IF YOU'VE GOT A TASTE FOR TERROR, TAKE CARSON TO THE PROM.

There's something perfect about this latest Ben Carson "vindication." Carson was questioned, you may recall, by the Wall Street Journal for his story about winning $10 for being "the most honest student in class." That award came, he said, in this way: His class had been told that their examination books had burned up and they had to retake a test--

So I, along with 150 other students, returned to the designated auditorium where our test awaited us. Only it was a markedly different test. The questions were incredibly difficult, if not impossible to answer based on the lectures and reading assignments. 

"Forget it," I heard one girl say to another. "Let's go back and study this. We can say we didn't read the notice. Then when theygive us the test, we'll be ready." The two left the auditorium. Immediately, three others packed up and left. Within ten minutes, half the class had left, and within a half hour, I was the only student left. Like the others, I was tempted to walk out, but I had read the notice and couldn't like and say I hadn't. I just decided to do my best and pray to God to help me figure out what to write. 

Suddenlt, the auditorium door opened noisily. It was the professor, with a photographer from the Yale Daily News in tow. 

"What's going on?" I asked. 

"A hoax," the professor smiled.. "We wanted to see who was the most honest student in class. And that's you. Here." 

As the photographer snapped my picture, she handed me a ten-dollar bill. Clearly a gift from God, but I was about to receive an even better one.

Now BuzzFeed has found a guy who says --

"...I immediately said, to my wife and friend, ‘That was the prank we played at the Record! And Ben Carson was in the class,’” said [Curtis] Bakal, who noted he wasn’t actually present during the taking of the fake test. “We did a mock parody of the Yale Daily News during the exam period in January 1970, and in this parody we had a box that said: ‘So-and-so section of the exam has been lost in a fire. Professor so-and-so is going to give a makeup exam.’” 

“We got a room to do the test in and one of us from the Record impersonated a proctor to give the test,” he said... 

Because he did not witness the fake test, however, he could not confirm that Carson — or only one student — was there at the end of class. But Bakal also backed up Carson’s claim that “at the end what few students remained — it may have just been one or two, I wasn’t there — received a small cash prize.” Bakal noted a staffer from the Record “impersonated a proctor to give the test.” (Carson said a professor had given him the cash prize in his written account.)

So the truth would seem to be that, rather than winning an honesty contest against 150 people and getting a gift from God, Carson was pranked and given a pity prize. Carson recast this humiliation as a triumph for himself and his faith. And conservatives think this is great for Carson; "Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea for the media to rush to the conclusion that Ben Carson’s life story is a tissue of lies," huffs Rich Lowry at National Review.

It's as if, after slaughtering all those people at the prom, Carrie White only remembered how proud she was to be named homecoming queen. But it wouldn't be the first time that a feverish belief in his own destiny led a man past all difficulties unto the political heights.