Everyone is having a great laugh at the Barack Obama smear email being forwarded around, pointing out how so obviously fake it is. The email's focus is a fake June 29 Maureen Dowd column that has the Times columnist explaining how she found out Obama's online fundraising effort is working so well because it's really being pumped with cash by wealthy financiers from "Saudi Arabia, Iran, and other Middle Eastern countries." The fictional column also says, "I guess we should have been somewhat suspicious when the numbers started to come out. We were told (no proof offered) that the Obama internet contributions were from $10.00 to $25.00 or so."

The truth busters at the Huffington Post point out, "for starters," that "the average Obama contribution has been around $100, not $15." Well, obviously! Every vote knows this!

Except, uh, they don't. And thanks to the "comically absurd" (HuffPo's words) email's well-executed mock up of an actual Dowd column, complete with the Times' font and her byline, people on the receiving end of this email might actually believe it. And as HuffPo thought to do, clicking on over to the Times website to see if the column is for real isn't an extra step most recipients would take

That's why these smear email campaigns work..

Like spam, they're very easy to fabricate and send, and even if a tiny percentage of recipients believe them — an herbal supplement really can increase my size by two inches? — they prove effective.

So while everyone playing a game of political inside baseball can wave their finger at the email and feel good about how they so easily flagged it as a fake, rest assured many Americans won't.