Fact or Fiction? Rolling Stone's UVA Gang Rape Story (2 Viewers)

[Zow]

Here's Dunham's statement/apology.

Guessing there will be some sort of settlement as well. Hopefully everyone can now move on. Maybe people will show 10% of the concern for actual rape victims that they showed for a guy they thought was maybe wrongly accused of rape but wasn't really.

That's a non-apology. She's "sorry about all he [barry] has experienced" but explicitly absolves herself of any fault and lays the blame with everybody else.

I barely know who Lena Dunham is. I know she exists and she has a television show that is apparently widely-watched and controversial. That's literally it. Everything else I know about her I've learned from this little episode, and I only know about her book and her false rape allegation because it happened to get linked up with the UVA story. What I do know, though, is that if you're a celebrity and you accuse somebody of raping you, you can't really come back in good faith and criticize journalists for trying to track down the guy who you accused of a serious felony. That's just stupid and shows a profound ignorance about the world works.

I haven't been following this thing very closely. I like Girls and think that Dunham is a talented writer. She also appears to be very self-absorbed and probably pretty annoying if you have to spend much time around her in real life. (I could easily be wrong about that; it's just the vibe I get. But I've never spent any time around her in real life to confirm it.)

I think you've correctly identified what she should have apologized for but did not. She should have taken extra precautions to make sure that nobody would mistake her pseudonym for a real name. She should have made it clearer that she was changing the details to make the identity of her attacker indiscernible. Her failure to do so was negligent, and she should have directly apologized to the real Barry for her mistake.

On the other hand, I think a lot of the criticism she's gotten for this has been off base. She made a mistake, but it appears to have been an innocent one -- caused by naivety and a lack of foresight, not caused by malice. (I guess it's possible that she had it out for the real Barry, but it seems rather unlikely if they'd never met.)

I'm not Barry, and he may have a different perspective, but from where I sit, Dunham's mistake seems pretty easy to forgive. It would even be easy to sympathize with, IMO, if only she seemed more genuinely sorry about it.

Yep.

If i'm "Barry" a personal phone call and apology would frankly go quite a long ways.

 

[Zow]

FTR, I think "I consent to have sex with you as long as you use a condom" is a valid position to take. So if someone surreptitiously removes a condom, that removes the consent. I dunno how the #### you could take the condom off without her knowing, but that's another discussion I guess.

I think that is a pretty interesting discussion to have. I'm as pro-women and anti-harrassment, anti-sexual abuse, pro-consent guy there is, but I can't get my head around "I only consented to sex with you if you use a condom, so if you sneak it off during sex, it is something that I did not consent to and therefore rape."

The closest analogy I can come to is a guy who lies about having a vasectimy. She only "consents" to sex bc she thought he couldn't get her pregnant. Is that rape if it turns out he lied?

What about lieing about not having an STD. If she shows up with the Clap a week later, was she raped?

It gets rediculous because you used the same standard for men, right? "She told me she was on the pill. I only consented to sex with the understanding she was on the pill. Therefore she raped me."

Lying to get a girl in bed is a time-honored tradition, but whether or not it constitute rape or some other crime (or tort) clearly depends on the lie.

"Yes, this is my Porsche. I'm totally not just borrowing it from my dad."

[SIZE=14.4444446563721px]"I absolutely will wear a condom."[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.4444446563721px]"I can dunk a basketball off of two feet without a running start."[/SIZE]

"I will not leave immediately afterwards to go home and adjust my fantasy football lineup. I don't even play fantasy football!"

"I don't have any STDs."

"I love you."

And so on.

I think I have a hard time calling any of those things rape. If a woman consents, even if the consent was obtained by dishonest means, I'd call it something other than rape. That's not to say that it can't be battery or some other legally sanctionable offense. If you falsely state that you don't have AIDs, or even if you neglect to affirmatively disclose that you do have AIDs, I'm down with civil and criminal penalties for battery or whatever.

In any case, whether we call it rape or something else, I think it's clear that certain types of lies should remain legally (not to be confused with morally) okay, while other types of lies should be legally punishable, and there may be some interesting gray areas in trying to sort out which lies fall into which category.

I see your point, but in many jurisdictions lying about having an STD then having unprotected sex could very well be a crime. And I'm okay with that.

 

[Smack Tripper]

Here is what the statement fails to address...

