The Hoax
I didn’t want to blog about this business because it seemed like a hoax but it would be unseemly to accuse a victim of perpetrating a hoax just based on general intuition. But for the record, Ashley Todd has admitted she was lying about the idea that a black man mugged her, sexually assaulted her, and scratched a “B” into her cheek because she had a McCain bumper sticker on her car. Matt Corley observes that before the hoax was exposed, Fox News Executive VP John Moody, a Pittsburgh native, had some provocative thoughts on the matter:
If Ms. Todd’s allegations are proven accurate, some voters may revisit their support for Senator Obama, not because they are racists (with due respect to Rep. John Murtha), but because they suddenly feel they do not know enough about the Democratic nominee.
If the incident turns out to be a hoax, Senator McCain’s quest for the presidency is over, forever linked to race-baiting.
Of course the McCain campaign could have done the smart thing and stayed circumspect about this until all the facts were in. But instead they decided to try and exploit it.
76 Responses to “The Hoax”
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October 24th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
I was amused this woman called Bloomfield the wrong side of the tracks in the City of Champions. I remember Bloomfield being a modestly gentrified neighborhood with a lot of good restaurants.
October 24th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
OK, I’m utterly baffled. How would the news that some random criminal attacked a random McCain worker make me feel I didn’t know enough about Barack Obama? And just for the record I don’t really see it cutting the other way either.
October 24th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
I’m beginning to think that MattY graduated from the Harvard University in Nunavit.
Apparently calling her to express sympathy is MattY’s version of taking advantage of the situation. Meanwhile, note that BHO’s campaign didn’t say a word about their supporters going overboard, as some have in other documented cases.
Imagine if everything had been reversed: McCain would have already sacrificed two goats on the AltarOfPoliticalCorrectness as well as introduced a bill to drive several red states out of the Union. And, even after the facts came out, there’d be the “it could have happened, so it might as well have happened” from obsequious hacks like MattY.
October 24th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
In many ways, I’m more appalled by Moody’s blog post than the actual hoax itself. I’m curious to see what else falls out of this story when she’s done talking. Was she alone in creating this hoax, or were there others? Was she trying to “help” the campaign, or did her boyfriend take a swing at her and she made up a story about a scary black man? Or did she just want attention? Not that the fate of the world hangs in the balance or anything, but I’m just curious about the thought process that goes into something like this.
October 24th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
College Republican official engaged in a racially-charged dirty trick? Shocking, shocking. (Well, the clumsiness is shocking, usually they’re a bit better than this.)
October 24th, 2008 at 3:26 pm
She carved the B backwords.
October 24th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
I never thought I’d say this, but Michelle Malkin deserve some credit for questioning the story from the beginning. It takes some guts to challenge your party. Good for her!
October 24th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
You really think the campaign was exploiting it? All I saw were that each campaign issued more or less pro forma statements on the incident.
October 24th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
Attack Yglesias all you like, 24Ahead, but maybe you could use basic reading comprehension instead.
From the article Matthew linked to:
The McCain campaign tried to personalize this attack, take advantage of it, and set the stage for another round of their feigned outrage. If you can’t see what’s behind their “shaken up by this” statement, you either have never followed dirty politics, or are blindly devout to the GOP.
What this woman did is despicable; truly the worst of America. That the McCain campaign tried to capitalize upon it without vetting the story itself is… no surprise whatsoever, sadly.
October 24th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
What a wonderful thing that the country is full of “good whites” who remain silent as the world’s most obvious racist hoax is being played. You should all be commended.
October 24th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
“Of course the McCain campaign could have done the smart thing and stayed circumspect about this until all the facts were in. But instead they decided to try and exploit it.”
Well, they really didn’t try to exploit it, probably because it smelled weird from the beginning.
But had it passed the smell test, why would it have been smart for them not to exploit it? If you’re likely going to lose an election in ten days, it’s worth taking high risk gambles. And had this been real, Moody is correct that it would’ve offered an opportunity for McCain.
