Alan Grayson: Real Internet Genius

22 Oct, 2009 by John Hawkins

Print this article Font size -16+

Congressman Alan Grayson, who’s been purposefully making a jackass of himself over the last few weeks in a sort of pitiful attempt to get noticed, is back with a hot new website: Names of the Dead. I like to say that kind of slow: Names. Of. The. Dead. It makes it sound like a horror flick.

Anyway, the idea is supposed to be to “memorialize Americans who died because they had no health insurance.”

Unfortunately, things aren’t working out so well. How “not well” are things working out? It’s so bad that even the libs over at TPM are mocking Grayson’s latest effort:

Grayson may be leaving himself open to some online practical jokers. At the moment I write this, four names are memorialized in the site’s rotating list:

– Lassie Martin, 10, Kanab, UT

– Norma Jeane Mortenson, 36, Los Angeles, CA

– Steve Rogers, 90, New York, NY

– Wile E. Coyote, 55, Sedona, Arizona

All four of those names are fraudulent. Lassie Martin is the dog “Lassie,” whose owners on the 1950’s TV show were called the Martins (and the town of Kanab, Utah, was one of the filming locations). Norma Jeane Mortenson was Marilyn Monroe’s real name. Steve Rogers is the fictional Captain America from Marvel Comics, and of course there’s Wile E. Coyote.

…Late Update: The automated list of names has been removed from the site. It may be that mourning “Hugh G. Reckshinn,” age 44, from Dumas, Texas, was a bit too much for them

So, when do I.C. Weiner and Jacques Strap make Alan Grayson’s list?