Some months back I signed up for an e-mail list administered by, in varying combinations, Jane Hamsher, Glenn Greenwald, Matt Stoller and Markos Moulitsas. The pitch at the time was for Stop the DC Establishment, a campaign to persuade journalists of “Petraeus’s long record of errant judgment in Iraq.”
The message shifted over time, asking list members to back the Democrats’ SCHIP plan (unsuccessful), oppose the January FISA bill (unsuccessful) and sign an FEC complaint about John McCain’s campaign finances (unresolved but likely unsuccessful). In every case, the list was a call-to-action directly furthering the Leftroots’ political goals.
This week, I received an e-mail from the same firedoglakeaction@gmail.com account used to send out most of these messages. But this one was just a little different:
A few “to be sure” statements: It’s their list, anyone can unsubscribe, and Greenwald’s book is undoubtedly sympatico with their previous messages.
But let’s be clear about what they’re doing: They are making commercial use of an e-mail list subscribers joined for expressly political reasons. More to the point, the list is now being used to advertise a product by one of the list’s owners.
I have no way of knowing the reaction of people on the list who signed up out of genuine support for their cause (as the blurred name above suggests, I didn’t sign up as myself) but I can certainly imagine some will be irritated that their interest in Greenwald’s political activities implies an agreement to receive commercial solicitations on his behalf. I’m a little irritated, if that counts for anything.
I actually wasn’t going to write about this, until I heard this week that Greenwald and Hamsher barely attended the Wednesday Dupont Circle event; apparently they showed up at the very end and gave a “hard sell for Greenwald’s book.” Two is one short of a trend, but if it becomes that, they could risk squandering their readers’ loyalty.
But don’t you see? Buying Greenwald’s book is a political action. In these times of living under the tyrant Bushitler there’s no greater political action than to buy the words of such a “brilliant” man. Not buying his book amounts to censorship.
I unknowingly signed up for that mailing list when I signed one of the petitions they were touting (or maybe it wasn’t unknowing, they might have said so in the petition, I just don’t remember it). I thought at first the mailings would be about that one issue and then I started getting them weekly on a whole range of topics. I either unsubscribed or threw the email into my spam folder, I can’t remember, but I haven’t received one now in a few weeks.