NY Times, Washington Post Hide Phony ‘Coffee Party’ Astroturf Roots — at the NY Times!

NY Times, Washington Post Hide Phony ‘Coffee Party’ Astroturf Roots — at the NY Times!

by Frank Ross

What product works best for hiding artificial roots? Printer’s ink, of course!

For more information, check recent copies of The Washington Post and The New York Times, both of which portrayed 41-year-old Annabel Park as a concerned citizen from Virginia who became the accidental founder of a new grass-roots liberal political group, Coffee Party USA.

In the articles, Park—who is identified as a “documentary filmmaker”—preaches “respectful and civil engagement,” even with the more successful source of her knockoff inspiration, the populist Tea Party. And in an online chat presented by the Post, she issues the following declaration:

We are purely grassroots movement, independent of any party, corporation, or lobbying organization.

Yet there was nothing accidental about Park’s anti-Tea Party activism; the Coffee Party’s roots are about as grassy as the signature surface of the old Houston Astrodome; and Park’s facade of cooperation is undermined by her “tea bagger” epithets on Twitter.

Meanwhile, her claim that the Coffee Party is “purely grassroots” and “independent of any party” is laughably rebutted by the fact that the registrant for the website was listed as “Real Virginians For Webb, 14461 Sedona Drive, Gainesville, Virginia 20155” until the information suddenly went private behind a proxy. That’s “Webb” as in Virginia Sen. Jim Webb, one of at least two elected Democrats for whom Park has actively campaigned (as evidenced by this campaign video, “Real Virginians for Webb”:

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