Astroturfing for Obama

Well, the Ellie Light story's breakin' across the 'sphere, so this gives me a chance to throw some traffic to Another Black Conservativae and Left Coast Rebel (who provided the photoshop):

The main story's at Hot Air, "Ellie Light: Obama Astroturfer?" And Jawa Report's got the summary:

Patterico, The Cleavland Plain Dealer and some other intrepid souls have uncovered what appears to be a genuine astroturfing campaign by Obamacrats who are writing boilerplate pro-Obama letters to newspaper editorial sections across the nation.

They use different handles like "Ellie Light," "Mark Spivey," and a host of made up names, made up info about their residences and cut-and-pasted replications of Obama Administration propaganda. Newspapers across the country, of course, found these letters very compelling and printed them without knowledge that they were being used as willing dupes in this political astroturf operation.

Thanks to Google, we're finding out that this was a political spamming operation possible links to Obama groups like Organizing for America and is not "grassroots" operation in any sense.

But see Dan Riehl as well, "Linking Ellie Light To The White House." And, at Classical Values, "Going Light?" (via Memeorandum). And Reaganite Republican, "Ellie Light and Other Obot Trolls."

Added: Patterico has lots more on this, "Still More Astroturfing: Gloria Elle and Jan Chen Write the Same Anti-Republican, Pro-Obama Letter; UPDATED: Two More Pairings Found; UPDATED AGAIN: Four Pairings Total, and One Is a Triplet!"