A Relief, Really

OK, no empirical data yet of Sarah's stupidity.

The unwitting supplier of the template reports:

"Gawker—the same online rag that called me a "Crazed Christ-Loving Re-Virgin"—is engaging in some craziness of its own: It's asking readers to judge the validity of what it says may be "Sarah Palin's High-School Grades"—but is in fact a forgery made from my SAT scoresheet, which I posted in January 2004.

A sleuth on the Straight Dope message board identified my scoresheet as the source of the forgery.

The forger lowered the grades and scores on the printout to make Palin, an honor-society member, look like a mediocre student—but wasn't smart enough to hide the obviousness of the Photoshop job. Still, Gawker publisher Nick Denton—who earlier published e-mails stolen from Palin's personal account— asserted the fake was credible: "The grades are mediocre—appropriately the small-town girl scores a D in foreign language—but not so dreadful as to immediately stretch credulity. And the first five digits of the social security number do match Sarah Palin's."

UPDATE: The forgery appears to have originated with a purported "Background Report" on Palin that was posted anonymously to a Web site. It was swiftlyswallowed blogs such as Daily Kos ("it sure seems credible"), and Wonkette
("a 425 verbal sounds about right"). None of them apparently noticed or cared that the front page of the "report" revealed it to be an obvious fake: The document, which features purported DMV records from 2006, bears a "RECEIVED" stamp dated "6-24-03."And now, I will attempt to leave all this bloggy excitement behind for a while, as I am currently pursuing a master's degree in theology and need to study for midterms. And no, my GRE scores will not be forthcoming