Cornyn's Anonymous Online Cheerleader
We've been gathering string on this story all day long, but it's taken me awhile to dump it all on the blog.
Here's where we're at. The kid bloggers* over at Burnt Orange Report discovered that their prolific pro-Cornyn commenter, Buck Smith, was none other than Dave Beckwith, longtime Cornyn staffer, former aide to Lt. Governor David Dewhurst, US Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison and Vice President Dan Quayle.
Dave Beckwith, aka "Buck Smith". This picture was taken sometime within the past few years.
Beckwith is kind of a legend for the way he deals with reporters when they write stories he views as unfair or unfavorable. He once "berated [NYT's Maureen Dowd] in public on several occassions... at one point, she left a dinner distraught because of Beckwith's open hostility toward her," according to a 1990 Beckwith profile in the Washington Post.
His online persona doesn't differ.
"Buck Smith, time and again, comes in, makes fun of people, challenges them to a duel," said Matt Glazer, BOR's Editor.
But "Smith" never disclosed his true identity. He left more than eighty comments on the left-leaning BOR and in other places, like Daily Kos, since last summer.
I asked Cornyn's campaign whether they stood by all of their paid senior staffer's online comments.
"Absolutely not," said Cornyn spokesman Kevin McLaughlin. "Buck Smith speaks for himself."
The bloggers argue that much of Buck's "speaking" happens during work hours, but that's another issue. We asked the Senator himself whether he stood by all of Buck's comments.
"I don't know everything he wrote about me. I think there are a lot of things that go on the internet," said Cornyn. The Senator also suggested we talk to Beckwith, even though the question was for Cornyn -- whether Cornyn stood by his staffer.
BOR has compared this to the "Jay Coxlie incident" in January, in which Rick Noriega's staffer, Rick Cofer, called the Cornyn campaign pretending to be a random dude named "Jay Coxlie" in order to get Cornyn's schedule.
Perhaps a more apt comparison (minus the stock market shenanigans) is what happened with Whole Foods' CEO John Mackey. The WSJ discovered that Mackey had been posting on online Yahoo! forums for eight years under a fake name, about his own company.
The Cornyn campaign has argued that everyone uses screen names**. Adopting another identity online may be common. But we learned from the Whole Foods debacle that it was a big no-no in business, if you are anonymously influencing your own business.
So... Is this kind of masquerade ethical when it comes to politics? Is it appropriate for a paid staffer to anonymously write about the very campaign for which he's paid? Feel free to weigh in under any name you choose.
*That's a Buck Smith phrase
**I am KVUEHu on Burnt Orange Report, elisewho on AIM and elisehu on gmail.
I'm a big champion of pseudonymity online. It's the natural extension of the long tradition of political speech written under pseudonyms.
That said, the answer to your rhetorical question "Is this kind of masquerade ethical when it comes to politics, if a paid staffer is anonymously writing about the very campaign for which he's paid?" is no.
I believe you have to disclose if you're working on a campaign.
I'd be very interested in hearing the logic being used by anyone to justify differently.
And as for "Buck Smith speaks for himself", not when he's doing it from your Senate office, Senator. That doesn't even pass the most rudimentary smell test.
Ah yes, the inartful art of sock puppetry (see: Glenn Greenwald [Salon] and John Ragone [press secretary of San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom] for further examples.