Progressives wrote Althea Bernstein’s lie.

One of life’s enduring mysteries is how a con artist like Al Sharpton gets a news and commentary program on cable television (albeit MSNBC). Sharpton promoted the Tawana Brawley hoax, which destroyed careers and prompted a suicide. The race huckster has never apologized for it. Far from it, his flogging of that fake hate crime launched a career worth millions of dollars. (Pay your taxes, Al.) 

Everyone connected to the Althea Bernstein hoax needs to apologize, starting with the young woman herself. She won’t heal — Madison won’t heal — until she makes a public confession of her guilt and begs our forgiveness.

Until then, we call on U.S. District Attorney Scott Blader to prosecute. Althea Bernstein is an adult. She knew what she was doing. She with malice aforethought fanned the flames of racial hatred as surely as any Klansman. 

So must Michael Johnson apologize. He is the Bernstein family’s spokesman and CEO of the Boys and Girls Club. Madison’s Al Sharpton. Said he couldn’t think of a more obvious example of a hate crime.

“Here’s a young lady that was minding her own business and somebody decided to set her on fire, and it’s unacceptable,” Johnson said. “Somebody tried to cause bodily harm because of the color of their skin.”

So must Madison Mayor Satya atone for her official statement that “This is a horrifying and absolutely unacceptable crime that I will not tolerate in Madison.”

So must Capital Times emeritus editor Dave Zweifel, who swallowed the improbable tale whole and — incredibly! — in a nakedly partisan attack blamed Republican legislators for condemning the riots that night [06-23/24-2020] but for “saying nary a word about the white guys who threw lighter fluid in the face of a Black young woman stopped at a traffic light and set her afire.”

So must former Progressive magazine editor Ruth Coniff: “Worst of all was the horrifying attack on Althea Bernstein, a bright, loving young woman …” In forgiving her attackers, Coniff wrote, “Bernstein’s open-heartedness seems almost superhuman.”  

So must the two most stupid people in the United Kingdom, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, who signaled their privileged wokeness by promoting this obvious deception.

So must Good Morning America, which aired a sympathetic interview with the non-victim. So must Wisconsin Public Radio and other “news” outlets who reported the lurid fable without even the hedge word “allegedly.” Their eager credulity fed hyperbole like this one:

“Attack on Althea Bernstein seems linked to Boogaloo Boys”

Some were never fooled

A few weeks after this non-crime, Blaska Policy Werkes concluded that “This hoax is for progressive folks.” (Only in the English language would “hoax” rhyme with “folks.”) It never passed the smell test for a host of reasons — the four frat boys on a shut-down campus — carrying charcoal lighter fluid down State Street!, the lighter that stayed lit, the 24/7 cameras coming up empty, etc. All on the same night of the riot in Downtown Madison that tore down statues and tried to immolate the City-County Building.

We wrote then, after Jussie Smollett, that some of us have learned to hold our fire until the facts are in. After Michael Brown (“Hands up, don’t shoot”) was found to be an urban myth five years ago. It’s why kids in Madison public schools make up stories about racial hate, like that bratty girl at Whitehorse middle school who got Mr. Rob fired. Even the Breonna Taylor and Jacob Blake stories are crumbling.

These narratives are critical to BLM/Antifa/Progressive Dane and other Marxists to Defund the Police, to Derail the Jail, to demonize white people, and to excuse criminality.

Racism works both ways

Michael Johnson was correct about one thing: “This is an escalation of racial tensions felt all across the country,” he said when he was promoting a story he so desperately wanted to believe. To convince people that America is racist, as Dennis Prager said, you have to fake it.

Blaska’s Bottom Line: Sadly, progressives yearn to believe any cockamamie story that alleges the worst about America. Their AmeriKKKa is irredeemably, institutionally racist. (1619 Project, anyone?) No wonder impressionable people like young Ms. Bernstein try to become heroes by pretending to be victims.

Should Althea be prosecuted?