So said John Moody, Executive VP of Fox News, yesterday. If course there was an “if”: “If the incident [i.e., the alleged "B" for "Barack" slashing] turns out to be a hoax …”
Of course, that “if” has now come to pass. The incident has turned out to be a hoax. The poor, confused girl who made the false police report has now been arrested.
And the McCain campaign is rapidly backing away. The McCain Pennsylvania spokesman quoted by two different media outlets as retailing the “B for Barack” story seems to have disappeared, but another McCain spokesman is now saying that both reporters got it wrong, attributing to the McCain guy things actually said by the police. But one of the reporters still has his notes. And in any case two misquotations of the same person by two different reporters is a coincidence as hard to credit as Ashley Todd’s original confabulation.
Moody was right: at this point, the McCain campaign deserves to be over, “forever linked to race-baiting.” But will Fox News – or anyone but Olbermann – play it that way?
