When Henry Met Stupid

The seven stages of dumb, nasty bad behavior run the gamut from casually, less than brilliant bad intentions to mind bogglingly, criminally evil stupidity. And it pops up on both sides of the aisle far too often. But frankly, I can't identify where this hell this falls on that scale. It seems that somebody is trying to play some games on the web with GOP sort-of candidate Fred Thompson. (Courtesy of Capt. Ed.)

Apparently hoping to confuse web surfers looking for Fred's website at http://www.imwithfred.com/, a new site has appeared at http://www.imwithfred2008.com/ -- only this site welcomes people to the Ku Klux Klan, "Bringing a Message of Hope and Deliverance to White Christian America!" It includes links to a variety of disgusting racist sites.

Who would post something like this as a smear on Fred Thompson? Someone a little too stupid to cover his tracks, possibly? A DNS search gives us an answer. The domain name, registered through GoDaddy (no great shock there), belongs to:

Henry Reynolds
500 California Ave. #5
Santa Monica, California 90403
United States

Ed's article goes on to point out that Mr. Reynolds is an attorney and a regular contributor to MoveOn, John Kerry, DNC and such.

As I noted in Ed's comments section, there is more information to be gathered before anyone can be absolutely sure of what's going on here. I mean, it's certainly possible that Henry is actually a gay member of the KKK with a life partner named Fred who will celebrate their anniversary in 2008, but somehow it seems to lack the ring of truth.

Seriously, now... how effective could anyone think this could be? Whether you care for Thompson or not, he's a pretty high profile person in the political scene. He could never have risen past the level of city dog catcher if he was stupid enough to have his name associated with this type of material.

Stupid? Evil? You be the judge.

Stranger and Stranger
The URL above imwithfred2008 now goes to an ad for John Edwards. Not good for Edwards and looking almost Rovian in nature.
Ron

Stranger and Stranger II
The link now re-directs us to Wikipedia entry for Fredric Jameson. Hat Tip to Ed.

Update From Ron
It should be pointed out that in addition to being stupid this is just plain wrong. It is the very thing that we have been accusing the other side of doing, accurately at times.