So glad we got that cleared up.
Also.. Billmon parallels this sad episode with the Tawana Brawley case
Suffice it to say that among its other nasty side effects, the spectacle turned Al Sharpton a household name. It also revealed the utter absurdity that some on the post-modern left are capable of. I distinctly remember one professor earnestly telling me that even if Tawana's story was false, it was still a crime because it represented the "mythic" truth of what had been done to African American women in America.
A legal standard that would, admittedly, make for some pretty interesting "mythic" trials.
As nutty as the reaction in some corners of the far left was, the reaction on the far right (which is to say, among mainstream conservative pundits) was even worse -- with Brawley and her advocates becoming the proof points for every claptrap racial theory ever peddled by conservative "scholars" such as the AEI's Charles Murray.
Update: Keep an eye on the timing of this story.
The McCain spokesperson's claims -- which came in the midst of extraordinary and heated conversations late yesterday between the McCain campaign, local TV stations, and the Obama camp, as the early version of the story rocketed around the political world -- is significant because it reveals a McCain official pushing a version of the story that was far more explosive than the available or confirmed facts permitted at the time.
The claims to KDKA from the McCain campaign were included in an early story that ran late yesterday on KDKA's Web site. The paragraphs containing these assertions were quickly removed from the story after the Obama campaign privately complained that KDKA was letting the McCain campaign spin a racially-charged version of the story before the facts had been established, according to two sources familiar with the discussions.
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