Demonstrating Genuine Leadership

If George Bush can't get the job done, perhaps the Raelians can?

In early January, 2003, someone, somewhere began demonstrating genuine leadership. Until January 2003, Google had never seen any result for this phrase. When I first checked (2003-01-17 15:00), there were fifteen results -- all published since New Year's Day.

All of these appeared in "Letters to the Editor" in newspapers in different cities. All letters were identical. Each was signed by a different person -- a demonstrably real person. No person claimed membership in any organization, nor did anyone attribute the letter to its true author. They just signed it and mailed it to the Editor.

One possible explanation: the messages are Alien Transmissions from outer space! Using public search engines, UnBlinking has determined that Alien Transmission 2003-01 is not alone! In fact:

* There have been at least three unique Alien Transmissions (2002-09, 2002-11, and 2003-01).
* Some Alien Transmissions appeared over two different names in the same newspaper.
* Two persons have published multiple, different Alien Transmissions several months apart.

The web contains 37 different appearances of the same "Letter to the Editor" in US papers.

UnBlinking scans the wealth of information on the internet, gathering background on people and events. Using public search engines, UnBlinking collates what may be known (and what may have been forgotten). Please use QuickTopic to share your comments. [Usability note: All links open into the same target window.]

The aftermath has been luscious indeed. Updates and highlights as of 2003-02-01:

* Originally, there had been three unique Alien Transmissions (2002-09, 2002-11, and 2003-01).

We now know of at least four more: (2002-04, 2002-05, 2002-10, and 2003-01B).

* Originally, one Alien Transmission had appeared twice in the Suburban Chicago News Sun: 2003-01-07, signed by Dr. Guy P. Cozzi, Waukegan, and a mere three days later from Sarah Kocal, Grayslake, Illinois.

Turns out the Atlanta Journal Constitution also published the same letter online twice: 2003-01-09, signed by Misty Haynie of Villa Rica, Georgia, then again on 2003-01-31 from Robert Rahm in Snellville.

The Santa Barbara News Press in California heard on 2003-01-10 from Ted Elswick in Lompoc, then dittoed itself with the same letter from Suzie Clary of Santa Maria exactly one week later.

The Baytown Sun of Texas published Troy Noack's submission on 2003-01-11, then Juanice W. Burroughs' copy of the same letter eleven days later.

It gets worse: On January 18, Philip Patzkowski wrote to the Middletown Record Online. On January 31, the same letter appeared again in the Record, again from Philip Patzkowski. This was not an instance of the Record Online having published at two different web locations, or accruing letters over time. The first instance, "Letters to the editor for January 19, 2003," is headed "Bush plan is right," while the second, from "Letters to the editor for January 31, 2003," is entitled "Bush helping taxpayers." The other authors and letters are entirely different.

* Originally, only two persons had published twice. Dirk Maurins and Nick Koszykowski had done so, to the Honolulu Star Bulletin and Houghton Daily Mining Gazette, respectively.

Philip Patzkowski joins them in their multiplicity. Further, the web reveals Dirk Maurins has sent at least four unedited form letters which the Star Bulletin has published.

* Originally, there had been 37 different appearances of Alien Transmission 2003-01A.

By 2003-01-22, the web had shown 15 more appearances of that letter, for a total of 52!
By 2003-02-01, the web had shown 16 more appearances, for a total of 68!

In fact, after dozens of major news sources (such as Slate, Newsweek, and the Christian Science Monitor) have described the spampaign, the letter is still appearing in new media outlets!

*** Excellent editorial responses are beginning to appear. An e-mail of Alien Transmission 2002-10 from Melissa Whitis, published in Seattle's Eat The State, was just another cold mimeograph, but Eat The State's editorial comment was hot and tasty:

This was one of a number of letters we get regularly through a letter-to-the-editor distribution service run by the Republican National Committee. I couldn't resist printing this one, not just because of the boilerplate nonsense, but because I totally agree with Melissa. I don't want weapons of mass destruction in the hands of freedom's enemies. I certainly don't want world events to be dictated by brutal and lawless politicians. That's why I support regime change in Washington DC.

Indeed. After calling attention to two other identical copies, the Orange County Weekly reserved the right to edit a letter from Kelly Knutson of Irvine:

When it comes to the economy, President Bush blah blah blah genuine leadership. The economic-growth package blah blah blah accelerating successful tax cuts of blah blah blah providing marriage penalty relief blah blah blah small businesses to save and invest.

Hehe... it's funny because it's true :-) The Muncie Star Press editors tried to keep a sense of humor:

When it comes to originality, John Pinckney, 400 N. Aspen Lane, author of the letter, might be demonstrating a lack of leadership...

