What are bloggers especially good at? Sniffing out a hoax. And they just wrapped up a doozy.

Thursday afternoon, the Drudge Report linked to a story that said a John McCain campaign staffer in Pittsburgh was beaten up after her assailant saw a McCain bumper sticker on her car. Ashley Todd, 20, told police a 6-foot, 4-inch-tall black man beat her up in front of a bank ATM, stole $60, and carved a “B” into her face.

Is there anything more incendiary than a white female McCain supporter getting beaten up by a black Obama supporter?

But bloggers on the right and the left doubted Todd’s claims. On Thursday, conservative commentator Michelle Malkin was saying on her Web site Todd’s story smelled fishy, because she refused medical treatment after reporting the incident to the police. Malkin also posted a photo of Todd with the “B” scratched into her face. A reader noted: ”Notice how the ‘B’ is backwards on the right cheek … if you were looking in a mirror and put it on your own face … she put it on her own face but forgot it would show up backwards.”

The story quickly fell apart, and by Friday afternoon the Pittsburgh police were holding a press conference after Todd failed a polygraph test. The Washington Post’s election blog has more details about how reporters, bloggers and police officers worked to disprove Todd’s story.

How did conservative bloggers behave during a story that was perfect for them to spread around the Internet? The Drudge Report started the whole thing, but it did correct the story as Todd’s story looked less and less likely to be true. RedState linked to the story, but on Friday expressed embarrassment, saying, “Good heavens. If our people resort to such tactics, we are no better than the liberal lie-babies. Anyone out there reading this pitiful effort, please be forthright and honest. Those are basic principles of conservatives.” We’ll call that one a half apology.

Michelle Malkin was one of the first people to cast doubt on Todd’s claims, and Fox News Executive Vice President John Moody wrote a post on his blog that in hindsight is especially damning. “If the incident turns out to be a hoax, Senator McCain’s quest for the presidency is over, forever linked to race-baiting,” Moody said. (And it looks especially bad for the McCain campaign that his Pennsylvania communications director pushed reporters to tell an inflammatory version of Todd’s uncorroborated story.)

Imagine if we had bloggers 19 years ago, when Charles Stuart accused an unnamed “black man” of carjacking him and his pregnant wife and shooting them both. Although the Ashley Todd story and the Charles Stuart story are on different levels of seriousness and severity, the parallels between them are striking.

The quick backstory: After lamaze class with his wife Carol at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Charles Stuart drove their car to Mission Hill, a portion of the city with many black residents, shot his wife in the head, himself in the stomach and then claimed to police that a black man with a raspy voice had carjacked them. The Boston police picked up a suspect based on Stuart’s description, and Stuart “correctly” identified him in a police lineup. The truth didn’t come out until months later, when Charles’ brother confessed he had helped dispose of the murder weapon. Stuart subsequently committed suicide.

The obvious parallels: Both Todd and Stuart had few ways to identify their attackers, and the primary way was their race. Todd could only say that her attacker was 6-foot 4-inches tall, despite the fact he supposedly sat on top of her and carved a “B” into her face. Stuart initially only told emergency personnel the attacker was a “black man.” He later said the man had a raspy voice, was of medium height and build, and wore a black jogging suit.

In both cases, Todd and Stuart injured themselves to make the crimes more realistic. While Todd says she doesn’t remember scratching the “B” onto her cheek, it looks like a self-inflicted injury. Stuart shot himself in the stomach.

Most bizarrely, Charles Stuart shot his wife on Oct. 23. Ashley Todd said she was beaten up On Oct. 22, and the story broke the next day.

What’s frightening is that 19 years after Charles Stuart created a black murderer, the first thing Ashley Todd did was invent a black mugger. In Boston, a city known for racial intolerance, tensions quickly flared. Did Todd hope to incite the same racial divisions less than two weeks before Americans are likely to elect their first black president?

Let’s hope that wouldn’t have been the case. And let’s also be thankful that quick reporting from people across the political spectrum stopped an outrageous story from spreading before the truth could come out.

Tags: ashley todd, attacker, black, boston, charles stuart, hoax, mccain, obama, pennsylvania