Fake Sarah Palin Facebook Page Uncovered and Shut Down

Hundreds of people thought they were becoming Facebook friends with the former governor of Alaska when they friended “Governor Palin.” What many of them didn’t know was they were actually chatting with a 38-year-old screenwriter in Los Angeles with a left-of-center agenda.

Alex Grossman said he decided to pose as “Governor Palin” to demonstrate his theory that Sarah Palin is using people who are easily duped for her own political gain. He says “those people” only care about “Jesus, salmon recipes and killing moose.”

On Monday, Grossman said, he tried to log into the Governor Palin account, and then realized the site had been taken down. While not commenting on the incident itself, Facebook “routinely disables fake accounts and pages when they’re reported to us or we come across them ourselves,” a spokesman said.

When asked Thursday by the Wall Street Journal blog why he started the page, Grossman seemed harmless and playful, saying. “I started thinking about Sarah Palin and her following: ‘What would it be like to be her? What are these people like? And do they really know her?’” As the WSJ blog reported, “Under the guise of research, he decided to attempt to pass himself off as Palin on Facebook.”

Grossman was much more outspoken about his agenda when Politics Daily interviewed him by phone on Friday. He said he made the fake page to show that “Palin is using these Moral Majority, holy rollers who are uneducated and lower-middle class for her own power.”

“She’s smarter than all these supporters and she knows it, so she is duping them into following her by her winks, ‘gotchas,’ guns and moose,” he insist. “None of her followers know anything about her politically. They just think she’s their best friend,” he said.

“She is enflaming hatred like was done in Fascist Germany – go after the uneducated, lower class to gain political power.”

He says he is not religious himself and strongly opposes people who vote for religious, social or values reasons because that “violates the separation of church and state.”

Grossman says that people who support Palin because she believes in God should “go back to their knitting clubs and pancake breakfasts” and not be involved in politics.

He created “Governor Palin” Facebook account in mid-June. He said he posted updates three to four times a day, mostly about love of God and country to tease readers into replying to him, thinking it was Palin.

Grossman claims he did not intend to deceive people and would “tip my hat to those that I thought knew better,” he told the WSJ blog, by posting over-the-top satirical updates.

While in control of the page, Grossman, pretending to be Palin, posted: “GOD LOVES US ALL, no matter how black or African, or even gay or Jewish we are,” the WSJ blog said.

And, “I need a salmon recipe for tonight. Todd just brought home a fresh one. Something spicy!” In response, Grossman received dozens of recipes, which he cites as evidence that Palin supporters don’t care about the issues and are too ignorant to recognize a fake page.

He told Politics Daily, “If Al Gore posted on his Facebook page that he needed a marinated steak rub recipe, don’t you think people would realize it was a fake?”

One woman wrote, “Sarah, You are the brightest star I’ve seen in government in decades. I met ‘Joe the Plumber’ . . . and could see BOTH of you in high office . . . Please let me know where I can send a donation.” Grossman replied, without explaining he was not Palin, “No need to send money, just prayers. Jesus is with me, doll, and I’m gonna be just FINE.”

But, when a woman posted a plea on the page to pray for her sick child, Grossman told the WSJ blog, “I felt terrible. It went into an area I wasn’t prepared for.” He didn’t respond to the woman.

Grossman’s sudden crisis of conscience, however, apparently didn’t bother him enough to tell the sick child’s mother that he was not Sarah Palin (which he could have done via Facebook e-mail privately) and that her requested prayers would not be said for her child.

Neither did Grossman close the page or post a clarification it was a phony. Grossman told Politics Daily that he “wasn’t surprised” when the page was taken down by Facebook because of all the reports from users that the page was a fake.

(BTW, if you come across a suspicious Facebook page, go to the lower left corner and there’s a button to report fraud. Facebook does not say how many reports of fraud it receives.)

Facebook recently differentiated between Facebook pages and “fan pages” for public figures. For a normal Facebook account, you have to request to be “friends” with someone and be accepted by the other person; this is the type that Grossman created under the name “Governor Palin.”

The real Sarah Palin has an official Facebook fan page, which anyone can join, at: Facebook.com/SarahPalin.

Facebook pages are tied to unique e-mail addresses, so Grossman used a separate e-mail address for the fake Palin page and his own personal Facebook page, which is till active at facebook.com/agrossman.

Facebook has strict rules and consequences for impersonating people, including: “You will not provide any false personal information on Facebook, or create an account for anyone other than yourself without permission . . .You will not post content or take any action on Facebook that infringes someone else’s rights or otherwise violates the law,” and “We can remove any content you post on Facebook if we believe that it violates this Statement.”

Palin’s spokeswoman, Meg Stapleton, told the WSJ blog, “Every day Governor Palin deals with individuals, politicians, and corporations pushing fake and inaccurate information into various media. She believes strongly in the efficacy of using direct Web-based communication forums like Facebook and Twitter to reach her supporters, the media, and the public at large. Maintaining the integrity of these forums is obviously fundamental to this new type of interactive communication. With that in mind, we greatly appreciated Facebook’s prompt response in disabling the impostor site.”

For now, Sarah Palin is not using Twitter. Her account — @AKGovSarahPalin – has not been updated since she stepped down as governor in late July.Ever since she tweeted on July 26 – “10 dys til less politically correct twitters fly frm my fingertps outside State site” – I have been waiting with bated breath for Sarah Palin uncensored.

Maintaining a sense of humor in politics is important. When I saw the clearly fake Sarah Palin Facebook page which was forwarded around a year ago, I thought it was hilarious and obviously not trying to confuse anyone into thinking it was hers.

Grossman, though, is not trying to be funny, and he doesn’t claim to be. He has a radical, left-wing agenda.

In my view, he preyed on the innocence and honesty of people to further his own gains, and now fame, saying to Politics Daily, “I could write a book on all this.”

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