04:45 pm
Ashley Todd
Back when I was at Amnesty International USA, we had a case involving one of our volunteers who claimed that she had been attacked, both in another country and near her home. She was an outstanding activist, a known expert on the country in question, and highly regarded by both staff and other volunteers.
To this day, I’m not sure what actually happened, but as time went on, some pretty compelling evidence that she made up all or part of her story emerged. The New York Times covered the case, as did The New Yorker.
I first supported this activist, then later concluded that parts of her story were untrue. It was perhaps the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to deal with in my career, and I have no doubt that I could have handled it much better than I did. Her case nearly tore Amnesty apart, with some, particularly senior staff, not believing her story, and many, particularly among her fellow volunteers strongly defending her. In the process, both sides seemed to forget the poor woman in the middle, who increasingly became a symbol rather than someone needing our support and sympathy. To this day, I regret my role in that.
I thought of all this when I heard about Ashley Todd, the young woman in Pittsburgh who reportedly was attacked because of her support for John McCain. My first reaction was that one part of the case looked suspicious: the reverse “B” on her face didn’t make sense — it looked like what someone would have done had they been looking in a mirror while marking their own face.
Today, she reportedly has admitted that she made the whole thing up.
That Ashley Todd has stoked racial fears in this country is an outrage. That some in the media ran with the story without first confirming the facts is not only deeply disturbing, but an indictment of the “publish first, check later” mentality that has taken over the media (a tendency that I, too, have succumbed to on occasion).
But for a few folks on the left, criticism of Todd’s actions apparently is not enough. In particular, Firedoglake (whose work I usually respect), went so far as to publish Todd’s picture with the words “Epic Fail” superimposed.
To be clear, analysis of the impact of Todd’s actions (and hoax) on the Presidential race is fair game. Discussion of whether the media, particularly Drudge, moved too quickly to accept the story as true, also is within bounds. It’s even acceptable to ask whether McCain and Palin’s constant attempts to paint Obama as a friend of terrorists in some way encouraged the media to make assumptions.
But it’s going too far to suggest that the McCain campaign somehow was complicit in the act of one disturbed young woman, or to make fun of her because she got caught telling a lie. As wrong as Todd may have been to concoct a story, it is equally wrong to abuse her.
Those who have forgotten the sad, disturbed person behind the story should be as ashamed of their jeering as Todd should be of her decision to use race to get attention and perhaps change the direction of the campaign.
UPDATE: Turns out the McCain campaign was pushing the story. So fire away. It’s a sad commentary on the state of the campaign that Michelle Malkin is showing more restraint and common sense than Steve Schmidt and company. That said, I still think gloating over Todd herself is both unseemly and mean-spirited.