About That Last Column ...

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I keep hearing that people thought my last column, called The Last Transcript and supposedly including new Mark Foley IM exchanges with a page, was real. It wasn't. Here are some clues that it was a goof:

The story begins: "In an unprecedented journalistic coup ..."

Who starts a story that way? Then, before the fake transcript, I wrote, "reader discretion is strongly discouraged."

It's a joke, you.

Then the transcript is way too on the nose for Foley to have ever said it. There were lines like, "then i had to drop out of the senate race... no way florida republicans would nominate me... omigod, they hate fags!" and ridiculous exchanges like

:

"Xxxxx: did hastert do anything?

Maf54: besides cover it up? ; )"

And:

"Xxxxx: mark, do you relize ur like a fundamentalist christian caricature of a gay man?

Maf54: if that involves an incredibly hard boner, then i plead guilty"

It's full of stuff like that, but I guess the lesson of all this is that the real Mark Foley scandal is so absurd that almost anything is believable.