1. Were any elements of the "Barry" character authentic? Again, I'm no conservative, but frankly knowing Dunham's background as the daughter of artists, in this liberal cocoon, the notion of a campus republican seems outlandish and pointedly sensational with regard to a pointless detail in the grand scheme of the story she's sharing. I guess you can tell me about an author's license, and I'm all for that, but this is the murk of memoir. Was it shock value? An attempt to assail conservative people? Now, conservatives are no more of a protected party than those with big moustaches or those with purple cowboy boots, but I'd be curious to know her thoughts if another person claimed that I was raped by Barry the minority and if indeed elements of that were fabricated. I think the logical question would be, how is it germane?

2. I believe I read elsewhere in this thread, and I haven't read the book and may just have to, but she also mentions information that he has "raped" multiple other acquaintances. Now, I'm fully sensitive to rape victims who choose not to come forward. In my heart of hearts, I wish they would and i wish scumbags that do this would find justice. If this is your private pain and private moment, and its an isolated incident, ok, I can understand why you don't want to relieve it in a protracted manner. But she's painting a picture of this guy not getting into a grey area fooling around one night but that of a being a serial rapist who also assaulted multiple friends. I'm sorry, you DO have a responsibility in that case, particularly when you pick up the flag of feminism in your statement.

Full disclosure on my end, I LOVED season 1 of girls, the first four episodes are brilliant IMO, a total breath of fresh air. And then... in an interesting meta manner, the show begins to suffer a bloat and excess that she seems to have suffered personally.

What ultimately soured me on her, was a story I read about her soliciting the production assistants on her show for stories about THEIR personal lives, as she literally said something along the lines of "Things are just going so great for me now, I'm out of touch with that struggle so what is going on with you guys". She's mining the lives of kids making $150 a day to feather her creative lifestyle.

So, she's all in with the victim card, but knowing what I know about her, well, we know one element of this incident was fabricated. Given the non-sensical associations and far fetched elements, I would not be surprised to find out she "misremembered" someone else's experience.

 

[Maurile Tremblay]

I see your point, but in many jurisdictions lying about having an STD then having unprotected sex could very well be a crime. And I'm okay with that.

I'm okay with it being a crime. I just don't think it should be rape (as opposed to battery or something).

 

[TobiasFunke]

Why provide any identifying details at all? For dramatic purposes? Because her readership would be liberal and the cowboy boots / talk radio / conservative aspects would appeal to their red meat mindsets?

Yeah, I know MT and IK are really thoughtful guys. But very few people who have been to very small, uber-liberal universities know what it's like to be identified as conservative or libertarian among the general inhabitants of said universities. I've had friends know I was against the drug war, a whole host of stuff, joke about my "fascism." I didn't like it. I think she knows what she did. I don't like it. I hope her ### gets sued badly.

eta* This is a person, who in her personal life, asked people to come to a barefoot high-school food party because she was a vegan and couldn't have leather in the house. This is from the NYT when she was sixteen. It was reported on. When she was sixteen. There's something up here.

Like I always say: if you were a weirdo when you were 16 and your parents are wealthy and semi-famous, you're probably lying about your sexual assault.

Seriously though: by providing irrelevant details about her life that you know some of this forum's readers will react negatively to, you're doing exactly what Saints (and I assume you, by your agreement with his post) accuse her of doing.

No, I'm saying I don't like her. What I think is that her life of constant entitlement activism should give one pause about her claims, especially given the dubious literary and factual elements of her "memoir," her weird admission/non-admission within said text of playing fast and loose with facts, going so far as to pen a "memoir" that is a a non-memoir, a weird blend of activism and narrative over fact, and the willingness to use certain facts in real life to paint a picture of an assault that named/didn't name a particular person that did have/didn't have these characteristics.

What I'm saying is what other people have said better than me: You don't just accuse somebody of rape.

Well then I suppose it's good that didn't accuse someone of rape. To accuse someone of something you have to name them or provide details sufficient for people to know who you're talking about. She retold her own story as part of a memoir, which shouldn't bother anyone According to her she tried to keep the other parties anonymous (presumably so as not to accuse someone of any type of sexual assault) and an unfortunate coincidence resulted in someone being wrongly connected to the incident.

You seem not to believe her because she was a weirdo at age 16, because her parents had money and because she is, in your words, an "entitlement activist." That's your business, I guess, although I don't really see the connection. I also don't know why so many people consider it a negative personality trait to have inherited wealth and social status and also care about social issues (this was particularly amusing when the source of the negativity was The National Review), but again that's their business.

 

[Smack Tripper]

I could see something like that making its way into someone's subconscious. I have a hard time believing she'd intentionally implicate someone she didn't know and had never met. It's not like she's some obscure writer who's going to sell a thousand books.

In a germ of a notion or concept, fine, 1st draft, place holder, I could see what you're saying.Books are fact checked and vetted though, so either Random House messed up or she lied. Either way, some regular schmuck gets damaged in one of the more serious ways you can be

Yeah, but why would they fact-check a pseudonym? I could see her thinking she was pulling that name out of thin air, especially since it seems the actual Barry was someone she was probably aware of but who she never met.

