The AARP recently sent out a letter to newspapers around the country about the Obama health care plan. The letter was signed by the respective state's state organization. Although the writers signed their names as individuals, the letters were remarkably similar in their wording -- mostly word for word in many cases.

That raised the collective eyebrows of editorial page editors around the country, who regularly review guest essay submissions and are suspicious of columns that appear not to be in the writer's individual voice.

In some cases, the editorial writers called the AARP offices in their states and asked them point blank if the state director had written the letter in his or her own hand. They tried to make it appear as if the piece were written by the state director instead of the national director in order to increase the likelihood that newspapers in the respective states would publish it.

One AARP staffer from Wisconsin who was called on the carpet over the letter was unexpectedly contrite.

"The opinion piece was crafted by several state directors, each of whom sent it out under their names, which as I see now was a mistake. Each of the state directors should have rewritten it to make it personal for their states. I apologize for this lapse in judgment and I understand why you wouldn't want to print it."

His explanation, however, kind of goes against what the AARP officials in Illinois say happened. A spokesman there told a newspaper editor there that his boss' version was the original, and that the letters being distributed in other states were copies of his.

I'd never try to pull that kind of thing on you or anybody else," the communications director wrote. "This piece was circulated internally in AARP and it seems other directors are using it. But I can assure you it was originally written here."

Who's telling the truth? Who knows.

This practice, which editorial writers have dubbed "Astroturf" because of the premanufactured, generic nature of the product, is fairly common among large organizations, some EPE's wrote. Often these groups get away with it because no one thinks to check whether the writer who signed it was actually the writer who wrote it. But in this case, editorial writers shared their letters with their colleagues in other states and busted up the turf attempt.