The Last Todd Story (We Hope)

Last week, a sad young woman perpetrated a hoax on America, claiming to have been attacked further by her mugger after he discovered her McCain affiliations. Her hoax was covered mostly by right wing bloggers like yours truly. Since then we've found out a lot about the young woman, including her sordid Ron Paul tale. We found out she is a liar, and we found out she was willing to hurt many people for yet to be understood reasons. (Tommy Christopher and I have covered the topic extensively this weekend on our blogtalkradio show Unusable Signal.)

We learned other things as well. The left media is only interested in the "violent supporters" meme if it is verbal, directed at Obama, and false. We learned that leftwing bloggers are outraged over hoaxes ... unless those hoaxes are perpetrated by the left, in which case they have an amazing ability to not hear about it. The same principle applies to nasty behavior by Obama supporters. They only have interest in the story if it can be spun negatively toward McCain.

Of course, this woman hurts my side more than the alleged victim, the Obama campaign. The extremely legitimate story about the double standard ... scratch that, the absurd double standard in coverage of stories like this one is very real. She has cast a shadow over the whole debate. It seems she has some serious problems, so I'm not going to curse her name, but it certainly is a bad situation.

Ashley Todd hurt both sides and a lot of people, and she did it for reasons we don't understand. It's a shame. But for me, the bigger shame remains what it was before and during her charade. It's the absurd, alarmist, yellow journalism nonsense about the McCain campaign inciting violence. That's the bigger shame, and it is compounded and highlighted by how the shameful left media and bloggers have covered the stories. I won't tell the sad young woman who perpetrated this hoax to feel ashamed, but I say it to the left media. You should be ashamed.