As detailed she did not deliniate or specify that it was a psedonym. It is a firable offense by the editor.

It's not what color was the wallpaper In my bedroom growing up, if was a multiple chapter tent pole of the book (I assume I haven't read but a rape I would imagine is a significant event in ones life)

It's not a fireable offense by the editor. Editing a memoir isn't like editing a magazine piece. And really this entire thing is easily remedied by clarifying that she intended the name to be a pseudonym. I understand conservatives hate Lena Dunham. I'm not familiar with her work and doubt it's my kind of thing. But I don't understand what the gotcha is here. That she intentionally implicated someone she never met in an unpleasant sexual encounter? It doesn't make any sense.

I'm not a conservative, but I am directly familiar with clearances in entertainment. Trust me, if the editor skates, its only because they have friends willing to take a massive bullet.

Its a matter of a few simple questions on their behalf in the CYA world we live in. If I was giving the benefit of the doubt, I would guess they didn't pry on this due to the sensitive nature of the matter but it is their job to pry and make a determination on either noting it is a psedonym or making sure that this was an event was authentic.

If you're the editor and Dunham tells you that Barry is just a pseudonym, you have no responsibility to comb through Oberlin College records to find out if there happened to be a student named Barry.

No, but if you're the editor, and there are specific citations of psedonyms in the book, and in this case, this particular passage is presented without that qualifier, you are there to say whether or not the pseduomym should be cited again or the name "Barry" should change.

A copy editor should have made sure pseudonyms were noted consistently throughout. But this is pop memoir. That entire wing of the industry is exceedingly vapid. Their primary goal is to get their trash onto the shelves while the name on the cover is still hot.

I agree, but that 70,000 a year job makes sure you don't spend millions in these types of suits, or that the client doesn't damage their own brand, as she has.

 

[Zow]

I see your point, but in many jurisdictions lying about having an STD then having unprotected sex could very well be a crime. And I'm okay with that.

I'm okay with it being a crime. I just don't think it should be rape (as opposed to battery or something).

I guess it depends on the jurisdiction, but there are oftentimes numerous levels or variations of "rape". In my jurisdiction there is probably about ten and the word "rape" is never actually used. But obviously the chargeable statute/crime and the corresponding ranges depends on what actually occurred - i.e. touch a boob, touch bare butt, digitally penetrate, sodomy, consensual sex with underage, nonconsensual sex. Additionally, in my state at least sexual motivation could be an aggravating factor. So, in our hypo, you could have an assault/battery aggravated by the sexual motivation aspect of it (and, in my state, probably a domestic violence designation attached to it as well).

 

[rockaction]

Why provide any identifying details at all? For dramatic purposes? Because her readership would be liberal and the cowboy boots / talk radio / conservative aspects would appeal to their red meat mindsets?

Yeah, I know MT and IK are really thoughtful guys. But very few people who have been to very small, uber-liberal universities know what it's like to be identified as conservative or libertarian among the general inhabitants of said universities. I've had friends know I was against the drug war, a whole host of stuff, joke about my "fascism." I didn't like it. I think she knows what she did. I don't like it. I hope her ### gets sued badly.

eta* This is a person, who in her personal life, asked people to come to a barefoot high-school food party because she was a vegan and couldn't have leather in the house. This is from the NYT when she was sixteen. It was reported on. When she was sixteen. There's something up here.

Like I always say: if you were a weirdo when you were 16 and your parents are wealthy and semi-famous, you're probably lying about your sexual assault.

Seriously though: by providing irrelevant details about her life that you know some of this forum's readers will react negatively to, you're doing exactly what Saints (and I assume you, by your agreement with his post) accuse her of doing.

No, I'm saying I don't like her. What I think is that her life of constant entitlement activism should give one pause about her claims, especially given the dubious literary and factual elements of her "memoir," her weird admission/non-admission within said text of playing fast and loose with facts, going so far as to pen a "memoir" that is a a non-memoir, a weird blend of activism and narrative over fact, and the willingness to use certain facts in real life to paint a picture of an assault that named/didn't name a particular person that did have/didn't have these characteristics.

What I'm saying is what other people have said better than me: You don't just accuse somebody of rape.

Well then I suppose it's good that didn't accuse someone of rape. To accuse someone of something you have to name them or provide details sufficient for people to know who you're talking about. She retold her own story as part of a memoir, which shouldn't bother anyone According to her she tried to keep the other parties anonymous (presumably so as not to accuse someone of any type of sexual assault) and an unfortunate coincidence resulted in someone being wrongly connected to the incident.

