Use of GOP Shills on Black Audiences Nothing New

Christine Todd Whitman shills for nukes, for a significantly larger fee

MSNBC Reports:

Did the Romney campaign plant supporters at NAACP speech?
By Jillian Rayfield
-
Wed Jul 11, 2012 5:47 PM PDT

Did Mitt Romney’s campaign plant African-American supporters in the audience to cheer for the speech the candidate gave Wednesday to the NAACP? That’s what the NAACP’s Hilary Shelton claimed on The Ed Show. (See Late Updates below).

Romney said today that after the speech, at which he was booed for saying he’d repeal the Affordable Health Care Act, he met with black leaders who told him they support his policies but are afraid to do so publicly.

But on The Ed Show, Shelton said those were likely people brought in by the Romney camp “to actually provide the cheering for him.”

“Quite frankly, the campaign actually gave me a list of African-American VIPs that they brought into the NAACP meeting,” Shelton told Ed Schulz. “So we were aware that they had people brought in specifically for the campaign. So I’m sure those were the ones they sat down with, because quite frankly none of the rank-and-file NAACPers met with him.”

Indeed, despite the boos, cheering can be heard at various points during the speech, including when Romney criticized President Obama over the economy and education…

The technical term for this is “paid shills.” It’s a con that goes back to the old Medicine Shows and the Shell Game at county fairs. I don’t need to comment on this post, because I already commented on it, on February 3rd, 2005.

Mediaite Meets Pravda

It’s not so much the facts as how you spin ‘em, after all.

There was an old Soviet-era joke about the then-”official” propaganda newspaper, Pravda, or “Truth.” It goes like this:

The Soviet and USA track teams competed in a dual meet. The USA team beats the USSR track team. The next day in Pravda, the headline reads: