I'm impressed there is an interesting video that accompanies this as well where Luntz was confronted by Ron Paul supporters.

Fair and Balanced?

Frank Luntz wears a toupee. End of discussion.

chisholm

That is not a toupee, it is a squirell nest with velcro

If you want to see the raw material...

http://youtube.com/watch?v=5HJaxDt0EbY

The "Fuck You Frank" comment comes from a Penn and Teller video which can be found here:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=If9EWDB_zK4

The truth is that Patriots of this country are confronting Frank Luntz about his bankrupting of the Fourth Estate.

Not to mention, that if the guy IS a plant, he could have been there to try to sway opinion towards Romney.

Luntz was also in Venezuela when the Bushies tried to topple Chavez. He confirmed it on Hard Ball to Matthews but would not say what he did in Venezuela.

I'm struggling with the wording, but I have formulated an opinion:

BULLSHIT

Is it me or does 'Chuck' look just like BTK?!

I wrote to Josh Marshall this morning and complained about two posts quoting Luntz' focus group participants. Both were negative on Hillary Clinton. Why do TPM and TPM Election Central give Luntz a platform at all except to point out the fact that he's an operative?

Perhaps he is being honest about what he's doing. I don't think so, but let's give him the benefit of the doubt that he's doing some sort of social scientific experiment with all this.

Isn't it at least as legitimate a source of outrage that he's actively studying to find the specific points at which a voter changes his mind as a method of making propaganda more effective? Never mind his or Fox's use of it in this event, but what he's asking us to do in forgiving him is to legitimize the pursuit of better talking points!

dsco

He has a Denis Rader look...

This is very serious Luntz has hired a serial killer as a schill.

The amount Luntz pays his actors "varies" depending on how well they fluff Fox's current favorite.

Why else wouldn't he pay them a flat fee?

TheraP wrote

"social biologists?" Never heard of them!

Me too, and me neither.

The best thing that could happen right now is a concerted effort to ID this guy and find out what his background is. This isn't the first time this kind of thing has happened in the media.

In Florida, an "interview" with a student at a local university found him strongly for Bush prior to the 2004 election. Turns out the student was also head of the campus GOP student organization.

CBS interviewed a 28-year old man purported to represent the generation of current contributors to Social Security who would be impacted by changes...or lack of them in the way SS is funded. The interviewee was quoted as saying that by the time he was retired, SS would be broke and so he really supported the idea of individual retirement accounts.

He turned out to also be the head of a taxpayer group strongly supportive of IRA's but CBS never bothered to note that fact in describing him.

Just another day of good old fashioned American mainstream media journalism. Note too that all of these little "slips" got discovered, not by the MSM, but by bloggers....including the recent double use of the same focus group guy, and Josh Marshall latching on to the surprising number of USA firings. Tis why I get more and more of my "news" by reading LOTS of blogs and comparing and contrasting. I find it keeps me in closer touch with reality.

If Luntz wanted honest opinions he'd grant his respondent anonymity. "Everyone who supports Mitt now raise your hand" is nonsense. You can see people tentatively raising their hands and looking around for approval. And they get to be on TV if they then say something to respond to his leading question about what made Mitt such a success!

to dweb

Chuck is a FAUX NEWS/NWO paid schill until such time that his affiliations to being an average schmoe are confirmed, or denied!

:)

I bet his neighbor is doing a youtube video now, I live by the creep Chuck in the Luntz's videos.

TheraP: Perhaps social biologists teach the theory of creation. I'll have to check the faculty at Regants University.

Yeah... Imagine finding 30plus gooper independents that as a group change to support articulately a Mitt Romney. Who saw the dramatic closer skills in the Mittster?

You can sign up for a FAUX focus group at www dot luntz dot com

Maybe the guy is Frank Luntz's lob cabin lover and Frank uses the corporate tab to fly him around?

I just signed up to be on Faux, I'll tell you when I meet Hannity and Luntz in an exclusive here.

Focus group? I suppose that is what they called it. Perhaps that is the way political pollsters do it, way to big based on methods guidelines. Leading questions don't make for good methods in any context.

Partial repeat carry over of members may provide a method of tracking shifting attitudes when the numbers are in the hundreds, but with 30? How many are carry over? How is this different from anecdotal?

Frank Luntz doesn't do charitable work - he has a dog in this fight somewhere on the GOP side. He's very deeply embedded into the GOP old guard. He takes great pride in the way that he "scientifically" manipulates public opinion through spiked focus groups, skewed polling questions and (begrudgingly) clever manipulation of language for conservative under-the-radar marketing programs. He's oft been Rove's hatchet man.