The Fort Wayne, Indiana, Journal-Gazette tried to be nice (but you can hear teeth grind):

No disrespect intended, of course. I'm sure all of the letter-signers sincerely support President Bush's tax plan. But form letters aren't what we are looking for when we ask readers to share their views. We're interested in reading what they have to say, not some hired flack with the Republican National Committee, where this particular letter originated.

However, editors of South Jersey News made their collective irritation clear:

To be frank, this is more than a little disgusting. When we receive a letter to the editor, we assume the author isn't passing off someone else's work as his or her own.

In the end, though, the people who sent the "genuine leadership" letters are cheating themselves and their fellow opinion page readers more than anyone else.

They're cheating themselves by letting a Web site do their thinking for them. And they're cheating fellow readers by trying to pass off regurgitated information as their own.

The Ombudsman of The Sacramento Bee got right to the point, too:

...this sort of deception corrupts public debate on important issues, and could drive even more citizens away from exercising their rights to free speech.

Bee editors explain (in the letters column today in Forum) that it is not their intention to publish letters that are part of campaigns. They try hard to weed them out. My view is the newspaper needs to do everything it can to prevent this deception from happening again.

Paul Janensch, a professor of Journalism, writing for the Hartford Courant describes the ultimate downside:

If Astroturf catches on, news outlets will become suspicious of all of the letters they receive - especially by e-mail. Newspapers will stop publishing them. Media executives will stop reading them.

It seems that the Wausua Daily Herald is taking the dangers very seriously:

...we won't publish the letter or future letters from the same writer, whose authenticity we cannot trust.

Debate, as we've said before, is the hallmark of participatory democracy.

But signing one's name to something someone else wrote borders on dishonest. And swamping the newspaper with identical letters doesn't advance meaningful discussion.

From the Christian Science Monitor, a suggestion that we all should know better:

One of the reasons Americans are turned off by politics is because of the inherent cynicism they see in the political debate. Every position seems like a commodity, espoused not out of belief but for tactical advantage. It's bad enough when politicians do it.

We shouldn't let our views, and the places we express them, be so cravenly manipulated. Keep off the AstroTurf, and let the sun shine in!

While, under the title Grand Old Payoff, The Providence Journal wrote:

We'll leave it to the historians to decide whether the Internet has helped civilization. But it certainly has corrupted society in some ways. Consider the letter we and some other papers published on Jan. 11 from one Randy Turner, of Falmouth, touting President Bush's economic plan.

It turns out that Mr. Turner is a beneficiary of a Republican Party program in which letter writers get five points each for each letter placed, with a maximum of 20 points a day. The points can be redeemed for insulated bags, a leather portfolio and other nifty prizes!

Thus U.S. politics has been reduced to the level of the organ-enlargement promises, anti-aging hormones, underwater real-estate sales, get-out-of-debt (painlessly) schemes and Nigerian coin deals that are rapidly devouring most e-mail addresses.

The Boston Globe asked, "Whose comments are they?

If I am correct in thinking that most readers would answer ''yes'' to the question at the top of this column, doesn't the paper owe them a letters page that is original thought?

Yes, says Editorial Page Editor Renee Loth.

''Readers have a right to assume that what they read on the letters page is not canned public relations material,'' she says. Thus, she has instituted a new policy to confirm original authorship on any letter that could be part of an organized campaign....

It is unfortunate that GOP-authored letters were published as individual works. I applaud the effort to keep it from happening again. The Globe is blessed with readers who are smart, literate, and passionate about politics. The letters page should be reserved for their heartfelt words, not those of special interests seeking to sway public opinion.

Press of Atlantic City asks and answers a central question:

So why is it wrong?

Because the Voice of the People is where we publish readers' opinions. We - and your fellow readers - expect letters to the editor to be your thoughts and your writing - not canned press releases.

If you want to write us an original letter about President Bush's "genuine leadership," we'll be glad to consider it for publication. (Although, you might want to use a different phrase.)

But if you are among those sending canned letters from partisan Web sites, at least now you know why these letters are not (if we're doing our job) making it into the paper.

Demonstrating Genuine Readership

I'll suppress most of the details -- hours scrubbing public search engines to find the same material, over and over! Neither can I replicate the path of discovery, but here's a peripatetic outline...

As I prepared to publish this, I realized why it doesn't flow like a 'story': I'm trying to represent the web here, and that can't be done without... the web. Some of these suspect "Letters to the Editor" existed in different newspapers at the same time. Some existed at different times in the same newspaper. Those pairs intersect, and branch to others. OK. It doesn't flow. I'll stop apologizing :-)

On 2003-01-17, Jeff Boes sent me an e-mail. (Apparently he had not learned his lesson last year, having sent me the e-mail that spawned Googlewhack.) Although Jeff is [ahem] supposed to be writing deep PERL and SQL for Nexcerpt, he happened upon something equally newsy: local newspaper "Letters to the Editor." Many of them. Everywhere. All exactly the same.

