Land of Genuises

You might have seen the story about an Illinois student newspaper which published a series of articles about an eight-year-old orphan girl whose father served and died in the War Against Iraq. The story turned out to be a hoax; the question remains as to whether the paper's editor was in on the scam.

The larger story -- not the fake one -- is chock full o' morons. Here's the editor's tale:

He [Michael Brennan] was the student newspaper editor when some of the Kodee "Kenningsology" columns were published but was quick to point out in the Friday interview that other Daily Egyptian editors had also published the columns.

He said he spent "1,000 hours" talking on the telephone with a person he said he believed was Kodee. He now believes it was Colleen Hastings, a person identified by the Daily Egyptian in its Friday edition as Jaimie Reynolds, a 27-year-old from Marion who graduated in 2004 from the SIUC School of Radio and Television. In the edition, the student newspaper published a front-page apology under the headline, "To all, we deeply regret our error."

What kind of freaking idiot spends a total of 42 days on the phone with a 27-year-old woman and thinks he's talking with an eight-year-old girl? For that matter, what kind of freak spends 42 days on the phone with an eight-year-old child he's not related to?

Brenner's clearly a half-wit; the only question is whether he's a half-wit for thinking anyone would buy that story.

And then there's the chuckleheads who allowed their ten-year-old daughter to be passed off as someone else's child:

On Thursday, 10-year-old Caitlin Hadley sat between her parents on a couch in her mom's office, retelling the two-year odyssey that began with her belief that she was going to be the star of a documentary film about a little girl named Kodee.

"It was sort of weird, but I had a lot of fun," Caitie said.

Her father, Richard Hadley, is a pastor at a Nazarene church in Montpelier, Ind., and her mother works for the church's regional office. Both said they felt they'd been scammed by Reynolds.

"I just realized that I didn't know this girl," Tawnya Hadley said. "In the profession that my husband is in, we move and meet new people all the time. What if she'd never brought Caitie back? We feel like we're idiots."

...

As Caitie's involvement continued, the Hadleys began asking why the documentary had not been finished.

A documentary film about a little girl named Kodee.

We feel like you're idiots too, Tawnya.

Remind me never to get pastoral counselling from a Nazarene pastor.