You seem not to believe her because she was a weirdo at age 16, because her parents had money and because she is, in your words, an "entitlement activist." That's your business, I guess, although I don't really see the connection. I also don't know why so many people consider it a negative personality trait to have inherited wealth and social status and also care about social issues (this was particularly amusing when the source of the negativity was The National Review), but again that's their business.

I think that's the issue. Look, we're misfiring. If I'm "Barry," I'm a mixture of pantagrapher's (not that he agrees with me) denial and vociferousness, and there's also a lawsuit coming right down the pike for future damages to my reputation, regardless of phone call or any other such overtures.

 

[TobiasFunke]

Why provide any identifying details at all? For dramatic purposes? Because her readership would be liberal and the cowboy boots / talk radio / conservative aspects would appeal to their red meat mindsets?

Yeah, I know MT and IK are really thoughtful guys. But very few people who have been to very small, uber-liberal universities know what it's like to be identified as conservative or libertarian among the general inhabitants of said universities. I've had friends know I was against the drug war, a whole host of stuff, joke about my "fascism." I didn't like it. I think she knows what she did. I don't like it. I hope her ### gets sued badly.

eta* This is a person, who in her personal life, asked people to come to a barefoot high-school food party because she was a vegan and couldn't have leather in the house. This is from the NYT when she was sixteen. It was reported on. When she was sixteen. There's something up here.

Like I always say: if you were a weirdo when you were 16 and your parents are wealthy and semi-famous, you're probably lying about your sexual assault.

Seriously though: by providing irrelevant details about her life that you know some of this forum's readers will react negatively to, you're doing exactly what Saints (and I assume you, by your agreement with his post) accuse her of doing.

No, I'm saying I don't like her. What I think is that her life of constant entitlement activism should give one pause about her claims, especially given the dubious literary and factual elements of her "memoir," her weird admission/non-admission within said text of playing fast and loose with facts, going so far as to pen a "memoir" that is a a non-memoir, a weird blend of activism and narrative over fact, and the willingness to use certain facts in real life to paint a picture of an assault that named/didn't name a particular person that did have/didn't have these characteristics.

What I'm saying is what other people have said better than me: You don't just accuse somebody of rape.

Well then I suppose it's good that didn't accuse someone of rape. To accuse someone of something you have to name them or provide details sufficient for people to know who you're talking about. She retold her own story as part of a memoir, which shouldn't bother anyone According to her she tried to keep the other parties anonymous (presumably so as not to accuse someone of any type of sexual assault) and an unfortunate coincidence resulted in someone being wrongly connected to the incident.

You seem not to believe her because she was a weirdo at age 16, because her parents had money and because she is, in your words, an "entitlement activist." That's your business, I guess, although I don't really see the connection. I also don't know why so many people consider it a negative personality trait to have inherited wealth and social status and also care about social issues (this was particularly amusing when the source of the negativity was The National Review), but again that's their business.

I think that's the issue. Look, we're misfiring. If I'm "Barry," I'm a mixture of pantagrapher's (not that he agrees with me) denial and vociferousness, and there's also a lawsuit coming right down the pike for future damages to my reputation, regardless of phone call or any other such overtures.

Apparently so, because I also said before that if I was Barry I'd sue too.

 

[rockaction]

Why provide any identifying details at all? For dramatic purposes? Because her readership would be liberal and the cowboy boots / talk radio / conservative aspects would appeal to their red meat mindsets?

Yeah, I know MT and IK are really thoughtful guys. But very few people who have been to very small, uber-liberal universities know what it's like to be identified as conservative or libertarian among the general inhabitants of said universities. I've had friends know I was against the drug war, a whole host of stuff, joke about my "fascism." I didn't like it. I think she knows what she did. I don't like it. I hope her ### gets sued badly.

eta* This is a person, who in her personal life, asked people to come to a barefoot high-school food party because she was a vegan and couldn't have leather in the house. This is from the NYT when she was sixteen. It was reported on. When she was sixteen. There's something up here.

Like I always say: if you were a weirdo when you were 16 and your parents are wealthy and semi-famous, you're probably lying about your sexual assault.

Seriously though: by providing irrelevant details about her life that you know some of this forum's readers will react negatively to, you're doing exactly what Saints (and I assume you, by your agreement with his post) accuse her of doing.

No, I'm saying I don't like her. What I think is that her life of constant entitlement activism should give one pause about her claims, especially given the dubious literary and factual elements of her "memoir," her weird admission/non-admission within said text of playing fast and loose with facts, going so far as to pen a "memoir" that is a a non-memoir, a weird blend of activism and narrative over fact, and the willingness to use certain facts in real life to paint a picture of an assault that named/didn't name a particular person that did have/didn't have these characteristics.

