An e-mail prank gone too far

Alright, breaking with the general theme of this blog, here is one of those really strange news stories that makes for a sick laugh:

A student, alumnus or parent at Georgetown Day School in Washington, DC allegedly managed to successfully hack into a teacher's e-mail account and use it to send notes to three of her current students. The school's principal, Kevin Barr, apparently flipped out and called in the feds, who have pursued the case on interstate communication grounds.

The Smoking Gun has a Secret Service affidavit relating to the case, which includes the text of the e-mails in question. One of them strikes of wild perversion while the other two are horrifically convincing as actual disciplinary notes. The Smoking Gun concludes:

But what we're left wondering about is why two Secret Service agents and "U.S. Department of Justice Investigators" were detailed to probe this obvious teen caper.

I've never much understood how or why stories like this catch fire, though the brief lament offered by Matthew Broderick's character at the end of “Election” has always tickled me:

Soon the wire services picked up on the story. It was the kind of absurd news item people E-mail each other or post on the bulletin board at work.