Joe the Mugger raised his big, black, metaphorical head in Pittsburgh last week. At 6 feet, 4 inches and 200 pounds, Joe allegedly robbed Ashley Todd, a 20-year-old McCain volunteer from College Station, Texas, at an ATM on a busy city street at 9 on Wednesday night, and nobody noticed.

The "robbery" took place in the heart of Bloomfield, directly across the street from a bar frequented by cops. The ATM at Liberty and Pearl is also surrounded by popular restaurants and neighborhood hangouts. Despite his hulking frame, Joe the Mugger was invisible to everyone but Ms. Todd. He put a knife to her throat. She handed over $60, convinced that it was all part of Barack Obama's plan to redistribute the wealth of hard-working people in America.

Instead of running away with his ill-gotten goods, Joe the Mugger noticed McCain-Palin bumper stickers on Ms. Todd's car. He flew into a rage and knocked the field representative for the College Republican National Committee to the sidewalk. After brutally punching and kicking Ms. Todd, Joe the Mugger sat on her chest.

"You are going to be a Barack supporter," Joe said.

Passing cars and residents in that predominantly white neighborhood failed to notice anything odd about a giant black man straddling a short, stocky white girl on a well-lit corner.

Ms. Todd did not fight off Joe the Mugger as he carefully cut a "B" signifying "Barack" in her face. The "B" was backward, perhaps indicating that Joe was dyslexic. Too bad he didn't carve an "O," which can't be flipped. Because the cuts were superficial and relatively neat, there was no blood. All things considered, it was the most considerate racial assault with political motives one could imagine.

Though she was a few blocks from a hospital, Ms. Todd drove to a fellow College Republican's apartment. After some prompting, she was persuaded to talk to police about the incident, but she initially refused medical treatment. She was stoic.

The next afternoon, as the story broke on local TV, Drudge Report blared the news globally with a bright red headline: "Shock: McCain Volunteer Attacked and Mutilated in Pittsburgh." The photo of her bruised face set the right-wing blogosphere aflame. It was clear to even the dullest wit in conservative talk radio's vast echo chamber that the first skirmish in the long-feared race war ignited by Obama's presidential candidacy had begun. Ashley Todd, the belle of College Station, was its first "victim."

John McCain and Sarah Palin called with words of support. The Obama campaign issued a statement calling for the swift arrest of her assailant.

Meanwhile, people with common sense rolled their eyes and gritted their teeth through hours of credulous media coverage. You didn't have to be an Obama supporter to know antebellum fantasy and retrograde racist kitsch when you heard it. It smelled just like Willie Horton. Still, propriety insisted on a proper police interrogation and investigation before Ms. Todd's ridiculous story was blown out of the water by Friday.

Many of those who initially believed Ms. Todd's story are probably too young to remember the Charles Stuart case in Boston. In 1989, Mr. Stuart, who was white, claimed that a black carjacker murdered his pregnant wife and shot him. It turns out that Mr. Stuart arranged the murder himself, but deflected attention to a phantom black man. Dozens were arrested and detained before Mr. Stuart's story fell apart. He committed suicide shortly after.

In 1994, Susan Smith, a South Carolina housewife, drowned her two young sons in a lake, but blamed it on a black male carjacker. Her story quickly fell apart. Like Charles Stuart, Ms. Smith assumed the public's racial anxieties would be enough cover to obscure her crime.

Racial hoaxes in America aren't a one-way street. In 1987, Tawana Brawley's rape allegations against upstate New York law enforcement officials dominated the headlines. A grand jury eventually rejected her charges as lies. To this day, Ms. Brawley -- who has since changed her name -- maintains she told the truth despite the lack of credible evidence or testimony.

Recently, Crystal Mangum, a black stripper, leveled sexual abuse charges against members of the Duke University lacrosse team. The white defendants were eventually exonerated, but the university and the prosecutor in the case took a big hit. Ms. Mangum resurfaced with a book this month recounting her "ordeal." Some people are beyond shame.

There's little doubt that Barack Obama represents something frightening and intolerable in the imagination of many American citizens. It doesn't matter whether Ms. Todd is psychologically unstable or merely a cynical political operator wannabe. She was savvy enough about media gullibility to think she could get away with playing with the dynamite of racial libel.

Meanwhile, Joe the Mugger is on the sidelines waiting for his next close-up. He watches his cousins in the zeitgeist do their thing. He cheers Joe the Marxist and Joe the Terrorist Sympathizer as they get big play in the last week of the 2008 election cycle. He applauds Joe the Anti-American and Joe the Muslim for dominating the headlines for as long as they have. Still, Joe the Mugger wouldn't trade places with any of them. It doesn't matter who wins the presidency -- Joe the Mugger knows he will always have a job.