Patterico has uncovered what appears to be curiously similar letters-to-the-editor by “Ellen Light” and “Mark Spivey” appearing in publications all over the country - decrying the Republicans, supporting ObamaCare and so forth.
Whoever is behind this doesn’t seem to realize that the dupes can be uncovered with a simple Google search…anyway it made me wonder how original some of our local efforts are.
This letter appeared in the Jan. 22 Missoulian from a Brett Schandelson:
In January 1973, the Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade that the constitutional right to privacy protects the right of women to make private decisions about the most intimate of matters – including the decision to terminate pregnancies that threaten their health and well-being. A minority of Americans has consistently opposed this important decision and has worked tirelessly to overturn Roe, since it was decided 37 years ago.
Now, anti-choice activists have set their sights on the health care reform bill before Congress with the goal of using reform to eliminate private health insurance coverage for abortion for millions of women. The most extreme proposal before Congress is the Stupak amendment, which would prevent millions of women from using their own money to buy private health insurance that covers abortion.
Restricting access to private health insurance coverage for abortion in effect denies women the choices that Roe secured. Women will not stand by silently as anti-choice forces work to undermine their rights and health care coverage. Congress must vote for a final health care reform bill that includes the health care coverage women need.
***Googling*** on one line. Aha! Note the resemblance to this letter in the St. Petersburg Times the next day:
On Jan. 22, 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Roe vs. Wade that the constitutional right to privacy protects the right of women to make private decisions about the most intimate of matters — including the decision to terminate pregnancies that threaten their health and well-being…
Now, antichoice activists have set their sights on the health care reform bill before Congress with the goal of using reform to eliminate private health insurance coverage for abortion. The most extreme proposal before Congress is the Stupak amendment, which would prevent millions of women from using their own money to buy private health insurance that covers abortion. Restricting access to private health insurance coverage for abortion in effect denies women the choices that Roe secured.
Women will not stand by silently as antichoice forces work to undermine their rights and health care coverage. It is imperative that Congress remove the Stupak abortion ban from health care reform.
This letter was submitted by a Barbara A. Zdravecky of Planned Parenthood.
I suppose this is nothing unusual. There is something rote and predictable about these cut-and-paste jobs that make my eyes glaze over. These letters are generated by bots not writers.
Maybe someday letters to the editor will be syndicated, like op-ed cartoons.
on Jan 24th, 2010 at 9:35 pm
I turn first to LTE’s in the Denver Post each morning. When I first moved here, I was encouraged, as the breadth was so much broader than the Bozeman paper. Now there are no surprises, no original thoughts. It’s just another medium fraught with mediocrity, better than the eds and op-eds, but mostly a waste of tim.
on Jan 24th, 2010 at 9:55 pm
I coached Brett Schandelson in Little League.
on Jan 24th, 2010 at 10:23 pm
[Just checking to see if I am still banned from this blog.]
on Jan 25th, 2010 at 6:17 am
I know the people are real here because the Missoulian calls and confirms before printing. Who knows where the text comes from.
on Jan 25th, 2010 at 9:52 pm
Who was that talk show host in Billings before Dave Rye … forgotten now. But at the beginning of each show he would read a script that he called “My take” or something like that. I learned in a book by Kevin Phillips that RNC was writing those scripts - emailed every morning to every right wing talk show host in the country. It’s message of the day.
Interesting, as always, that you only notice the ‘other side’ of this - Planned Parethood, while the right wing is far advanced in this art. They have even hired bots to call the few progressive talk shows to talk the talk. There’s very little original going on out there except you and me, and I wonder …
on Jan 25th, 2010 at 9:52 pm
Dave Berg!
on Jan 26th, 2010 at 6:32 am
Yup, I think you’re right Mark but it sure does make those letters to ed boring doesn’t it. I don’t know about the talk shows..most the callers are boring unless they’re (1) insiders who (2) know something, and are (3) not hired. I’d rather hear Mark Steyn or Michael Savage just talk than listen to most callers.
The letter game cracks me up personally because we are always being hectored to send in more letters because “the other side is really good at this.” It’s all so old-school but I guess people still read them and keep score.
I think what’s hot right now are online comments to newspaper stories.
on Jan 26th, 2010 at 9:30 pm
I do agreemost of them are boring. You start to read them, you can see it coming, move on to the next one … once in a great while you read one that is original and interesting. Yawn. Then you get the one about the woman whose purse was returned by the nice young man, and the other one about how that’s not the way we behave in ‘our town’.
The only thing words than the letters are the op-eds. But I was really pleasantly surprised - I psent one whole whole month reading every piece in the Chroncicle, and while their idea of ‘balance’ was to run the dreary Ellen Goodman against Will and Hall and the FREE guys, the local editorials were really quite varied and good. Busted my preconceived notions all to pieces.
on Jan 27th, 2010 at 11:23 am
Ma- I spenrrk T
Mark is that your Na’vi name?
on Jan 27th, 2010 at 9:56 pm
Oops … my laptop. I don’t know if it is a keyboard issue or motherboard, but it misbehaves. I recently stripped all the programming off it and reinstalled Windows, and the cursor still jumps all over the place, the touch pad is hyper-sensitive, the ‘O” and space bar don’t really work all the time.
Anyway, that spelling of my name was the result of a cursor jump that I did not catch. I’ll take any advice anyone gots.