—–
Also, this is yet more evidence that the College Republicans are the heart and soul of dirty tricks in American politics.
October 24th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
It really is hard to figure out WTF Moody is talking about. Maybe he’s the only person in America who fell for the subtext: that a random crime by a black assailant disqualifies BHO from the presidency. And if after it’s revealed that the white person in the story is the transgressor, I guess the white candidate is now disqualified. You’ve really got to admire Moody’s journalistic integrity.
October 24th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
Wow, no link from LoneDipshit to his own site. Must be hard for him to come to terms with the fact that his side is going to get thoroughly slaughtered in a week and a half.
October 24th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
I’m with Steve V. on this — is there any real evidence that the McCain campaign was using this to score points?
October 24th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
Drudge is the worst. I’ve never understood why people say they read him.
October 24th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
I knew it was false right away. I checked with the Department of Corrections up here in MA and Willie Horton is still locked up.
No October surprise for McCain.
Also, the B strikes me as similar to the Boston Red Sox ‘B’. I wondered if it was a RS fan mad at the Phillies for being in the World Series. What with all the anger from Eagles fans towards our beloved Patriots….maybe it was in retaliation.
October 24th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
I’m glad people are calling out Moody for claiming that if this was real it would have helped McCain. Or more accurately, that it would be reasonable for people to change their minds on this basis. It says a lot about Moody. What a f*ckhead.
October 24th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
Let’s be serious, here. The McCain camp didn’t really exploit this. I’m sure they were just as skeptical as everybody else. Saying that its ’sick and disgusting’ is pretty fucking tame, and not the least bit exploitive. What did you want them to say? MattY is as bad as Sean Hannity. I just happen to agree with him a whole lot more.
October 24th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
Benen says “I’ve heard that the campaign was pushing this story to reporters rather aggressively last night, and Fox News and Drudge have been covering it with great enthusiasm (and without much skepticism.” So maybe they were trying to exploit it … but I’d like to see a media outfit come out and say as much.
October 24th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
RidleyGriff: The McCain campaign tried to personalize this attack, take advantage of it, and set the stage for another round of their feigned outrage.
I dunno. If the lady was a random person off the street I’d agree. But she’s a campaign volunteer. It’s not unreasonable to think that if a volunteer suffers injury while in service of the campaign–regardless of the cause (political or not)–a call from the candidate might be a nice gesture. Everyone commenting on this, including Matt, leads with, “I withheld judgment to give her the benefit of the doubt.” The McCain campaign also gave her the benefit of the doubt: they gambled (wrongly it turns out) that she was for real and took the not unreasonable step of calling her to express sympathy.
If the campaign was stupid enough to push the story privately to Fox or Drudge, that’s another matter. But it seems more likely to me that Fox and Drudge just ran with the kind of story they like to run with.
October 24th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
“Police suspected all along that Todd might not be telling the truth, starting with the fact that the “B” was backward, Bryant said.
“We have robbers here in Pittsburgh, but they don’t generally mutilate someone’s face like that,” Bryant said. “They just take the money and run.”
October 24th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
Didn’t McCain personally call her to console her? Did she really punk her own candidate?
October 24th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
“Drudge is the worst. I’ve never understood why people say they read him.”
Drudge writes news that republicans want to read. And he gets the best stories because he isn’t encumbered by those pesky facts. He makes Fox News look like the epitome of journalistic integrity.
October 24th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
Somewhere Al Sharpton is laughing.
October 24th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
“We have robbers here in Pittsburgh, but they don’t generally mutilate someone’s face like that,” Bryant said. “They just take the money and run.”
Especially in Bloomfield. For those not familiar with the neighborhood, something like this going unnoticed on that particular street at that particular time is highly unlikely. I gave her the benefit of the doubt, but the fact that she twittered “looks like I’m on the wrong side of Pittsburgh” baffled me. I suspect she is a sheltered suburbanite that sees any urban neighborhood with character as ‘bad’ and reckoned that it was as good a place as any to perpetrate her master scheme to get Sarah in the White House. I am irrationally furious about the whole thing.
