This story offends on so many levels UD doesn’t know where to start.
Oh, sure she does. She’ll start by linking you to this article, detailing the gangrenous corruption of Jack Bonner, a DC lobbyist whose firm sends fake letters to Congress on behalf of pharma and other clients. The letters – full of pretend mistakes to make them look authentic – appear to have come from just plain American folks, and argue on behalf of issues dear to Bonner’s corporate clients’ hearts. They are of course written by Bonner’s firm.
After decades of this practice, Bonner for some reason got caught at it, or offended someone high up or something, because Bonner recently got, as TPM writes, “hauled before Congress,” where he swore up and down he’d be a good boy from now on.
To that end, he hired an old friend, American University professor James Thurber, as his ethics adviser, to produce an ad cleaning up Bonner’s rep, presenting him to the world as a scholar and a gentleman. And how else to do this but through the university?
Here’s the ad.
Having done some guest lectures and workshops for AU, Bonner turns out to be a regular philosophe.
Classy to use the respectability of the university to clean this guy up… Classy to drag students into it — We love you, Jack! — as well as AU… Although AU’s been so scandal-ridden for so long that a make-the-lobbyist-look-pretty ad doesn’t add much …
But here’s the grangrene on the cake: As TPM notes, even now Bonner’s giving a workshop at AU on how to do his thing!
Grassroots Lobbying
The Art and Craft of Lobbying
Instructor: Jack Bonner
October 24 & October 31This weekend workshop is designed to teach the craft of grassroots lobbying as practiced in Washington, D.C. Emphasis is on the detailed strategies and applications of grassroots lobbying. Students are exposed to the latest developments in the field with practicing lobbyists and gain practical grassroots skills.
As TPM comments, “[W]ho better to teach those ‘latest developments’ than a guy whose firm just got caught sending forged letters urging wavering members of Congress to vote against climate change legislation, on behalf of a coal-industry client but purporting to come from local community groups?”
From TPM‘s latest post on the situation:
“The university is aware of the ad and is looking into the facts of the situation,” [an American University] spokeswoman told TPMmuckraker. “The university does not endorse individuals or organizations.”
The ad was placed — and, according to the AU spokeswoman, paid for — by the school’s Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies, which is run by long-time professor and political expert James Thurber.
So now Thurber’s in trouble and he’ll have to turn around and hire Bonner’s firm to place ads calling Thurber a scholar and a gentleman…
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Update: Thurber has apologized.
November 5th, 2009 at 3:28PM
When I read the headline, I first thought that James Thurber was awfully active for someone who had been dead for nearly fifty years.
November 5th, 2009 at 3:47PM
His life and hard times.