The fine art of astroturf
21/10/08 12:00![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
owlectomySo I'm doing my daily blogsurfing when I come to an advertisement for MercuryFacts.org, which claims that women and children are being put in danger by the warnings about mercury in tuna; they're curtailing their consumption of tuna and therefore not getting enough fatty acids. This was interesting to me because I'd recently read this article about mercury in tuna, which did indeed make me cut down on my tuna a little.
So it turns out that MercuryFacts.org is run by the Center for Consumer Freedom, and that's a fishy-sounding name if I ever heard one - just like you know that the Organization for Balanced Energy Choices is always going to be funded by coal and oil groups. And MercuryFacts.org doesn't disguise that they're supported by restaurants and food companies.
Well. It turns out that in 1996, Phillip Morris started the "Guest Choice Network" to oppose regulating smoking in bars and restaurants. And the "Guest Choice Network" has now renamed themselves... the Center for Consumer Freedom.
The point here isn't about mercury in tuna, or any of the CCF's other pet causes. But: if their cause is righteous, then they shouldn't need to be getting their money from the fast food industry and the meat industry. And they shouldn't need to disguise where they're getting their money from. As long as they're not honest about that, it seems like they're trying to put the a happy-face sticker of "freedom" on top of things like unknowingly consuming unsafe levels of toxic chemicals.
So it turns out that MercuryFacts.org is run by the Center for Consumer Freedom, and that's a fishy-sounding name if I ever heard one - just like you know that the Organization for Balanced Energy Choices is always going to be funded by coal and oil groups. And MercuryFacts.org doesn't disguise that they're supported by restaurants and food companies.
Well. It turns out that in 1996, Phillip Morris started the "Guest Choice Network" to oppose regulating smoking in bars and restaurants. And the "Guest Choice Network" has now renamed themselves... the Center for Consumer Freedom.
The point here isn't about mercury in tuna, or any of the CCF's other pet causes. But: if their cause is righteous, then they shouldn't need to be getting their money from the fast food industry and the meat industry. And they shouldn't need to disguise where they're getting their money from. As long as they're not honest about that, it seems like they're trying to put the a happy-face sticker of "freedom" on top of things like unknowingly consuming unsafe levels of toxic chemicals.
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(no subject)
21/10/08 17:02 (UTC)Seriously, the greater a group sounds, the more likely they're run by, like, the Evil League of Evil...
(no subject)
21/10/08 18:06 (UTC)(no subject)
21/10/08 19:02 (UTC)(no subject)
17/12/08 07:13 (UTC)Some sick puppies out there actually making a profit off of continually poisoning people.
I think they should all be forced to work sanitation and give all those good hard working people cushy job as their task masters.