I began receiving emails containing the Anne Kilkenny letter about Sarah Palin, John McCain’s VP choice, around September 3rd. Unbeknownst to me, by the time the fifth e-mail had arrived, her letter had already moved from e-mail status to hot celebrity Web fodder.

At first I thought the letter — which is highly critical of Palin’s work as both mayor of Wasilla and governor of Alaska — was a hoax. But while listening to All Things Considered on Friday, I suddenly heard Martin Kaste come on with a three-minute interview of the woman who wrote the e-mail. Turns out there really is an Anne Kilkenny and she really is the author behind this letter about Palin (whom she’s known since 1992). She’s a stay-at-home-mom, living in small-town Wasilla, where Palin was once mayor, who’s gone on the record with her criticism of Palin’s mayoral and gubernatorial reign.

During the interview, Kilkenny said that she sent the e-mail out to her friends and encouraged them to forward it to others, if they wanted, but said she had also added the caveat, “Please don’t let it leak out onto the Web.”

Fat chance. With so little known about McCain’s VP choice, Palin not yet granting interviews, and the mainstream press slow to deliver, everyone following the campaign is hungry for information, and Kilkenny delivers — with a lot of punch.

Kilkenny’s letter demonstrates the power of multiplication, in case you’ve forgotten it. A mere click on “Forward” turns a letter sent to 25 people into a letter received by hundreds of thousands — within days.

Kilkenny’s letter doesn’t purport to be objective, but rather to be the truth as she sees it. She says that she has known Palin from Wasilla city-council meetings, and that she’s even on a first-name basis with her parents and mother-in-law. She starts out with compliments—Palin is smart, savvy, passionately committed to pro-life principles (she’s not a pretender on this issue), and very popular with many Alaskans. But then she sinks her teeth in: Corruption, overspending, ruthlessness, and pork-barreling marked her mayoral tenure, Kilkenny argues, and her gubernatorial record hasn’t been any better.

At the end of her letter, Kilkenny gives specific reasons for why she wrote it (they sound very much as if she was aiming for a broader audience than her friends, despite her claim to the contrary). Among her reasons are her belief in voter participation and her unique freedom, coming from her stay-at-home-mom status, that allows her to step in where others — who are in Palin’s debt in one way or another — fear to tread.

Whether one believes in the merits of the substance of Kilkenny’s letter or not, the letter surely demonstrates the subversiveness of the Web, compared to traditional media. Both The New York Times and CNN’s “Candidates Unfiltered” — each purporting to deliver real news — have met their match in a stay-at-home mom with nothing but a point of view and a little access to the Web.