The Hoax in Pittsburgh

Yesterday, when I read the report of a young woman in Pittsburgh being robbed and assaulted-then badly beaten and mutilated because her car had a McCain-Palin bumper sticker, I was ready to post my comments on the incident. (The woman reported to police that her attacker had carved a letter "B" into her face with a knife.)

Something, however, told me to hold off a day or two until the dust settled. Perhaps, it was because I had been reporting on a recent hoax at Elmhurst College in Illinois, where a young Muslim woman reported being assaulted by a masked man in a college restroom because she was Muslim. A week later, the woman was charged with filing a false police report. It took CAIR five days to remove the original report of assault from their website, a fact I duly noted.

Fortunately for me, I didn't run with the story, and, today, it turns out the Pittsburgh case was also a hoax. So what do I say now? Well, for starters, I am glad that this young woman has also been charged with filing a false police report.

Her action obviously got a lot of people upset. McCain and Palin apparently called the woman personally to wish her speedy recovery. The Obama campaign expressed their concern as well. It certainly didn't help that the woman identified her attacker as an African-American, which only served to open up old wounds.

Manufacturing a phony crime to affect public opinion is a serious offense (though the charges in both cases are actually misdemeanors). Though McCain cannot be blamed for her actions, it does his campaign no good-especially among African-Americans.

So now we are saddled with another bad episode in an election in which I will be glad when it's finally over.