What I'm saying is what other people have said better than me: You don't just accuse somebody of rape.

Well then I suppose it's good that didn't accuse someone of rape. To accuse someone of something you have to name them or provide details sufficient for people to know who you're talking about. She retold her own story as part of a memoir, which shouldn't bother anyone According to her she tried to keep the other parties anonymous (presumably so as not to accuse someone of any type of sexual assault) and an unfortunate coincidence resulted in someone being wrongly connected to the incident.

You seem not to believe her because she was a weirdo at age 16, because her parents had money and because she is, in your words, an "entitlement activist." That's your business, I guess, although I don't really see the connection. I also don't know why so many people consider it a negative personality trait to have inherited wealth and social status and also care about social issues (this was particularly amusing when the source of the negativity was The National Review), but again that's their business.

I think that's the issue. Look, we're misfiring. If I'm "Barry," I'm a mixture of pantagrapher's (not that he agrees with me) denial and vociferousness, and there's also a lawsuit coming right down the pike for future damages to my reputation, regardless of phone call or any other such overtures.

Apparently so, because I also said before that if I was Barry I'd sue too.

I think we're misfiring over her motive about alluding to specific details in the memoir, which I think is bad motive and politically-motivated. You think she's been sexually assaulted, and that her motive in releasing the details about the guy's political affiliation isn't bad and that it's coincidence. We disagree. If you take away the bolded, I don't think our positions are mutually exclusive.

 

[Sweet J]

FTR, I think "I consent to have sex with you as long as you use a condom" is a valid position to take. So if someone surreptitiously removes a condom, that removes the consent. I dunno how the #### you could take the condom off without her knowing, but that's another discussion I guess.

I think that is a pretty interesting discussion to have. I'm as pro-women and anti-harrassment, anti-sexual abuse, pro-consent guy there is, but I can't get my head around "I only consented to sex with you if you use a condom, so if you sneak it off during sex, it is something that I did not consent to and therefore rape."

The closest analogy I can come to is a guy who lies about having a vasectimy. She only "consents" to sex bc she thought he couldn't get her pregnant. Is that rape if it turns out he lied?

What about lieing about not having an STD. If she shows up with the Clap a week later, was she raped?

It gets rediculous because you used the same standard for men, right? "She told me she was on the pill. I only consented to sex with the understanding she was on the pill. Therefore she raped me."

Lying to get a girl in bed is a time-honored tradition, but whether or not it constitute rape or some other crime (or tort) clearly depends on the lie.

"Yes, this is my Porsche. I'm totally not just borrowing it from my dad."

[SIZE=14.44px]"I absolutely will wear a condom."[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.44px]"I can dunk a basketball off of two feet without a running start."[/SIZE]

"I will not leave immediately afterwards to go home and adjust my fantasy football lineup. I don't even play fantasy football!"

"I don't have any STDs."

"I love you."

And so on.

I think I have a hard time calling any of those things rape. If a woman consents, even if the consent was obtained by dishonest means, I'd call it something other than rape. That's not to say that it can't be battery or some other legally sanctionable offense. If you falsely state that you don't have AIDs, or even if you neglect to affirmatively disclose that you do have AIDs, I'm down with civil and criminal penalties for battery or whatever.

In any case, whether we call it rape or something else, I think it's clear that certain types of lies should remain legally (not to be confused with morally) okay, while other types of lies should be legally punishable, and there may be some interesting gray areas in trying to sort out which lies fall into which category.

Good post. Agreed.

 

[Sweet J]

An interesting thought experience for me: What if one of the Palin girls (or some similar polarizing conservative figure) said that 6 years ago she was raped by Marcus, the black fiscal liberal with dreadlocks who went to Oral Roberts university. And it turns out there was, indeed, a black guy named Marcus who went to Oral Roberts University, and he was known to be, I don't know, a Keynseian liberal. But he was bald, no dreadlocks.

Would I think differently than I do here? I dunno.

 

[Baloney Sandwich]

An interesting thought experience for me: What if one of the Palin girls (or some similar polarizing conservative figure) said that 6 years ago she was raped by Marcus, the black fiscal liberal with dreadlocks who went to Oral Roberts university. And it turns out there was, indeed, a black guy named Marcus who went to Oral Roberts University, and he was known to be, I don't know, a Keynseian liberal. But he was bald, no dreadlocks.

Would I think differently than I do here? I dunno.

