People who sympathize with Todd are part of the problem, IMO.

The reason this shit led to lynchings and massacres just a few short decades ago is because there were no shortages of people falling over themselves to feel sorry for the poor little white girl.

And we've still got these people, with their Bill Frist-like telepathic diagnoses of mental conditions, making excuses for this behaviour. I can'y help but think that's why this shit's still continuing in the 21st century.

Dicks everywhere.

PB

:shrug:

:thumbsup:

I would add that someone who is that sociopathic does not belong among us, but in either a prison or a psychiatric facility depending on her evaluations. I would prefer psych, not because it will be easier on her (it won't) but because a psych facility would keep her until she is "better," not for a set term without regard to her probably re-offending.

black girl killed? maybe a one-liner on page b47.

pretty white girl? Hell, Greta and Sean and Bull and Flush are talking about it 24/7...

they think Ann the Man is pretty fer gawds sake!

to those ugly 'liberal' feminists...like say....MICHELLE OBAMA!!!

Standards do make a difference and with the likes of laura ingram wanting 'joe the plumber' to run for congress I think PLUNGING the depths would be about right for these folks!

... tasteful...

Seems it has even invaded DU. I find that pretty sad.

and you're right, it is sad- and often times, lazy and irrational.

You might recall a case a couple of months back where a uni student got kicked off a boat and left in Greece for using a couple of short unattributed phrases from wiki on a paper. The faculty from UVA didn't follow their own written procedures, and the violation was pretty scant, in the scheme of things. How hard would it have been to simply give a failing grade on the assignment? I reckon that would have made enough of a statement for the students- and not garnered international press. But no.

The so called honor code, you see- it "required" the nuclear option- and as you may also have seen, many posters on a progressive board stepped up to the plate to defend and defend vigorously zero tolerance (some barely concealing their antipathy for what they perceived as a little rich girl). It was one of those Tale of Two Cities moments that ought to give reasonable people pause.

This kind of race-baiting certainly qualifies in that respect.

Regards

Headline fucking news.

Black man is lynched, and then 9 months later, when everyone has forgotten about it, she has a red headed kid

It is extremely dangerous, I wonder if the corporate media will cover the development of this story turning out to be false with the same zeal as they did reporting it in the first place?

If the police hadn't been skeptical of her story, the race war she tried to start would be blazing around the airwaves right now.

Whether or not she has mental issues she's clearly functional enough to be held responsible for her behavior.

this girl or the first dude of alaska! lol

Turn his house into a freeper factory.

I do not in the least sympathize with her or have any understanding for her racist fantasies.

Her intense mental illness is obvious, however - as obvious as a melanoma would be. There is no need to pile on the ridicule and contempt for someone who is both insane and, as we have seen, powerless. We can be above that, no?

:rofl:

Something that requires a doctor and a biopsy to diagnose?

Is that more or less obvious than your obvious case of denial? Because that's pretty hard to beat.

That's what makes it obvious.

Anyway, who cares?

The story is not about this pathetic creature, but in the first reactions from Drudge and the media, in the way the McCain campaign attracts people like this systematically, in all the racist projections cast on Obama by the racist mentality.

At least the cops didn't go off and arrest 100 black men at random, as has happened at other times.

:shrug:

"At least the cops didn't go off and arrest 100 black men at random, as has happened at other times."

Oh, hurray!

:eyes:

That wasn't a hooray, more of a "thank god" (or thank the noodly appendage, if you prefer).

Unfortunately, the most important racist state in this discussion is the United States. No?

For every racist out there in this country who does something bad, there's ten more that will defend them.

her problems only arise when she has to actually admit the horrible thing she has done.
in othe words she's full of shit. as well as bigoted and dumb as shit. i'd feel sorry about the dumb as shit part- but that's the reason she failed- so i don;t feel sorry fr her for that.

Big House instead of the Nut House. This story that she continues to spin is not fully attributable to a mental condition. This girl committed a crime and thinks that she can fall back on a mental condition. This is disgusting for everyone that has a family member with an honest mental condition.

Then it appears you believe you can diagnose racism via the internet, but not mental illness. What then is the precise and relevant difference other than mere prognostication and opinion...?

