Last night, the big story was Ashley Todd, the young Speedbump volunteer from College Station who claimed she'd been robbed and assaulted by a black man who made a political statement by scratching the letter B on her cheek. On right-wing blogs, this was referred to as mutilation, and the whole story was designed to scare old white people like my mother into believing another Mau Mau uprising was just around the corner thanks to Barack Obama.
This afternoon, Ms. Todd has acknowledged she just made the whole thing up. It occurs to me that Speedbump may be like Gene Wilder in the Mel Brooks movie Young Frankenstein. First, he takes an obscure political figure like Trig's mom and buys her 100K worth of cosmetics and duds; next thing you know, she's a star and on the TV and everything.
Then, in an even more stunning feat of creating life, Speedo spends ninety minutes of a presidential debate talking about Joe the plumber from Ohio and before you know it, Joe's also a star and he didn't even need the expensive duds.
You can't blame a naif like Ashley for thinking she was starting to see a pattern here. Now, if only she could come up with something that might get Speedo's attention...
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