The back story: papers around the country were tricked into giving free space on the Letters pages to the Republican National Committee. Republicans plan to keep up the fake grass-roots (also known as Astroturf) campaign. Democrats, instead of shining a spotlight on this deception, are planning to figure out how to do the same thing.
Bravo for the Boston Globe! They, at least, will fight back against these deceptive Astroturf letters, according to this morning’s
Ombudsman essay. They plan to check out the authorship of questionable letters, so that genuine opinions of Globe readers don’t get buried by unacknowledged spin-speak and press releases.
But don’t you think this is a bit ironic? The Republican National Committee raised half a billion dollars for the last election–why are they foisting this extra unpaid work on newspaper editors? Fellas–and that goes for you Democrats too–just pay the paper for a political ad and then air your views in an open, honest way!