by hilzoy
I didn’t write about Ashley Todd last night, when I first read her story. It didn’t make sense to me, but then again, lots of things don’t, and some of those things are true. All that was clear to me then was that one way or another, it would turn out to be a horrible story involving someone with very serious problems, and that I did not want to leap to conclusions.
Now that she has recanted, I’m torn. On the one hand, I think that anyone who would do something like this must have real psychiatric problems. (I don’t think this about all crimes — I think someone could rob a bank and be perfectly sane.) And I can almost think my way into the mindset of someone who is completely convinced that if Barack Obama is elected, something unspeakably bad will happen to this country, and who is frustrated that she can’t make people see what is so evident to her. You can see this kind of desperate conviction in some of the tapes of McCain supporters outside his rallies, and you can read it on some of the right-wing blogs: the sense that this country is about to make an incalculable mistake, and no one seems to care. It would not take much, I think, for someone who felt this way, and who had serious psychiatric problems, to decide, in a moment of absolute boneheadedness, to show the world what seemed so obvious to her.
(Note: being able to understand something like this does not in any way imply thinking it’s not an appalling thing to do. There are appalling things that I can understand, and some of the things I can understand are more appalling than some of the things I can’t. Second note: I don’t mean to suggest that this is something to which McCain supporters are particularly prone, except insofar as this is the sort of thing you do when your candidate is about to lose, and Obama is not losing. Nuttiness does not follow political boundaries, and no one should think that either side is immune to it.)
But what I can’t think my way into is her saying that the person who did it was black. No kind of desperation that I can think of would have required that detail. That’s just gratuitous, and very, very ugly.
I’d like to give a shout-out to the Pittsburgh police. I know nothing about the officers who worked this case, but it seems unlikely that they are all Democrats, all Republicans, or all any political anything. They are professionals, and they did their jobs. If they hadn’t, some tall black man who was just going to the store or taking a walk could have ended up in jail.
Because the police did their jobs, some innocent man, somewhere, will get to enjoy the rest of his life. No one will ever know which tall black man would ever have been wrongfully arrested, or whose life might have been ruined, not even the man himself. But he’s out there somewhere, and while he owes his close call to Ashley Todd’s racism, he owes his escape to the Pittsburgh police. Had it not been for them, ten years from now the Pittsburgh papers might have had occasion to write a story like this:
“A decade after he was cleared as a suspect in one of Boston’s most notorious crimes, William Bennett is still very angry.
In autumn of 1989, the ex-convict was named a suspect in the killing of Carol DiMaiti Stuart, a pregnant, suburban white woman shot, allegedly by a black man, in what looked like a random street robbery. Bennett’s arrest seemed to solve a high-profile murder case, quieting an outraged city whose leaders promised swift justice. But when suspicion shifted to the husband, Charles Stuart, Bennett went from cold-blooded murder suspect to a symbol of police abuse and Boston’s lingering racial divide.
Yesterday, in a rare interview, Bennett told the Globe the case still haunts him. He blames it for his mother’s premature death and frayed family ties. And he refuses to hide his frustration.
“I don’t trust anybody. I barely trust myself,” said Bennett, now 50. “The police falsely pinned a crime on me once and they can do it again.
“I have no faith in the law enforcement and I don’t like cops,” said Bennett, who does kitchen work on Newbury Street for a food service company. “Nothing has changed. You still have those same racist cops on the police force.”” (Boston Globe, 4/6/2000.)
I’d also like to give a shout-out to all the people who held off on this, and to Michelle Malkin, who did a lot to keep this story from getting completely out of hand. To the people who jumped on the bandwagon: think about the responsibilities that come with having an audience. When a story like this hits, you can try to convince people to withhold judgment until the facts are in, or you can lose your head along with everyone else. It seems like a pretty clear choice to me.
And to McCain’s Pennsylvania communications director: now would be a good time to decide to spend more time with your family.
My problem though with the idea that people “should hold off until all the facts are in” is that it seems to imply that it would have been legitimate to talk about it had the story been proven true.
Just the same way the fact Ms Todd is obviously deeply disturbed does not say anything about the McCain campaign (although the way they handled the story does), the fact a black mugger was a supporter of Barack Obama does not and would have been meaning anything about his campaign.
