Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

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  2. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette was running this story at 10:48 a.m.  It was on the Boston Globe website early this afternoon.

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    Ashley Todd, a 20-year-old college student from College Station, Texas, center, is led from Pittsburgh Police Headquarters by detectives in Pittsburgh, Friday, Oct. 24, 2008. Todd, who had told police that she was robbed at knife point, knocked to the ground by an assailant who scratched a backward letter “B” into her face with a dull knife, told investigators on Friday she had made up the story, police said. (AP Photo/Keith Srakocic)

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    p>No matter.  At 6:30 this evening, guess who was on the radio, race-baiting over the Obama supporter who cut the backwards B into the cheek of a McCain supporter?

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    Jay Severin.  Of course.

  3. Jonathan Martin passed along this sludge eight hours ago, and has added more posts on his blog.  Nowhere does he mention that this was a lie.

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    p>As for the lady herself, I wish her well.  She’s clearly beset with mental health issues, and I hope she gets the treatment she clearly needs.

    • Would you be willing to amend to

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      p>”While I hope she is prosecuted for her false report about a phantom black guy who carved a B into her face…

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      p>….and while she seemed to be able to distinguish right from wrong (as evidenced as her various forms of misleading the cops)…..

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      p>….I hope that her temporary mental impairment is considered a mitigating factor during her trial or plea bargain, and when she serves jail time, she also gets the treatment she needs.”  

      • This political squall isn’t as important as her long-term health, but certainly she should be held responsible for the consequences of her actions.  Frankly, when I saw this story, the first thing I remembered vis-a-vis the backwards B was the backwards swastika Geraldo drew on his face before claiming he’d been assaulted.

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    p>And here is some reporting from TPM on how the McCain campaign initiated the theme that “B” stood for “Barack”:

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    As Greg Sargent reported yesterday, McCain Pennsylvania communications director Peter Feldman pushed reporters on a highly incendiary version of Todd’s hoax — providing reporters with quotes from the fictitious attacker and telling them the the “B” scratched on Todd’s face stood for “Barack.” As the Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson aptly put it, Feldman’s actions showed “not just a willingness to believe it but an eagerness to incite a … racial backlash against the Obama campaign.”

    Our reporting did not find any direct evidence that the McCain campaign’s national headquarters played a role pushing the story.

    However, the national campaign has now come forward and lied about what happened in Pennsylvania. McCain campaign spokesman Brian Rogers has now told NBC that alleged quotes from the McCain campaign in early reports of the story were actually the product of “sloppy reporting” and that they were actually quotes from the Pittsburgh police.

    This is simply not credible.

    Initial reports specifically quote the McCain campaign. And at least two sources involved in the contemporaneous reporting have come forward and said on the record that the quotes came directly from the McCain campaign. To believe that two separate local news organizations made the identical mistake with the same quotes and are now both covering it up is simply not credible. But that is what Rogers is now claiming.

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    p>Let the woman face the consequences of her actions, but I agree with sabutai that she is small potatoes and it I hope she gets help and turns her life around. The biggest culprit is any and everyone associated with the McCain campaign who has spread this rumor or worked to cover up the campaign’s willingness to use this incident to incite racial outrage and possibly violence for the purpose of gaining votes.  

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