I said she's mentally ill. Trying this guaranteed-to-be-caught stunt, carving her own face, all the high-strung blather on her videos are sufficient evidence of crazy. Sometimes you don't have to be a doctor to recognize crazy. What she did is a very serious crime, however, one that could have endangered lives. But even so she can still be a case for psychiatry rather than criminal justice. And it doesn't matter who feels "sorry" for her. She's sick. Dahmer was even sicker, it doesn't make his crimes any the less crimes. And with your bringing in that example, can Hitler be far behind?

:eyes:

I imagine a lack of mental illness also requires a diagnosis... unless of course one believes that they themselves are capable of stating emphatically that she is is mentally stable and her actions were done merely out of spite/anger/frustration/what have you

Six of one, half a dozen of the other, and all that.

her mental illness is NOT obvious---and, FYI, I'm an RN and I work with the mentally ill on a daily (nightly) basis. From the most benign to the most severe in our society, I work with them.

This girl did a stupid, stupid thing. A selfish, stupid thing.

That does not mean she's "insane" or "powerless". It does not mean that her "mental illness is obvious". To base the idea that she has a mental illness 1) on this act and 2) on the fact that she says she has a history of mental illness is foolish, IMO.

Every night I see teenagers and adults who do incredibly stupid things and end up paying a dear price for it, whether it's getting in a fight while being heavily intoxicated, or doing ridiculously large amounts of drugs and ending up on a ventilator due to an OD, to talking on a cellphone while driving in traffic and ending up with their heads through a windshield. --- these people are not mentally ill just because they do something stupid, selfish, and short-sighted. And just because someone does something stupid, selfish, or short-sighted does not even begin to mean that they have any form of mental illness.

Thousands of perfectly sane people are in prison for doing perfectly insane things, like killing a spouse, or beating a child.

By your definition, anyone who does anything aberrant is, by default, suffering from a mental illness. That only 'ill' people do horrible things is absolutely disgusting. In fact, most "mentally ill" people live quitely and "normally" in society, shunned because of the stigma that they are inherently dangerous, that anything bad in society that has happened was done by someone who had obvious mental illness---a stereotype that you are happily enforcing in this thread.

It's HATE!

charges are being filed. She is currently being charged with filing a false police report, other charges are pending.

Police believed from the beginning, as did her friends, that she had made up the story.

I've been around a few C.R.'s and the Prof. that proudly leads them.
They definitely have issues.

you'll have to forgive me if I'm not quite willing to believe her.

http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/wireStory?id=6096249

I'm guessing one of the other thread contributors would be comfortable calling her just a "Slutty Black Chick?"

from a caller

She's a lying, racist piece of shit.

Ditto.

K&R.

After seeing the movie, we know what kind of shit these things can provoke.

I think she needs help. And I hope she gets it.

That's the way that's part of the problem.

Incarceration doesn't seem appropriate, nor hanging.

Also, to redress the wrongs done, every media outlet that reported this bullshit without the slightest attempt to fact check, or to point out the obvious glaring problems with the story that the blogbarians here were pointing out AS THE STORY BROKE, need to provide equal and as prominent coverage to the actual truth here.

And her defenders humiliated.

Looks like I'm getting both.

I suspect your choice of the appropriate institution might differ from mine, but we can agree on that. This is a heavy crime, but establishing competence will be a bitch. With a backwards b.

:thumbsup:

We can think clearly about real people in real situations, and they can't: that's why we always win in the end

what I was doing to stir up shit and take revenge on anything I deemed worthy. Took me years and a number of slaps in the face by people telling me I was WRONG and EVIL to get it and to make the change by taking a long, hard look at myself.

So you can be mentally sick and still know what is right and what is wrong. Her actions can't be written off due to an emotional illness. If you kill someone while drunk driving, the disease of alcholism does not get you off the hook. You are responsible. Period.

:rofl:

It's shouldn't be an either/or approach to the story.

Admitedly this one fits the role well. She stands in for a whole class of mental illness recruited into a political party, no less.

:rofl:

Someone can do real wrong and yet still end up serving as an effigy burned for a class of wrongdoers. The hate directed at this mentally ill loser is stored up from a lot more than anything she did.

Clearly this is not the case here.

Regards

Shouldn't have used that word. Scapegoat only in the sense of blamed as a stand-in for a whole class of wrong. But I wasn't thinking she was therefore innocent or excusable! To say she's sick doesn't make it less of a crime.