By focusing on the fact the story has not been proven true, we seem to be saying, had it been proven right, hysteria would have been legitimate.
I am sorry but no. It does not matter that this communication director made up quotes about a crime that was not true. It is astounding they would try to use such an isolated and unfortunate act of violence in an electoral manner in the first place.
michelle: I completely agree. I don’t think that had the story been true, it would have been right to blame Obama, any more than i think that it’s now right to blame McCain.
You forgot the scary irony of the Stuart case. The murder occurred October 23, 1989, 19 years to the day before this event. I remember it well. I was there in Boston, and, as an African-American male of a certain age (mid-twenties, in grad school) and of a certain build (5’9″, about 175 at the time), I fit the description of the mythical murderer. And I lived in fear that the cops would stop me for no reason other than a vague description that could have been one of thousands.
You forgot the scary irony of the Stuart case. The murder occurred October 23, 1989, 19 years to the day before this event. I remember it well. I was there in Boston, and, as an African-American male of a certain age (mid-twenties, in grad school) and of a certain build (5’9″, about 175 at the time), I fit the description of the mythical murderer. And I lived in fear that the cops would stop me for no reason other than a vague description that could have been one of thousands.
Marc — Wow, I didn’t realize it was exactly 19 years earlier. That’s bizarre.
I’m from Boston, though I was out of town for the months during which that unfolded. I cannot imagine what it would have been like to fit the description of the killer, at the time.
As I said, that’s the part of this that I can’t find the least compassion for. It would have been so easy for this to well and truly ruin someone’s life. And it was so completely gratuitous.
But what I can’t think my way into is her saying that the person who did it was black. No kind of desperation that I can think of would have required that detail. That’s just gratuitous, and very, very ugly.
Not “gratuitous”, Hilzoy. Inevitable. Logical. Some word like that.
I don’t pretend to understand what was in that young College Republican’s head, but I flat out guarantee you that there is no way her imaginary Obama-supporting mugger could ever have been anything but black — and male.
It will not do, in the age of Rove, to positively dismiss the conspiracy theory — that some campaign operative put her up to it. But let’s provisionally accept that her motivation was purely the personal, inchoate frustration you describe. Let’s even suppose that she was driven by fear of something like Barack-the-Socialist, not Barack-the-Black-Guy. Then, perhaps, we might allow that she could have concocted her story with a white villain.
But then she would have needed to invent a white socialist mugger! Even crazy people don’t believe in white socialist muggers. Especially not the sort of young, white, Republican, crazy people whose YAF conventions C-Span regales me with annually. In their seamlessly-constructed world view, socialists are chablis-sipping, limp-wristed, pointy-headed “elites” — not brawny coal miners or (gasp!) plumbers demanding union wages.
Pity Ashley Todd, but don’t do it half-way. Do not hold her accountable for something she could not help: making her fantasy mugger a black man.
Incidentally, don’t blame her, either, for sporting the most Republican name any parents could ever bestow on their child. Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve never known a Democrat named either Ashley or Todd, let alone named both 🙂
–TP
I think someone could rob a bank and be perfectly sane
Though these days you’d have to be pretty uninformed.
Tony P: White socialist muggers would be odd. But it would be easy to invent a white assailant who was one of those deluded Obama cultists we hear so much about, and who, seeing her sacrilegious bumper sticker, was thrown into a fury at the implied disrespect for The One.
But what I can’t think my way into is her saying that the person who did it was black. No kind of desperation that I can think of would have required that detail. That’s just gratuitous, and very, very ugly.
As Tony and Marc both point out, made-up scary thugs are inevitably black. Also, regardless of the description Todd gave, it would have matched some innocent person. Unless you’re saying that a black man is less likely to have the resources to defend himself; then, alas, I suppose you’ve got a point.
Assaulting her with an arugula-flavored latte, and jumping into his getaway Prius? Yeah, I suppose if you were sufficiently unhinged you could invent a story like that.
Hilzoy: But what I can’t think my way into is her saying that the person who did it was black. No kind of desperation that I can think of would have required that detail. That’s just gratuitous, and very, very ugly.
