I know it's in bad taste, but after looking at the picture of Ashley Todd, I just have to say one thing:

"I'd hit that."

And her twitter comment after the supposed assault reads: "oh the blog i will be making soon ... it's been a rough night."

I mean COME ON! Who gets assaulted with a knife and makes such a nonchalant remark? On Twitter?

This thing was bogus from the get-go. Why the kid gloves, Ezra?

Rule of thumb: if it works in favor of Republicans but it's too weird for Michelle Malkin, then it's too weird.

Called it!

I live in Pittsburgh. My wife and I saw this on the morning news, WTAE.

The woman has two black eyes and the letter B clearly scratched into her face.

The "B" is backward, as though looking at it in a mirror.

The attacker has dyslexia? And enough confidence to take the time to carve a political message into someones face out on the public street?

Please. This doesn't make sense. Maybe she's telling the truth, but....

My God, the right is beginning to lose Malkin.

Between this and Palin's support for amnesty, poor Michelle is probably curled up under her desk crying into her pompoms.

Why the kid gloves, Ezra?

A.) To avoid some serious egg on the face if it turns out to be true.
B.) To not be a dick. Look, if its false, its false. But no matter whether its true or false, its a sad state of someone's mental affairs (either her or both her and her attacker.) Shouldn't there be just a little bit a compassion for someone who feels the need to lie like this?

If it's not true, it will unravel fairly quickly. I get the impression that most people outside of hardened sociopaths are pretty bad liars, and the police can spot a liar pretty well and can extract the truth out of him. They simply spend more time dealing with liars than liars spend dealing with the police.

These things aren't unknown, particularly among the young and naive, who think that making such claims will "bring attention" to the cause. One is reminded of this incident at Princeton where a pro-abstinence student claimed to have been assaulted for his views on sexual conservatism. Granted, though, claiming that "two pro-sex advocates wearing black clothes and ski caps accosted Nava near campus and severely beat him" might have tipped people off that his claims were being embellished, whereas it's somewhat more believable that someone got mugged in a bad part of Pittsburgh.

The "B" is backward, as though looking at it in a mirror.

it's also possible that the picture itself was taken in the mirror. Apparently she took it herself, so maybe.

Still fishy obviously. She didn't report it until the next day, I think.

There are two plausible explanations for a backwards B: first that the attacker was doing it above her head and thus was upside down or that she did it to herself while looking in a mirror and was too much of an idiot to reverse it. Well, he was sitting on her chest, looking at her face right side up according to her story.

I'm sorry, but this is horseshit and this is really dangerous stuff. I'm from Boston and I remember how Charles Stuart falsely accusing a black person of killing his wife created a hostile environment for blacks that lasted well past the accusation being debunked. This doesn't have anything to do with McCain and certainly should not be a mark against his campaign (unlike the racism at his rallies, which is a direct result of the kind of inflammatory campaign he's running,) but it does say something about the state of race relations in this country. Further evidence that even if Obama is elected in a landslide we have a LONG way to go.

Those cuts really don't look deep. One wouldn't expect a mugger to carefully cut the letter in, but to do so quickly.

How does one take a picture of themselves in the mirror without the camera appearing in the picture?

The news account Ezra posted also seems to eliminate the other explanation advanced for the backwards B - that the "attacker" was standing over her head and therefore carved an inverted B.

I'm calling fail.

She's twenty. From Texas. Has been in Pittsburgh one week. Works for McCain/Palin.

She chose the busiest street in a safe, quasi-gentrified Italian-American neighborhood. There are traffic-lights on every block. There literally would've been cars going by slowly or stopped for a light a yard or two away from her at the ATM. The houses on the streets off the main drag (she claimed she was mugged on the main drag, Liberty Av.) are packed very close together and in the early evening there's always someone (white, working-class, maybe old) hanging out on a porch or something. Then there are just the people (there are lots of them, most white) walking the streets.

