So, it's come to this...

More than 200 Trinity College students, faculty and staff rallied on campus Monday in response to a racially offensive comment posted on an online message board.

"Something negative happened and we want to turn it into something positive," said Ibrahim Diallo, one of the students who organized the rally. Organizers said they hoped to start a discussion and make it clear that people did not agree with the posting.

The comment, posted anonymously on a website called TrinTalk, disparaged minority students and said their admission to the college correlated with a drop in the rankings of "our fine Trinity." TrinTalk is not affiliated with the college.

Waiting, waiting, waiting…. Ker-plunk…

On Friday, Oct. 31, Lynda Ikejimba '09 announced that she was responsible for the racist TrinTalk.com post that incited a series of events, including last week's student-initiated rally, "Stand in Solidarity," which received coverage in The Hartford Courant.

"I am the person responsible for the outrageous, despicably racist post published on the TrinTalk website," wrote Ikejimba in a campus-wide apology email. "And I am a black woman. I am writing to apologize to all of you for what I have caused."

Two things - One: A 200 person rally in response to a single comment left on an online message board? What's next: 4 people held a rally at Beers with Demo world headquarters over the weekend in response to a completely unrelated, non-sequitor comment left on a post devoted to controllable pitch propellers.

And: What does it say about the nature of race relation in this country in 2008 when the majority of these alleged hate crimes and instances of hate speech turn out to be hoaxes? That the perpetrators claim they are trying to raise awareness belies the reality that awareness has risen… it has risen, indeed!

And to think that all that diversity training may have paid off, afterall.

H/T: The Volokh Conspiracy

Inevitable

Some of this stuff is just like waiting for the other shoe to drop, anymore.

David Shuster, an anchor for the cable news network, said on air Monday that Martin Eisenstadt, a McCain policy adviser, had come forth and identified himself as the source of a Fox News Channel story saying Palin had mistakenly believed Africa was a country instead of a continent.

Eisenstadt identifies himself on a blog as a senior fellow at the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy. Yet neither he nor the institute exist; each is part of a hoax dreamed up by a filmmaker named Eitan Gorlin and his partner, Dan Mirvish, the New York Times reported Wednesday.

It would appear we have a “vetting” issue. But, wait… it gets better...

The hoax was limited to the identity of the source in the story about Palin — not the Fox News story itself. While Palin has denied that she mistook Africa for a country, the veracity of that report was not put in question by the revelation that Eisenstadt is a phony.

Fake but True…? It just never ends with these people. The degree by which their desire to play CYA over that of desiring journalistic integrity is staggering.

And before we go, the most pathetic excuse of the day:

And in July, Jonathan Stein of Mother Jones magazine blogged an item about Eisenstadt speaking on Iraqi television about a casino in Baghdad's "Green Zone."

Stein later realized he'd been had.

"Kudos to the inventor of this whole thing," Stein wrote. "My only consolation is that if I had as much time on my hands as he clearly does, I probably would have figured this out and saved myself a fair amount of embarrassment."

Full story here.