Hunt For East Mountain Tea Party Spokesperson Continues
by John Weckerle
In recent weeks, we’ve taken issue (here and here) with the anonymity of an official spokesperson for the East Mountain Tea Party (EMTP) who posts articles on the EMTP site and has posted comments here, including some that we consider to be anti-Muslim and equating Islam with al Qaeda. We initially almost-but-not-quite concluded that the person, who goes by the moniker “teapartynm” on the EMTP site and “East Mountain Tea Party” here, was one Emily Cooper. However, Gadabout-blogalot.com editor and EMTP supporter Chuck Ring asserted that Ms. Cooper was not the domain contact any longer, and was in fact no longer participating in Tea Party activities. Mr. Ring declined to clarify: “I don’t see that knowing the name will add anything to the issue at this juncture.” We disagree; as we stated in the original article, we consider equating Islam with al Qaeda to be bigotry, and while we think that while outright, Terry Jones-style bigotry is ugly, we believe that anonymous bigotry is worse, if somewhat less effective.
Now, it is a rule that domain contact information must be kept current, and with that in mind, we filed a complaint with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). This is the organization that administers domains at the highest level, and makes the rules for using them. Registrars (for example, Network Solutions or GoDaddy) then process requests for domain names. Now, the way this process works is that, upon reciept of the complaint, ICANN sends a request for validation or update to the the registrar – in this case, GoDaddy – which then sends a notification to the administrative contact e-mail, and the recipient logs on and confirms the contact information. Yesterday, we got a response that told us:
Dear John Weckerle,
The contact information for EASTMTTEAPARTY.COM has been validated. If you find any of the information to be invalid please let us know. Otherwise, for further information concerning the domain name please contact the registrant.
Thank you,
Domain Services
Note that this says “validated,” not “updated,” and we checked the registration information. Sure enough, everything is the same, and it still lists Emily Cooper as the administrative and technical contact. That leaves two possible scenarios: that Ms. Cooper and teapartynm are one and the same, or that the current holder of that e-mail address deliberately falsified the contact information to protect his or her own anonymity. In the former case, we again call on Ms. Cooper to confirm or deny whether she is teapartynm, and use her name in speaking/writing publicly from now on. She is entitled to her opinion, but it will carry far more weight with her name on it. If the latter scenario is operative, well then, whoever you are: shame on you for essentially putting another person’s name on your “work” and hiding behind somebody else’s identity. Such actions detract from the credibility of the organization you purport to represent – not to mention yours as a spokesperson, beyond the issue of anonymity (and as we’ve noted in previous articles, we don’t assign much credibility to anonymous sources to begin with) – and do not speak well of your character.
We note that since the article on their site that caused the conundrum and associated activities appear officially sanctioned, it is our view that the official position of the organization, such as it is, is that Islam is equivalent to al Qaeda, and all Muslims are to blame for the crime committed by the radical terrorist organization headed by Osama bin Laden. We find it especially disappointing, because we know a number of fine people who are involved and who we would have expected to either act against this trend or quit and form another, perhaps less intolerant organization.
We have some ideas on the subject, but nothing we can prove (yet), so we’ll keep digging (primarily because our curiosity has been piqued, but also because we really think teapartnm needs to identified), and will update our readers on the progress of our investigations.
2 Responses “Hunt For East Mountain Tea Party Spokesperson Continues”
the East Mtn Tea Party site has an article tonight with an author/by line that seems like an admission of guilt
We noted that; article coming! Thanks!