The Astroturf Behind Santelli
Interested in how the uninformed spewing of one relatively obscure CNBC anchor became a nationwide cause célèbre? It turns out it had a little something to do with astroturf organizing funded by rightwing foundations: “At stake isn’t the little guy’s fight against big government, as Santelli and his bot-supporters claim, but rather the ‘upper 2 percent’s war to protect their wealth from the Obama Adminstration’s economic plans. When this Santelli ‘grassroots’ campaign is peeled open, what’s revealed is a glimpse of what is ahead and what is bound to be a hallmark of his presidency.”
As I’ve been saying, one thing that makes it difficult to break the top two percent’s grip on things is their total control of the media. A typical Sunday chat show will consist of a host who belongs to the top two percent reporting to a network executive who belongs to the top two percent, who reports to a conglomerate executive who belongs to the top two percent. Their livelihoods will depend on attracting advertising dollars that are controlled by other top two percenters, and if the host brings some pundits on to discuss things they’ll be from the top two percent. Thus do the delicate sensibilities of the two percent or so of households earning more than $250,000 a year wind up getting equal weight—or more!—to those of the overwhelming majority of households that earn less than $100,000 a year.
Under the circumstances, it’s vital to find pathways of communications that aren’t so utterly dominated by the small minority of Americans located in the top two tax brackets.
35 Responses to “The Astroturf Behind Santelli”
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March 2nd, 2009 at 11:04 am
I just read that magazine for the articles.
March 2nd, 2009 at 11:07 am
Or we could adopt some variation on campaign finance disclosure laws: when you’re appearing on TV in an advocacy role, the scroll underneath could display your taxable income from last year, and its source(s).
March 2nd, 2009 at 11:08 am
Damn. That about sums it up. You can throw a whole lot of the current mess under that hat.
March 2nd, 2009 at 11:16 am
I remember hearing public figures note that this was somehow tapping into a populist rage, and I could not figure out what planet they were on. There was zero chance normal people would connect to this ranting–if for no other reason than it was a dude on a trading floor whining about taxpayer handouts. If anybody ever cared what a dude on a trading floor thought, they sure as hell don’t these days.
I’d be interesting to see who flagged this as a “populist” uprising–which political figures, media members, etc. It would be interesting to see either who was dumb enough to fall for this, or who else might have been a paid part of it.
I am, however, shocked that they basically bought someone. I knew the system was corrupt and that this guy was full of crap–I just figured he was a useful idiot rather than a bought-and-paid-for schill.
March 2nd, 2009 at 11:17 am
If this was truly some astroturf plot, let us hope they spent way too much money on it and are eager to repeat it.
I mean the payoff was an overpaid middle-aged white guy standing in a room of derivative traders (i.e. McCain’s best demographic–more overpaid middle-aged white guys), Joe the Plumber saying some stupid stuff, and Michelle Malkin acting unhinged. Oh, and some really small protests by people who can’t spell.
If this is how the Koch family wants to piss away their money, why stop them?
March 2nd, 2009 at 11:22 am
Matt, love your blog, but be careful not to caricature the top 2%. Obama won the educated wealthy handily. I am in that top 2% (joined a tech start up early and work/skill with a massive dose of good fortune (*see Outliers) got me there) and most of my peers (top executives at public tech companies, neighbors in very nice area, etc) just about 100% support Obama. You are right that there is an elite Washington/Media consensus that opposes progressive reforms, but I don’t think it is because the media are top 2%ers. That in an of itself does not seem to me to be determinative.
I’d love to see Obama puncture the myth that those of us that had the good fortune to make a lot of money object to paying higher taxes. Most of us can buy all we want in terms of home, car, consumer goods, etc. But we also want public goods: a clean environment, good schools, good police/fire, a good SEC and oversight, parks, investments that will allow for energy independence, etc. I get very upset about paying taxes when I focus on the vast waste that sometimes occurs (eg, the waste and corruption associated with the billions we threw at private contractors to rebuild Iraq), but when we hear Obama articulate his priorities (Energy, Healthcare, and Education) I have no objection to paying higher taxes to invest more in that. I think telling this story is key to taking all of the wind out of the arguments of the Right.
March 2nd, 2009 at 11:22 am
You have hit on a subject that needs much more discussion. How do middle class people get on the air? Ideas are not the purview of the wealthy.
