You cannot understand the new Swift Boating of the Hillary Trojans without knowing the people behind it. In fact once you meet some of them you might conclude it is an insult to place them in the same class as the Swift Boaters. The trail gets a little twisted at times and the underbrush a bit thick, but I trust the journey will be worth it.
The GOP and Karl Rove
To any Democrat or political reporter, the Hillary Trojans have all the earmarks of a Karl Rove effort. As the master practitioner of wedge politics, Rove may have found his ultimate wedge in the disgruntled supporters of Hillary Clinton. The more Rove can convince these people that the Democratic National Committee is an evil empire that robbed them, the more he can channel their anger to the Presidential candidacy of John McCain.
The problem with this convenient theory is that Rove and the GOP are far too clever to let themselves be traced to the Hillary Trojans any more than they could be traced to the Swift Boaters or the infamous Brooks Brother Riot of the 2000 campaign. When the histories of this era are written by another generation, the speculation will only continue to grow. Rove, of course, all but encourages this because like the cat burglar who never gets caught it only increases his reputation.
The fact that the Hillary Trojans seem to have a decentralized structure–the Al Qaeda of American politics–the harder it becomes to track down who is bankrolling them and masterminding their efforts. With 527 groups at least you can see who contributed, but with blog sites and political spam the detective work becomes harder. Prosecuting spammers has proven as difficult as catching sand with a sieve.
What follows are profiles of a few known Hillary Trojans, presented with the idea that the best defense against a Trojan is to show what is inside the horse.
PUMA
PUMA (originally “Party Unity My Ass” and now officially a more sedate “People United Means Action”) was one of the original angry Hillary groups. Started by Darragh Murphy and depending on whose story you read Will Bowers, PUMA fed on the anger over the actions of the Democratic National Committee over the Florida and Michigan delegations. The PUMA PAC website features a graphic that now says “Obama National Committee” rather than Democratic National Committee.
There will be no unity in the Democratic party until the voices of the 18 million voters who support Hillary Clinton are heard and heeded.
After some twisted–and frankly audacious–language about considering Clinton to still be head of the Party and “continuing to support her throughout this election cycle” (whatever that means), PUMA lists three more goals:
2. To lobby and organize for changes in leadership in the DNC
3. To critique and oppose the misogyny, discrimination, and disinformation in the mainstream media, including mainstream blogs and other outlets of new media
4. To support the efforts of those political figures who have allied themselves with Hillary Clinton and who have demonstrated commitment to our first three goals
In June Murphy filed a form 8871 with the Federal Election Commission for the formation of PUMA as a 527 Political Action Committee. Under “Purpose” Murphy wrote:
Puma PAC is a grassroots political action committee. Our goals are to protest the actions of the Democratic National Committee during the 2007-2008 presidential campaign, oppose the bias and sexism in the media during the campaign, and protest the 2008 Presidential Election.
The filing listed Murphy as both Treasurer and Executive Director. So far there have been no financial reports, so PUMA’s support is unknown.
As for Murphy, she has an interesting past, formerly serving as head of Rowanoak Corporation (presumably named after William Faulkner’s home–an interesting choice for a business name especially if you know your Faulkner), which arranged for construction work in the Boston area but itself did no actual contracting. In 2003 the United States District Court for Massachusetts issued a judgment against Murphy’s mother Ann Walsh for receiving “fraudulent transfers” to her from Murphy.
Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon cites Murphy’s $500 contribution to McCain in February of 2000 commenting:
So, not much of a Clinton fan but appears to be big on McCain.
At this point PUMA has not yet endorsed John McCain.
Clintons4McCain
Like its ambiguous title– does it imply Bill as well as Hillary Clinton or does it mean Clinton supporters?–tracking the true story of this group and its web of associations would be a full-time assignment for any investigative reporter. At some point, I hope one will decide to accept that impossible mission.
According to a Wired article the domain name ClintonsForMcCain.com was registered by the Republican National Committee on May 15. As far as I can tell the site was never activated. On June 4 someone registered the domain name Clintons4McCain listing Washington, D.C. as its address. The registrar was a company called Wild West Domains out of Scottsdale, Arizona. Wild West is a spinoff of GoDaddy. Wild West CFO Michael Zimmerman gave money to John McCain as recently as last year according to opensecrets.org and the Center for Responsive Politics.
Clintons4McCain is not registered with the Federal Election Commission. According to the blog site, Clintons4McCain was founded by Peter Boykin, Cristi Adkins and Anne Franklin. Although the founders claim to be Hillary Clinton supporters, only Franklin has contributed to her campaign. Adkins claims a vague involvement with the Clinton West Virginia campaign, but that is all.
