June 11, 2009 06:17 PM UTC

Denver Post Socks Puppets

•  
• by: Colorado Pols

From today’s Denver Post:

Memo from David Kenney to staff: Quit visiting blogs and posting anonymous comments that praise or defend Gov. Bill Ritter.

Or, in online parlance, enough with the sock puppets.

The Kenney Group is handling Ritter’s re-election bid, and Kenney learned Sunday that a blogger had traced four similar anonymous postings praising the Democratic governor to Kenney’s office.

And last week, readers of Colorado Pols, one of the state’s best-known political blogs, accused Kenney’s staffers of doing the same thing.

“Between fantasy football, March Madness and political blogs, I apparently have to crack down on the use of my office computers,” Kenney said.

Asked if he himself had posted anything anonymously, Kenney said, “God, no.”

On Saturday, a blogger who uses the pseudonym “Steve Balboni” wrote in his blog, Steam Powered Opinions, that he had received 36 hits and four postings in less than two days in response to a piece called “More Bumbling from Ritter.”

“Balboni,” who revealed his identity to The Denver Post but asked to remain anonymous, said he usually gets only two postings a week, so he was curious about all the traffic last Friday and Saturday. He said he tracked the origins of the postings and all were from a computer system at The Kenney Group.

First of all, what’s with the Kenney comment of “God, no” in regards to using blogs? That statement oozes of both contempt and disregard, neither of which are a good message.

More importantly, we want to make clear that any references made to posters coming from The Kenney Group was done in the comments section by other Polsters. We make no effort to attempt to track down the identities of registered users at Colorado Pols, nor will we. Your anonymity is safe here as long as you don’t do something yourself to screw it up (as the case with the Kenney folks).

In fact, we find the whole thing kind of harmlessly amusing, like freaking out your kitty with one of those pocket laser pointers.