Sadiq Khan's World Cup astroturfing blog photo
"Astroturf" is a brand of arttificial sports field playing surface. It is also now used to describe a "fake political grassroots movement".
Whilst these things are common in the USA, "astroturfng" was evident during the Labour Party's last General Election campaign, where various Photo Opportunities relied on hand picked audiences and fake "members of the public" applauding Tony Blair and Gordon Brown etc. all stage managed for the media.
The Labour Party seems to have, belatedly, tried to jump on both the World Cup bandwagon, and on the growing popularity of blogs, with the notorious NuLabour spin doctor Alastair Campbell pontificating on the Labour's World Cup Blog 2006 with Alastair Campbell.
This seems to be currently under heavy comment censorship as Tim Ireland posts snippets of Alastair's public domain election expense claims.
There is also the Labour's World Cup Blog 2006 with Sadiq Khan MP
Sadiq Khan is the Labour MP for Tooting in south London.
Both of these "blogs" are hosted on the offical Labour party website.
Can the idea of "astroturf" be any more clearly demonstrated than by the obviously photo-manipulated fake image of the MP's head superimopsed on an England shirt ?
Even Labour activist bloggers are embarrassed by this manipulated photo, and by the lack of genuine two way conversation with the people who have taken the trouble to bother to comment.
UPDATE 15th June:
At last the spin doctors have finally put up a more natural photo, which really does emphasise the original "astroturf" fake:
Will this be used as an example of how not to run a political blog ?
Is this what Zach Exely is being paid by NuLabour for ?