Two hours later, Jamie McCarthy sent along a similar note. Now I gotta get busy UnBlinking.

At first touch, Altavista returned two results: an online blog named 'onepotmeal,' (whose locale and name may offer political context), and a northern Michigan Mining Gazette (whose locale and name may offer political context).

What plausible explanation for so many "writers" with identical thoughts? OnePotMeal suggests: "The radio in my head tells me that I think W., Inc. is demonstrating genuine leadership." Henceforth, we refer to 'Demonstrating Genuine Leadership" as Alien Transmission 2003-01.

Clearly, some readers of the Houghton, Michigan, Mining Gazette aren't on the frequency. One reader (a Canadian with considerable freedom of speech) "can see Bush as he is - a liar, a corporate thief and an illegitimate president. The Gazette editors juxtapose this letter just to pose the question:

A little Googling finds that Nick is a regular receptor. From the Mining Gazette September 2002 Letters to the Editor, comes Alien Transmission 2002-09:

Searching for Nick's phrase, "obligation to disclose their agenda" seemed like a dead end. However, it brought me back to a site OnePotMeal had mentioned, Atrios sez Dittoheads Write letters, which describes "Astroturfing." (If it's artificial "grassroots", it must be "astroturf.")

  Atrios knows that Alien Transmissions have come before, as detailed at Failure Is Impossible. There, Maia Cowan lists 34 different newspapers that carried the "obligation to disclose their agenda" letter (Alien Transmission 2002-09) over different signatures. This example, from the September, 2002, Honolulu Star Bulletin:

Aloha! Update: Dirk's works have led UnBlinking to two entirely new Alien Transmissions! AT 2002-05, from the "All Republican All The Time" Honolulu Star Bulletin of 2002-05-11: ...and AT 2002-04, from the "Whatever Dirk Sez" Honolulu Star Bulletin of 2002-05-26: The first Alien Transmission of May, Partisan Games, appears over different names in at least 13 newspapers, whereas Sick and Tired was [ahem] 'written' by only four different Alien Receptors! Now, back to our regularly scheduled UnBlinking...

Now, backtrack with me. Remember Alien Transmission 2003-01? Here's a clip from the January, 2003, Honolulu Star Bulletin. Guess who... The Dirk-man! Dirk-o-rama! Dirk-meister! Makin' copies!

This same Alien Transmission also appeared in the Boston Globe. Thanks to skimble, for pointing out their mistyping of the phrase "President Bush has demonstrating genuine leadership." It's one of only a few mutations extant! Sez skimble:

When it comes to astroturfing, copycat propagandists can't even get it right. Bushisms are now creeping into the language of his minions and toadies.

Finding the same letter in the 2002-09-27 Cape Cod Online (try javascript off, cookies on)

Led me to another Cape Code letter with suspiciously smooth language after the elections:

That letter, Alien Transmission 2002-11, appeared in at least twenty newspapers. Identically.

In ultimate cloning mode, the Santa Barbara News Press (try javascript off, but cookies on) published Alien Transmission 2003-01 on January 10 from Ted Elswick in Lompoc. The same editors then published precisely the same letter again on January 17 from Suzie Clary in Santa Maria!

A scan of Google Groups hints this all may be Republican PR spin machine in action, citing a 2003-01-07 letter from Jack Oliver, Deputy Chairman of the Republican National Committee:

The President's proposal will benefit every American who pays taxes - especially middle-income workers, seniors on fixed incomes, small business owners that are the backbone of our economy, and unemployed workers. Under the Presidents proposal 92 million taxpayers would receive an average tax cut of $1,083 in 2003 alone...

We need you to add your voice to the millions of Americans that support the President's plan by writing a letter to your local news editors today and making sure your community knows that President Bush's plan is the right plan for America's taxpayers.

Is it the Republican National Committee, rather than Space Aliens? The numbers say "no." The RNC agrees on "$1,083," matching Alien Transmission 2003-01. AT2003-01 goes on to say "46 million married couples will get back an average of $1,714." Perhaps a search for 46 million married couples is another trail? Oddly, the White House and Treasury Department Press Releases say $1,716. not $1,714 as specified in the Alien Transmission. Off by two bucks. Oh, well.

Update, 2003-01-21 13:00 EST: The Inquirer, UK today describes how the GOP is involved. Technically, it's true that Team GOP Spam, Bam, Thank You Ma'am is owned by the Republican National Committee. However, it still seems likely that space aliens are in charge!

Demonstrating Gen-"You Whine" Readership

So, what are these Alien Receptors whining about? I also checked the phrase "When it comes to the economy." It did not lead to some mother lode of ready-to-bake letters. Rather, it reveals Ronald Brownstein's Like Father, Like Son: The Economic Indicators Head South

When it comes to the economy, the Bush family is on an intergenerational losing streak.