Starbucks, a Cafe Mocha, some Chinese and Thai restaurants, more bars than you can count and numerous other eateries are still open at this time on the very strip of Liberty Avenue where the ATM is. Again: there are tons of people about!

Only a very provincial, possibly mentally ill, young racist from the South would chose this as the place to have her mythical six-foot-four African-American boogieman (and, yeah, Obama supporter) lurking with a knife, only too happy to then (post-mugging) cut up a Republican white woman. At 8:50 PM no less.

The backwards 'B' is just the icing on the Klan cake.

Her quotes about the guy who did -- six-foot-four black man, dressed in black, he put a knife to her throat, etc. -- are simply beyond parody.

Every cop and reporter in Pittsburgh knows this didn't happen. As does anyone who's ever been in Bloomfield in the early evening.

In the past African-Americans were lynched for even lesser lies.

Not to mention wearing a black undershirt(and just the undershirt) at 9 PM in Pittsburgh in mid-October.

I always do my best mugging of my political opponents when I'm freezing.

Further evidence that even if Obama is elected in a landslide we have a LONG way to go.

Agreed. I think one of the best side-effects of Obama's popularity is that it'll make a lot of moderate racists or liberals/centrists who "don't see racism" think twice. I mean, for every vocal KKK member, there are 10 people who don't actually hate anyone, they just happen to believe black culture is horrible or think affirmative action is just as bad as racism or whatever. But it's a good year for Democrats for a lot of reasons, so a fair number of those people will be voting Obama.

Andrew Sullivan, for example, is pretty big on "The Bell Curve" and other racialism. But as an Obama supporter, he's been perfectly willing to criticize racist attacks, even veiled racist attacks. With luck, after spending the entirety of Obama's presidency doing that, Sullivan and others like him will keep on doing so.

1. Well at least she went to Blinn and is not an Aggie.

2. Story sounds a lot like another fake story about a kid from Athens, Tx who said she was beat up by Hispanics because she was anti-amnesty.

http://www.athensreview.com/archivesearch/local_story_101091934.html

Every cop and reporter in Pittsburgh knows this didn't happen. As does anyone who's ever been in Bloomfield in the early evening.

To be fair, about 10 years ago, while these weren't "muggings", per se, there were a group of incidents in Shadyside where teens would basically intimidate and scare patrons at an ATM after they completed their business, in the hopes that they would quickly walk away, leaving their card in the ATM, ready to make another transaction.

Even in the 90s, Bloomfield wasn't a dangerous neighborhood, but street crimes can happen anywhere, especially when the potential victims are perceived by criminals to be likely to have money.

I've got to agree with steelers over cowboys. I just moved to New England from Pittsburgh, and when I read the story, my first thought was "he pinned her down on Liberty Ave during the day? No way." A mugging I can see (not that Bloomfield's unsafe, but these things happen even in Shadyside) but the rest is preposterous. I'm VERY concerned though about the new claim in the P-G that she was sexually assaulted...on one hand I feel gross being doubtful, on the other I would be furious if it were just part of a larger fantasy and thus trivialized rape while playing with very dangerous racial stereotypes. It's all just really gross.

Fair enough, Tyro. Still, I think you have to concede both sentences stand: "Every cop and reporter in Pittsburgh knows this didn't happen. As does anyone who's ever been in Bloomfield in the early evening."

You obviously know the area.

And you know this didn't happen as described.

Not on that street. Not at that time.

Now if she'd said, oh, that she'd gone to buy drugs in McKeesport and then didn't have all the money and an ugly scene resulted where the drug-dealers robbed her and then -- then seeing that she was wearing a Baltimore Ravens T-shirt they carved 'Steelers' on her ass you'd be horrified, but you'd have no trouble believing it happened.

Now that -- that would be Pittsburgh violence!

That could very easily lead the local news. (If not the Drudge Report.)

But what this Texas girl described just didn't happen.

My point then is that anyone who knows the area knows it didn't happen. As does every cop and reporter in the city.

