfing or Ratf*cking?

Astroturfing, from Wikipedia:

Astroturfing in American English is a neologism for formal public relations campaigns in politics and advertising which seek to create the impression of being spontaneous “grassroots” behavior, hence the reference to the artificial grass, AstroTurf.

Ratfucking, same source:

Ratfucking is an American slang term for political sabotage or dirty tricks. It was first brought to public attention by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in their book All the President’s Men

In common usage, “astroturfing” is Democratic “ratfucking,” which is a term usually attributed to GOP tactics.

Karl Rove is said to be the reigning king of ratfucking.  From Salon, August 13, 2007:

Donald Segretti, ringmaster for the Committee to Reelect the President of a gang of dirty tricksters engaged in what he called “ratfucking,” recruited Rove.

His alter-ego, David Axelrod, is today’s master of astroturfing through his company, ASK Public Strategies, which shares office space with his primary firm, AKP&D Message and Media, from which he astroturfs the campaign of Barack Obama.  According to a March 14, 2008 article in Business Week:

On behalf of ComEd and Comcast, the firm helped set up front organizations that were listed as sponsors of public-issue ads. Industry insiders call such practices “Astroturfing,” a reference to manufacturing grassroots support.

The reason I bring all this up is that the blogosphere is abuzz today with speculation that Camp Obama is behind a supposedly “grassroots” You Tube smear of Sarah Palin.  These allegations stem from a post on the website, The Jawa Report, which claims:

• Evidence suggests that a YouTube video with false claims about Palin was uploaded and promoted by members of a professional PR firm.
• The same voice-over artist has worked directly for the Barack Obama campaign.
• David Axelrod is Barack Obama’s chief media strategist.

• The family that runs the PR firm has extensive ties to the Democratic Party, the netroots, and are staunch Obama supporters.

• Evidence suggests that the firm engaged in a concerted effort to distribute the video in such a way that it would appear to have gone viral on its own. Yet this effort took place on company time.

• Evidence suggests that these distribution efforts included actions by at least one employee of the firm who is unconnected with the family running the company.

• The voice-over artist used in this supposedly amateur video is a professional.

• This same voice-over artist has worked extensively with David Axelrod’s firm, which has a history of engaging in phony grassroots efforts, otherwise known as “astroturfing.”

The “professional PR firm” in question is Winner & Associates, the “employee” said to be responsible for uploading, then yanking, the video is “eswinner” or Ethan S. Winner, son of company president Charles N. Winner and Leslie Song Winner.  Winner & Associates is a large PR group affiliated with an even bigger international PR group, Publicis Groupe, and sounds a lot like Axelrod’s ASK, though the Jawa Report links “eswinner” to Axelrod through a common voice-over artist used by the producers of the Palin smear video and Axelrod’s AKP&D firm.

The Jawa article goes to great lengths to “prove” it’s case, and I’m okay with it, to a point.  Even if all the connections pan out, one question remains.  Why would the “master of astroturfing” job out a smear campaign to a “major PR firm” stupid enough to leave it’s fingerprints all over it?

Doesn’t make sense to me.

On the flip side, there’s another “grassroots” entity making You Tube ads critical of one of the presidential candidates.  This one, “weneedmccain” has a series of anti-Obama ads up and it’s producer is just as cryptic.  Like the Palin video, these are professional quality ads, the voice-over artist sounds like an actor, not an “average guy” in his basement.  Yet when techPresident’s Micah L. Sifry went looking into “weneedmccain”’s identity, he concluded that “Michael Brown” was indeed just a really committed Republican private citizen with seemingly unlimited access to sophisticated digital recording equipment and the resources to use them at will.  Yeah, right.  Who is techPresident?  How and why did he get onto this story?  How did he debunk it within hours of reporting it? Why?

Seems to me, one aspect of “ratfucking,” which has been around longer than “astroturfing,” btw, might be to set up a compelling scenario of wrongdoing by the other guy and then yell, “fire.”  I’m just not so sure in this instance that the guys doing the yelling aren’t on the same team as the guys with the matches and gasoline on their breath.

PUMA

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