In 1722, Ben Franklin was a fifteen year old apprentice for his older brother’s printing business and news paper, the New England Courant. Young Franklin was as opinionated in his youth as he would be throughout his life and wrote on a variety of subjects hoping they would be published in the Courant. To his dismay, his brother James rejected Benjamin’s writings and instead, insisted that his apprentice devote his attention to the duties of an apprentice.
Not one to be dismissed, Ben Franklin masqueraded as a middle aged widow and secretly submitted a series of letters to the New England Courant under the pseudonym of Silence Dogood. He slipped the first letter under the door of the Courant one night and was delighted when he overheard his brother discussing publishing the letter in the paper. Silence Dogood submitted a new letter every fortnight (fourteen days) as promised in the first letter and each one was subsequently published in the Courant. The letters delighted readers which were a mix of commentary and satire. So complete was the character that Ben had created that once Silence said that she had been widowed, a number of men actually sent proposals of marriage to Silence Dogood through the news paper hoping to gain her attention.
The Courant published fourteen letters in all before James found out that Silence Dogood was none other than his younger brother, Ben. James was furious at having been tricked into publishing Ben’s work especially after he expressly told Ben over and over again to stick to his assigned tasks and leave the writing to those that were employed for that purpose. The rift between the two brothers was serious enough that Ben would eventually leave his apprenticeship without permission and escape to Philadelphia.
It seems that we now have a new Silence Dogood on our hands and while she is not a widow or even witty, she is an ardent supporter of Barack Obama. Letters from a person claiming to be Ellie Light began appearing in January at news paper offices in cities across the country and even at some foreign news papers. Each letter was only slightly different from the others; containing the same basic message which is curiously similar to the excuses that Democratic strategists offer for Obama’s poor performance as President.
The underlying message in the Ellie Light letters is that Obama is doing the best that he can and that he can’t simply wave a magic wand to make all of the problems he inherited from George Bush vanish. She certainly tows the Party line by denigrating Bush, the Tea Party movement, Rush Limbaugh and Fox News before continuing to say that she is appalled at the lack of support that Obama has received from the main stream press and that they appear to be ignorant of the landslide victories that swept him into the Presidency in November or 2008.
Letters of political support are nothing new for the editorial pages of local newspapers and Ellie Light would probably have been chalked up as just another one of Obama’s core group of supporters that would still defend him no matter how badly he fails except there were some red flags that began to appear. More than sixty Ellie Light letters were published in American newspapers and while each one was signed by Ellie Light, she would list her home town as being in the circulation area of that particular newspaper. Once someone began connecting the dots, questions began to fly as to the real identity of Ellie Light and several websites ran with that story. Ellie Light would issue a response to those questions in a series of e-mails to the Plain Dealer, a major daily paper in Cleveland Ohio. Curiously, that e-mail correspondence ended abruptly when she was asked about the different home towns associated with her letters.
So who is Ellie Light? Well, someone named Barbara Brooks claimed to be Ellie Light in her face book page but the Plain Dealer has since spoken with two people that say they are Barbara Brooks. One says she’s a divorced nurse and is the author of the Ellie Light letters and the other claims her husband, not her, wrote the Ellie Light letters. While the Plain Dealer did not elaborate on the husband of Barbara number two, they did report on their interview with Barbara number one.
Barbara number one, the one that claims she is Ellie Light, says she that as a traveling nurse, she has worked in a number of hospitals across the county. She claims that she used the names local towns as her home for each paper because many papers will not print letters submitted by people that do not reside in their circulation area. Brooks denies the suggestions that her letter writing campaign was a plot concocted by the Obama administration saying that if that were true, she would not be whining about the lack of support for the President and would have gone with the White House assertions that support for the President and his agenda remains solid. Of course Ms. Brooks uses Skype, an online phone service and that makes her hard to trace but the Plain Dealer says that Brooks did provide a home address located somewhere in California.
Curiously, a third “Ellie Light has now surfaced. A woman claiming her real name is actually Ellie Light contacted the radio talk show of Michael Smerconish today. Mr. Smerconish describes himself as a life-long Republican and despite his support for many conservative positions, supported Barack Obama in the 2008 election. His support for Obama earned him the honor of being the first radio talk show that was graced with an interview with the President. The Ellie Light that called Smerconish also claims to be a traveling nurse that calls southern California home. Weird huh?
