Fake Letters From McCain Volunteers?

Google the text of the letter below later. 

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Ghost Writers

If you are spelunking the murky depths of the McCain campaign for instances of moral depravity, you're likely to find plenty to go around.  There has been no shortage of lies, distortions, and sleaze coming from the man the press once adored as a Maverick and Straight Talker.

But, any hardened political cynic would likely be surprised by the shenanigans that have permeated to the top of national press coverage.  Much of what we've seen can be found in the annals of political operations; it's just that much of it is particularly dirty.  And then there are the ghost writers.

I recognize that my participation in and observances of politics doesn't go back that far, but I have yet to hear of anything like this at all.  My friend Cernig posted on it last night.

A Dutch journalist had went to work separately for both the Obama and the McCain campaigns under cover.  Not a bad way to get a little inside information of the inner workings of a campaign, I suppose.  Having done a little volunteer work myself in the past, the lower level of volunteer work just isn't that interesting.  You fold fliers, you make phone calls.  If you don't have people-fear like I do, you knock on doors and try to register new voters.  It's an important part of the political process, just not a very exciting part.

But then the journalist stumbled upon a job I had never heard of:

The assignment is simple: We are going to write letters to the editor and we are allowed to make up whatever we want — as long as it adds to the campaign. After today we are supposed to use our free moments at home to create a flow of fictional fan mail for McCain. "Your letters," says Phil Tuchman, "will be sent to our campaign offices in battle states. Ohio. Pennsylvania. Virginia. New Hampshire. There we'll place them in local newspapers."

Place them? I may be wrong, but I thought that in the USA only a newspaper's editors decided that.

"We will show your letters to our supporters in those states," explains Phil. "If they say: 'Yeah, he/she is right!' then we ask them to sign your letter. And then we send that letter to the local newspaper. That's how we send dozens of letters at once."

The breach of public trust here is profound.  When I read a letter to the editor from a mother of a soldier serving in Iraq and showing her support, I expect to think her pol...

Ginny

I can has iPhone?