In his brilliant 1994 satirical novel, “Thank You for Smoking,” Christopher Buckley chronicles the exploits of smarmy professional deceiver Nick Naylor, chief fact-distorter for the “Academy of Tobacco Studies.”

Mr. Naylor’s primary job is to distort voluminous amounts of scientific data showing that tobacco products are deadly. To that end he creates bogus “grass-roots” groups to spread the word, funding them through third-party “donors.” The result is that the tobacco industry’s defenders in Congress are able to point to a “groundswell” of support.

Actual members of the groups are sincere; they truly believe in “smokers’ rights.” They don’t know they are being used.

“Though the Academy naturally preferred to keep a low profile in its contacts with the front groups, Nick felt it was important to have them in for a pep talk. So what if they were stooges? They didn’t know that,” Mr. Buckley wrote. “They targeted local politicians who favored anti-smoking ordinances, attacked the surgeon general much more viciously than the Academy itself could, organized ’smoke-ins’ … and distributed morale-boosting T-shirts and caps with pro-smoking emblems modeled on the old Black Panther salute: upraised fists holding cigarettes.”

Mr. Buckley wrote the novel from actual experience as a former presidential speech writer (for President George H.W. Bush) and political columnist. Naylor is based on actual special-interest flacks and the bogus grass-roots groups described one of the flacks’ actual tactics.

So the current low level of discourse at town hall meetings on health care reform is simply the latest incarnation of an age-old tactic. Now, however, entrenched interests with much to lose through reform in the public interest have far more powerful tools – cable network talking heads and the Internet – with which to spread misinformation.

Many of the people who have disrupted town meetings on this vital issue undoubtedly believe they are doing the right thing. And, of course, they have every right to be heard.

But every time one of them screams a contrived “fact” about health care reform into the face of a U.S. senator, some manipulative spin doctor in a $2,500 suit feels an electrical jolt of satisfaction.

The good thing about the Internet, of course, is that accurate information about the reform plans is available to those who seek it. One good site: www.factcheck.org, a nonpartisan site operated by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.