I just wanted people to know (the vast majority of whom aren't familar with Pittsburgh) that there's a lot more than the backwards 'B' that makes this tale totally preposterous.

As you well know.

This thing was bogus from the get-go. Why the kid gloves, Ezra?

Maybe because this is a dumb thing to blog about? I looked at Memeorandum at one point yesterday and saw this ridiculous non-story leading the page, with the mandatory fury from right-wingers and requisite counter-response from lefty bloggers. There's nothing to glean from this, nothing to say about it that isn't trite or silly, so why even bother mentioning it? Leave that for the right-wingers who have no taste and the riff-raff on the lefty bloggers who don't know any better.

Maybe because this is a dumb thing to blog about?

It is a dumb thing to blog about. It really doesn't matter what bloggers think of the story or what any of our opinions are. At the end of the day, either some street thug will be caught bragging to his friends about having done this, or a young Texan who decided to make up a story like this will likely crack under the pressure and tearfully confess to making the whole thing up within the next day or two. I can certainly speculate which of these two scenarios is more likely, but I trust the police to do their jobs over the next couple of days.

Ezra's first instinct was the correct one: point out that muggings are muggings and that no one deserves to be mugged. Let's wait for the police to figure out what's behind all of this and then engage in calls for the punishment of the perpetrator.

I don't see the point of all of the proclamations of what we think, except that, a week from now, we will be able to take the credit for/hope everyone forgets that we were right/wrong about our predictions.

If Drudge and Fox News and the other rabble-rousers don't clearly refute this story it will become accepted fact by many, many people.

McCain has West Virginia and Ohio. He's making his last stand in Pennsylvania. His main commercial implies Obama thinks our troops in Afghanistan are "dishonorable" baby-killers. His second biggest commercial plays with an image of a (made to look incredibly sleazy: smirk, anachronistic bushy porn-star moustache, picture tinted a strange color) African-American Fannie Mae exec. Then, of course, there's all the terrorist (Obama's a friend of) stuff on the trail.

McCain's appealing to racism, racist fear and the gross ignorance of rural voters.

It's thus rather important than that people in Western PA and all of rural America not think that the big scary cities of America are full of giant black boogie-men (turned Obama supporters) carving up innocent white girls!

This would seem to be a no-brainer actually.

Don't get me wrong: the whole thing is pathetic and distasteful.

But, sadly, it matters.

"...during at least five hours of questioning last night..."

5 hours of questioning? Really?! I would've cracked....

When I first heard of Twitter I though "Why on earth would I want to have an electronic log of my activities ... unless I'm working on an alibi?"

What do you know.....

"McCain has West Virginia and Ohio."

What the heck is this based on? Here are some recent poll numbers for Obama: +14, -2, +2, +6, +5, -1, +5, -2, +11.5, +9. All of those are within the last three weeks. McCain may win it or he may not, but he doesn't "have" it.

(source, of course: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/)

Forgot to mention that those are OH poll numbers; McCain does seem to have WV sewn up.

Sadly, she lied:

http://kdka.com/local/attack.McCain.Bloomfield.2.847628.html

How does one take a picture of themselves in the mirror without the camera appearing in the picture?

Not that it's relevant anymore, but you could accomplish this by simply cropping the camera out of the photo.

Thomas? Anonymous? Care to discuss the implications of this? What kind of campaign must McCain be running to provoke this kind of insane deception?

…Hello?

Sadly, she lied:

Um, what? Sadly? Better that she were actually attacked? Better that racial tensions overflow? Better that this idiocy dominate the right-wing media and further ramp up partisan divisions?

Instead of a segregationists dream of discord we have a pathetic little Republican exposed as bullshitting. It's win-win.

umm.. it was a LIE.

it's all over the news.

bad news for some of you rednecks i know, but there it is, YET another BIG REPUBLICAN LIE!

Yo, calling all toasters, chill out. I'm an Obama supporter. I said "Sadly" because it's frakking SAD that she would make something like that up. That's what's sad.

Sheesh.

50 years ago she would have gotten some innocent lynched.