No, I think it is just part of her insanity. And I don’t use that word lightly: I think she may have had a psychotic break – not presuming to diagnose, but in the loose layperson’s sense of losing contact with reality. Unless it’s shown that there was some kind of organised conspiracy going on that pushed her into both the act of self-harm and the false reporting, I think she was as still cut loose from reality when she reported the “crime” as when she carved the B into her own face. I mean, yes, it was racist, but in a racist society insane as well as sane people have racist delusions.
Ashley Todd is the by-product of a savage campaign mixed with racism and religious bigotry, branded and served by John McCain and Sarah Palin.
The Republican Party is the main repository of the KKK, skin heads, Aryan Nation and other hate groups.
The McCain campaign and republicans in general design their message and tactics to appeal to the fringe elements of their party.
Ashley Todd and Joe the plumber are two examples of the sad characters inspired by the Republican trash machine.
These characters share one thing in common; they all have low self esteem due to inferior mental capacity.
Isn’t more likely that this woman is stupid, rather than mentally damaged?
All sorts of tales sound good before subjected to critical enquiry. Ms Todd was obviously unable to adequetly forsee the likely consequences.
Stupid or Mad? no matter what, the websites that reported this uncritically are racebating cu… people
If her behavior is a symptom of mental illness, then an awful lot of Republicans are mentally ill.
I don’t think thatit is a problem of mental illness.
I think that her behavior is symptomatic of an extremist mentality and right now the Republican party is infested from bottom to top with exgtremists. If the deomcratic party was infested from top to bottom with extremists then the bizarre behavior would come from our camp.
As I see it, Ashley’s behavior is the extreme end of a continuum of behaviors manifested by people who are unwilling to change their perceptions of reality no matter how hard the real world slaps them upside the head. Kind of like those members of the Wewather Underground who kept believing for years in the face of reality that just one more bomb would spark a revolution.
Another example of this sort of refusal to process info from the real world: out in New Mexico the Local Republican parry leaders claimed that ACORN had illegally registered 28 vorers. So certain were they that they had caught ACORN in the actg that they filed formal challeges agaisnt the registrations fo 28 individuals and publicized heir challenges. It is not a coincidence that the majority of the 28 folks had Hispanic surnames.
Except that as the registrations were examined they turned out to be valid. So did the R officals apologize? Heck no. They hired a private investigator who went out to the homes of tow of the voters and harassed them in their homes! One was a grandmother in her eighties!
Extremists believe what they want to believe and don’t let the real word influence their thinking. So AShley wanted to believe that a black man attacked her and the Republican party officials wanted to believe that Hispanic voters were illegally regisgtered and Bill Ayers wanted to believe that America was on the brink of a revolution.
I would like to go on record distancing myself from wordtodawise’s comment, above, and in particular its intermingling of Joe Wurzelbacher’s garden-variety anti-tax zealotry with the psychosexual and racial hangups of Ms. Todd, not to mention WTDW’s characterization of the Republican party; even were it true that the Republican party is (this year especially) supported by more white racists than the Democrats, and I don’t necessarily dispute that proposition, it would not follow that the Republican party should be considered to be defined by that support. On the subject of Ms. Todd, her story seemed to be an obvious invention from the start, for all the reasons stated everywhere, but it hadn’t occurred to me to place the actions of the Police in a historical context, to consider how easily they could have functioned as an institutionalized lynch mob, so good on them for not doing that, and I hope it’s a genuine sign of progress.
Events like this are not that uncommon. In Germany there have been numerous cases in recent years with people falsely claiming to have been attacked by skinheads*, often in connection with having swastikas cut into their skin. Since such attacks also occur in reality police and media are in a dilemma: report a potential fake and be the boy that cried wolf** or wait and make it potential “old news”. Unlike fake Holocaust survivors that try to make money (and thus give ammunition to Holocaust deniers), most of the perpetrators seem to be either mentally ill or looking for their 15 minutes of fame.
*the most common neonazi variety ove here (left-leaning skinheads are quite unsuccessful in their attempts to break the mental connection of skinhead=neonazi)
**by now the public is extremly suspicious and thus tends to underestimate or downplay the real danger from violent young nazis (many of which seem to have become nazis to justify their violent behaviour, not the other way around).
hilzoy and others. There is little doubt in my mind that Ms Todd does have some psychological issues, but it seems that her history, up to now, has been fairly normal.
