Sympathy for pathology, as it is--

She's young and stupid, and made a terrible mistake. And I suppose that she does not know that what she did was more than a stunt about an election, but an example of hate. Hate. Really. She doesn't know, yet, that what she did was about blaming blackness. That it was racial, and that this crime in lying could have led to real trouble.

Because she did lie. And she did bother to mention race. She claimed that the person who attacked her was a 6'4" black male about 200lbs. She said it was a mugging, and money was stolen and then she was marked. Mutilated! said the Drudge announcement. And unfortunately, her cry of "Black! Obama supporter! Big one! Scary!" Twittered and attention-grabbing, and calculated to draw attention--did just that. It drew attention, the kind she did not want.

People were suspicious of her backwards, carefully traced, fingernail-scratch-deep 'B'. Not Drudge. Not everyone in the McCain campaign--for example, it seems to have been pushed by people in McCain's Pennsylvania team. But regular people doubted it.

And now she is discredited and found a liar, and so is the McCain campaign diminished in part from her "efforts". She blew it. She lied, and was caught out, and the fact remains, for all her deceit--she thought she was helping. She was wrong, and she might only now just be beginning to understand how it hurts her candidate. She is, after all, young. She will understand better some day.

But that she took her cue from what this campaign might have considered acceptable--there's the rub. That her lie was backed up by anyone--encouraged--egged on.

She will have some notoriety to live with. I do not suppose it will be easy.