Shit. I hope it isn’t me.
We need to build a Wally Detector.
I’m going to need some garlic, a silver cross and a nuclear device.
Actually, I thought you died a few years ago
I now work in a nuclear facility in Canada.
I can help. 
Good God!
I mean, I feel safer already!
Very good, than you can get us the cross?
And an intelligent spell checker?
I ran across this page today. Scroll down to the header SDMB Smiley Election 2: December 2002–January 2003.
There it is.
Wasn’t justifying anything, just giving context for the newbies and the OP.
Wow, one of the original authors wrote a very nice posting at epinions – she had every right to be infuriated and instead she took a much more human and humane view.
I know it seems like a big bunch of nothing now and some of you are doubtless wondering why it was so sensitive for such a long time.
Short answer: It was a surefire flamefest starter for a long time. Years.
At the time it all started happening it was seen as a huge tragedy – WallyM7 was very very popular and greatly loved and to hear that he had been killed, it was devastating to a lot of people. There was this huge outpouring of very public grief.
Prior to that time I don’t think we had ever really lost anyone and to lose them in a horrific accident like that only made it worse.
It took a while afterwards for the truth to surface. A lot of people didn’t want to believe it – some still don’t, I’m sure – there’s been a lot of agita over it through the years. Every time any of this was brought back up some people would point and laugh and some others would get their feelings hurt and be defensive . . . and next thing you know they all went to Fist City.
Finding out Wally was a plagiarist was the last straw for many – between the people howling about Wally being a fake in so many ways and the people howling over how Wally was being trashed . . . there was just no good way to go in this.
But all that was a long time ago and I’m glad we can talk about this with some perspective and some serenity.
I used to be very angry at “Wally” – I would still like to punch him in the nose for all the people he hurt – but time has mellowed my perspective. I think now that this started as a casual little thing and blew up into something that became much bigger than he probably ever bargained for or could have imagined. His alligator mouth overran his hummingbird ass, as we say where I live. He had made promises to people and said things that he could never, ever pay off on. Dying was the only way out. I even feel a little sorry for him, sort of – how small a life he must have been living to come here and play out this Walter Mitty fantasy. I’m sure he never meant to cause so many people so much grief and pain but he did, he did. That is, even now, unforgivable.