Shill Clearinghouse Hires Shill (stop the presses!)

(link goes to BoingBoing)

Cory "BoingBoing" Doctorow comments (in a "shocked, shocked!" manner) on how the Democratic National Council has hired a former Director of Communications for the Recording Industry Association of America, Jenni Engebretsen.

The point Cory misses is that lobbyists are for the most part amoral. They are paid for their connections and the persuasiveness with which they can put out their clients' message in an undiluted fashion. Consider that for a second; they become True Believers with an unvarying and unshakable opinion that happens to coincide 100% with that of the person whose name is on a check handed to them.

I once had the pleasure of dining at the home of Hillary Rosen (CEO of the RIAA '98 - '03) and Elizabeth Birch, her partner at the time (and Executive Director of the Human Rights Campaign, a gay-funded equal-rights lobbying group). The occasion was that I and a small team of co-workers had donated our time to setting up a write-a-letter-to-your-congressman web site for HRC (first of a kind in '95). They both seemed like lovely people.

Three years later Ms. Rosen would become the head of an organization that, instead of recognizing that their business model is not sustainable given new technology, litigates (then and now) against twelve-year-old girls for downloading N*Sync songs. For a check.

(have these people never read Anthem ? synopsis: in a dystopian "future" society a man is legally prosecuted for putting candle makers at risk of obsolescence by having invented the light bulb).

In 2004 she then went on to serve as interim director for HRC. (Whiplash!).

So, I'm not really too concerned who they hire to do their shilling for them. It is what it is.


http://riaa.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Birch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Rosen