And Who Got Fooled?

As some people discovered, yesterday's story about Mike Gravel and Barak Obama, It's All About the National Initiative, was part of an April Fool's Day plant by a group of bloggers. However, it didn't quite work out as planned, leading to the inevitable question:

Was the April Fool's joke really on us?

Our "leader" Manila Ryce of The Largest Majority explains it, in Okay, So We Lied…:

[Y]esterday’s story about Obama adopting the National Initiative in exchange for Gravel dropping out of the race was an April Fools joke in which several blogs participated. Davis Fleetwood was even able to get Mike Gravel himself in on the prank to a certain extent. Unfortunately, the Gravel campaign ultimately dropped the ball with the video they were supposed to put out at midnight which would have given the story a greater deal of credibility.

* * * *

How did it work? We started with a basic template of a story (which I posted in its entirety in my article) and each blog was to post that same story while making slight alterations where they saw fit. In doing this, few posts were exactly the same, but the same basic information was there in each case. Davis Fleetwood made a video for people to embed, and Tengrain of Mock, Paper, Scissors (listed above) made the photoshoped pic you see at the top of this post.

The next step was for us to link each other, so each blog in the list above would link the one below it as the source for their story. The bottom blog would link the top blog. If any reader tried to track down the original source of the story, they would’ve been led around in a complete circle until they arrived back to the blog they started at.

The fake video interview with Mike Gravel didn't get posted on YouTube until late in the evening, Davis Fleetwood Talks with Mike Gravel, which is unfortunate, since it would have added the perfect touch to lend credence to the story. However, as mentioned by Manila and as I noted in my caption on the story, the underlying purpose of our prank was to highlight the issue of the National Initiative, which is a proposal espoused by Gravel that has not received a lot of press. Truthfully, I think that the ideology of majority rule for all laws has its pros and cons as a concept on the national level, since I believe that there are some laws that are good for us as a country despite the "will of the people," but I do believe it is a worthy concept that is worth further consideration and discussion.

Other thoughts on our efforts can be found at The April Fool’s prank was on me and Mike Gravel Campaign.

In addition to The Largest Minority, other participants were:

Blue Man in a Red District
BuelahMan’s Redstate Revolt
Cause for Concern
Freida Bee
Mock, Paper, Scissors
Monkey Muck
PoliTits
The Greenbelt
The Largest Minority
The Osterley Times

Last year's April Foolish effort was to announce the vote on articles of impeachment against Bush, see Basta: Impeach, which, I'm sad to say is still just a hope and a dream.