So many Ellie Lights and yet none were asked the crucial question of why the IP address (a computer’s personal identification number) was different in each e-mail, some originating in several foreign countries. That would be a neat trick for a traveling nurse but easily explainable if the letters were actually disseminated from all of those areas. As it turns out “Left Coast Rebel”, a conservative blog, provided a tip on Ellie Light to Dan Reihl of “Reihl World View” after someone claiming to be Ellie Light left a comment on his blog using the screen name “Winston44”. Dan researched that lead and found what appeared to be a dormant Twitter account under that name. While there were no tweets, winston44 followed eighteen people and had six followers. Following a hunch that most people will first add the people they know to a new Twitter account, Dan traced the first of winston44’s contacts and surprise, surprise. That account belonged to Adam Segal, President of the 2050 group.
The 2050 group is an international public relations firm and Segal had been working with the National Alliance for Hispanic Health Care in their push for Obama-care. A November 23rd press release placed the National Alliance for Hispanic Health Care at the White House for a meeting with the President over healthcare. Segal is also well known to be a supporter President Obama especially, his healthcare reform initiative. Now that is curious isn’t it? The Ellie Light letters came from multiple IP addresses, some from Europe. Now there appears to be a link between an international public relations firm that is very friendly to this administration and a Twitter account that Ellie Light used to post at least one comment on a conservative blog. Coincidentally, that public relations firm would have no problem generating e-mails from multiple computers around the world.
This story is evolving daily and Dan Reihl says that he has circumstantial evidence that winston44 is none other than Samantha Powers, the wife of Obama’s regulatory Czar, Cass Sunstein. It just seems that every time you research anything having to do with this administration that webs appear; magically connecting all of the usual suspects so none of this really surprises me.
To read the article on Ellie Light in the Left Coast Rebel follow the link below:
http://www.leftcoastrebel.com/2010/01/ellie-light-and-white-house-via-riehl.html
For a look at Reihl World View use: http://www.riehlworldview.com/carnivorous_conservative/2010/01/ellie-light-now-mark-spivey.html
Paul
Not one to be dismissed, Ben Franklin masqueraded as a middle aged widow and secretly submitted a series of letters to the New England Courant under the pseudonym of Silence Dogood. He slipped the first letter under the door of the Courant one night and was delighted when he overheard his brother discussing publishing the letter in the paper. Silence Dogood submitted a new letter every fortnight (fourteen days) as promised in the first letter and each one was subsequently published in the Courant. The letters delighted readers which were a mix of commentary and satire. So complete was the character that Ben had created that once Silence said that she had been widowed, a number of men actually sent proposals of marriage to Silence Dogood through the news paper hoping to gain her attention.
The Courant published fourteen letters in all before James found out that Silence Dogood was none other than his younger brother, Ben. James was furious at having been tricked into publishing Ben’s work especially after he expressly told Ben over and over again to stick to his assigned tasks and leave the writing to those that were employed for that purpose. The rift between the two brothers was serious enough that Ben would eventually leave his apprenticeship without permission and escape to Philadelphia.
It seems that we now have a new Silence Dogood on our hands and while she is not a widow or even witty, she is an ardent supporter of Barack Obama. Letters from a person claiming to be Ellie Light began appearing in January at news paper offices in cities across the country and even at some foreign news papers. Each letter was only slightly different from the others; containing the same basic message which is curiously similar to the excuses that Democratic strategists offer for Obama’s poor performance as President.
The underlying message in the Ellie Light letters is that Obama is doing the best that he can and that he can’t simply wave a magic wand to make all of the problems he inherited from George Bush vanish. She certainly tows the Party line by denigrating Bush, the Tea Party movement, Rush Limbaugh and Fox News before continuing to say that she is appalled at the lack of support that Obama has received from the main stream press and that they appear to be ignorant of the landslide victories that swept him into the Presidency in November or 2008.
