So earlier today, I saw and was digging into this story.

An employee of the Republican ad firm responsible for 2004’s controversial “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” advertisements has apparently been producing viral videos which ridicule Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson. The firm, Stevens, Reed, Curcio & Potholm, now works for John McCain’s presidential campaign.

I had a bit of skepticism that the fingerprints on the guy-driving-the-car ads would lead back to Team McCain, for two big reasons. First, the ads, while funny in some areas, are just way over the top and too off-color for any serious campaign to approve, even tacitly. (You just don’t want your candidate associated with joking references to doing you-know-what with a plunger to a criminal.)

Secondly, it doesn’t fit the McCain critism of his opponents. For example, I don’t think it’s much surprise to anyone that Team McCain has gone after Mitt Romney early and often. Sometimes the charges carry some weight, sometimes they strike me as lame (calling attention to the he-should-have-gotten-Skinemax-out-of-Marriotts story) but they’ve thrown just about everything but the kitchen sink at Romney.

But they haven’t played the Mormon card, at least from what I’ve seen (Romney advisers apparently believe Team McCain has crossed the line in this area), and so the idea of them approving a web ad with jokes about Mormons about “assuming the missionary position” just seem like the sort of thing that would cause the candidate to explode. (How many Mormons have voted for McCain over the years in Arizona?)

Anyway, it seems pretty moot now, as the author of the original article has just posted:

I have been contacted by a legal firm representing Stevens, Reed, Curcio & Potholm regarding this post. They have told me that the assertions made in the post below are false, and that SRCP has no connection to any of the YouTube videos posted under the username abrad2345, and that their employee, Amy Bradford, has nothing to do with this as well. I want to personally stress that I have no concrete evidence whatsoever that suggests that either SRCP or Ms Bradford is in any way connected to the matter regarding these YouTube videos, and that any wording in the piece below which suggests that I do have such evidence is not correct. In the sake of openness and transparency, I have opted, for the moment, to leave the post below intact, but please remember that I cannot vouch for the authenticity of the claims made in it. In fact, I suggest if you do choose to read it, you should treat it as something which has been debunked.

That’s a pretty darn big “Nevermind.”

UPDATE: Any doubt that McCain was NOT behind this is laid to rest by today’s edition of the guy-driving-the-car ad, in which the ADD-inflicted and factually-challenged protagonist declares “I don’t know about this guy McCain. It all ties back to Kim Jong Il. Shot down in Korea? Yeah, Manchurian Candidate. Why would I insult a war hero? McCain was brainwashed by the Koreans.” Folks, there’s a lefty behind this, I’d bet, considering the closing statement, “Anybody who ended up a war should be excluded [from the presidential race]… Smart guy stays home… like our current president and vice president.”