McCain Campaign Worker Lied About Attack

Police say a campaign volunteer confessed to making up a story that a mugger attacked her and cut the letter B in her face after seeing her McCain bumper sticker.

At a news conference this afternoon, officials said they believe that Ashley Todd's injuries were self-inflicted.

Todd, 20, of Texas, is now facing charges for filing a false report to police.

Todd initially told police that she was robbed at an ATM in Bloomfield and that the suspect became enraged and started beating her after seeing her GOP sticker on her car.

Read the rest here.

Yeah, she's crazy. Crazy like a fox.

Because her claim, though a lie, was coded with race and images of race. Because she hoped that, upon hearing she was mugged and assault and that a "B" was carved on her face, people would assume that it must have been a black man who did it. (Never mind that my first thought was that it was one of the crazy white people who are doing things like this, this, and ALL of this this. Never mind what my frame of reference is.)

Because such an attack, perpetrated on a young white woman of the Josie the Plumber persuasion could bring to the national mind dark and dangerous specters of black male criminality which would find their way back to the doorstep of Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama. Which would implicate him simply because he is who is he is.

Crazy like a fox, because these images of black male criminality are very real for her and for others, men and women, white, Latina/o and--yes, tis true--black, this election season. So real that a foolhardy and movie worthy stunt like this (as T would say: You can't MAKE this stuff up!) might work to sway voters in the direction of McCain.

*sigh. Sad. But once upon a time this might have worked.