Peter Boykin
Boykin, whose photograph shown above resembles everyone’s stereotype of the computer geek, is the most fascinating of the three. His bio on the site proclaims:
Peter is in the Information Technology field and a Webmaster and developer of many sites like http://www.misshillaryclinton.com and www.clintons4mccain.com and he assisted in the original domain name for justsaynodeal.com
Researching Boykin leads back to a 2000 article from Danville, Virginia:
Four months after the city adopted the slogan ”Danville Can,” a resident has made it the address of his pornographic Web site titled ”Pete’s Wild and Young Adventures in a Gay Wonderland.”
Site creator Peter Boykin, 23, said material on the site, which includes pictures of males engaged in sex acts, is for ‘’shock value.”
Since Peter Boykin is a reasonably common name, I tried to track whether this was the same Peter Boykin involved in Clintons4McCain. Several parallels made the lead worth tracking. Both are website developers and both the same age.
Further circumstantial evidence come in the form of an anonymous email posted on the East Carolininian web site about Boykin’s next venture (see below). Here is the ending of that email:
Do you really think Bob Winstead would put his businesses in jepordy and be involved in a scam? I think not. So everyone I want you to know this show is very legit and once it starts airing and you see the publicity behind it coming this show will be the talk of the triangle.
Anonymous
Raleigh NC
danvillecan@yahoo.com[/QUOTE]
Anonymous become Peter Boykin in another posting:
Dear Friends of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society,
We are also taking donations as well and we are looking for sponsors.
If you can help please let me know pboykin@…
Please join the contestants on the local reality show Entrepreneur$
http://www.realseriousbusiness.com and 96 Rock for
Band Together for the Cure
The email address given is “Pete” <danvillecan@…>.
Boykin’s most curious biographical detail is his involvement in the 2005 TV venture “Entrepreneur$: the Reality Show.” Proposed for a North Carolina Fox outlet, the show hoped to go national, but never went anywhere. Boykin was one of 16 finalists, the last chosen according to one account.
Perhaps one reason the venture never took off is that the program premise sounds suspiciously close to a Ponzi scheme, with each contestant trying to raise money for a venture called Eventsleader.com, which curiously was owned by the show’s “creator” Bob Winstead. Boykin was so desperate he actually posted on the web asking people to support him. Here is a sample:
The reason I know this Peter Boykin and the one for Clintons4McCain are one and the same is the both have the same picture, which heads this article.
Between that brief media exposure, courtesy of Fox, and the Clintons4McCain blog, I could find no further information on Boykin. Based on what I could find it appears he was a student at the University of North Carolina.
Since then my guess is that Boykin is the one behind the proliferating number of Hillary Trojan blogs. Several of the links on the site yield a WhoIs with Wild West Domains or GoDaddy including http://hillaryisourchoice.com, Puma08.com, and http://www.dontvoteobama.net/. The latter rates as one of the sicker anti-Obama sites on the web, reeking of racism.
For those seeking to halt the spread of disinformation and flat-out racism on the net about Barack Obama, keeping track of these sites must be akin to playing Whack-a-Mole–which I am sure is exactly the strategy.
Christi Adkins
Christi Adkins lists herself as RN, Cht, the Cht being certified hypno-therapist. I don’t know why the GOP is always seeking out women who are blond to dish out the dirt, but Adkins is built in the mold of Ann Coulter and rapidly learning to drop Coulter-like phrases to draw attention. Yet where Coulter has some legitimate credentials, Adkins is another story.
How a nurse with no political qualifications and no real position in the Clinton campaign should suddenly be viewed as the spokesperson for the Hillary Trojans shows the power of the American media, the willingness of other media outlets to not question their colleagues, and the real danger behind Faux News.
I suspect that Adkins answered what amounted to a Faux casting call for a pro-McCain, former Clinton supporter who could appear on their interview shows. A pundit would not have worked in this role, nor a high level staffer; rather what they needed was an “average American” Clinton supporter. Being white and blond would add the right racial contrast to Obama–the same one McCain sought to exploit with his weird add featuring Paris Hilton.
Prior to working with Clintons4McCain, Adkins was involved in one of those weight-loss schemes you see on infomercials. Nothing in her resume other than being a hypnotist suggests she has any expertise in weight loss or has participated in weight loss research. In fact, nothing in her resume suggests she has any expertise in anything. You can still cruise the web site should you desire to learn more about Ms. Adkins’ credentials.
The Professor Higgins behind this Eliza Doolittle-like transformation is none other than media owner and consultant Burke Allen. According to one source I found, Allen is also Adkins’ husband. It took me awhile to confirm this, but the online index of radio people gives Allen’s broadcasting history, starting out for two years under the name of Burke Adkins in Logan, W.V. He then moved to Salt Lake City, which is also where Adkins was an RN.
Finally, I found their 2003 wedding announcement (see picture above), detailing the betrothal of Burke Allen Adkins to Cristi McGee Babin. At the time Babin/Adkins worked for Sylver Enterprises and fitnessinparadise.com and Adkins/Allen for Alan Burns and Associates, a DC broadcast consulting firm which specializes in Adult Contemporary and Contemporary Hit Radio. Nothing in this history suggests any involvement in–let alone interest in–either Hillary Clinton or any kind of politics.
