Even Chain Emails Have Authors

The New York Times has a short profile of the man largely responsible for the anti-Obama emails that you may have had forwarded to you by uncles and cousins this year. His name is Andy Martin, and he sounds like a real piece of work.

In some ways, I feel like it’s unfair to lambaste conservatives for Martin. He’s clearly a man with a lot of psychiatric problems. But the fact of the matter is, when you pick up the rock, these are the kinds of people you find underneath it. I’m sure that Daily Kos and Democratic Underground have more than their fair share of paranoids, schizophrenics and general crazies.

But I’m going to do it anyways.

Martin and this kind of lunacy has a cache and a solid place in the rightwing message machine that simply isn’t comparable with anything going on in progressive politics. Martin himself may be a sadly sick man with too much money and time on his hands, but the people at Fox News and Sean Hannity know what they’re doing when they have him on. Martin is useful for them. They can bemoan and decry Martin later, once he’s not on the show. But they’ve succeeded in doing what they set out: they helped Martin and his ilk disseminate the lies and slander a bit further, they’ve scared another old woman from voting her interest. That’s how it works. If it wasn’t Martin, it’d be another crazy. He just happens to be the one the deadenders need to put enough distance between themselves and the lies they need to get elected.