Hank the Angry Dwarf Is a Giant in Poll

The campaign to write in Hank the Angry, Drunken Dwarf -- a regular on the Howard Stern show -- in People Magazine's Most Beautiful Person poll started quietly enough last week. But as word spread across Usenet from alt.fan.howard-stern to rec.humor and University of California newsgroups, the votes surged. By Monday, Hank was pulling even with Tom Cruise and Mel Gibson. Tuesday, Hank was gaining on Leo Di Caprio himself. And by noon, the votes gave Hank the crown of the world's most beautiful person -- at a rate that caused People's poll to shut down about an hour later.

The insanely heavy level of voting (something like 50 votes a minute) caused People.com's people to suspect a sinister kind of electronic ballot-stuffing: vote-bots. But Usenet erupted in fury, with irate protesters screaming that there really are that may Stern fans out there. By late afternoon the poll was back up, with Hank the undisputed winner. Hank the Angry, Drunken Dwarf had more than 40,000 votes, easily beating out Leo's paltry 5,000. If Stern fans were able to agree on the spelling and punctuation of Hank's moniker, his total would be even more astronomical.

Andy Emmerich, a freshman at the University of Illinois and a ringleader of the write-in, summed it up nicely: "Isn't the Internet great?" No mister, it's democracy that's great. Sheesh.