Word: astroturfs
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...viewers were entertained by a flying nun, a buxom genie and a suburban witch who twitched her nose. Yet of all the ridiculous TV shows of the era, two stand out for their enduring, unfathomable allure: The Brady Bunch, the sitcom about an adage-spewing stepfamily cavorting on an Astroturf lawn, and Gilligan's Island, the tale of seven mismatched castaways on an island that seemed oddly close to Hollywood. Both shows had a goofy otherworldliness painfully out of step with their tumultuous times. Both spawned fanatical cult followings and countless spin-offs. Both, amazingly, were created by the same...
DIED. RON LUCIANO, 57, former umpire; from suicide by carbon-monoxide poisoning; in Endicott, New York. Luciano's 11 Astroturf-chewing years of calls and confrontations paved the way for a second career as a sports commentator and author of books titled with baseball-related puns...
...development at a committee hearing -- his people call these sympathizers, describe the looming peril and offer to "patch" them directly through to a congressional office to voice their protest. "But only in their own words," stresses Bonner, mindful that congressional staffs are getting better at spotting pseudo-grass-roots ("Astroturf") lobbying. Bonner charges $350 to $500 per call generated...
...same budget plan cutting the business-lunch deduction from 80% to 50%, it was the National Restaurant Association that stirred to action, sending local TV stations satellite feeds of busboys and waitresses fretting about their imperiled jobs. And the restaurateurs hired Jack Bonner to roll out the Astroturf. "I see it as the triumph of democracy," Bonner said of his livelihood in a Washington Post interview. "In a democracy, the more groups taking their message to the people outside the Beltway and the more people taking their message to Congress, the better off the system...
...neighbor of like interest is a push-button exercise and can easily trigger a chain reaction. The result is a mass mailing that requires neither a centralized mass mailer nor the cost of postage and paper. And the next step can be a genuine, unrehearsed protest -- grass roots, not Astroturf -- that rolls into Congress or the White House via E-mail. Gingrich promises that Thomas will take power away from lobbyists, but if so, that may just mean Thomas has taken over their dirty work. (And after all, why should lobbyists be exempt from technological unemployment in the information...