After her graduation, Sarah returned to Alaska and worked on the sports desk of Anchorage television station KTUU. On weekends, she'd sometimes appear on camera, delivering sports reports during the 10:00 PM newscast.

Her attitude toward people of color was evolving. In Anchorage, she even dated black men. A friend says, "Sarah and her sisters had a fetish for black guys for a while."

Each year, over Thanksgiving weekend, the University of Alaska hosted a basketball tournament called the Great Alaska Shootout, featuring some of the country's best teams. In 1987, one of the top squads to visit Anchorage was the University of Michigan, led by six-foot-eight junior Glen Rice, number 41.

Rice would lead Michigan to the NCAA Championship in 1989, appearing on the cover of Sports Illustrated and setting a scoring record for the NCAA tournament that stands today. After graduating from Michigan as the school's all-time leading scorer, he starred in the NBA for fifteen years.

Whether in her professional capacity as a sports reporter or simply as a basketball groupie who'd begun to find black men attractive, Sarah linked up with the Rice during the weekend tournament. One friend recalls, "They went out. I suspect it was more than that. I can't say I know they had sex, but I remember Sarah feeling pretty good that she'd been with a black basketball star."

In one version of the story, Sarah's encounter with Rice took place in her sister Molly's dorm room at the University of Alaska Anchorage. "She hauled his ### down," a friend says, "but she freaked out afterward. Hysterical, crying, totally flipped out. The thing that people remember is her freak-out, how completely crazy she got: I ####ed a black man! She was just horrified. She couldn't believe she'd done it."

Glen Rice remembers the weekend quite differently. When I spoke to him by telephone in March 2011, he said, "I remember it as if it was yesterday. She was a sweetheart. I met her almost as soon as we got out there."

Rice does not recall being in a university dorm room. "We hung out mostly at the hotel where the team was staying," he told me. "We just hit off. In a short time, we got to know a lot about one another. It was all done in a respectful way, nothing hurried."

"So you never had the feeling she felt bad about having sex with a black guy?" I asked.

"No, no, no, nothing like that," Rice said. "Even after I left Alaska, we talked a lot on the phone. I think right up until the time she got married. She was a gorgeous woman. Super nice. I was blown away by her. Afterward, she was a big crush that I had. I talked about her for a long time. Only good things. She was a well-rounded young lady. It's amazing the way that's stayed with me. I think the utmost of her and I felt that way from the start."

 

[tommyboy]

we should probably waterboard Sarah palin now

 

[Sweet J]

An interesting thought experience for me: What if one of the Palin girls (or some similar polarizing conservative figure) said that 6 years ago she was raped by Marcus, the black fiscal liberal with dreadlocks who went to Oral Roberts university. And it turns out there was, indeed, a black guy named Marcus who went to Oral Roberts University, and he was known to be, I don't know, a Keynseian liberal. But he was bald, no dreadlocks.

Would I think differently than I do here? I dunno.

After her graduation, Sarah returned to Alaska and worked on the sports desk of Anchorage television station KTUU. On weekends, she'd sometimes appear on camera, delivering sports reports during the 10:00 PM newscast.

Her attitude toward people of color was evolving. In Anchorage, she even dated black men. A friend says, "Sarah and her sisters had a fetish for black guys for a while."

Each year, over Thanksgiving weekend, the University of Alaska hosted a basketball tournament called the Great Alaska Shootout, featuring some of the country's best teams. In 1987, one of the top squads to visit Anchorage was the University of Michigan, led by six-foot-eight junior Glen Rice, number 41.

Rice would lead Michigan to the NCAA Championship in 1989, appearing on the cover of Sports Illustrated and setting a scoring record for the NCAA tournament that stands today. After graduating from Michigan as the school's all-time leading scorer, he starred in the NBA for fifteen years.

Whether in her professional capacity as a sports reporter or simply as a basketball groupie who'd begun to find black men attractive, Sarah linked up with the Rice during the weekend tournament. One friend recalls, "They went out. I suspect it was more than that. I can't say I know they had sex, but I remember Sarah feeling pretty good that she'd been with a black basketball star."

In one version of the story, Sarah's encounter with Rice took place in her sister Molly's dorm room at the University of Alaska Anchorage. "She hauled his ### down," a friend says, "but she freaked out afterward. Hysterical, crying, totally flipped out. The thing that people remember is her freak-out, how completely crazy she got: I ####ed a black man! She was just horrified. She couldn't believe she'd done it."

Glen Rice remembers the weekend quite differently. When I spoke to him by telephone in March 2011, he said, "I remember it as if it was yesterday. She was a sweetheart. I met her almost as soon as we got out there."

