Was Ashley Todd’s Imaginary Attack a Desperate Rovian Dirty Trick?
Not to be callous, but your slow-on-the-draw Tattler admits that when he first heard, partially awake, on the radio that someone named Ashley Todd was assaulted by a tall black man in Pittsburgh because she had a McCain sticker on her car, and the added fillip that the alleged attacker had ‘carved a B on her cheek,’ I thought the announcer was talking about the insect, as in, ‘he inscribed a BEE on her cheek,’ and a surreal mental scenario followed that featured an angry tattoo artist yelling, “Hey, c’mon you, hold still while I finish this wing!”
The story seemed a little suspicious from the git-go and Thom Hartmann noted on his radio show Friday that the ‘B’ was backwards, the way someone not-too-bright and looking in a mirror would sketch a ‘B’ on her cheek.
Later in the day, after John McCain and Sarah Palin had rushed to the phones to offer their condolences to the 20-year-old Texas Republican, Ashley confessed that she had invented the whole lurid tale – it was a tasteless hoax, apparently designed to make Obama supporters, and particularly those of the large black male variety, look bad.
Aside from the hideous Susan Smith aspect to the false charge, and the chance that the Pittsburgh police might have commenced a wholesale harassment of black men to find the nonexistent perpetrator, McCain and Palin’s haste to involve themselves in the incident bespeaks two things: a.) They were trying to make political hay out of this young woman’s misfortune, which calls into question their judgment or b.) The McCain campaign was somehow in on the deal, which paints them as over-the-edge con artists.
Todd had worked for the College Republican National Committee in New York, and recently moved to Pennsylvania to act as a full-time McCain-Palin volunteer on behalf of the group. (The College Republicans are the same organization that spawned such upstanding GOP choirboys as Jack Abramoff, Karl Rove and Ralph Reed.)
As yet, there is no evidence that the McCain campaign was directly involved, but it wouldn’t be hard to imagine the impact that the ugly tableau of a fiendish black male sexually attacking a young white lady might have on rural Caucasians in Pennsylvania, a state McCain must win in order to have any shot at the presidency. Joe the Plumber move over, here comes the Scary Obama-Supporting Black Sexual Predator.
Under-the-radar rumors of creepy McCainiacs trying to goad Obama voters into violence while media cameras are present have been floating around recently, the invective particularly aimed at inciting dark-skinned Obamaites, but not much has come of it up to now except some of the demented Starboard Side of the Blogosphere typically and perversely whining about those mean lefties trying to smack down Republicans who wave around McCain-Palin signs in public. (Yep – from the same crowd that counts among its ‘base’ tolerant sophisticates who shout “Kill him!” and “Traitor!” at McPalin academic retreats.)
As the always effervescent-with-bile Michelle Malkin elucidates: “The Obamedia diaper-wetters are gripped with fear over a few over-the-line catcalls at McCain-Palin rallies.”
Uh, it’s not just a ‘few over-the-line catcalls’ at the downhome Bund affairs; it’s a river of right-wing effluvium oozing endlessly from the TV screen, computer monitor and radio speaker, as well. (And Michelle herself could use a mirror.)
The Tattlesnake – Electoral Enigmas and Other Wacky Weirdness Edition
Laugh-a-bull: McCain’s top pollster Bill McInturff appeared on MSNBC with Chuck “Not Related to Crazy Ashley” Todd on Halloween. To put it politely, McInturff was pissing up a rope trying to sell some bizarre notion that this election is somehow similar to 1984 and 1996 and is tightening up to the point that McPalin can pull off a win. Hell-o, Bill – both those years featured a popular incumbent peacetime president and an economy that wasn’t crashing to the ground and taking a devastated middle class with it. He also blabbered on inanely about armies of older, rural white voters crawling to the polls to catapult Wrinkles and the Winker into the Oval Office. This is big-box absurd – the majority of Americans, some 80 percent, live in or near a city – there aren’t enough rural voters, even if every single one voted for Mac and Cheesy, to elect him as president. Todd can be commended for keeping a straight face during McInturff’s lunatic raving, no doubt designed to buck up the flagging morale of the depressed Republican base. (Hey, Bill, poll this: Obama’s a point behind McCain in his home state of Arizona four days before the election.)
Laugh-a-bull Two: What if the polls showed Bush the Junior suddenly popular with independent and undecided voters? McCain would be rushing to the nearest microphone, “My friends, I’d like to remind you that I voted with President Bush 92 percent of the time and Governor Palin and I embrace all of his wonderful policies! Why, I’m just like him!” with the High-Heeled Sneaker nodding in agreement, “Oh, you betcha! President Bush is the original maverick all right!”
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