October 24th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Matthew left out the good parts.
From Pittsburgh Tribune at http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/breaking/s_595049.html
“Ashley Todd, 20, is now telling investigators that the man who robbed her outside a Bloomfield ATM on Wednesday night also groped and sexually assaulted her.
She also says she lost consciousness during part of the attack near Liberty Avenue.”
————-
October 24th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
Stacy (18): MattY is as bad as Sean Hannity.
Hokay, allow me to fly off the handle to break this flip claim down. Matt is as bad as SH because he’s:
(x) partisan
( ) shouts down/censors contrary opinion in chosen medium
( ) consistently ignores verifiable evidence when provided
( ) republishes publicly discredited lies
and for good measure…
( ) unprincipled whore for his employers
I dunno, I don’t think 1 out of 4 traits in common is really working as a persuasive argument. I think most of the regular trolls on this blog score better than Hannity.
October 24th, 2008 at 4:05 pm
Another fishy aspect to the hoax was the fact that the women refused medical treatment. I bet the police figured it was a hoax as soon as they learned that.
October 24th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
Note the Obama campaign statement in the KDKA article Matt links to:
The statement is impressive in that it expresses sympathy for the woman while not agreeing in any way that she was a victim of crime. Indeed, the campaign’s wish that “the person who perpetrated this crime is swiftly apprehended” has come true. One truly can love the sinner and hate the sin.
October 24th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
This is the third time in the last two years that College Republicans have faked assaults on themselves. When does it stop being viewed as a series of isolated incidents?
October 24th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
Re RoboticGhost’s comment “the fact that she twittered “looks like I’m on the wrong side of Pittsburgh” baffled me. I suspect she is a sheltered suburbanite that sees any urban neighborhood with character as ‘bad’ and reckoned that it was as good a place as any to perpetrate her master scheme to get Sarah in the White House.”
————-
Yeah. I’m not familar with Bloomfield but Shadyside and Squirrel Hill to the south are nice neighborhoods.
Although they do sometime have muggings — the robbers seem to figure the students from Carnegie Mellon and Pitt are soft targets.
But I thought the police were shutting that down with stings.
October 24th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
Fair enough, cmholm. It was a bit of hyperbole on my part. Matt is not as big of an asshole as Hannity, nor is he as dishonest. But man, sometimes I can’t believe the partisanship. Maybe its because I’ve only been reading him since the beginning of the year.
I mean, Sullivan has an award named after him for people that speak truth to their own party. Maybe I’m missing something…
October 24th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
I doubt she had any help, certainly not anybody old enough to remember the Morton Downey Jr. rule: If you are going to write something on your face in a mirror, remember that the mirror reflects your image backwards.
What a dumbass.
October 24th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
I was amused this woman called Bloomfield the wrong side of the tracks in the City of Champions.
If you were a college student who grew up in a Texan exurb, an “ethnic [Italian] neighborhood” is going to be the stereotype of what you think the “wrong side of the tracks” looks like… when in fact those vibrant neighborhoods with lots of foot traffic are probably some of the safest places in town.
October 24th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
As a Pittburgher I am very relieved that this was a hoax. Hope she gets some help. I was also very skeptical of this story from the beginning due to the location she picked. I guess to someone from Texas, an older-looking urban neighborhood might look *bad*, but while anything can happen, anywhere at anytime, I couldn’t imagine an attack lasting very long on the main drag of Bloomfield. There’s lots of activity there. It’s an historically Italian neighborhood with pretty popular restaurants and bars. And there is constant traffic on Liberty Avenue. And Yinzers are far to nebby to not notice someone being attacked violently like that. She might have wanted to do some research on the area before picking a location to make this sort of claim. Not that the claim wasn’t a little far-fetched in its own right.
