Madness

This was not merely a hoax. This is madness, for we should all be very, very mad about this.

Who knows? Someone could have been plopped into a police lineup had the story not unraveled quickly enough.

So I suppose in the end, we should be thankful that no one went to jail or was killed before Ashley Todd finally copped to the truth. Because that's the way these things used to go.

But it's instructive that Todd knew exactly where to place the blame when the cops started asking questions. A nigger. Six-foot-four, maybe some wild hair - an Afro - and probably someone who looked a little like Willie Horton. Or Josiah Sutton. Or Clarence Brandley. Or any of the Scottsboro Boys.

Whatever. Any one will do, right?

I'm just amazed at how easy it was, in some quarters, for the monster to be created. But maybe I shouldn't have been. Maybe there will never be such thing as a post-racial America. Maybe we're never too far along the path to racial reconciliation that U-turns can't be made. Maybe Todd was simply following a pattern that you can trace back to "Birth of a Nation" or any lynching tree.

And maybe right-wing wacko Atlas Shrugs was right, after all: Todd might, indeed, be the "new face of the Republican Party."