Patterico and his commenters have spent a lot of time today digging up more instances of “Letters to the Editor” appearing in multiple locations.  An example has focused on one Gloria Elle, and Jan Chen, who have identical letters posted in two newspapers:

Jan Chen of Seattle writes to the Northwest Asian Weekly (a small Asian paper serving the Seattle area):

As one listens to the Republican anger over health care reform, one can imagine an anti-government protester cheerfully paying premiums on insurance policies that drop you after you make a claim, or happily sauntering out of an emergency room that denied them treatment because of a coverage problem. One can imagine a town hall sign-waver enthusiastically forking over most of their pay to bill collectors after suffering a catastrophic injury, thinking, “Wow, the free market system is great.”

Meanwhile, Gloria Elle writes to the Baltimore Chronicle — on the same page as Mark Spivey and Ellie Light:

As one listens to the Republican anger over health care reform, one can imagine an anti-government protester cheerfully paying premiums on insurance policies that cancel you for making a claim, or happily sauntering out of an emergency room that denied them treatment because of a coverage problem. One can imagine a town-hall sign-waver enthusiastically forking over most of their pay to bill collectors after suffering a catastrophic injury, thinking, “Wow, the free market system is great.”

Jan Chen and Gloria Elle certainly have a similar writing style, don’t they?

They do.  Patterico notes that a Tweeter has also found the same content used by a writer, Cherry Jimenez of Bloomington, in the Indiana Daily Student. One of his commenters has noted that the letters appear on a blog called Buzzflash, run by a Mark Karlin & Associates.  Furthermore, I’ve discovered that Gloria Elle has written at least one other letter to them that has also appeared in the Baltimore Chronicle.

Here’s a letter to Buzzflash posted on July 8, 2009, by Elle, about the death of former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara:

Subject: Robert McNamara

Robert McNamara has died, and some might be surprised at the vitriol surrounding him. What’s he done that made so many people so mad? He was the “Architect of the Vietnam war.” So what’s that mean? He was the originator of the idea that the Viet Cong only had so many people and resources to draw from, and if America continued to bomb them relentlessly, eventually, all the VC will die and the North will have to surrender. He reduced the war to numbers, and ignored factors such as motivation and national pride. Then, as head of the International Monetary Fund, McNamara originated the idea that nations who borrow money from the United Nations must submit to the most draconian economic policies, or be denied loans. For example, nations receiving IMF funds must slash or eliminate social spending. Again, he was a numbers guy, asserting that such factors as national well-being could be reduced to fiscal prudence. But the man lived long. Before any of this, McNamara was the President of the Ford Motor Company, and gave the world a car that would last. And last and last. He was the architect of the Ford Falcon. Like the Plymouth Valiant and Dodge Dart, the Falcon was based on the idea that people will buy a car that will never die. Ah, but he forgot the numbers. Yes, they’ll buy it, but they’ll buy it once. He forgot planned obsolescence. Perhaps having committed such a blunder as to give the world a truly reliable car, he decided to make up for his good deed by destroying nations.

Gloria Elle
U.S.

I actually found this letter on Buzzflash after finding it at the Baltimore Chronicle, on the same page as Elle’s letter about health care reform.  Just search for “Gloria Elle:”

The Death of Robert McNamara

Editor:Robert McNamara has died, and some might be surprised at the vitriol surrounding him. What’s he done that made so many people so mad? He was the “Architect of the Vietnam war.” So what’s that mean? He was the originator of the idea that the Viet Cong only had so many people and resources to draw from, and if America continued to bomb them relentlessly, eventually, all the VC will die and the North will have to surrender. He reduced the war to numbers, and ignored factors such as motivation and national pride.

Then, as head of the International Monetary Fund, McNamara originated the idea that nations who borrow money from the United Nations must submit to the most draconian economic policies, or be denied loans. For example, nations receiving IMF funds must slash or eliminate social spending. Again, he was a numbers guy, asserting that such factors as national well-being could be reduced to fiscal prudence.

But the man lived long. Before any of this, McNamara was the President of the Ford Motor Company, and gave the world a car that would last. And last and last. He was the architect of the Ford Falcon. Like the Plymouth Valiant and Dodge Dart, the Falcon was based on the idea that people will buy a car that will never die. Ah, but he forgot the numbers. Yes, they’ll buy it, but they’ll buy it once. He forgot planned obsolescence. Perhaps having committed such a blunder as to give the world a truly reliable car, he decided to make up for his good deed by destroying nations.

It’s formatted a little differently, and why not?  A block of text, as it appears on Buzzflash, isn’t very readable.

So, the question is: has Gloria Elle simply been submitting her letters to multiple publications, and this time she happened to be copycatted by multiple people?  Is Mark Karlin and Associates, a Chicago-based PR firm, sending out pro-Obama and Democrat (and anti-Republican) letters to multiple publications, perhaps on the orders of Organizing for America?  Or are newspaper editors, perhaps desperate for something to fill their papers, searching the Internet for commentary, and posting those with which they agree?

More as it comes in.