Putting The Faux Into Faux Outrage

Charlie Sykes is leading the pack of rabid echo-maniacal bloggers in questioning whether the person that Senator Russ Feingold uses in his latest commercial is even a real person.

First, let me say that I don't know if it is a real name of a real person, or a name taken out of the blue. And frankly, I couldn't care less. But since the right want to make a deal out of it, let's look at some things.

First of all, as my good friend, Jay Bullock, points out, there would be good reason on why not to use a person's real name:

Consider: How do we even know it's a fake name? Because as soon as the ad appeared, the right-wing smear machine flew into action to see if they could find this "Elizabeth M. Ackland." Google searches, Lexus-Nexus searches--Charlie Sykes even went so far as to search cemeteries. This is not just a casual "I wonder who that is" curiosity. This is obsession. So if you want to believe that the motives of people like Charlie Sykes in digging obsessively for information about Ackland were entirely pure, be my guest. But you have to ask yourself: Why were the right wingers so hell-bent on finding Ackland, if she were real? Of what possible use to them would the information be about where she worked? Where she lived? Where her children went to school?

Yeah, scary. When you consider the way that the Charlie Sykes stormtroopers (not a Nazi thing--they embrace that for themselves) treat the personal and professional lives of those of us who are real and do attach our real names to what we do and our support for candidates, it would have been irresponsible for Feingold to subject an innocent person and her family to the hell that was sure to follow.

(You know Jay is hitting the nail on the head when Freddy The Fly Dooley starts to throw tantrums and resort to name calling.)

Illy-T reminds us that this is not an unusual course of action for the right wing hate squads, and reminds us of how Michele Malkin made life hell for a sick twelve-year-old boy and his family during the S-chip debate three years ago.

Illy-T and Jay also remind us that this isn't the first time that someone used phony people. Via xoff, we are reminded that Scott Walker had used paid actors to portray "real people" in a TV ad.

Out of curiosity, I googled mrs. capper's name. It came up with one hit, for a facebook page that belonged to a woman who most definitely wasn't my wife. Just because Sykes' stalking came up empty doesn't necessarily mean that the person doesn't exist.

However, there is one thing that my esteemed brethren of the left have missed. This one thing shows that Sykes is the ultimate master of all hypocrisy and why he is the one that put the faux in this round of faux outrage.

That one thing, my dear reader, is a name:

Liz Woodhouse.