JUNEAU, AK — If once-upon-a-time GOP vice-presidential candidate and once-upon-a-time most popular US governor Sarah Palin had her own television show she probably wouldn’t be in the public eye as often as she is now. Her latest sensational headline concerns a rarely updated and out of date website affectionately named CrackHo.com.At issue for the enormously fecund politica is the fact that the site recently chose to redirect traffic to her website.
While one might think that the ex-beauty queen might be pleased by the sudden rush of extra traffic to her official online government presence, such has not been the case.
In fact, the governor’s office has issues a cease and desist order to the owner of CrackHo.com and accused it of illegally bearing the official state seal.
“It has come to our attention,” Alaskan assistant attorney general Michael Barnhill informed the site owner in a May 5th letter, “that the website www.CrackHo.com has jijacked a State of Alaska webpage.”
Shu Latif, who just happens to be the proprietor of the website in question, agrees that she redirected traffic for a while, but disagrees on some of the details related to the prank.
“A while back,” she explained in a note posted to the site, “I created a new front page for CrackHo.com. I redirected traffic to the Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin’s Web site. I never had the official seal or anything from her site on my server. It was a simple redirect using the meta refresh tag. I didn’t think anyone would notice. Ooops.”
Barnhill is unmoved by such technical mumbo-jumbo and insists that Latif has violated Alaskan law and must pay. Six months in prison or $500 should solve the problem, he has suggested.
Given the fact Palin’s grasp of geography and international geo-politics has been weak, perhaps a lack of familiarity on the part of her and her staff concerning technology is understandable – but there’s a considerable difference between stealing a State Seal and redirecting traffic to it.
Amusingly enough for Latif, while the redirect was in effect AdSense obediently fed her Palin related PAC advertisements, which earned her a bit of extra pocket money.
Latif, who says that removing the website is already on her To Do List given its lack of updates, cheerfully admits that “Yes, I know the AdSense ads have been Palin’s PAC banners. I think it’s awesome that in essence, they are paying ME!”
Now that’s a maverick way to earn a stimulus payment!