Burke Allen
Allen owns two small, West Virginia stations that air Faux programming. His media consulting firm, Allen Media Strategies, also has been moderately successful placing clients on Faux programs, but he hit the jackpot with Adkins. Helped by YouTube placements no doubt engineered by Boykin and carefully-placed comments on various web sites, Adkins usurped the role of spokesperson for disgruntled Clinton supporters (Darragh Murphy must be boiling).
Clinton supporters might be surprised to find the man behind much of the Hillary Trojan campaign owns stations featuring Bill O’Reilly, Neil Boortz, and James Dobson. His station in West Virginia, Power93.5FM states:
The purpose of Faith Communications Network, Inc. is to encourage and strengthen the Body of Christ, providing a means of spiritual growth so that each member may live abundant, victorious lives as they become conformed to His image.
Lest anyone have any doubt about Allen’s involvement in the Hillary Trojan movement, his web site is listed on several of the Hillary Trojan web sites and blogs.
The history of Allen, Adkins and Boykin all suggests they are opportunists who seized an opening and ran with it, much of that thanks to a heavy helping hand from Faux News.
Where Is Hillary?
Despite all this, Hillary Clinton has yet to formally and unequivocally disown any of the Hillary Trojan blogs or organizations. This may be the most disturbing part of the entire story. She has failed to criticize Clintons4McCain by name or object to the use of her picture on the site. There is in this something of the reluctance of Al Smith’s break with FDR in 1932 and Henry Wallace’s twelve years later.
By failing to speak out forcefully against the Clinton Trojan efforts, Hillary Clinton only generates ill feeling among Democrats and progressives. By failing to vehemently oppose these crackpots, she has shown at best poor judgment.
The Big Picture
The people behind some of the Hillary Trojan efforts raise a host of issues about American politics and the media. Along with others, I oppose reversing the FEC decision about blogs and the Internet, but have become convinced that blogs should have to reveal the source of their funding and sponsorship just like CBS.
More troubling is the dual role Burke Allen plays as both agent and media owner along with his cozy relationship with Faux. Finally there is the role of Faux in perpetuating this fraud on the American people. Not since the days of P.T. Barnum and other bunkum purveyors has anyone sought to take some half-baked hypnotist off the street and turn her into a spokesperson for the so-called 18 million “disenfranchised” Clinton voters.
What Faux has pulled off is essentially to foist on American politics one of the biggest media and political hoaxes in our nation’s history. That it was allowed to do this by the FCC, other mainstream media who picked up the story, and the McCain campaign is nothing short of a national disgrace. Faux, of course, will deny any involvement in the hoax and portray itself as the victim of these con artists, but if the likes of Christi Adkins can bamboozle Faux, they are even dumber than we thought. More to the point, when a news outlet puts a label on someone you assume the label to be true. They are responsible for that label.
The issue of “fake news” and fake news experts has become a major concern for American media. The Center for Media and Democracy maintains a site devoted to exposing these distortions of reality, including “Accidental Housewife” Julie Edelman who really is a shill for corporations. In an investigative report on “fake news,” the Center stated:
The quality and integrity of television reporting thus significantly impacts the public’s ability to evaluate everything from consumer products to medical services to government policies.
Little did the Center know when it wrote that in 2006 that “fake news” would become an issue in the 2008 Presidential campaign.
Meanwhile the same Hillary Clinton who readily accepted the votes of Limbaugh and McCain cross-over voters that enabled her to win several primaries, stood by and allowed Adkins to serve as the spokesperson for her disgruntled supporters. The Democratic Party needs to get beyond the rancor of the primaries, but the Clintons continue to play the role of sore losers. If Hillary Clinton wishes to remain a force in the Democratic Party and have any chance at a possible second run at the White House, she needs to heal wounds, not create new ones.
The Hillary Trojan effort is still in its infancy and perhaps unlike the Swift Boat campaign, this one can be stopped before it does irreparable damage to the political process. There is one person who could do this–John McCain–but the former supporter of campaign reform has made his Devil’s bargain with Karl Rove and the chances of that appear to be becoming less likely day-by-day.
After Word
At this point, though, I hope this essay has given the Democratic Party enough material to begin to put together at least one juicy McCain ad that would highlight his relationship with Adkins, who claims to have had a “private meeting” with McCain. Here’s the quote:
Although relatively new to Washington insider politics, Adkins was invited to participate in a special invitation only private meeting with Senator McCain at his Arlington VA campaign headquarters to discuss policy issues and answer important questions concerning healthcare, Supreme Court Justice appointments and placing more women in congress to represent the unrepresented.
If Adkins is providing advice to McCain on healthcare and the Supreme Court, then it’s time to run for cover.
Posted by: liberalamerican
Welcome to something new to the net--a netzine about ideas. Because my disability no longer permits me to publish three times a week, I have decided to move to a monthly format in which essays will appear as they are written.
