Posted on 10/21/2004 7:03:25 PM PDT by ijcr
The Guardian yesterday ran up the white flag and called a halt to "Operation Clark County", the newspaper's ambitious scheme to recruit thousands of readers to persuade American voters in a swing state to kick out President George W Bush in next month's election.
The cancellation of the project came 24 hours after the first of some 14,000 letters from Guardian readers began arriving in Clark County. The missives led to widespread complaints about foreign interference in a US election.
It also prompted a surge of indignant local voters calling the county's Republican party offering to volunteer for Mr Bush.
The paper said it had closed the website where readers collected an address to write to and had abandoned plans to take four "winners" to visit voters in Clark County. Instead, the group would be taken to the "more tranquil" area of Washington.
Albert Scardino, the paper's executive editor for news, simultaneously denied and conceded that an early halt had been called to the project. "It is roaringly, successfully completed. It has been an overwhelming triumph," he said.
He then acknowledged that no more addresses were being distributed, blaming attacks on The Guardian website by Right-wing hackers.
"If we had not had the technical problem of the assault we would have completed the distribution of names in orderly fashion," he said. "We were able to give fewer addresses [of voters in Clark County] than we hoped. There were 14,000 names and addresses sent out. We would like to have made it possible to reach another 42,000 people."
The scheme seemed to backfired from the start as the reactions of the first recipients varied from indifference to anger and even alarm.
The surrender was announced in a lengthy "mea culpa" by Ian Katz, the G2 editor at The Guardian, who dreamed up the scheme.
He began with a lengthy denunciation of the American Right for over-reacting to his scheme, and painted his project as the victim of its own success, after many thousands of readers wrote to Clark County voters.
Further down the piece it became clear that Mr Katz was calling it quits. "Somewhere along the line, though, the good-humoured spirit of the enterprise got lost in translation," he wrote.
There had been mounting evidence that urging foreigners to send anti-Bush letters to Clark County - an isolated slice of the rural mid-West - was only hurting Senator John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate.
One senior local politician, speaking off the record to avoid offending his neighbours, said: "They picked the wrong county for many reasons. One is, we're very parochial. When people talk about The Guardian of London, they think you mean London, Ohio, which is in the next-door county. Another is, we have some issues with literacy round here."
Mr Katz acknowledged that an ever-growing number of Democrats, among them Sharon Manitta, the spokesman in Britain for Democrats Abroad, tried warning The Guardian: "This will certainly garner more votes for George Bush."
Mr Katz wrote yesterday that the paper had considered the possibility, but "we didn't believe it". He insisted: "Folks in Clark County itself have best recognised the spirit of the enterprise. Local media coverage has been consistently fair and good humoured."
"Good-humoured" headlines in the local newspaper, the Springfield News-Sun have included "Butt Out Brits, voters say" and "Trashing letter campaign" - a reference to the fact that the first woman to receive a letter from a Guardian reader, Beverly Coale, threw it away, fearing it was from a terrorist.
Karen Henschen, a member of the executive committee of the Clark County Democratic party, said scrapping the project was "probably the best thing they could do".
The end of the scheme comes as a relief to Linda Rosicka, the director of the Clark County board of elections, who has been fielding dozens of interview requests from the world's media.
Yet there is one last Guardian letter Mrs Rosicka would still like to see - one containing a cheque for $25 (about £13), which the newspaper still owes her for its purchase of the county's electoral roll.
"I was nice and made the file available, because their reporter said he was right on deadline," she said. "They said the cheque is in the mail. As of this morning, it still hasn't arrived, and it's been more than a week."
Your source is actually the Telegraph, not the Guardian.
But I read Mr. Katz' so-called "mea culpa". It's pretty lame, and makes it quite obvious that they cancelled the project because it was backfiring on them...it just fired people up for Bush.
Even some of their loyal leftist/Democrat readers (mostly from the U.S.) were telling them it was a bad idea (for them).
Wankers!
Oh, shoot, I just sold all my "All Creature's Great And Small" memoribilia on ebay. Darn.
County voters who can read that should vote out all senior local politicians, as a warning to the others.
I don't think anything was "Lost in Translation." We understood perfectly.
Can Mrs. Rosicka legally distribute the county voters roll complete with names and addresses???
Seems very wrong to me.
"I was nice and made the file available, because their reporter said he was right on deadline," she said. "They said the cheque is in the mail. As of this morning, it still hasn't arrived, and it's been more than a week."
LOL! Something for talk radio. Cheap Libs.
This must be the handiwork of Karl Rove, who I suspect is also behind the thoughtless remarks Mrs. Heinz-Kerry made about our first lady. Somehow, I'm also thinking he may have prompted the wild goose chase the senator went on this morning...
You simply cannot make this stuff up, eh? :)
As if anyone was having trouble reading the letters...
My beloved MOM got a call yesterday from Laura Bush yesterday in Henderson Nevada. She is very thrilled to walk (with her walker) to the polls and proudly cast her 16th Presidential vote for the next President of the United States, George W. Bush.
She is very thrilled to lead her State, Nevada, to a win for 'W'.
She called me after the 3rd debate and was more perspective than any of the media spin meisters. She told me that the "game was over". Go figure?
What a great idea from the Guardian! - is there a way to spoof these Guardian letters to other swing states without being caught at it?
I'm sure Cornwallis said the same thing about Yorktown.
I thought the same thing, is it legal? And for money? Who gets the money, I wonder. Maybe she was just joking about the "cheque". (Those brits, such funy spelers!)
I would also bet the letters against were not just from those on the right.
We fought for independence from these brits for a reason! (Not my original line, somebody else said it, I'm just borrowing it!)
The 3rd time we booted out something British..
PS~ For you Eurotypes and Brits remember this: You do not know even half about Americans that you THINK you know.
What you know is colored by your media and institutions which are virulently anti-American. That's fine. Opinions exist, even wrongheaded ones.
But....stop deluding yourselves into thinking that all of America is JUST LIKE YOU.
WE are not.
Lefties: Ten Times the Silliness....without the common sense!
Lefties: Ten Times the Silliness....without the common sense!
You could set up your own "British" website and buy the names of registered voters in other swing states, and make the same invitation, with some sample letters to get things rolling. A nice press release from "Ian Godfry" to a list of the world's media with specific reference to The Guardian's project for Google search purposes, and you'll be all set.
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