Remember the glory days of the 2008 election when we had the delightful specter of Ashley Todd claiming that Barack Obama's thugs had held her down and carved a "B" in her face except haha she totally made it up and the "B" was facing the wrong way? We loved her!

But now we are casting our love aside, because we're way more into this Ohio bus driver guy, Rickey Wagoner, who claimed that some black kids shot him so that they could kill a whitey, but he was saved by his pocket copy of the Bible for dummies, except that of course he made the whole thing up.

Where Todd just had to engage in a little light face-carving, Wagoner actually shot himself in the leg and stabbed himself in the the arm, which, you have to admit, shows a lot more commitment to an elaborate falsehood. Witness his epic tale of gangbanging.

Rickey Wagoner told police Feb. 24 that he was repairing a mechanical malfunction early that morning outside his electric-powered bus when he was attacked by three teens who claimed they wanted to “shoot a polar bear” – which is street slang for a white person.[...]

The 49-year-old Wagoner told police one of the teens shot him twice, but one bullet was stopped by a copy of “The Message,” a paraphrasing of the Bible into contemporary English by Eugene Peterson, that was in his shirt pocket.

Initially, it looks like Wagoner got exactly the kind of attention he wanted. The FBI opened an investigation into the incident as a hate crime and police spokespeople said pious things about how there was probably divine intervention because Wagoner should't even be alive.

However, he also got a full-on police investigation out of the deal, which is what happens when you are shot and stabbed, and said police figured out the whole thing was likely self-inflicted.

[P]olice said Wednesday that Wagoner’s injuries were not consistent with defensive wounds – but were consistent with hesitation wounds, suggesting they were self-inflicted. [...]

Police found two bullets lodged in “The Message,” but investigators said it was “not credible” that the bullets could have been fired into the book without wounding Wagoner.

The only DNA found at the scene was from Wagoner, who police said did not sound out of breath when he drove away on the bus and called a dispatcher to report the shooting. Police said Wagoner should have been winded since he claimed he had just “fought for his life” and then run 200 to 300 feet.

You know, when we inevitably fake a hate crime against ourselves (oh, like you don't think of doing that ALL THE TIME) we will plan way better than this dude or Ashley Todd. Maybe we'll just pay a friend to shoot us or stab us or run after us or whatever to lend a little more gravitas and truthiness to the whole thing. But if we DO get busted, we hope we get off as easy as Wagoner, who is facing some employee discipline but will not be criminally charged. That is a far sweeter deal than you should really get for ginning up a little racial hate story about gangbanging black teens who only get to be in the club if they shoot a white guy. On the other hand, we didn't know that "shoot a polar bear" was street slang for white people, so ultimately we feel edified by this whole affair.

[Raw Story/Dayton Daily News]