GOP Astroturf update....

Editors at the San Diego Union Tribune can console themselves: they weren't the only ones to be scammed by the GOP Team Leaders Action Center.

From from it. According to This Modern World, the list of dupes has become woefully long. Time Magazine just added its name, followed by the Kalamazoo Gazette, the Huntsville (AL) Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Anchorage Daily News, the Gallitin (TN) News Examiner and the Glasgow (KY) Daily Times.

These fine examples of American print journalism all published--verbatim--the same letter on "creating jobs and fostering economic growth," composed by TLAC operatives. They placed it in their "letters to the editor" sections, presenting it as a heartfelt missive, painstakingly penned by a real person, rather than the digital result of a couple of mouse-clicks that it really is.

What an all-time low for U.S. journalism. Granted, astroftuf is nothing compared to the Jayson Blair scandal, which pales in comparison to the appallingly shallow, sporting-event-like coverage of the 2002 election debacle and piss-poor, fawning, Pravda-like reporting of the Bush administration's invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

But still.

This Modern World post here.