www.eschatonblog.com links to a story that says the McCain campaign actively pushed the story.
Bwa ha ha - stupid bastards.
Whoa. Now that does become meaningful. I had agreed that this incident was of no national note whether it had been real or a hoax. Crazies abound and their existence reflects not on the value of the candidates … unless their campaigns are explicitly or implicitly encouraging, aiding or abetting them. Pushing the story, embellishing it even, counts as aiding and abetting youbetcha it does.
A couple of weeks ago, I said something about how the election had become so entertaining, I was no longer hoping for voting day to arrive and for the whole thing to be over; I said that on some level I would miss the insanity, the hilarious circus, and that I wished it could go on for a couple more weeks. I also said that I knew it would be a passing feeling, and that no doubt, before long, I’d be back to fatigue mode, counting the minutes until we can finally cast our ballots and bring the season to a close.
I have to say, I still have not reached that point. Every day, there is more mindblowing madness; every day, developments top the previous day’s surreality. I swear, it’s like some unholy hybrid of Wilder and Fellini is orchestrating events from beyond the grave.
I wingnuts are running the Republican Asylum. In a different time, a significant faction of the REpublican party would break away from the rabid right wing fundamentalist side that is quite literally going mad, it seems to me.
There is a respectable subset of Republicans who are not nutters, who tend to be Republicns based solely on their mythical small governement small taxation principles, but more and more find themselves ostracized for their “divergent” social views.
I hionestly think the Republicn party cannot be “won back” as I have read some hope to happen. I think they need to form their own party.
Oh my god. I am, for the first time in my life, agog. I’m just…I’m so flabbergasted on so many levels. I cannot wrap my mind around this. The article with the exorcised paragraphs had me literally drop my jaw.
Holy shit.
And he wants to feel a white woman’s boob. Don’t forget the white woman’s boob.
You guys laugh but this kinda thing scares me shitless. McCain supporters are in panic mode, this is just but one of the fringe ones, who knows what other might try doing?
Ms. Todd’s asinine hoax helps to defuse any future half-assed schemes overzealous young Republicans come up with.
I’m afraid I’m going to have to disagree with you. You see, I live in Pittsburgh and, as it happens I stayed home from work yesterday because I was sick. This was the second lead story on two news stations that I personally saw last night, right behind a school bus which was hit by a pickup truck. It was also a leading story on this morning’s news and front page news in the more liberal newspaper. Basically, the Pittsburgh area got saturated by this story. In last night’s and this morning’s reports, the woman was described as a volunteer or staff member for McCain’s campaign. While the media was saying this morning that parts of her story didn’t make sense and showing the photo of her, nonetheless, people came home to the news of a woman being attacked because she supported McCain. I even saw a link to it on another message board I frequent.
I think this will hurt McCain here – people don’t like to be made fools of. I know I should feel sorry for Ms. Todd, but to me this is an incredibly rude, foolish thing to do and I can’t imagine why she thought it was a good idea or if she considered what would happen if it didn’t work.
Sounds like Bush, getting ready to conquer Iraq.
Word. It’s a goddam shame Hunter S. Thompson is no longer with us; he would have been having an absolute field day.
I just thought about everything that has happened even just since Palin, heck since last Friday, and I laughed, really laughed for a good little bit.
Heck, we’re just entering the pressure cooker, people. And there are a bunch of new local races in play, where the crazy is extra-saturated. And John McCain is the most desperate candidate for national office that I can ever remember, he’s got very little to lose, and he is clearly unconcerned with his reputation. At this point if he ripped off his John McCain mask and it was Alan Keyes underneath, I would be only a little surprised. And he has Sarah Palin at his disposal- the One Ring of humorous potential, a terrible weapon wielded by increasingly self-interested, fragmenting, unscrupulous handlers.
I’ll have six pack abs by 11/5.
I am tempted to wish that this young lady be actually assualted some day in the future, but that nobody would believe a word she said – but that would be wrong, so I won’t.
I now read that she has a history of mental health issues. Too bad they manifest themselves as racist attention whoring instead of just scarfing up two pints of cookie dough ice cream.
Doesn’t it just?
Like I said earlier, it doesn’t say much for wingnut bloggers when they push this shit before having any idea whether it’s real or bullshit. But for a presidential campaign to do so…that says the McCain campaign is operating in wingnut blogger territory. Moronic wingnut blogger territory. Worse-than-Malkin wingnut blogger territory.
It just doesn’t get any better than this. 
Link to TPM story on the McCain campaign’s role.
This is sad for Pittsburgh and the state of politics in America as well as for so many other reasons.
Anyway, if this girl was smart she would have scratched an “O” in her cheek for “Obama” so it wouldn’t have been backwards.
Can’t believe I’m about to ask this, but what makes her racist?
I can’t believe you actually need to ask.
Well, what I know is that she said a big black Obama supporter mugged and groped her. But it makes sense that an imaginary Obama supporter would be black, especially to someone who’s clearly mentally ill and identifies strongly with McCain. And the bigness and groping go with imaginary mugger. Whatshisface’s comment about supporters no longer knowing who Obama is, that I see as racist. I just don’t necessarily see where ‘big black mugger’ is a racist hallucination any more than, say, ‘skinny white thief’ would be.
Trust me, when it comes to racism I’m like what Chris Rock said about how Regis could cut his head off in the middle of an interview while screaming the n-word, and he’d think, I should have seen it coming. I’m white, so it doesn’t happen to me, but it does happen to people I care about all the fucking time, plus a whole fuckload of other people who I care about by virtue of them being human beings. I often have to take breaks from this place to get away from the Fear that comes over me when I consider how resistant most of the (white, privileged) posters are to any kind of claims of racism from a black person. So I’m not saying this lightly. I seriously wonder why in this case (unlike so many others) everybody here jumped right on ‘big black horny mugger is racist’. Okay, when I type it out like that I’m laughing because yes, on the face of it. But on deeper examination I find myself wondering whether it isn’t more of a racist artifact that we instantly perceive it that way, which is another question I didn’t think I’d ever find myself asking.
It’s racist in the sense that she was trying to drum up racial fears of scary black boogeymen that would attack nice, innocent white girls like her. Since most of Obama’s supporters would have to, by definition, not be black, this makes some sense (assuming he has roughly fifty percent national support AND that fewer than 20% of the country is black AND he doesn’t have 100% of the “black vote”).