October 24th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
People are leaving out one of the most relevant facts in the case: she was from College Station (Home of Texas A&M). For anyone from Texas, that alone explains the idiocy of carving the B backwards. It’s an Aggie joke in real life!
October 24th, 2008 at 5:02 pm
She might have wanted to do some research on the area before picking a location to make this sort of claim.
Lessons when deploying a scheme to incite racism:
1. Use the Google first.
2. Watch a few episodes of “Friends” or something to familiarize yourself that not everything ‘city’ is bad.
3. Familiarize yourself with optics.
Bah! Work’s done. I’m going to go spout off about this in a bar. Pre-Internet blog commentary outrage technology in full effect!
October 24th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
By the way, if anyone is in the Carnegie Mellon-Shadyside - Bloomfield area any time soon, they might call the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts in Shadyside and see if Susanne Slavick’s exhibit is still on.
I saw it a few weeks ago when visiting my son and liked it. Slavick took photographs of war damaged buildings in Iraq and overlaid intricate mosiacs from Iraq’s past architecture — gives the sense of war’s wounds slowing being repaired like a gaping scar beginning to heal. Also gives some idea of what Bush destroyed. I can’t explain it –but it’s worth seeing.
October 24th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
It wouldn’t be unusual. In 2000 NBC was basing large segments of their newscasts on faxes from RNC opposition research. Was it Russert who was quoted saying something like “These faxes are great. Keep ‘em coming” ?
October 24th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
We should be grateful she didn’t decide to carve an “O”.
October 24th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
Skeptical? Maybe.
Overwhelming excited by the small possibility it was true?
Hell yeah!
October 24th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
If you don’t think that at least some representatives of McCain were pushing the story read
October 24th, 2008 at 5:42 pm
Yes, the McCain campaign was pushing the story.
John McCain’s Pennsylvania communications director told reporters in the state an incendiary version of the hoax story about the attack on a McCain volunteer well before the facts of the case were known or established — and even told reporters outright that the “B” carved into the victim’s cheek stood for “Barack,” according to multiple sources familiar with the discussions.
John Verrilli, the news director for KDKA in Pittsburgh, told TPM Election Central that McCain’s Pennsylvania campaign communications director gave one of his reporters a detailed version of the attack that included a claim that the alleged attacker said, “You’re with the McCain campaign? I’m going to teach you a lesson.”
Verrilli also told TPM that the McCain spokesperson had claimed that the “B” stood for Barack. According to Verrilli, the spokesperson also told KDKA that Sarah Palin had called the victim of the alleged attack, who has since admitted the story was a hoax.
The KDKA reporter had called McCain’s campaign office for details after seeing the story — sans details — teased on Drudge.
October 24th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
Damn software ate my link!!! MaryL got it.
October 24th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
24AheadDotCom Says:
October 24th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Meanwhile, note that BHO’s campaign didn’t say a word about their supporters going overboard, as some have in other documented cases.
Do you have any evidence that this guy who didn’t exist would have been an Obama supporter if he did?
October 24th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
Unlike, say, the NYT’s highly responsible coverage of the Duke lacrosse “rape” case!
October 24th, 2008 at 6:23 pm
“Didn’t McCain personally call her to console her? Did she really punk her own candidate?”
No, my guess is there’a fair chance that McCain consoled her, then said:
“And if you made this up, you’d better admit it soon and minimize the embarrassment to me, or else I’ll carve “arack Hussein Obama” along the rest of your cheek. You little jerk….If, that is, you made it up.”
I’m actually surprised that more political beatings don’t happen in a nation of 300 million. But a backwards B carved very lightly in her face? It doesn’t pass Michelle Malkin’s BS detector. I’m imagining a scene like the self-pummelling from Liar Liar.
October 24th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
PS The dumb broad should have waited for Halloween.