For most people who have a mental break (not necessarily a psychotic one) there is a triggering event or series of events. And I think you hit on it, hilzoy.
While the Democratic message this year is that we can’t “afford” 4 or 8 more years of the same, the Republican message is more of we can’t “survive” 4 years of Obama.
And if you totally buy into the sense of how bad an Obama presidency would be, that the US could not survive under his leadership, that level of fear can trip one over the line.
The fact that she created a black assailant was not some devious conniving. It was second nature to her in all probability. That is what blacks do, after all. She obviously had to come up with a description and black would be the first thought that would come into her mind.
No kind of desperation that I can think of would have required that detail [that the assailant was a tall black man]
I wonder if a manifestation of mental ill health this banal really needs professional analysis. Not for nothing is it a cliche: we often desire what we fear, and vice versa. It HAD to be a tall black man. About…hmm…six-four. With big hands. Scapegoats aren’t, by definition, random.
I’m with Warren Terra. I really think (and of course I’m not a psychiatrist, etc.) that she sounds disturbed, and at least when I wrote this, she was claiming to have a history of psychiatric problems. (Haven’t checked to see whether that has changed; I just logged on.)
As I said above, the only reason I can see to think that this would be more common among McCain supporters than among Obama supporters is that insofar as it’s a response to desperation, it would be something that one would be more likely to do if one’s candidate were losing. I really think that there are nuts on all sides, unfortunately, and if we start holding any given side responsible for having nuts, there’s no end to it.
People’s response to this story is a different matter, of course.
I was elsewhere blogging (mea culpa!) when this incident was pumped by some of the NeoCon early adopters – they were spraying rhetoric and verbally gesticulating about Obama supporters….
Then, I saw the photo of Ms. Todd. The reversed ‘B’ was a dead giveaway – something one would do in a mirror.
She needs some kind of help, as do the people who refused to wait for a full story before going off.
“…as do the people who refused to wait for a full story before going off.”
Such as, as I mentioned on another thread, Andy McCarthy, who tells anyone with a complaint, most originally, to “get a life”!
(Typical McCarthy: “I just caught up with an interview by one of my favorite guys, Hugh Hewitt, of another of my favorite guys, Stanley Kurtz. (It’s on Hugh’s Townhall blog, which always has plenty of required reading.)”)
Indeed.
Gary, you are being most unfair to the McCarthy post you link; sure, it starts out with the “Obamaniacs: drop dead” refrain you mention, but you didn’t mention the sweeping vistas of Crazy that then commence. After that polite invitation from McCarthy to his detractors, the post goes into an extended section about how McCarthy doesn’t have a racist bone in his body (my heavens does he protest strenuously, though unfortunately he doesn’t mention Some Of His Best Friends) – and then he says that Obama is a racist and insinuates that he is building a mass terrorist movement. Good stuff!
Also, regardless of the description Todd gave, it would have matched some innocent person. Unless you’re saying that a black man is less likely to have the resources to defend himself; then, alas, I suppose you’ve got a point.
I don’t know what hilzoy meant, but black males have, historically and currently, been treated differently than white males by law enforcement and the justice system.
For example, Marc in Denver mentioned the fear he felt of being picked up randomly because he, physically, matched the description of the suspect. I’m not sure white males have developed the same fear.
There’s probably a reason why.
it really did have to be a black man. read enough wingnut blogs and watch enough redneck YouTube interviews and you’ll see that a lot of people out there think Obama is going to run the country on a platform of black power, taxes for slavery reparations, and extreme affirmative-action, revenge for 400 years of white rule, yadayadayada. Todd’s message was “watch out, white America! the blacks are taking over, and they’re pissed!”
for example: “Change means….. BLACK!
Judging from the immediate response in a couple of the right-wing blogs (Drudge, Blogs for Victory), both of which jumped to their fear of black people, it would appear that racism is very much alive in this campaign. The right is waiting, (and salivating) for any opportunity to bring race into the mix, hoping to play on the fears of the ignorant. After all, it has worked so well for them for so many years.
