And I also totally wroted this myself.

And I also totally wroted this myself.

Forget being a presidential candidate. At this point, the more pressing question seems: How the heck did Rick Perry get elected to anything, ever?

Following on the heels of the "drunken speech," we have this, via Mediaite:

Some background. [Mark] Schatzker wrote a satirical essay that seemed to mock the hyperbole and hyperventilation on both sides of the Occupy movement, that listed quotes of fabricated participants of Occupy Toronto. At the very top of the post is the “satire” label, though that was clearly missed by conservative bloggers, many of whom wrote about it, which were apparently forwarded by many readers of these right-of-center sites. One such quote was from a fictional 38 year-old protester named Jeremy: “It’s weird protesting on Bay Street. You get there at 9 a.m. and the rich bankers who you want to hurl insults at and change their worldview have been at work for two hours already. And then when it’s time to go, they’re still there. I guess that’s why they call them the one per cent. I mean, who wants to work those kinds of hours? That’s the power of greed.” [...] It’s one thing for bloggers to mistake this fake quote as real, but this story enters a whole new level of absurdity when Governor Rick Perry cites the same fake quote. During an appearance last Friday at The Barley House in New Hampshire, Perry cited the same quote which had been forwarded to him by his son. Now Perry did qualify the veracity of the quote to some degree, saying “I don’t know if it can be proved up or not,” though the larger question might be why a presidential candidate is sharing a story that he doesn’t “know if it can be proved up or not.”

So a bunch of conservative bloggers see a piece of satire, and one that's clearly labeled "satire" at that, and start passing it around presuming it's real. Fair enough: There is no intelligence test for being a conservative blogger, and this sort of viral fakery happens fairly often. There is a tendency for people to believe what they want to believe, and nobody ever accused the modern right of being too adherent to actual fact.

But then to get a presidential "contender" quoting it on the campaign trail? Must we?

We've already had Michele Bachmann telling the world that vaccines can make you "retarded" based on some random woman she didn't know telling her so. Well, that certainly rises to the level of something you need to announce to the rest of the world. We've got Perry citing conservative chain letters. It's not exactly at the level of denying all of climate science because some guy somewhere said "sunspots!", but it's just ... depressing. We get it: A fellow made up a satirical quote that really nailed what conservatives want to hear, about the protesters. They decided to ignore the "satire" tag and just go with it. So did Perry's son. So did Perry.

This guy ostensibly is running to lead the entire country. What if he sees something on the Colbert Report, thinks it's real, and it causes him to declare total proved-up nukular war on Ubeki-beki-beki-stan-stan before any of his advisors tell him there is no such country?