Funny how a quickly a non-story can become a story.
When reports
first surfaced yesterday--and by "surfaced" I mean "appeared atop the
all-powerful Drudge Report"--that a " 6'4", 200-lb African-American
male" in "dark clothing" punched, kicked and scratched a "B"
(apparently for "Barack") into the face of the woman he was mugging
outside a Pittsburgh ATM after he spotting a McCain bumper sticker on
her car, I made a conscious decision not to comment.
My
reasoning was simple. Despicable individuals exist. Some of them shout
"kill him" at John McCain rallies; others cut people who disagree with
their politics. But since 99.9 percent of McCain and Obama supporters
are normal, sane human beings, the press probably shouldn't encourage
the public to think otherwise by obsessing over the 0.1 percent who
aren't. That's why I didn't report on the bigots who occasionally crop
up at Sarah Palin events. And that's why I wasn't going to report on "Borro."
Until, that is, this afternoon, when Pittsburgh authorities revealed
that 20-year-old Texas native Ashley Todd--the alleged "victim"--had
confessed to making the entire story up (and injuring herself in the
process). Of course, only Todd, a McCain volunteer, can say for sure
what her motives were. But the deliberately inflammatory description
she created of her fictional assailant--big, black, pro-Obama--provides
us with a rather unsubtle hint. Like the "Kill Him" crowd, Todd belongs
to the 0.1 percent of McCain supporters who happen to nuts, or bigoted, or whatever. The difference is that when those folks shout "kill him," they only expose
their own ugliness. Todd tried
to make other people look ugly.
I'd say she deserves her 15 minutes of infamy.
