Ever since Matt Drudge front-paged it las night, the blogosphere has been abuzz about the story of the McCain volunteer supposedly attacked for her political views:
PITTSBURGH — A 20-year-old woman who was robbed at an ATM in Bloomfield was also maimed by her attacker, apparently because of her political views, Pittsburgh police said.
Ashley Todd, of College Station, Texas, said she was using an ATM at Liberty Avenue and Pearl Street just before 9 p.m. Wednesday when a man approached her and put a knife to her throat.
Police spokeswoman Diane Richard said the robber took $60 from Todd, then became angry when he saw a McCain bumper sticker on the victim’s car. The attacker then punched and kicked the victim, before using a dull knife to scratch the letter “B” into her face, Richard said.
“She further stated that the male actor approached her from the back again and hit her in the back of her head with an object, she doesn’t know what the object was, causing her to fall to the ground where he continued to punch her and kick her and threaten to ‘teach her a lesson’ for being a McCain supporter,” Richard said.
Sounds horrible right ?
Well, as even several conservative bloggers are pointing ou, not so fast.
Don Surber took one look at the photograph and cried foul:
The B is backwards.
It is a red flag. A large one. A red flag that reminds me of the young women like Tawana Brawley who have reported similar thinks — backwards KKK — backwards N-words.
As does Ann Althouse, who also wonders why this is a story that should interest anyone outside Pittsburgh:
I’ve seen the photograph, and, quite aside from the backwards “B” — does the surveillance camera show an upside down attack? — the scratching looks too even and shallow to seem like the result of a violent attack.
And even if it did happen, what would it mean? There are violent attacks all the time, for all sorts of reasons, and if you want to assert that they say something about anybody other than the attacker, you’ll need to prove that too.
Bottom line: This is the stupidest distraction in the whole history of this crazy campaign season.
That much is true, but it also strikes me as incredibly fishy and a little bit too much like the fake on Tawana Brawley and Morton Downy, Jr.’s non-encounter with skinheads at the San Francisco Airport back in 1989.
It’s not at all beyond the realm of possibility that this woman fabricated this attack to get herself on television.
And, even if it’s true, what does it prove ? That some common thief attacked a woman at an ATM in Pittsburgh and then “mutilated” her face.
Nothing to see here, move along.
October 24th, 2008 at 10:04 am
Your a bastard! A bastard with a capital B. Make that a backwards capital B!