We can only hope that the money losing networks will follow the lead of other corporations and layoff the higher wage workers, pundits and reporters, allowing new faces and new ideas to become part of the discussion.
The WaPo can start with George Will, remember the little innocent where George participated in Ronnie’s debate training and then asked the same questions in the Carter debate? That alone should have cost him his coveted perch in the media.
March 2nd, 2009 at 11:22 am
Matt… Do you really believe this conspiracy theory? I think Santelli’s just a dbag who screeches about that stuff every day and happened to strike a cord with wingnuttia one day.
March 2nd, 2009 at 11:23 am
I think Gibbs should make it clear it to GE, at a White House press briefing, that the Administration does not appreciate it that GE’s talent is being used for anti-administration propaganda. At some point GE may/could/will come to the Government asking for money and maybe the response should be, Santelli, Kudlow, have a nice day.
March 2nd, 2009 at 11:28 am
That’s a good idea Chris. Since we all receive government largess in some form or another, I think the administration should be able to hire and fire a person in the private sector based on whether that person is sufficiently supportive and deferential to the administration. What a wonderful world that would be!
March 2nd, 2009 at 11:31 am
Gee, you mean the ObaMegaphone isn’t large enough in the fawning media?
And how’s come the Left doesn’t draw the obvious conflict between Barry’s largest in history Wall Street Bribes and his early and essential support for TARP1 and 2?
Or the fact that ObaMessiah himself is in that corrupt and evil 2%?
And how’s come we hear about dumb if not corrupt and evil ol’ Geithner et Cie when in fact the ObaLiar has first, middle, and last say over his administration’s policies?
Really, if ObaRezco really objected to the stink from Geithner’s burning shitpile of money then I think he need only make a call.
Hell, he can tell Rahmbo to do the deed.
March 2nd, 2009 at 11:44 am
Joe the Plumber doesn’t make 250,000 a year (yet). Maybe he should get a TV show. After Rachel Maddow?
No, you say?
What we need are not a bunch of joe-six-packs with TV shows, but knowledgeable liberals with broader concerns than their own paychecks (that is, who are not GOP voters). Because anybody you stick on TV, if they did not already make $250k a year, will soon get there.
So what you’re looking for, Matt, are knowledgeable liberals, regardless of how much they make.
March 2nd, 2009 at 11:44 am
“As I’ve been saying, one thing that makes it difficult to break the top two percent’s grip on things is their total control of the media.”
You can keep saying it, but it doesn’t change the fact that you are eliding the main point in doing so.
The core problem here is not that news anchors are rich.
The core problem here is that General Electric dominates Washington and Wall Street coverage, and General Electric has a very specific corporate agenda that they are trying to advance with their coverage.
March 2nd, 2009 at 11:44 am
Be still my heart… more unhinged ramblings from my boyfriend.
You still haven’t answered me JT– will you marry me?
I dream of you and Joe the Plumber talking incessantly about taxes and socialism.
xxoo,
your #1 fan
March 2nd, 2009 at 11:48 am
Rick Santelli looks like a creepy vampire dude in need of a blood engorged neck to suckle on.
March 2nd, 2009 at 11:53 am
I don’t care how it happened, it was a comic relief – I want it to happen again! A subdeb conservative figure like Malkin (the couldn’t even get Coulter for the job – I guess the price wasn’t right) leading thousands, or hundreds, of yahoos wearing costumes to protest against the tax decreases that most of them are receiving – it is like a Palin rally without the intellectuals.
More! Oh please, let them continue the teabagging stunt! If your foe insists on making itself ridiculous, you should not stand in its way.
March 2nd, 2009 at 12:10 pm
The first link isn’t working.
March 2nd, 2009 at 12:10 pm
dm,
I think it would be a mistake to read Matt’s point here as being “rich = conservative.” Left-right is certainly one divide in our society, with (as you say) liberal rich people supportive of the idea of progressive taxation paying for a vibrant public sector, and lower-middle class conservatives opposing it.
But wealth itself is a dividing line, too. Remember, much of media slant has to do not with what people say about issues, but with selecting which issues get a lot of air time, and what the acceptable range of debate is. Take NAFTA. The conservatives on TV are solidly pro-NAFTA, pro international trade deals in general, period. The liberals on TV are almost all pro-NAFTA as well, but wish to tweak it a bit to smooth the corners. Among the public at large, however, there is a great deal of opposition to the basic “Free Trade” philosophy that both the TV liberals and TV conservatives accept.
