Ashley and Joe
What is it about McCain supporters that drives them to perpetrate hoaxes in their effort to discredit the Obama campaign?
Friday, the breaking story of a McCain volunteer's violent attack and mutilation dissolved into smoke almost as fast as it had arisen. Ashley Todd, a young white woman from Texas volunteering for the McCain campaign in Pennsylvania, originally told police that she'd been attacked at an ATM by a tall black man, who then, after seeing the McCain sticker on her car, cut a "B" into her face.
Many, upon hearing this report, had their doubts, some prompted by the fact that the "B" on her face was backwards, in exactly the way it might be if cut by someone looking in a mirror, and not by an assailant, not even one suffering from an urban American public school education. This didn't stop the Pennsylvania communications director for the McCain campaign from spreading the story and even embellishing it, telling reporters that the B stood for "Barack".
By the end of the day, the race-baiting hoax was revealed. Ashley Todd was a fraud, there was no violent black man, driven to mutilate a young white woman by his support of the Obama campaign. There was only a pathetic young woman with "not insignificant mental health issues", in custody for filing a false report and a few right-wing websites including the Drudge Report once again revealed as unreliable.
Poor Ashley was nowhere near as successful as that other McCain hoaxster, Samuel J. "Joe the Plumber" Wurzelbacher. Joe the Plumber chose a hoax that didn't involve filing any police reports, which helped. But Joe's hoax not only got on national television and right into the mouth of the candidate himself, it's now become a central theme in the campaign, which has created ads and a whole appearance tour based on the hoax.
Was Ashley, in some sick, sad way, inspired by Joe's success? Joe's hoax involved some similar elements: it was based on a long-time prejudiced sterotype, it had no connection to actual facts, it was intended to put Obama and his campaign on the spot, allowing the hoaxer to, in some way, contribute to the 'fight'.
Joe appealed to the stereotype that Democrats raise taxes and are anti-business to complain that Obama would raise his taxes. Ashley chose an even older prejudiced myth, the big black male coming to deflower the young white woman, to portray Obama supporters as violent criminals. Both were playing out some psychodrama of their own imagining.
Joe, not a licensed plumber, would, as he now admits, actually get a tax cut under Obama's plan. He's actually in no position to actually buy the business he said he was "gettin' ready" to buy, but if he were, he would benefit more from Obama's plan, which has provisions to help small businesses. The entire ropeline conversation was Joe's attempt to 'get' Obama. But, when you watch the entire exchange, not just the snippets frequently aired, you see Obama patiently and carefully explaining to Joe just exactly what he would do, and Joe comes off looking unreasonable.
Ashley, as she now admits, was actually never a victim of any Obama supporter of any race. She was actually never a victim at all, except perhaps of her own mental illness. However, like Joe, she wanted to feel victimized by the Obama campaign, and to use her victimization as a weapon against that campaign somehow, in a way that, ultimately, makes no sense to a rational mind.
Both hoaxes were rapidly picked up by spread by the McCain campaign, a campaign that has devolved into reliance on irrational base emotions: anger, prejudice, fear, and a devil's brew of victimization and self-righteousness. The campaign has been feeding these emotions with continued lies, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that they've chose the Joe the Plumber lie as an ongoing theme. But I do have to wonder, as the intensity picks up in the next week, whether there will be another Ashley, driven to an extreme in the desire to literally make her mark. Let's hope not, though it seems almost the inevitable expression of the essence of the McCain/Palin campaign.
Ashley, at least, seems on the path to get the help she needs. John McCain continues his "Joe the Plumber Tour" and Wurzelbacher himself may now run for Congress.
The lies and the hoaxes continue.
Friday, the breaking story of a McCain volunteer's violent attack and mutilation dissolved into smoke almost as fast as it had arisen. Ashley Todd, a young white woman from Texas volunteering for the McCain campaign in Pennsylvania, originally told police that she'd been attacked at an ATM by a tall black man, who then, after seeing the McCain sticker on her car, cut a "B" into her face.
Many, upon hearing this report, had their doubts, some prompted by the fact that the "B" on her face was backwards, in exactly the way it might be if cut by someone looking in a mirror, and not by an assailant, not even one suffering from an urban American public school education. This didn't stop the Pennsylvania communications director for the McCain campaign from spreading the story and even embellishing it, telling reporters that the B stood for "Barack".
By the end of the day, the race-baiting hoax was revealed. Ashley Todd was a fraud, there was no violent black man, driven to mutilate a young white woman by his support of the Obama campaign. There was only a pathetic young woman with "not insignificant mental health issues", in custody for filing a false report and a few right-wing websites including the Drudge Report once again revealed as unreliable.
Poor Ashley was nowhere near as successful as that other McCain hoaxster, Samuel J. "Joe the Plumber" Wurzelbacher. Joe the Plumber chose a hoax that didn't involve filing any police reports, which helped. But Joe's hoax not only got on national television and right into the mouth of the candidate himself, it's now become a central theme in the campaign, which has created ads and a whole appearance tour based on the hoax.
Was Ashley, in some sick, sad way, inspired by Joe's success? Joe's hoax involved some similar elements: it was based on a long-time prejudiced sterotype, it had no connection to actual facts, it was intended to put Obama and his campaign on the spot, allowing the hoaxer to, in some way, contribute to the 'fight'.
Joe appealed to the stereotype that Democrats raise taxes and are anti-business to complain that Obama would raise his taxes. Ashley chose an even older prejudiced myth, the big black male coming to deflower the young white woman, to portray Obama supporters as violent criminals. Both were playing out some psychodrama of their own imagining.
Joe, not a licensed plumber, would, as he now admits, actually get a tax cut under Obama's plan. He's actually in no position to actually buy the business he said he was "gettin' ready" to buy, but if he were, he would benefit more from Obama's plan, which has provisions to help small businesses. The entire ropeline conversation was Joe's attempt to 'get' Obama. But, when you watch the entire exchange, not just the snippets frequently aired, you see Obama patiently and carefully explaining to Joe just exactly what he would do, and Joe comes off looking unreasonable.
Ashley, as she now admits, was actually never a victim of any Obama supporter of any race. She was actually never a victim at all, except perhaps of her own mental illness. However, like Joe, she wanted to feel victimized by the Obama campaign, and to use her victimization as a weapon against that campaign somehow, in a way that, ultimately, makes no sense to a rational mind.
Both hoaxes were rapidly picked up by spread by the McCain campaign, a campaign that has devolved into reliance on irrational base emotions: anger, prejudice, fear, and a devil's brew of victimization and self-righteousness. The campaign has been feeding these emotions with continued lies, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that they've chose the Joe the Plumber lie as an ongoing theme. But I do have to wonder, as the intensity picks up in the next week, whether there will be another Ashley, driven to an extreme in the desire to literally make her mark. Let's hope not, though it seems almost the inevitable expression of the essence of the McCain/Palin campaign.
Ashley, at least, seems on the path to get the help she needs. John McCain continues his "Joe the Plumber Tour" and Wurzelbacher himself may now run for Congress.
The lies and the hoaxes continue.
posted by Paul at 8:54 AM |
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