But, on a larger scale, the Republican machine doesn’t really care about race, any more than it cares about religion. These are both just tools used to gain power. And power is the only thing that has any meaning or worth to the Republican machine.
I think we haven’t yet heard the full story on Ashley Todd – we haven’t heard her own account of the events. It may well be that the political establishment was indeed worried about the racial ramifications of the incident and decided the best solution was to pressure her into recanting her story.
Keep on clapping, Nabalz, keep on clapping.
The fact that she created a black assailant was not some devious conniving. It was second nature to her in all probability. That is what blacks do, after all. She obviously had to come up with a description and black would be the first thought that would come into her mind.
I concur.
One only has to watch, say, a week of television (or “Cloverfield”) to see that this is what has been both sub- and consciously pounded into our heads.
(Did you ever notice that in both “Traffic” and “Requiem for a Dream” — both critically acclaimed — the nadir of a main character’s (the attractive young white girl in both cases) plot arc was sex with, and/or at the behest of a large black man? Yeah, not many did, or if they did, no one mentioned it.)
Since before TV. Since way before “To Kill a Mockingbird,” really.
Sickened and disgusted, sure. Surprised? Not me, not an iota.
Also, regardless of the description Todd gave, it would have matched some innocent person. Unless you’re saying that a black man is less likely to have the resources to defend himself; then, alas, I suppose you’ve got a point.
I don’t know what hilzoy meant, but black males have, historically and currently, been treated differently than white males by law enforcement and the justice system.
I have to agree with the second comment there, and add in that there tends to be a bit of “they all look alike” mixed in with the problem. I’d bet money a far higher percentage of black males have experience with having “fit the description” — otherwise it wouldn’t be such a mainstream joke.
The national McCain campaign appears to be trying to cover for their Pennsylvania communications director and lying about his actions.
Like so much else coming from the McCain campaign, this move seems both reprehensible and unhelpful to their cause. It’s a sad statement about American politics that I continue to be more surprised by their incompetence than their lack of ethics.
To second Ben Alpers’s comment, it seems to me that if the McCain folks had invited their Pennsylvania rep to resign or at least clamming up about him (as Hilzoy suggested in the post, more or less), they could have done themselves a world of good. By starting a war of words and reputations with people who buy their ink by the barrelful, as the saying goes, they are just asking for trouble and risk taking ownership of his actions.
Ben Alpers- I’d say thanks for the link, but it just pissed me off and disgusted me. Getting rid of the guy is a no-brainer.
It’s a sad statement about American politics that I continue to be more surprised by their incompetence than their lack of ethics.
Unfortunately I agree.
It reminds me of how Palin flat-out says that the investigation into Troopergate completely vindicated her. A commenter at Balloon Juice the other day said that the only way to top that lie would be for her to shoot someone on live TV one night. The next day, she’d have to deny it and say she was at home in Alaska all night monitoring Russia.
>>>(Did you ever notice that in both “Traffic” and “Requiem for a Dream” — both critically acclaimed — the nadir of a main character’s (the attractive young white girl in both cases) plot arc was sex with, and/or at the behest of a large black man? Yeah, not many did, or if they did, no one mentioned it.)
I must be no one:
http://stevensoderbergh.tripod.com/reviews/traffroughcut.html
“There is a second problem — a single disturbing moment in Soderbergh’s treatment of Caroline’s descent into the abyss. We see this rosy-cheeked, middle-class kid take to dispensing sex in exchange for drugs — a valid signifier of her degradation. But Soderbergh pulls out the oldest, vilest, most notoriously evocative image to emphasize this: she’s not just sleeping with a street criminal; she’s sleeping with a big black buck of a street criminal.
“Go ahead: say I’m being “P.C.” Point out that in the part of the country where the story takes place, low-level urban drug dealers are overwhelmingly African American. That still doesn’t change the fact that the image of the big, virile, dangerous black man having his way with the flower of white womanhood is a racist provocation that immediately evokes memories of Birth of a Nation. I don’t think that Soderbergh intended to be suggesting, “Not only is she selling herself; she’s selling herself to one of them.” But, within the historical context of such images, it would be naive to deny that the audience will take the implication that this marks an even deeper shame.”
