For those of you new to The Coracle, there was an online list on which a long-dormant e-mail address of mine was carried. The address was associated with my work at an Ivy League think tank that, when I moved on, forwarded mail to a subsequent address. Save for a few bits and pieces that I received for the year after I left the university, nothing came to that address for fourteen years.
Then, and this is where it gets good, about mid-way through the last presidential election cycle, I started receiving "talking points" to that e-mail address from an anonymous source that were designed to help me frame sermons in a way that would aid the Democratic Party.
It was interesting to see how narratives are created in this manner, as I noticed that the information I was given was being repeated not just from pulpits and in newsletters in mainstream Protestant congregations, but by members of the media. This included direct quotes from the talking points with little or no effort to differentiate them from their original source. It seemed kind of lazy, but apparently it was effective in narrative creation.
Then, the talking points stopped. I assumed someone had read this weblog and, realizing I was giving the game away, had pulled the plug on my account. Apparently, that was either not the case or it was merely a temporary situation.
Yesterday, I received a new communication. Honestly, this is getting positively thrilling.
The latest missive suggests that I note how "conservatives" are mocking the daughter of a recent Democratic president for drinking wine while underage. I am directed to scoff at their concern about this and compare it to the beer consumed by a recently appointed justice of the Supreme Court. I could find no "conservatives" mocking the daughter, but I did find numerous "tweets" that repeated the same talking points that I was asked to disseminate. Remarkable, isn't it?