Astroturfing explained!

And explained quite well by Jimmie at Sundries Shack! 

A little history is in order. The term AstroTurfing came about to describe efforts to make a protest look like it came from the grassroots (i.e. unorganized groups of ordinary folks who’ve come together in more or less an impromptu manner). It became commonplace in the last election when professional AstroTurfer David Axelrod became a top adviser to the Obama campaign. Jim Treacher was the first to really dig into Axelrod’s operation and you can get a good chunk of background on what he was doing in this post.

You can see from the links that the common element to all these AstroTurfing efforts is dishonesty. Whether it’s a group of people paid to represent themselves as concerned citizens, keyboard jockeys paid to infest blogs with fake “concern troll” comments, or manufactured memes propagated by left wing blogs from a central source, AstroTurfing is predicated on deceit.

That is different from what has been happening at town hall meetings, no matter what Jazz Shaw says. What seems to confuse people is the presence of money and top-down organization. But neither of those, by themselves or even together, mean that AstroTurfing is at work. They do indicate there’s some pretty heavy community organizing going on and that should be familiar to most of us since our President is the Community Organizer-in-Chief, You’d think that our professional journalists would have studied up on the subject given how much attention he’s brought to the profession, but that doesn’t seem to have happened.

Let’s be clear. The protesters you’ve seen opposing Obamacare generally aren’t AstroTurfers. Indeed, there is no evidence at all that Obamacare protesters have done any AstroTurfing. The supposed gotcha memo that the left waved around like a bloody shirt a couple weeks ago (before Mary Katharine Ham showed their outrage was more fake than Lindsey Lohan’s lesbianism) wasn’t an AstroTurfing effort either. It was good-old grassroots activism, just like our President used to do, except the guy who wrote the memo wasn’t actually paid to be an activist. The Tea Party movement is a grassroots movement, even though they have some semblance of organization.

Great essay he put together, and a much needed explanation, be sure to read the whole thing folks. Words DO mean things, and yes being clear and concise DOES matter! Especially when the term is being used to discredit legitimate protesters.