Insofar as the outrage spills out against the McCain campaign and freeper mentality, who set the stage with racism as the heart of the anti-Obama campaigns, it's a good thing. Insofar as it focuses on her as some object that must be gleefully obliterated, she serves as a scapegoat: a symbolic banishing.

The McLame campaign should be pilloried for their role in hyping this hoax. And Ms. Todd should certainly have the book thrown at her to discourage the next ass clown from attempting such a stunt.

This kind of accusation makes me mad as hell because of the potential for injury and death when dealing with the police. This cannot be taken lightly.

Regards

you hit it on the head

I've been involved in campaigns for a very long time, since the late '70's, and I have seen people on our side of the aisle go off pretty bad during the heat of a campaign.

She's young and zealous and impressionable. A dangerous mix. Professional campaign managers should know how to channel that energy. That was always the case here when anyone started to step over the line.

Obviously McCain's campaign in PA is under intense scrutiny since they all but declared PA a do or die situation.

She deserves to be punished and punished to the fullest extent of the law.

But I can see how it happened.

People do stupid shit all the time when they are under pressure and have no idea how to handle it. All those cop shows are living proof that unrelieved pressure is a dangerous thing. I blame the guy in charge who seems to have been stoking the flames as much as I blame young Todd...

Then the feeling sorry part flew out the window.

She is a criminal first and if she has any psychological problems let them sort that out in the court room or while she is in prison.

This kind of thing needs to be nipped in the bud immediately.

Don

have concluded that she's mentally disturbed.

They see mental illness in the trenches every single day and so their judgment on the matter is good enough for me.

You don't have to "feel sorry" for the woman to recognize that she's got problems that need to be addressed- and that jail may not be the best place to deal with them.

btw: inpatient psychiatric care- and mental illness, ain't no piece of cake. My guess is that she'll be put on a 72 hour hold and cited out- though if Pennsylvania has the usual statutes, it could also be for a couple of weeks. That's something for medical professionals to decide.

Ashley Todd -- who has a backward letter "B" scratched into her right cheek -- confessed to faking the story and will be charged with filing a false report, Assistant Police Chief Maurita Bryant said at a news conference Friday.

Todd, of College Station, Texas, admitted there was no robbery or attacker and said she had prior mental health problems, according to Bryant.

http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/news/17789356/detail.html

She may or may not be mentally ill, I doubt, especially with the Hipaa laws, that we'll ever know for sure.

And you know what? The person who posted was so right. Like many of us, I was going off the deep end with respect to what should be public and what should be private-

That poster set me straight- we can all learn things like that, admit to being stupid or caught up sometimes- as I surely was.

We all are that way at times.

Lynchings happened because racists succumbed to their hate and abandoned the rule of law -- not because of sympathy toward people who made false allegations.

Hate on.

I strongly suspect she's seriously ill, in which case I would sympathize.

If her actions are somehow revealed to be intelligently guided, a cynical plan to incite racism, I'll be willing to join the wielders of figurative pitchforks and torches.

The rush to judgment seems very premature, no matter how damaging her hoax/delusion has been or nearly was.

...and not wanting her to get the maximum sentence, isn't the same as believing a girl who says she was attacked and lynching on her behalf.

they're the epitome of milquetoast, lily-livered, spineless, quivering Democrats,

And the reason we keep losing elections.

They need to lead, follow, or get out of the way.

It harder to be forgiving and understanding than to hate. Hate is for the lily livered.

Very apt analogy.

I feel sorry for her.

Because she's crazy and she's stupid...and that's a bad mix.

EDIT: When calling someone stupid, one should always check one's spelling.

I don't think she's mentally ill. She wanted attention and she didn't cause a whole lot of damage to herself to do it -she lightly scratched herself and put some makeup around her eye. If she'd really seriously harmed herself, maybe I'd buy the mental illness diagnosis.

I'll give you one thing: even though your analysis of historical and contemporary events is faulty in the extreme, your observation that there are large numbers of dicks roaming the electronic landscape is spot on...

Just because she didn't get away with it doesn't mean that she couldn't have done a lot of damage. She could have hurt the black men that would have been thrown in jail for this faux crime, she could have hurt the campaign that we've all been working so hard for, and most important she could have seriously fucked up race relations in this country.