March 2nd, 2009 at 12:29 pm
Recusancy: It’s not a conspiracy. It’s right out in the open. Lewis Lapham had a great article on the rise of the Republican echo machine five years ago in Harper’s, and nothing has changed for them. What has changed is that the rest of the world has gotten ahold of some broadcast machinery of its own, and reality is slowly making inroads into the CPAC mindset.
March 2nd, 2009 at 12:47 pm
Matt, we’re all ON a “pathway of communications that [is]n’t so utterly dominated by the small minority of Americans located in the top two tax brackets”.
TV production is too expensive for anybody but corporations. Television is certainly now (and probably always was) a medium for controlling the opinions of the middle class.
The neutral internet is demographically dominated–that is, larger subgroups will have a louder voice, excluding the class of people who can’t afford internet access.
Santelli’s paid advertisement being treated as news is by no means novel. It’s what Pravda did, what the Nazi Party did, and –gasp– what the American televised news media has ALWAYS done.
The goal is too disempower television and print media–and their shitty investments are doing our job for us.
March 2nd, 2009 at 1:05 pm
That’s a good idea Chris. Since we all receive government largess in some form or another, I think the administration should be able to hire and fire a person in the private sector based on whether that person is sufficiently supportive and deferential to the administration. What a wonderful world that would be!
Then they should avoid going broke and needing bankruptcy protection. You know, sometimes the invisible hand spanks you, Brad. It doesn’t alway give you a hand job. And do you really want to use phrases like “based on whether that person is sufficiently supportive and deferential to the administration” after eight years of the Bush administration. Is conservatism always predicated on memory loss?
March 2nd, 2009 at 1:14 pm
At their inception, the highly centralized broadcast media of television was designed to engineer public opinion. In c. 1950 their executives met together and agreed they would never broadcast anything “controversial”. This was because of the pressure of the Cold War — the Korean war. Whatever the case, from the first, they have been conceived as a propaganda arm of the defense establishment; and one of their tenets has been to promote the utopia of a commercial society.
March 2nd, 2009 at 1:18 pm
Actually the protests started before Santelli appeared on TV on Feb 19.
March 2nd, 2009 at 1:39 pm
What is funny about the protesters – besides the fact that they are funny – is that they are busy scoring own-goals. They are right about the idea of part of Obama’s economic team – the Geithner and Summers faction – that somehow we can restore the status quo ante. But the status quo ante is the absolute center of conservative governance. It is the ownership society. The idea that it is your money, so you are smart enough to take your own risks. Which is like saying it is your own body, so you are smart enough to do heart surgery on it.
The SQA is blowing away. The whole thirty years of lessened incomes and wages, and heightened return on investments and assets – the whole paradigm of moving government supported social insurance programs into the private sphere – is burning up. By advocating surfing the business cycle, they are basically accepting that the rightwing conservative paradigm is generally only good for the wealthy. This is a bunch who are, a., protesting their own tax cuts and b., unableto comprehend that their own position in the economy is not segregated from their neighbors. This isn’t a game of alphabet blocks. Your neighbor’s house values are going to have a direct impact on yours. Perhaps they should have thought of that before supporting clueless presidents like Reagan, Bush I and Bush II.
They at least know that something stinks in the Bush-Obama plan to spend more money supporting the investor class in the last four months than we have spent on medicare in the last two years. But they don’t know the stink comes from their own hateradio gods.
Pathetic, but predictable.
March 2nd, 2009 at 1:40 pm
Luck favors the prepared mind.
I would be careful. In fact I will never say Santelli’s spiel was done in collaboration or even direct knowledge aforethought of the organized professional PR world of the anti Obama forces. That can never be proven and in fact he probably wasn’t. Rather he was spouting their line which was already out there. And that message itself could be and was arrived at independently among many libertarian types.
When Santelli erupted they were ready. The UTube bit went up. I know for a fact it went viral on stock market trading boards within the hour. A movement was born.
If you try and start a discussion of this by accusing Santelli of direct involvement you sidetrack the most important thing. The astro turfers were there to pick up the ball and run with it through the MSM.
