So the deeply troubling violent attack in Pittsburgh on a McCain campaign worker by a "tall black man" who carved a letter B onto her face, telling her "you're going to be a Barack supporter", turns out to be a deeply troubling racist fantasy invented by someone we'll charitably describe for the time being as disturbed:
Ashley Todd, 20, of Texas, 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... This afternoon, a Pittsburgh police commander told KDKA Investigator Marty Griffin that Todd confessed to making up the story. The commander added that Todd will face charges; but police have not commented on what those charges will be.
The story, first reported yesterday and embraced with vigour by Matt Drudge, met with instant scepticism elsewhere on the web and also from Pittsburgh police, who noted inconsistencies in Todd's story, such as whether the putative attacker could actually have seen her McCain bumper sticker in order to identify her as a Republican, and why camera footage from the ATM she said she'd used didn't show her. (The campaigns didn't make any assumptions, though: the Obama campaign released a statement sending "thoughts and prayers" to Todd, and she was personally contacted by both John McCain and Sarah Palin.) Fox News executive vice-president John Moody weighed in with the opinion that if proven false, the story would mean "Senator McCain's quest for the presidency is over, forever linked to race-baiting". (Although he added, displaying bizarre Fox logic, that "if Ms Todd's allegations are proven accurate, some voters may revisit their support for Senator Obama... because they suddenly feel they do not know enough about the Democratic nominee." How's that again?)
In any case, though, the story failed the first internet test of racially charged anti-Obama smears: if even Michelle Malkin isn't willing to believe it, it pretty much can't be true.
UPDATE: Footage from the Pittsburgh police press conference.
