How Far Will We Go?

When I heard that a young woman, a McCain campaign volunteer, was allegedly attacked by someone who beat her up and scratched a B on her cheek, I felt my heart drop. In large part, it was out of sympathy for the young woman, because no one deserves to be beat up for their support of a particular political candidate. But I also felt my heart drop because it seemed that someone might have so misunderstood the message of unity behind the Obama campaign that they would resort to this kind of violence.

Then, it was reported that this was a part of a robbery, and that the B scratched into the face of the young woman was an afterthought. Ok, I still felt sympathy for the young woman, but I was a little less concerned about what it might mean for the integrity of this rather rare message of unity within American politics.

This afternoon, I flipped to a quick scan of the Huffington Post, and one of the lead stories was that, the young woman, the campaign worker, had made the whole thing up. The injuries were self-inflicted. She had beaten herself up, scratched a B in the side of her own face, and then gone to police to claim that a “tall, black man” dressed all in black, attacked her, knocked her down, held a knife to her throat, hit her in the head, stole $60, and scratched the B in her face while saying “you are going to be a Barrack supporter!”

She later added to her story, before admitting that she had made the whole thing up, that she was also “sexually assaulted”.

It was all a scam. It was all faked. It was all done by someone who was willing to injure herself and lie to police in order to try to inflame racial passions in this country to benefit a political campaign.

It just makes me sick to my stomach.

Now, I’m not saying that this was an organized attempt at race-baiting by the McCain Campaign (although others are). In fact, I was surprised that the official response of the McCain campaign to the whole story was so muted. The Obama Campaign initially responded with sympathy for the “victim” of the alleged “attack”, and as of now has not responded to the fact it was all a racist scam.

What I am hoping we do is we take a close look at this, take a close look at what fear, anger, and hatred unleashed in a political campaign brought one young woman to do. What I am hoping is that we realize how desperately we need to move away from divisive politics in this nation. What I am hoping is that we realize that what there is to fear from one another is caused by the kind of hatred and mistrust this young woman tried to manipulate. What I hope is not that young Ashley Todd learns from this, but that we all do.

And I learned that it actually was possible for me to be in agreement with the Vice President of Fox News.

Yours in faith,

David