I'm torn between thinking that if this is a hoax, the hoaxer should be banned with extreme prejudice, and hoping that there will be another hoax designed to appeal to right-wingers.

I come down strongly on the "hoax" side because I spend a lot of time "reviewing" the emails that my father and other relatives exchange. These are of the sort Obama born in Kenya, Obama dissed dead soldiers and their families, Obama pushing Sharia law, Obama hates Flag pins.

As far as I'm concerned, I have seen 100s of the hoaxes designed to appeal to right wingers. You can see them too: go to snopes.com, search on Obama and False ,stop reading when you get bored.

As to banning, if we really are supposed to be learning rationality here, how does it help to erase all evidence that in large numbers we got tricked? And it didn't even take Omega to do it to us, it was just another Beta like ourselves? If this does turn out to be a hoax designed to appeal to us, it should be taught as something we need to watch out for.