OKAY, THIS IS THE LAST UPDATE: New news from Cleveland.com:
"I am Winston Steward and have been sending the letters from Ellie Light," he told The Plain Dealer in an e-mail late Tuesday, following a phone interview in which he said the same. "I hope this ends any confusion and sets the record straight."
The woman said her husband was using her name because he was afraid he might be attacked by "right-wing crazies up in Bakersfield," about 40 miles from their home in a mountain community.
Afraid of right-wing crazies? yet he had no problem throwing his wife to the wolves by naming her name. Typical liberal male.
PROBABLY THE LAST MAJOR UPDATE: Gawker claims to have solved the riddle. Much along the lines as we discovered ourselves.
Brooks' husband, according to public records is a guy named Winston Steward. That's his Facebook profile picture up top. None of this made any sense, so we called Brooks in Texas, where she also has a home. She says the Plain Dealer got it wrong. "I'm not Ellie Light," she told us. "My husband is.
I never told anybody that I was Ellie Light. Winston wrote every single letter. He's been doing it since he saw that the Gulf War was being fought under false pretenses. I told him from the beginning that he shouldn't write letters under phony names, but he wanted to get them out there.
" So why did she tell the Plain Dealer, in the clearest possible terms, that she was, in fact, responsible for the Ellie Light correspondence? "That wasn't me," she says. "I don't know how they got that. Maybe my husband was impersonating me." As evidence, she cites this clip of her husband calling into Michael Smerconish's radio show to claim responsibility for the letters.
Steward called in and spoke in his regular voice, and neither Smerconish nor any other listener apparently caught on to the fact that he was a man. If he can pretend to be a woman on the radio without really trying, Brooks says, maybe he talked to the Plain Dealer's reporter, too. Brooks told us that she's called the Plain Dealer to alert them, and they've since added an update at the top of the story.
Look at the guy. I'm still not convinced "he" isn't a woman.
There is/was a nutroot at the Daily Kos named Winston Steward who wrote a lunatic diary. The Kos gets no link from me. But consider it true. It is either legit, or a link created by the Kos to throw more jelly in the mix.
And there was
an album put out in the 80s by a man named Winston Steward, We can't claim there one and the same. The album received no reviews. So I can't even tell if you it sucks or not.
LATEST MAJOR UPDATE: This comment was left at Politico:
I am not Ellie Light!! Ellie Light is my husband, Winston Steward. He wrote all the letters himself. He doesn't belong to any organizations. It was his idea, and I advised him not to write under phony names.
Posted By: Barbara Brooks | January 26, 2010 at 01:58 PM
MAJOR UPDATE: This has "balloon boy" (part 2) written all over it. From
Cleveland.Com: A woman claiming to be Barbara Brooks has now contacted The Plain Dealer and said she is not the letter writer; she claims her ex-husband is running a spoof. The newspaper is investigating; more details as they become available.
I tend to believe someone is jacking around. First, the inconsistencies in the "real" name, and second, the claim of threats, via email. Before anyone even knew who "she" was? Ha. If had to pick one, I'd guess the caller was the real Ellie Light and the Barbara Brooks character is just a pajama wearing freak trying to make a buck. But who knows, they very well both may be pajama wearing freaks.
MAJOR UPDATE # 2: My sources are telling me there is a Barbara Brooks on Facebook, who claims to be a pediatric nurse, who is claiming that "Ellie Light" is her husband. She does not say whether or not she is married to David Axelrod. On her
Facebook wall she wrote:
Don’t think you can make a difference? Well, my husband wrote letters to newspapers under a pen name “Ellie Light” and over 42 newspapers published the letters and now Ellie Light is the most searched name on google. I don’t agree with using phony names, though. But then he isn’t a Mennonite . . .
In any event, here's the story as it was reported originally:
-------------------------------------
She claims to be a traveling nurse. You might notice she claims in the audio that "Ellie Light" is her real name, but in the interview with the Plains Dealer, she claims her real name is Barbara Brooks. So, you know, don't give up the search for the real Ellie Light just yet.
Roxana Mayer anyone?Audio at this link ------->
Politico has the story.Well, the mystery may be over. A woman who said her name was, in fact, Ellie Light called this morning into the radio show of Michael Smerconish, a national talker based in Philadelphia who has been friendly to Obama, to clear things up.
"I'm only me," she said, identifying herself as a traveling nurse who works for 13-week stretches at hospitals around the country, and whose primary residence is in Southern California.
"I need to own up – I did misrepresent my home town in some places," Light told Smerconish. Her logic in faking the addresses is one familiar to advocacy groups: "If I thought it was written by a neighbor of mine, I would give it more credence."
UPDATE:
Cleveland.com is claiming her true name is Barbara Brooks.
And her real name is Barbara Brooks. Or so she told The Plain Dealer today after a series of phone interviews, e-mails and records checks involving Brooks/Light, a family member, licensing records and property information. The 51-year-old woman provided her address on Monday night to The Plain Dealer, and what she says is her real name in conversations today that followed checks of public records.
The Plain Dealer is not publishing her exact address, which can be difficult to find, because she says she has received e-mail threats that say, essentially, "We know who you are and we're coming to get you."
A nurse?
BTW, I call complete and unadulterated BS on the threats she claims to have received.
Is there a White House connection? Perhaps. Check out what
Riehl World View has to say.
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