Rice does not recall being in a university dorm room. "We hung out mostly at the hotel where the team was staying," he told me. "We just hit off. In a short time, we got to know a lot about one another. It was all done in a respectful way, nothing hurried."

"So you never had the feeling she felt bad about having sex with a black guy?" I asked.

"No, no, no, nothing like that," Rice said. "Even after I left Alaska, we talked a lot on the phone. I think right up until the time she got married. She was a gorgeous woman. Super nice. I was blown away by her. Afterward, she was a big crush that I had. I talked about her for a long time. Only good things. She was a well-rounded young lady. It's amazing the way that's stayed with me. I think the utmost of her and I felt that way from the start."

Good golly. What's that from?

 

[IvanKaramazov]

An interesting thought experience for me: What if one of the Palin girls (or some similar polarizing conservative figure) said that 6 years ago she was raped by Marcus, the black fiscal liberal with dreadlocks who went to Oral Roberts university. And it turns out there was, indeed, a black guy named Marcus who went to Oral Roberts University, and he was known to be, I don't know, a Keynseian liberal. But he was bald, no dreadlocks.

Would I think differently than I do here? I dunno.

After her graduation, Sarah returned to Alaska and worked on the sports desk of Anchorage television station KTUU. On weekends, she'd sometimes appear on camera, delivering sports reports during the 10:00 PM newscast.

Her attitude toward people of color was evolving. In Anchorage, she even dated black men. A friend says, "Sarah and her sisters had a fetish for black guys for a while."

Each year, over Thanksgiving weekend, the University of Alaska hosted a basketball tournament called the Great Alaska Shootout, featuring some of the country's best teams. In 1987, one of the top squads to visit Anchorage was the University of Michigan, led by six-foot-eight junior Glen Rice, number 41.

Rice would lead Michigan to the NCAA Championship in 1989, appearing on the cover of Sports Illustrated and setting a scoring record for the NCAA tournament that stands today. After graduating from Michigan as the school's all-time leading scorer, he starred in the NBA for fifteen years.

Whether in her professional capacity as a sports reporter or simply as a basketball groupie who'd begun to find black men attractive, Sarah linked up with the Rice during the weekend tournament. One friend recalls, "They went out. I suspect it was more than that. I can't say I know they had sex, but I remember Sarah feeling pretty good that she'd been with a black basketball star."

In one version of the story, Sarah's encounter with Rice took place in her sister Molly's dorm room at the University of Alaska Anchorage. "She hauled his ### down," a friend says, "but she freaked out afterward. Hysterical, crying, totally flipped out. The thing that people remember is her freak-out, how completely crazy she got: I ####ed a black man! She was just horrified. She couldn't believe she'd done it."

Glen Rice remembers the weekend quite differently. When I spoke to him by telephone in March 2011, he said, "I remember it as if it was yesterday. She was a sweetheart. I met her almost as soon as we got out there."

Rice does not recall being in a university dorm room. "We hung out mostly at the hotel where the team was staying," he told me. "We just hit off. In a short time, we got to know a lot about one another. It was all done in a respectful way, nothing hurried."

"So you never had the feeling she felt bad about having sex with a black guy?" I asked.

"No, no, no, nothing like that," Rice said. "Even after I left Alaska, we talked a lot on the phone. I think right up until the time she got married. She was a gorgeous woman. Super nice. I was blown away by her. Afterward, she was a big crush that I had. I talked about her for a long time. Only good things. She was a well-rounded young lady. It's amazing the way that's stayed with me. I think the utmost of her and I felt that way from the start."

Good golly. What's that from?

We did a thread on this story when it broke. I still chuckle a little at the guy who said that Palin was on him like white on rice.

Edit: Credit goes to Leroy Hoard.

 

[TobiasFunke]

An interesting thought experience for me: What if one of the Palin girls (or some similar polarizing conservative figure) said that 6 years ago she was raped by Marcus, the black fiscal liberal with dreadlocks who went to Oral Roberts university. And it turns out there was, indeed, a black guy named Marcus who went to Oral Roberts University, and he was known to be, I don't know, a Keynseian liberal. But he was bald, no dreadlocks.

Would I think differently than I do here? I dunno.

After her graduation, Sarah returned to Alaska and worked on the sports desk of Anchorage television station KTUU. On weekends, she'd sometimes appear on camera, delivering sports reports during the 10:00 PM newscast.

Her attitude toward people of color was evolving. In Anchorage, she even dated black men. A friend says, "Sarah and her sisters had a fetish for black guys for a while."

Each year, over Thanksgiving weekend, the University of Alaska hosted a basketball tournament called the Great Alaska Shootout, featuring some of the country's best teams. In 1987, one of the top squads to visit Anchorage was the University of Michigan, led by six-foot-eight junior Glen Rice, number 41.