Frank's gems include turning logging into the "healthy forests initiative" and the inheritance tax into the "death tax". He has set back the global warming discussion by years. In other words, he helps the conservatives sugar coat bitter pills and we all get the shaft. Although he won't admit the fact, Luntz has more in common with Joseph Goebbels (another PhD holder in language) than Madison Avenue.

Right now in NH, Frank is probably trying to undermine the Huckabee surge that seems to be freaking out the Republican old guard. Romney may also be very likely underwriting his activities.

TPM needs to get an updated picture of Frank. Yes, he wears a shaggy rug. But he's also grown pretty chunky in a way that is reminiscent of Jabba the Hutt. Under the TV lights you often see beads of sweat trickling over the scales that adorn his skin.

I am not a Phd but My guess is that about 70% of the people will respond to this article by saying this -
FUCK YOU FRANK!

Media effects research of the kind Luntz implies he is doing (moment-by-moment reactions to mediated information) requires carefully controlled experimental conditions. Otherwise it yields gibberish. Luntz gives no indication that he is following any coherent or even incoherent experimental design or method. Assuming that his credentials are as he describes them, he knows very well that under the "research conditions" of a Fox television studio his pretense to science is ludicrous. But it doesn't matter to him. He only needs to impress viewers who are not so knowledgeable. What the rest of us, the intelligent American majority, think about his methods is laughably irrelevant. He knows his audience. He's not on Fox for us.

Yet deep down a man like this also knows that soon the ghost of his Ph.D. adviser and the souls of all the other good people who expected from him not mere celebrity but honesty and great things will come calling during sleepless nights, night after night, and one day he'll repent. And we'll welcome his repentance.

Ozzinny has the political aspect about right, I suppose.

Fuck You Frank Putz!!!

Fuck you Frank!

I have participated in several focus groups, although none were on politics. In some of them, I was a "self-plant"--I did not break any rules or fail to disclose pertinent information, but I definitely had a dog in the fight. So my opinions would have been skewed had this been the reason I was there. But my goal was something different--like Luntz, I was studying behavior.

Since the groups I was attending were for product development, they were led by a couple of marketing people, usually a man and a woman. It was blatantly obvious that they were pushing the group in a particular direction, despite multiple disclaimers that they just wanted our opinions. I waited for a few minutes, then made an argument in the opposite direction that I knew would appeal to others. It is not particularly relevant whether my argument was earnest--the entire group ended up going in my direction by the end of the time slot. The marketing people were visibly displeased by the outcome.

These focus groups are sitting ducks. They are locked in the room, being fed some bullshit. They are just waiting for an authority figure to show up and lead them out of the wilderness. Chuck may very well have been their Moses. It's also important to consider that Luntz is not unbiased and his and his employees' subtle biases may well be apparent to the participants.

Even when his conclusions make some sense, Luntz's methodology is often questionable. Although he plays social scientist here, his goal has nothing to do with science--he wants to be able to manipulate people's behavior, not just observe it.

The bottom line is that such focus group conclusions are not to be trusted, ever, but even more so when Luntz and Fox News are involved.

I'm sure if somebody dug down into the paperwork, there would be a check from a Romney organization to Luntz.

Those "undecideds" were too wildly enthusiastic and unanimous based just on Romney's debate performance.

Paid shills...

Although Luntz is a Fox News tool, the guy who showed up at two focus groups in New Hampshire was more likely because of sloppiness and laziness than any other motive.

I live in a city where Frankie does many focus groups– a few blocks from my house. It’s always a quick 100 bucks to go sit and play with his “patented Fox News Dials” (they are actually not patented, and not from Fox News), and get a preview of what agenda will be pushed next.

I have done over TEN groups with him— they never check who they hire— they just need to fill the seats to look good for whatever client is behind the one-way glass.

I have been in many groups where people walk out. He insults people, forces the ‘correct’ answers from people, browbeats people…. He’ll cut you off if you give an opinion he does not like. Just a fat, smug bully with bad teeth.

Once, when he left the room the whole group was so pi**ed off, we all agreed to swing his ‘dials’ at random– and he concocted ‘trends’ from this to prove a later point.

Scientific, indeed.

He’s just another B.S. artist making a buck…. just like me, also making a buck (from him).

Good to know, Elliot...

Pol Pot knew what to do with guys like this.