Harry Potter fanfic site ClintonKaine.com priced at $90,000
One political domain squatter isn't just your average muggle looking to cash in, though he'd be happy to do that, too.
- Finalist for the Nesta Tipping Point prize and a degree in broadcast journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia.
If you've got $90,000, you can own the site publishing some of the best Harry Potter/2016 US presidential election mashup fan fiction around.
Just when it seems as if this election cycle couldn't possibly get any more strange, leave it to domain squatters to inject a little extra serving of the absurd. Last Friday, Hillary Clinton announced her pick of Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine as her running mate. The introduction of the potential next vice president was made on Twitter and then in person Saturday, and by Wednesday Kaine formally accepted the nomination for veep at the Democratic convention in Philadelphia.
The rollout went quite smoothly except for one detail: anyone who visits the website at ClintonKaine.com is greeted by the latest chapter of "Hillary Potter," a silly satirical comic mashup featuring characters like Timotonous Kaine, Don Marvolo Trump, Mike Pent and of course, Hillary Potter.
Not your typical campaign site.
It's all the work of attorney Jeremy Green, who uses the pen name Jeremy Pegg and buys political domains on the side. He bought ClintonKaine.com back in 2011. You can also find installments of Hillary Potter on a couple of his other sites, ClintonBiden.com and ClintonBooker.com.
Green, who considers himself more of a "leftist" and might vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein "out of privilege, but mainly just the privilege of not living in a swing state," certainly seems to craft his story lines to be sympathetic to Clinton and Kaine's cause.
"Timotonous Kaine. He would help Hillary Potter vanquish Don Marvolo Trump, known in popular parlance as He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Elected," reads the most recent installment on ClintonKaine.com. "As the definitive Hufflepuff, Kaine had the genuineness and the strength of character to resist Trump's trollish howls and perhaps even help prevent undecided members of the wizarding population from falling victim to Trump's projections of terror and assurances of salvation."
Now that the Clinton-Kaine ticket is official, Green has upped the price on the domain. For $90,000, he'll hand it over, though he'll entertain minimum offers of $60,000. That's up from a buy-it-now price of $20,000 before Kaine got the nod, and way up from the $8 Green paid for the domain in 2011.
So far, the Clinton campaign isn't coming up with the cash, but that's fine with Green, who recently tweeted that he'd be happy to hold on to the site and continue the adventures of Mrs. Potter and Timotonous, among other projects.