If it turns out she was sick, or abused or whatever, then I feel sorry for the situation, not her. There's too many people who actually deserve sympathy in this country right now.

that same as I hope for anyone else but I see no reason for leniency but rather she should damn well take the brunt on this unless she rolls on higher ups. That's the way it works for everyone else and thats how it would go down AT BEST for her made up attacker if he existed.

All I see is that poor misguided child. Fuck her there are poor and minority kids that really are kids sitting in prison now despite whatever tough situations in their background.

Mercy in this country is for the rich and the white. Fuck Ashley Todd's disgusting blackhearted ass.

I think one can feel sorry for her while that the same time recognizing that her actions were both wrong and deserving of punishment.

"There are just two people in this world that are perfect: you and me. And I'm starting to have doubts about you."

As anyone. She is one of the victims of what happens when the type of bigoted, unrestrained, fear-based hate is allowed to serve as valid political views by the RW base. Dixiecrats still exist and are now the core of the GOP, the only difference is that they are no longer constrained by geography.

However, I do not feel either sympathy nor empathy towards her. As much as I understand what happened, I will never be able to put myself in her shoes in any capacity other than the intellectual observation above about how it happened. Even so, I think it is unfair to not allow people to accept that she is a victim at some level.

To your bigger point, I agree wholeheartedly - this is why hate cannot be allowed to remain a part of the US political language. It is a taint which destroys everything it touches. Todd had issues of acceptance, but this hate almost could have ruined an innocent man's life had she had done a better job with her forgery.

L-

It reminds me of when I was in high school and my best friend was a cute little blond-haired blue-eyed girl. I was a half-Asian, black-haired, brown-eyed, olive-skinned girl. Periodically we'd get up to our harmless high school hi jinx and rabble rousing. Without fail I'd be the one punished with a detention or two while she would ALWAYS be absolved of any guilt or responsibility, despite the fact she was usually the instigator.

I still feel these little bits of prejudice whenever I take a flight and I'm always one of the folks pulled aside by TSA, or when I AmTrak over to the west coast and in Havre, MT when the border patrol hops on the train I'm always one of the few who gets my ID and baggage searched.

These are just minor incidents that I find more laughable than offensive, but I have no doubt that my ethnicity has always been a factor in them. We have many generations to go before eliminating most of these backward tendencies to sympathize with the poor, white, "innocent" girl.

Now I know why.

You'd rather demonise people than understand them. It's quite...Republican of you. You have the same reaction to us acknowledging mental illness as freeps have when someone tries to analyse what led up to 9/11. Understanding doesn't equal excusing or condoning.

The reason this shit led to lynchings and massacres just a few short decades ago is because there were no shortages of people falling over themselves to feel sorry for the poor little white girl.

It is unfair to compare Ms. Todd to the offended White girl in a lynching case, as if one size fits all. Some of those young ladies were lying, as was Ms. Todd; some didn't even know they had been offended (the lynching victim was guilty of "reckless eyeballing") and some may actually have been assaulted, in which case the lady deserves sympathy as does the lynching victim, who never got his day in court.

And we've still got these people, with their Bill Frist-like telepathic diagnoses of mental conditions, making excuses for this behaviour. I can'y help but think that's why this shit's still continuing in the 21st century.

I am mentally ill. I suffer major depression. People like Ms. Todd, assuming that she is as mentally ill as reports on the case indicate her to be, need a little more understanding. That is not a call completely exonerate her in the matter. What she did was reprehensible. Nevertheless, again assuming she is mentally ill, it is more important that she get help than punishment.

It would appear that Ms. Todd has a worse problem than depression. Her behavior could have set off a serious racial incident. She shows paranoid tendencies in her fantasies about black men. She is quite likely a danger to herself and others. Let's let the professionals decide.

Pardon me for being a dick.

I tried to rec this.

to excuse despicable behavior. And people fall all over themselves to defend her.

"Mental health issues" are as common as the common cold. Nowadays, the term covers everything from well-validated, clearly biologically-based illnesses like schizophrenia to a nasty personality. How many people here at DU have "mental health issues"? That does not mean that you would excuse behavior like this on their part.

She is lying about the amnesia. The only psychiatric disorders that contain amnesia as a symptom are the highly questionable ones.

But she said a black man attacked her, this racist knew what she was doing.

Regards