Audrey Seiler, Susan Smith redux ...

Late yesterday we received word (via a massive headline on Drudge) that a woman had been attacked by a black Obama supporter because he was upset that she had a McCain bumper sticker (and that she was White ... obv). I am posting the underscaled version that was on Drudge's site last night:

The "victim" even claimed that the attacker carved a B on her face. What is so classic is that mere moments after the story went up, I received this message via Gmail from Left Wing Jumper:

3:30 PM me: http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/news/17789356/detail.html

LWJ: seems sketchy

3:31 PM

LWJ: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Smith

me: damn that was quick

The reason I responded "damn that was quick" was not to be dismissive of his theory, but to indicate that we had both seen this story before. Audrey Seiler was the University of Wisconsin Student went missing for a few cold nights in Madison. At the time, both LWJ and I were called mysogenists and other such names when we both claimed Ms. Seiler was crying wolf. Of course, we all learned later that she had faked her own abduction, then blamed it on an unknown black assailant.

Susan Smith set the precedent of these cases in 1994 when she initially reported to police that she had been carjacked by a black man who drove away with her sons still in the car. Smith made tearful pleas on television for the rescue and return of her children. The police even put the media in a frenzy by releasing this 'sketch' of the attacker:



Of course, a few days later, Smith confessed to letting the car, with the boys inside, sink in a nearby lake.

What makes the case of the McCain worker - she is a College Republican up from Texas working in PA for the election - so funny is that a close examination of the B shows that it is backwards ... but if done in front of a mirror would look correct.

Today, less than 24 hours after the "attack" we receive word that this afternoon, a Pittsburgh police commander told the news media that the "victim" confessed to making up the story.

Too bad LWJ was not on the case, or it would have been solved 22 hours sooner. However before she recanted her statement, she did spend time with a sketch artist and rendered a few sketches of the attacker ...

She is sure it was either him











or him


or him


or him!


[UPDATE: Didn't see this last night, but apparently Senator McCain’s quest for the presidency is over, forever linked to race-baiting.]

[UPDATE #2: You gotta call it like you see it, and the RCP Blog has done just that:

Ashley Todd, the woman who told police she had been mugged by a black man who scratched the letter "B" into her face after seeing a McCain bumper sticker on her car, has now admitted she made the whole thing up, according to this report from KDKA.

What a disgrace.

This hardly ranks as one of the great racial hate crimes hoaxes of all time - Tawana Brawley, Susan Smith, and the Duke Lacrosse case were all far more egregious and damaging to the country's race relations - but it still is just a dirty and utterly irresponsible act that defies logic and deserves condemnation.

I couldn't agree more. --LWJ]