Nearly halfway through his term, President Bush's economic record is beginning to look a lot like that of his father, former President George Bush. That isn't good news for the younger Bush. Or for the economy.

Most key measures of economic well-being for average families declined under the first President Bush. Then, after an unsteady start, almost all of those same measures improved during Bill Clinton's eight years in the White House.

Now, under the second President Bush, the trend lines are pointing down again.

The same query returns red, white, and blue charts by Scott Davis, asking, Are you better off than you were 2 years ago?. Apparently not.

This track led to Change in Income Inequality for Families: 1947-1998, which will make you hope that the masses never rise up, and David Chandler's graph of the astonishing income disparity in the United States, a graph on which "Ordinary millionaires don't even show up!"

...the truth of my central thesis is not dependent on the exact height of the graph or shadings of definitions. As one correspondent put it, there is a "money spike" and there is a "population spike." There are two classes in this country. One class derives concentrated power from its concentrated wealth. The other class has power only in numbers. That power is effective only to the extent that it can be mobilized through organization.

Until we come to terms with these issues, phrases such as, "We the people...," and, "of the people, by the people, and for the people," are hollow cliches.

So, are the Alien Receptors just "the people," "mobilized through organization"? Not necessarily, as "When it comes to the economy" also returns "The U.S. Needs A "Regime Change" at Buzzflash:

BuzzFlash provides headlines, news, and commentary for a geographically-diverse, politically-savvy, pro-democracy, anti-hypocrisy web audience, reaching a million visitors a month and growing.

Make Them Accountable cites Crain's Chicago Business, debunking the myth that "Republicans Are Better for the Economy than Democrats". The Make Them Accountable home page carries a quote from Joseph Goebbels: "Repetition is the lynchpin of propaganda." As in, Alien Transmissions?

Blogs are by "the people," and more have picked up the story now (2003-01-18 14:00). For example, Paul Murray noted a report by Paul Boutin, who says:

It's not the first time a form letter has been a hit, but you'd think by now it would be easier to catch them. Idly curious as to who authored and distributed it, I've left a couple of phone messages with people whose names have appeared in print under the letter...

I bounced through a 2003-01-18 report from Blake Carver at LIS Librarian News, to Metafilter (for once coming late to the game :-). The first comment captured the tone of the room: "I guess they all subscribe to the 'goosestep' news service."

Later, Johnathan Rouse describes the underlying disingenuousness of this use of form letters:

Maybe I'm misunderstanding this - I was under the impressions that form letters to congressmen were clearly identified as such; certainly the offices of congress recognize them as such. These op ed pieces are indistinguishable from the pieces next to them; pieces that contain 100% original thought/viewpoint. This is centralized power disguised as decentralized popular mandate, at least, that's the way I'm taking it, and it just seems very wrong. The target here isn't to convince a congresscritter to pass a law, it's to sway the will of the unaware public, who read these pieces and think "jeez, I had no idea the Bush econ. policy was so popular. Maybe I've been too hard on him".

Opus dark agrees:

A communications channel which is found to be contaminated with cut-and-paste agitprop is a corrupted (and corruptible) communications channel. It is less useful than it once was. Its charter is no longer a valid measure of its content.

From now on, it must be diligently filtered, or ignored.

Saladin's reply proves The Transmission Is Out There: "I even read this tripe in the St. Augustine (population 12,000) Record the other day." The 37 copies we know of may be only a drop in the bucket.

Briefly, I puzzled over mixed messages sent by John U. Miller, Indianapolis, who circulated Alien Transmission 2002-09. Had he signed another editorial opposing the Bush tax plan?

Ah, no! The other editorial referred to John U. Miller (Executive Director, Capital Area Council of Churches, Albany) who signed a missive from the Religious Community For Responsible Tax Policy:

We are gravely concerned with the current tax cut proposals initiated by President Bush and being debated and passed by Congress. As millions of people - parents and children, the elderly, people with disabilities, and the working poor - are driven to seek charity to meet their most basic needs, we are appalled that the focus of attention in this congressional session is not on meeting their needs; rather, it is on tax cuts that will mostly benefit the affluent.

Let us be clear, we oppose the tax cut proposal initiated by President Bush and currently moving through Congress. It is too inequitable, too large, and threatens the future well being of our nation.

This letter also appeared widely since it represents represents the views of over 600 clergy representing thousands of churches and millions of members from all 50 states. The big difference: all these writers had the dignity to sign their names!  

Remonstrating Gen-"You Whine" Readership

Real work beckons. I'll clean up these tables in coming days. And, yes, I know many of these live links are broken. But, I have graphics of all these clippings yet to post.

In the meantime, Alien Receptors, you're not alone...