Letters of political support are nothing new for the editorial pages of local newspapers and Ellie Light would probably have been chalked up as just another one of Obama’s core group of supporters that would still defend him no matter how badly he fails except there were some red flags that began to appear. More than sixty Ellie Light letters were published in American newspapers and while each one was signed by Ellie Light, she would list her home town as being in the circulation area of that particular newspaper. Once someone began connecting the dots, questions began to fly as to the real identity of Ellie Light and several websites ran with that story. Ellie Light would issue a response to those questions in a series of e-mails to the Plain Dealer, a major daily paper in Cleveland Ohio. Curiously, that e-mail correspondence ended abruptly when she was asked about the different home towns associated with her letters.
So who is Ellie Light? Well, someone named Barbara Brooks claimed to be Ellie Light in her face book page but the Plain Dealer has since spoken with two people that say they are Barbara Brooks. One says she’s a divorced nurse and is the author of the Ellie Light letters and the other claims her husband, not her, wrote the Ellie Light letters. While the Plain Dealer did not elaborate on the husband of Barbara number two, they did report on their interview with Barbara number one.
Barbara number one, the one that claims she is Ellie Light, says she that as a traveling nurse, she has worked in a number of hospitals across the county. She claims that she used the names local towns as her home for each paper because many papers will not print letters submitted by people that do not reside in their circulation area. Brooks denies the suggestions that her letter writing campaign was a plot concocted by the Obama administration saying that if that were true, she would not be whining about the lack of support for the President and would have gone with the White House assertions that support for the President and his agenda remains solid. Of course Ms. Brooks uses Skype, an online phone service and that makes her hard to trace but the Plain Dealer says that Brooks did provide a home address located somewhere in California.
Curiously, a third “Ellie Light has now surfaced. A woman claiming her real name is actually Ellie Light contacted the radio talk show of Michael Smerconish today. Mr. Smerconish describes himself as a life-long Republican and despite his support for many conservative positions, supported Barack Obama in the 2008 election. His support for Obama earned him the honor of being the first radio talk show that was graced with an interview with the President. The Ellie Light that called Smerconish also claims to be a traveling nurse that calls southern California home. Weird huh?
So many Ellie Lights and yet none were asked the crucial question of why the IP address (a computer’s personal identification number) was different in each e-mail, some originating in several foreign countries. That would be a neat trick for a traveling nurse but easily explainable if the letters were actually disseminated from all of those areas. As it turns out “Left Coast Rebel”, a conservative blog, provided a tip on Ellie Light to Dan Reihl of “Reihl World View” after someone claiming to be Ellie Light left a comment on his blog using the screen name “Winston44”. Dan researched that lead and found what appeared to be a dormant Twitter account under that name. While there were no tweets, winston44 followed eighteen people and had six followers. Following a hunch that most people will first add the people they know to a new Twitter account, Dan traced the first of winston44’s contacts and surprise, surprise. That account belonged to Adam Segal, President of the 2050 group.
The 2050 group is an international public relations firm and Segal had been working with the National Alliance for Hispanic Health Care in their push for Obama-care. A November 23rd press release placed the National Alliance for Hispanic Health Care at the White House for a meeting with the President over healthcare. Segal is also well known to be a supporter President Obama especially, his healthcare reform initiative. Now that is curious isn’t it? The Ellie Light letters came from multiple IP addresses, some from Europe. Now there appears to be a link between an international public relations firm that is very friendly to this administration and a Twitter account that Ellie Light used to post at least one comment on a conservative blog. Coincidentally, that public relations firm would have no problem generating e-mails from multiple computers around the world.
This story is evolving daily and Dan Reihl says that he has circumstantial evidence that winston44 is none other than Samantha Powers, the wife of Obama’s regulatory Czar, Cass Sunstein. It just seems that every time you research anything having to do with this administration that webs appear; magically connecting all of the usual suspects so none of this really surprises me.
To read the article on Ellie Light in the Left Coast Rebel follow the link below:
http://www.leftcoastrebel.com/2010/01/ellie-light-and-white-house-via-riehl.html
For a look at Reihl World View use: http://www.riehlworldview.com/carnivorous_conservative/2010/01/ellie-light-now-mark-spivey.html
Paul
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