some guy in lebanon

I know this is a story that is about 48 hours late, but I’m saddened at how quickly its left the airways, so I’m publishing it anyways.

The story amazes me. A Texan woman, campaigning for McCain in Pittsburgh, went to the police late last week, claiming that while being mugged by a 6′4” black man, he noticed that she had a ‘McCain sticker’ on her car and proceeded to carve a “B” into her face and assault her until she ‘turned into an Obama supporter.’ The media flipped out, and conservative talk radio went nuts. Both campaigns denounced the assault, and the woman, a budding celebrity in her early twenties, received calls from both Obama and McCain.

Within 24 hours, the story began to unravel. There was no footage of the woman at the ATM where she said she’d been mugged. The bruises on her face appeared self inflicted. The “B” she said had been carved into her face had two serious flaws: It appeared to have been cut with a butter knife, and was backwards, as if it’d been haphazardly cut in the mirror. Anyone facing her would have cut a “B” facing the right way. She failed a polygraph and subsequently told the police she made it all up.

So I have a serious point of contention here -

That nobody is making a bigger deal about the chosen description of the man she said assaulted her is just sick.

Am I the only person who’s noticed that, though the lying woman was rightly called a liar in the press, no one is calling her an ignorant race baiter and racist? An America where nobody makes a huge deal about her belligerent description is Sarah Palin’s America, the new Republican party’s America - An America made up of inexcusable lies that are merely ignored unless they are useful.

We have a long history in this country of racially-motivated murders that sprung from these exact sort of accusations. How many have died at the hands of the mob thanks to claims of assault by white women against black men?

Barack Obama’s stunning rise to power, and on the edge of a historic presidential championship, was supposed to herald the end of this sort of deranged racism. Indeed, conservative commentators have made it clear that they believe the case of Obama justifies the end of affirmative action.

Instead, we have this pitiful, disgusting, and illuminating story of a young Texan woman who apparently thought she could convince the world that a person sitting on top of her would carve a backwards “B” into her face - oh yeah, and he was totally black. Perhaps she should have attributed the strange occurrence to the black man’s ignorance of the English language? Maybe her Texan sensibilities encouraged her to believe that Ebonics uses backwards letters?

Or maybe this story highlights the barrel-bottom reality of American conservativism: Young Texan woman travels to the scary north to try to spread the “conservativism ideals” of the south to western Pennsylvania, and instead packs into her carpet back the very racism she sought to ferment. And maybe it also highlights the dreadful state of our educational system – Did she ever stop to think, as she looked into a mirror with a butter knife, that the image of her face staring back at her was flipped? Take a look at this picture:

Young lady, how sick are you, really? And how sick is our press? Yes, she’s a liar. Liar liar pants on fire. Lying rarely ever hurt anyone, except when it’s this sort of lie. What she is, is a hate-mongering racist liar playing with fire in a building that is burning to the ground. Why didn’t she stop to think how terrifying and destructive her lie would be in the heart land of America where the legacy of the lynch mob lives on? How much more entrenched would the Angry Black Man stereotype have been? Don’t just call her a liar, call her what she is:

A perfect representation of the expiration date sticker on the side of the party of Reagan. Conservativism is supposed to be a set of ideas – A philosophy, with firm guidelines and an important history. It is sick jerks like Karl Rove who twisted the ignorant herd of Americans with “conservative values” (who apparently now believe in lying, self aggrandizement, self mutilation, and hateful racism) into the fold of the real conservative movement, and convinced the intellectual Right to go along with it. Barry Goldwater is rolling over in his grave. As are Milton Friedman, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Paine.

The legacy in this country when it comes to African Americans is abysmal. This race-baiting case is the worst symptom of the virus that is American racism.

That nobody is making a bigger deal about the chosen description of the man she said assaulted her is just sick.

The Dao that can be experienced is not true;
The world that can be constructed is not true.
The Dao manifests all that happens and may happen;
The world represents all that exists and may exist.
-Dao De Jing