'Witchcraft In the White House' Writer Punks TownHall.com

The important blog Town Hall helps nervous lower-middle-class old white people believe "conservatism" has something to do with them instead of being a three-decade policy of siphoning away their minimal wealth and giving it to the richest 1%. With this mission in mind, TownHall.com publishes absolutely any fringe-wingnut op-ed writer it can find, including fired-by-everybody-else has-beens like Ann Coulter. So it wasn't really surprising when the "#1 conservative website" had a bizarre opinion piece claiming that Barack Obama's mother-in-law was practicing some kind of freaky Mexican-Colored voodoo in the White House. Wonkette wrote about it, the author of the piece sent an angry email to Wonkette, the email was immediately published, and hundreds of Wonkette commenters had a delightful time of it all. But who was this mysterious wingnut writer?

The bloggers at the Times of Londonwere horrified, even if the Wonkette commenters saw "hoax" all over it. Still, it was only a little bit beyond "mainstream Tea Party opinion," and today it looks positively quaint compared to the racist ravings of Donald Trump, the actual frontrunner for the Republican nomination.

And now the writer, "Kristen Atkinson," has written to your editor to explain that it was all a simple prank to get the TownHall.com readers to amp up their racist comments. Which is what happened, and after Wonkette encouraged the non-TownHall.com world to enjoy the "Michelle Obama's Mom Is a Witch" story, the whole thing vanished off Town Hall. 

Kristen is apparently John Wright -- or maybe that's part of the elaborate, years-old prank too? -- and he claims to be a Seattle writer who is the author of this new book, The Obama Haters. 

And now your comments about this fake blog post that was made to elicit crazy comments from wingnuts is celebrated in yet another book about Barack Obama, hooray for Democra$$$y: "The satirical Web site Wonkette was the most entertaining. It made a hilarious spoof of my blog, and its readers ridiculed the author without pity as a moron and a fanatic."