Actually, the headscratching staff has no idea how megabucks lobbyist Rick Berman – who sets up fog-machine front groups for the fast-food industry, the tobacco industry, the liquor industry, and any industry fighting minimum-wage increases – managed to hijack the website that was established to monitor his stealth marketing.

The unlikely saga begins with this full-page New York Times ad that ran a few days ago.

Given that the hardworking staff has been bird-dogging Berman for years, we poked around a bit and put this post together. In the process we went to visit the website of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), which ten years ago set up BermanExposed.org to, well, expose Berman’s shenanigans.

Representative samples regarding two of Berman’s myriad front groups.

Imagine our surprise, then, to click on BermanExposed.org and wind up with this.

That’s right – BermanExposed now exposes you to . . . Berman’s corporate website.

Wait, what?

So we sent this email to Jordan Libowitz, Communications Director for CREW.

Dear Mr. Libowitz,

We have frequently written about corporate gunsel Rick Berman. (See here)

So naturally we wrote about Berman’s Fake Meat/Dog Food ad in the New York Times this week.

But imagine our surprise when we discovered that CREW’s BermanExposed.org website is now owned by Berman himself.

Would you be willing to talk about how that happened?

We’re sure our faithful readers would be interested to hear your side of the story.

Sincerely,
The Hardworking Staff

We have not heard back from Mr. Libowitz, which under the circumstances does not surprise us. As for Rick Berman, he’s laughing all the way to the dog food bank.