Tea Party event-crashing comes to New York

try this (4.00 / 1)

Here is a blogpost on the topic that was shared on Take19 today.  

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by: jmcbride @ Tue Aug 04, 2009 at 21:21:52 PM UTC

you're not sure it's astroturfing? (4.00 / 4)

have you read all the emails and memos that have been all over the place the last few days?

it's astroturf. it may not be 100% contrived, but the same folks who gave us the teabaggers -- freedom works, americans for prosperity, etc -- are the genesis of this latest movement populated largely by the same folks who showed up to McPalin rallies last fall.

one more thing. i got a call from a WNY congressman this morning. he wanted to talk about the healthcare bill and the crazies who are coming to the in district events over the next month. i told him what i would tell any of the other congresscritters out there. get video.

two things:

make sure you have real people there to tell their real health care nightmares. let the wackjobs shout them down of that's what they want to do. get it all on video. then have someone interview the nutters outside, much like people did during the final months of the presidential campaign last year. these people believe that obama wants to euthanize their grandma and many of them believe that the president is a kenyan national. it doesn't play so well on television.


TODAY is day one. It always is.

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by: phillip anderson @ Tue Aug 04, 2009 at 22:08:27 PM UTC

to me, astroturfing means (4.00 / 1)

that you don't have the real followers you pretend to have.  You put up a false-front organization, and if you need people, you hire them.

The folks from those Palin rallies are very real.  We even have them in Tompkins County, in large enough numbers to fill rooms.  I don't think packing this candidates forum was astroturfing, though I certainly didn't enjoy it.

This needs a new word, but it's not astroturf. It's harnessing the rage of a small number of widely distributed people - who really are believers - to create a disturbance.  The people are real, the rage is real.  There's no false front, just leaving it to the media to project from these incidents to make a movement look like it has broader support than it really does.

("If there are wild teabaggers in Wisconsin, Texas, and New York, they must be everywhere.  Who knew?")

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by: simonstl @ Tue Aug 04, 2009 at 22:28:11 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

if you hire people, (4.00 / 3)

firms that do not work on the cheap, to gin up the crazies with outlandish bullshit, is it still genuine? the anger itself certainly is. the "movement", i believe, is not.

they are indeed believers. but, they are believers of completely manufactured bullshit, bullshit that was concocted and distributed at great expense solely for the purpose bamboozling these folks and creating the perception that there is some sort of reasoned opposition to the president's plan to euthanize our grandparents and turn ourselves into cuba.


TODAY is day one. It always is.

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by: phillip anderson @ Tue Aug 04, 2009 at 22:35:40 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

if you're paying people directly to act outraged (4.00 / 1)

then yes, it's astroturf.  (I think you can describe a lot of the conservative media establishment that way, yes.)

But while these folks may well have been bamboozled, that's very different from getting paid to put on a show.  These are genuine grassroots, however crabgrass we may think them.

Watching the videos, I think "they're crazy, yes, but real."  They didn't just get bought or hypnotized by recent propaganda - they've been on the right for a long while.

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by: simonstl @ Tue Aug 04, 2009 at 22:50:46 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

but some of them are indeed (4.00 / 2)

being paid. check out TPM for some good coverage, some of it originating right here in NY.

oh, and as i said, get video.

I'm not gonna rock the boat. Rockin' the boat's a drag. What you do is sink the boat!
- Truth and Soul, Inc.

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by: Putney Swope @ Tue Aug 04, 2009 at 22:54:32 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

who's getting paid? (0.00 / 0)

I've been following TPM, and don't recall seeing that protestors were getting paid here.

Let me know - it's totally possible I missed something!

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by: simonstl @ Tue Aug 04, 2009 at 23:20:10 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Most are not paid, some are, (4.00 / 1)

and their "community organizers" are certainly well-funded.

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by: devtob @ Wed Aug 05, 2009 at 03:49:23 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

I think the confusion as to whether we have astroturf (4.00 / 2)

comes from folks who are meeting ordinary people at these things who have reservations about hc reform--but then thinking these people with questions are part of the shouting  mob. So then people say, "well...sure they're loud, but some of the folks just have real concerns." I've head that kind of comment a dozen times today from well-intentioned liberals/progressives.

The confusion, in other words, is a sign of a successful mob action--the goal of mob action being to make everyone think that everyone is doing it, and thereby to silence the majority.   So it's 1000% imperative that we help people distinguish between a posse hired to disrupt and well meaning citizens who turn out to ask questions.  We must distinguish between them to show how small the mob actually is, and how dangerous it is to let a loud,  angry minority shut down our civic spaces.

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by: Jeffrey Feldman @ Tue Aug 04, 2009 at 22:33:15 PM UTC

agreed (4.00 / 1)

100%. as i said to that congresscritter this morning, you have to make sure that you create an atmosphere that says that people should have their say and speak their mind. americans get that. but when you have a mob of nutjobs shouting people down, that plays terribly.  

TODAY is day one. It always is.

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by: phillip anderson @ Tue Aug 04, 2009 at 22:38:55 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Today was not the first (4.00 / 1)

A teabagger mob disrupted a Tim Bishop town hall meeting on Long Island in June.

Republican front groups, media allies and politicians are behind this thing 100 percent. And they are encouraging rude, disruptive behavior.

Democratic Reps and Senators are forewarned, and had better be prepared to eject loud, disruptive people from town hall meetings, just as they are removed from Congressional hearings and Notre Dame commencements.

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by: devtob @ Tue Aug 04, 2009 at 23:03:00 PM UTC

First, make sure only your intended audience gets in. (4.00 / 1)

That is, if you are a Member of the House of Representatives, you only want to talk to your own constituents.  If a busload of people from somewhere else shows up, you know you're up to no good because what interest does anyone have talking to somebody else's congressman?  What does one hope to accomplish?

So I suggest carding everybody.  It should be an easy task to assemble a list of zip codes for your district, and check ID cards to make sure these are actually your constituents getting in.

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by: Steaming Pile @ Wed Aug 05, 2009 at 13:23:03 PM UTC

"Crabgrass" -- a great term (4.00 / 1)

Kudos to simonstl in an above comment for this term.  Perhaps it will catch on to describe the loons who are pulling these stunts.

No, most of them are not paid, but they are carefully coached in disrupting meetings and acting like spoiled little brats.  The whole "movement" is definitely astroturf in the sense that it is being run by corporate lobbyists.  Most of the people who show up, however, are more "crabgrass" than anything else.

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by: Dan Jacoby @ Wed Aug 05, 2009 at 17:03:27 PM UTC