When that story in the 80’s about the CIA compliticy with Contra cocaine dealers broke it was destroyed, and the reporter whose name I forget eventually was ruined and committed sucicide because he went a step too far. He claimed the CIA invented crack and started the crack epidemic as a policy. This silly charge became the focus and since it was not true or certainly not proveable when that part was challenged the entire story was swept aside as untrue. This is one of the most valuable storiez to study into the nature of modern propoganda.
March 2nd, 2009 at 2:32 pm
You can also find the article in question at the Exiled.
March 2nd, 2009 at 2:39 pm
The article is still available at:
http://exiledonline.com/exposing-the-familiar-rightwing-pr-machine-is-cnbcs-rick-santelli-sucking-koch/
The website eXileD appears to belong to one of the original authors, Yasha Levine. She’s updated her reporting on Santelli’s teabagging with a second article:
http://exiledonline.com/astroturf-revolution-dispatch-koch-activists-teabag-media/
To those that might discount her ‘investigative’ journalism as tinfoil hat stuff, what’s even more ‘tinfoil hat’ is the notion that some wealthy, pampered tv star like Santelli is somehow the face of neo-populism.
Santelli and his allies, whether real people or imaginary Sith, are ultimately trying to rile the right-wing Palin voters and the fans of Sam Wurzelbacher (aka: Joe the unqualified Plumber).
So far it’s been the equivalent of applying a coat of paint to a house with dangerous cracks in it’s foundation.
Nonetheless, to the two percenters in charge of the bulk of America’s media, a facade supporting their illusion is much better than portraying reality.
As to Hefner’s coporation deleting the page, perhaps the invisible hand of Santelli’s shadow emperor got to him.
March 2nd, 2009 at 2:55 pm
Re: “Tinfoil hat”
I read Levine’s article and it didn’t sound like she had much evidence to back up the key links between, for instance, Santelli and the Koch family. And I kept wondering if the “astroturf” websites she mentioned weren’t just lucky (how many similar low-bandwidth conservative websites might be out there?). Much of her article centered around how fast people responded to Santelli — putting up the video within a few hours etc. — which sounded about right for a quick reaction, not a pre-planned campaign.
As someone who’s done a little investigative journalism, you have to reign in the tendency to look for the conspiracy. If you cast your net wide enough, you can fish out supporting evidence for just about anything.
March 2nd, 2009 at 3:07 pm
The core problem here is that General Electric dominates Washington and Wall Street coverage, and General Electric has a very specific corporate agenda that they are trying to advance with their coverage.
=========================================================
And this enormous power and control of the media has resulted in their stock falling from $32 to $7 in the last year.
March 2nd, 2009 at 5:33 pm
Er, yeah Campesino. The powerful fucked up. That’s, um, the cause of EVERY recession.
Dude, GE doesn’t CONTROL the media. GE IS the media–or at least 1/4 of it. Saying that GE and NBC are “in league” isn’t really a conspiracy THEORY.
March 2nd, 2009 at 7:24 pm
The article can also be found on exiledonline.com
March 2nd, 2009 at 11:13 pm
Luke Says:
March 2nd, 2009 at 5:33 pm
Er, yeah Campesino. The powerful fucked up. That’s, um, the cause of EVERY recession.
Dude, GE doesn’t CONTROL the media. GE IS the media–or at least 1/4 of it. Saying that GE and NBC are “in league” isn’t really a conspiracy THEORY.
======================================================
You miss my point entirely. I was familiar with the GE – NBC corporate structure as I worked for GE Aircraft Engines for 15 years, ending 2002. I’m wincing as the stock price continues to fall and my retirement start date continues to move to the right
I find the whole concept of GE “controlled” corporate media with an “agenda” pretty laughable when you consider they line up MSNBC with Olberman, Maddow, etc who are obviously pro-corporate Republican types.
If you have real examples of how GE has used the networks for some nefarious purpose that has advantaged the corporation I’d love to hear it. I always thought the broadcast end of GE was a total waste and should have been dumped in the mid-90s when it was worth something
March 2nd, 2009 at 11:25 pm
Oh and AP says this whole astroturf story isn’t true. Playboy and TPM Muckraker have taken down their stories
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jdX-0mpkS8XcbsUguOqpyWvXjnzAD96M7J780
Of course the fact that Santelli, CNBC, the people who run the web site, etc all say the story’s not true is just more indication of how devious the plot really is