Just sayin’.
Yikes:
I liked this:
Then there’s also this:
Ho-kay.
Just curious: why do you think she didn’t carve an O, which would be the same backwards and forwards?
I know that’s trivial, but it’s kind of interesting to speculate about.
Just curious: why do you think she didn’t carve an O, which would be the same backwards and forwards?
I know that’s trivial, but it’s kind of interesting to speculate about.
Just curious: why do you think she didn’t carve an O, which would be the same backwards and forwards?
I know that’s trivial, but it’s kind of interesting to speculate about.
Just curious: why do you think she didn’t carve an O, which would be the same backwards and forwards?
I know that’s trivial, but it’s kind of interesting to speculate about.
“Just curious: why do you think she didn’t carve an O, which would be the same backwards and forwards?”
Stupidity?
socialists are chablis-sipping, limp-wristed, pointy-headed “elites” — not brawny coal miners or (gasp!) plumbers demanding union wages
You know, when the communist party was actually active in the USA in 1910’s and 1920’s, it had a disproportionately large number of Finnish members, my countrymen. This was because the Finns were a) new immigrants b) working in industries like mining. So, your real-world American communist would have been a blond coal miner from Michigan, speaking bad English with Finnish accent. For that guy, the drink of choice would not have been latte, but hard spirit. In 1920’s, thousands of those Finnish communists moved to Soviet Union in order to build a new, bright communist society in Eastern Karelia, only to perish in the purges of Stalin a decade later.
“…speaking bad English with Finnish accent.”
And lots of other accents, particularly Eastern European, but also Russian, German, Yiddish, Italian, etc., etc. All part of the then paranoia about immigrants and anarchists, too.
I’m from Boston and remember the Stuart/Bennett case well. (I was actually stopped and warned by the police while bicycle riding on a dark path the night after the crime.)
I hate to add to William Bennett’s grief, and I don’t want to show support for the “round up the usual suspects” job the police did on that case. But the truth is, if the police were going to round up a usual suspect, Mr. Bennett was a natural choice. He had a pretty long record. I believe this included the shooting of a cop, which may help explain the vigor of the police effort to pin the crime on him. But that’s not all. Black criminals usually have Black victims, and Bennett was no exception. I remember reading about a Haitian taxi driver allegedly robbed and beaten by Bennett who, as a result, was so frightened of Boston violence that he returned to Haiti (!) to get away from the likes of William Bennett.
This doesn’t justify Bennett’s being pushed around for a robbery that not only he didn’t do, but a robbery that didn’t even take place. The police work did appear to be shoddy. But I have trouble with Bennett’s putting all the blame on the cops for his broken life. He did some of the walking down the wild side on his own.
Move over Sarah Palin. ASHLEY TODD FOR VICE PRESIDENT!!!
(this is evidently more nuts than John McCain’s pick. I’ll give you John a “B” for judgement)
“I think that her behavior is symptomatic of an extremist mentality and right now the Republican party is infested from bottom to top with exgtremists. If the deomcratic party was infested from top to bottom with extremists then the bizarre behavior would come from our camp.
As I see it, Ashley’s behavior is the extreme end of a continuum of behaviors manifested by people who are unwilling to change their perceptions of reality no matter how hard the real world slaps them upside the head. Kind of like those members of the Wewather Underground who kept believing for years in the face of reality that just one more bomb would spark a revolution.”
I do, in fact, happen to have a psychology degree and I agree with wonkie’s statement here. The girl is not ill; according to her blog excerpts, this was planned long in advance–the insane don’t do that. That and someone pointed (either here or another blog) that her mental history up until the hoax was normal. Todd isn’t sick–she’s just a prime example of classic American mentality (e.g. “it’s either my way…or my temper tantrum”). Granted it does take some desperation to cut into one’s own face (especially when you take into account a woman’s instinctive vanity), but desperation was all that was. She’s just another irritating racist, but apparently racism is about to painted as a “mental health” issue, and so we need to be compassionate and understanding towards HER, rather than the innocent, random black man who’s life she almost ruined.
Fuck her.