Of course it would have to be liberal sock puppets on the attack. Republican sock puppets would just hire mercenaries.
(I can’t take credit for that title, much as I would love to. Some conservative pundit used it first.)
The story is that the political fund-raising website for Sarah Palin, Team Sarah, posted many nasty and racist comments about the President-elect. The Huffington Post wrote about this. The Huffington Post blogger included some of the Team Sarah comments in her post. They were. . .unpleasant.
Apparently, the Team Sarah site does not moderate its comments, since no steps were taken to remove the offensive racist comments until the issue broke on Huffington Post.
The conservatives soon circulated a story that liberals had created false internet personae, (hence, “sock puppets”) joined the Team Sarah site—which, as you might expect, is Members Only and very ex-cluu-sive– and written the nasty postings themselves. One social conservative blogger pointed to a website called “Something Awful” as the source of the prank. He also called for “principled liberals everywhere” to deplore this bad behavior.
Well, Something Awful is a satire site, not a political site. Their motto is, “The internet makes you stupid.” Based on the one-minute tour I took of the site, I would say they are aptly named, and they’ve got a whole QED thing going on with the motto. You look at the site and can’t help picturing over-caffeinated post-adolescent males without enough meaningful tasks in their lives. That’s my opinion, anyway.
If the people at Something Awful really did perpetrate this hoax, then I am outraged. I am indignant. I am angry. Why? Because I’m trying to get my own sock puppet on Team Sarah, and they’ve probably messed it up for me! It’s bad enough that I had to go to AOL and spend at least four minutes coming up with an e-mail name that hadn’t been used. Then I had to go to Team Sarah and get grilled with hearts-and-minds questions like, “Do you just love Sarah or what? What do you like best about her?” and, “What’s the best phone number for us to reach you?” Then, a day after I do this, you kids get caught with the metaphorical spray-paint, and they deny my request for membership. Thanks. Thanks a lot. Don’t expect me to be making a latte-mocha run for you guys any time in the near future!