Sunday, August 06, 2006

DCI Group Abusing YouTube

It all started on May 24, 2006 when a 2 minute spoof, Al Gore's Penguin Army showed up on You Tube. It's kinda odd and has Linux's Tux being bored and brainwashed by Gore dressed as the Batman villian, the Penguin.

The video clip says it was posted by toutsmith a 29 year-old who according to his myspace page lives in Beverly Hills and doesn't want children.

However the Wall Street Journal found that it was really posted by the DCI Group, who ABC calls a slick Republican public relations firm. Is that fair? Well looking at their leadership you see a few ties to several Republican campaigns. Source Watch makes it clear. The main partners all worked in the 1990s for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company and has the quote "We are a political firm and all of our partners have political campaign experience". They are "associated with telemarketing company Feather Larson & Synhorst DCI" which gets a lot of money from the RNC and has "close ties" to Karl Rove.

Faking grassroots campaigns is known as astroturfing and it seems to be a specialty of DCI Group. Do Democrats do this? Can anyone give me an example? Personally I like how the first two links on their site, About Us and Our Approach have exactly the same content.

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