[UPDATE]: Gimme a break, I had to get this out before I gave my baby a bath. Ethan Winner, obviously.

Yeah, actually, it’s kind of important. Full version after the fold, but short version now: PR flack Ethan Allen Winner is now claiming that he lied about Sarah Palin’s AIP affiliation all on his lonesome, and never mind all the other people from his firm. Please, please, please never mind; he’s begging you…

Review here and here: basically, My Pet Jawa did some digging into a notably false anti-Palin video and found evidence that it came from a PR firm with links to Astroturf expert David Axelrod.

Oops.

Anyway, MPJ (via Ace of Spades HQ) now has Ethan Winner’s statement. It’s his story, not mine, so I’ll summarize: Ethan Winner says that he acted alone, that nobody helped him, that the Obama campaign didn’t help him, and that it’s all our fault anyway for nominating her. And there were death threats! – although how that was managed between midnight and 1 AM Monday morning is left as an exercise for the reader. Apparently it was done by the half of the VRWC that’s a smoothly-operating, cruelly-efficient, absolutely relentless nightmare vision of Men in Black – as opposed to the slack-jawed fundamentalist women-hating yokels that’s the other half of us. No, I don’t know how our opponents reconcile those competing visions, either.

But I digress.

So, it was all one person, nobody else to blame, so go away, please, and let the healing begin. Alas, we have yet to have explained the roles of “cnwinner,” “Justyn Winner,” and “stckyfngz” in this sordid little affair. Or, as Rusty refers to them: Charles N Winner, President of Winner & Associates; Justyn Winner, Vice President & General Counsel for Winner & Associates; Jared Liu-Klein, Associate at Winner & Associates. And after that’s resolved, we can start looking at all those links that MPJ made between this company, and, say, David Axelrod. Because Rusty’s taking the position that it stretches the laws of probability just a touch that a pro-Obama astroturfing program like this doesn’t have any links to an Obama operative known for astroturf. It looks… suspicious. And, do you know something? Right now Rusty’s suspicions are pretty damn credible.

Just ask Ethan Winner. God, but I love the irony of that last name.

Moe Lane