October 24th, 2008 at 7:11 pm
As our collective heads exploded in Pittsburgh today, I talked to about five people who are planning to be Ashley Todd for Halloween. Fits several important criteria: Cheap! Easy! Topical!
October 24th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
I can’t begin to imagine how stupid Fox exec John Moody must be as a Pittsburgh native to have fallen for this.
As other have pointed out Bloomfield is a quasi-gentrified Italian-American neighborhood. This young woman from Texas claimed to have been attacked on a street (the major avenue running through it) that has plenty of people out at 8:50 at night, what with the still-open-for-the-day coffee shops and restaurants and bars and all. Also, there are traffic lights on every block so there were either slow moving cars going by that ATM or stopped for the light, this a yard or two away.
It shows how pathological these people are in the feelings and fears of black people. And how tenuous their connection to (even thier own lived) reality.
October 24th, 2008 at 7:32 pm
Steve Sailer,
The Duke Lacrosse team, at least, was accused of committing a crime INSIDE!
Not OUTSIDE at 8:50 at night on a busy, pleasant, often traffic-congested street full of elderly Italian-Americans, twentysomethings in their hipster outfits, guys and gals in Steelers shirts going to bars, a few Thai-food-loving yuppie couples, numerous working-class(white)families and the occasional woman walking her dog!
October 24th, 2008 at 7:59 pm
Do you have any evidence that this guy who didn’t exist would have been an Obama supporter if he did?
Oh, that’s not the most fun part of the incoherence. It’s that even after criticizing Obama for not apologizing for an attack that is known to be a hoax, he goes on to proclaim:
And, even after the facts came out, there’d be the “it could have happened, so it might as well have happened” from obsequious hacks…
His irony-meter is completely broken.
October 24th, 2008 at 8:50 pm
Dammit, Matt. Let’s keep it real, shall we? There was absolutely nothing in the KDKA report that indicated that the McCain campaign exploited this “incident” in any way.
Let’s leave the posting of partial-almost-truths to the other party, please. If we all do that, it increases our credibility greatly.
October 24th, 2008 at 11:10 pm
bob in fla:
There’s nothing in the KDKA report indicating that the McCain campaign pushed the story anymore.
As quoted above and spelled out over at TPM, McCain’s PA communications director apparently did push the story early on, and the original KDKA report made that clear.
October 25th, 2008 at 2:21 am
Read it again. The McCain campaign not only pushed the story, they *elaborated* on it. That the attacker said “You’re with the McCain campaign? I’m going to teach you a lesson.”, and that the carved “B” definitely stood for “Barack” (as opposed to, for example, a familiar derisive epithet for woman) were allegations that originated *with the McCain campaign, not with Ashley Todd*, at least so far as the record currently shows. Now, it may be that the McCain campaign was told these things by Todd, but when their allegations came under question, they didn’t claim this; they backpedaled instead.
Here’s the TPM excerpt again:
John Verrilli, the news director for KDKA in Pittsburgh, told TPM Election Central that McCain’s Pennsylvania campaign communications director gave one of his reporters a detailed version of the attack that included a claim that the alleged attacker said, “You’re with the McCain campaign? I’m going to teach you a lesson.”
Verrilli also told TPM that the McCain spokesperson had claimed that the “B” stood for Barack. According to Verrilli, the spokesperson also told KDKA that Sarah Palin had called the victim of the alleged attack, who has since admitted the story was a hoax.
October 25th, 2008 at 11:18 am
Aside from the fact that it’s completely disgusting that the news media tried to capitalize on what was “reportedly” a victim of a politically motivated crime, I just feel bad for this young woman. She’s clearly mentally ill, and it just makes me sad.
October 25th, 2008 at 11:55 am
It was the conservative blogs, especially Drudge, who pushed this story hard (in screaming red letters). The McCain campaign amplified it, although it now seems that, pace my comment above, some of what the McCain campaign said does appear to have also been claimed by Todd, though it had not been public till the McCain campaign made it so.
October 25th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
Delete “if.”
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