Got this from Daily Kos.
. . The trainer, Austin James, was instructing Tea Party members on how to “manipulate the medium”. This is what he told them:
“Here’s what I do. I get on Amazon; I type in “Liberal Books”. I go through and I say “one star, one star, one star”. The flipside is you go to a conservative/ libertarian whatever, go to their products and give them five stars. … This is where your kids get information: Rotten Tomatoes, Flixster. These are places where you can rate movies. So when you type in “Movies on Healthcare”, I don’t want Michael Moore’s to come up, so I always give it bad ratings. I spend about 30 minutes a day, just click, click, click, click. … If there’s a place to comment, a place to rate, a place to share information, you have to do it. That’s how you control the online dialogue and give our ideas a fighting chance.”
Yeah? Well next campaign I’m going to call in a Domino’s delivery to the Republican HQ. And I might just play door-bell-ditch at Rex Bohn’s house too!
6 comments
Comments feed for this article
December 30, 2010 at 7:31 am
moviedad
They are blind to the fact that if you need to use dishonesty and misinformation, perhaps your message is missing substance. In a conversation concerning ‘Democracy Now’ I defended its neutrality in that it just lets the people talk. These are people who are on the ground in our many warzones. My friend’s point is that just by stepping out of line with the mainstream media; democracy now is showing itself as a propagandist organization. Who can argue with such stubborn stupidity.
December 30, 2010 at 9:31 am
Anonymous
the horrifying part of this, is that in today’s instant gratification world, and really in general, customer ratings play a huge part in what someone else purchases. it used to be word of mouth, now it is word of internet. the gop pays people to do this sort of thing. on a way less serious level this, but as fraudulent as the robo-signers in the foreclosure debacle. some people don’t look any deeper than a customer rating. this really deserved more than your usual flippant remarks like dominos, and door-ditch. you really are a butt-hook.
December 30, 2010 at 10:38 am
HRMelk
What a sad, sad way to try to manipulate your beliefs on others.
Ive met ‘libs’ who are wrong on some things, but these far-right
lunatics are just evil.
And sad.
December 30, 2010 at 11:05 am
Eric Kirk
I think most business interests are aware of the pitfalls of the rating data, and use comparative statistics to account for the variables. Certainly a company like Crown Publishers isn’t going to let a few obsessed tea party hacks lead them to bad investments.
Not that publisher’s aren’t capable of bad business decisions. I did some Christmas shopping at Copperfield’s in Petaluma a couple of weeks ago and they had a slew of right wing books that weren’t selling. Palin’s book was already being offered for a reduced price and according to the woman at the register they weren’t moving them (duh, it’s Petaluma!). I don’t know if the publishers push them, but she mentioned that there was a local right winger who hardly ever buys a book but walks in and complains that “liberal books” outnumber “conservative books” on the shelves. When the manager pointed out that books are offered based on what the market will bear (you’d think that argument would appeal to a right winger), his response was that conservative books would sell better if liberal publishers and store owners gave them a chance, and maybe Petaluma wouldn’t be so liberal if there was more of a free exchange of ideas, yada, yada.
There was definitely no shortage of right wing books when I was there. They had a whole shelf which seemed dedicated to books by O’Reilly and others slamming Obama, including one by an author I didn’t recognize arguing that Obama is the biggest threat to liberty since Hitler. But yeah, there were many more “liberal books” available. The woman basically said that the conservative books are there for show as there aren’t many takers, and that they had “way overordered” Palin’s book and Bush’s book, in the latter case thinking that Clinton’s endorsement would boost those sales. It wasn’t yet being offered at a reduced rate, so maybe it played out. Me, I’ll wait for the movie.
December 30, 2010 at 11:21 am
Sally
Eric, we already saw the movie – it was 8 years long!
December 31, 2010 at 12:51 am
moviedad
Customer Ratings like other Honor System arrangements, are perverted to the service of profit. In the corps. it is illegal for a company to do anything that decreases the value of the stockholder’s shares. Doesn’t that make every executive responsible for exploiting every avenue of profit? So in the capitalist, “money is the only value placed on anything and everything.” world, it is just good business sense to post false ratings. Or go on craigslist and create false anonymous ‘chatter’ about your business or products. The political activist who admits to doing this is just showing the way the rest of the corporate world behaves.