Rice would lead Michigan to the NCAA Championship in 1989, appearing on the cover of Sports Illustrated and setting a scoring record for the NCAA tournament that stands today. After graduating from Michigan as the school's all-time leading scorer, he starred in the NBA for fifteen years.

Whether in her professional capacity as a sports reporter or simply as a basketball groupie who'd begun to find black men attractive, Sarah linked up with the Rice during the weekend tournament. One friend recalls, "They went out. I suspect it was more than that. I can't say I know they had sex, but I remember Sarah feeling pretty good that she'd been with a black basketball star."

In one version of the story, Sarah's encounter with Rice took place in her sister Molly's dorm room at the University of Alaska Anchorage. "She hauled his ### down," a friend says, "but she freaked out afterward. Hysterical, crying, totally flipped out. The thing that people remember is her freak-out, how completely crazy she got: I ####ed a black man! She was just horrified. She couldn't believe she'd done it."

Glen Rice remembers the weekend quite differently. When I spoke to him by telephone in March 2011, he said, "I remember it as if it was yesterday. She was a sweetheart. I met her almost as soon as we got out there."

Rice does not recall being in a university dorm room. "We hung out mostly at the hotel where the team was staying," he told me. "We just hit off. In a short time, we got to know a lot about one another. It was all done in a respectful way, nothing hurried."

"So you never had the feeling she felt bad about having sex with a black guy?" I asked.

"No, no, no, nothing like that," Rice said. "Even after I left Alaska, we talked a lot on the phone. I think right up until the time she got married. She was a gorgeous woman. Super nice. I was blown away by her. Afterward, she was a big crush that I had. I talked about her for a long time. Only good things. She was a well-rounded young lady. It's amazing the way that's stayed with me. I think the utmost of her and I felt that way from the start."

Good golly. What's that from?

We did a thread on this story when it broke. I still chuckle a little at the guy who said that Palin was on him like white on rice.

Edit: Credit goes to Leroy Hoard.

Amazing. Would have been a forum record for likes if we'd have the feature at the time.

 

[Zow]

 

[chauncey]

Here is the Breitbart article detailing the claims in the book and their investigative journalism that followed.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Hollywood/2014/12/03/investigation-lena-dunhams-republican-rapist-story-falls-apart-under-scrutiny

I don't remember the link that had the actual excerpts.

 

[rockaction]

 

[SacramentoBob]

An interesting thought experience for me: What if one of the Palin girls (or some similar polarizing conservative figure) said that 6 years ago she was raped by Marcus, the black fiscal liberal with dreadlocks who went to Oral Roberts university. And it turns out there was, indeed, a black guy named Marcus who went to Oral Roberts University, and he was known to be, I don't know, a Keynseian liberal. But he was bald, no dreadlocks.

Would I think differently than I do here? I dunno.

After her graduation, Sarah returned to Alaska and worked on the sports desk of Anchorage television station KTUU. On weekends, she'd sometimes appear on camera, delivering sports reports during the 10:00 PM newscast.

Her attitude toward people of color was evolving. In Anchorage, she even dated black men. A friend says, "Sarah and her sisters had a fetish for black guys for a while."

Each year, over Thanksgiving weekend, the University of Alaska hosted a basketball tournament called the Great Alaska Shootout, featuring some of the country's best teams. In 1987, one of the top squads to visit Anchorage was the University of Michigan, led by six-foot-eight junior Glen Rice, number 41.

Rice would lead Michigan to the NCAA Championship in 1989, appearing on the cover of Sports Illustrated and setting a scoring record for the NCAA tournament that stands today. After graduating from Michigan as the school's all-time leading scorer, he starred in the NBA for fifteen years.

Whether in her professional capacity as a sports reporter or simply as a basketball groupie who'd begun to find black men attractive, Sarah linked up with the Rice during the weekend tournament. One friend recalls, "They went out. I suspect it was more than that. I can't say I know they had sex, but I remember Sarah feeling pretty good that she'd been with a black basketball star."

In one version of the story, Sarah's encounter with Rice took place in her sister Molly's dorm room at the University of Alaska Anchorage. "She hauled his ### down," a friend says, "but she freaked out afterward. Hysterical, crying, totally flipped out. The thing that people remember is her freak-out, how completely crazy she got: I ####ed a black man! She was just horrified. She couldn't believe she'd done it."

Glen Rice remembers the weekend quite differently. When I spoke to him by telephone in March 2011, he said, "I remember it as if it was yesterday. She was a sweetheart. I met her almost as soon as we got out there."

Rice does not recall being in a university dorm room. "We hung out mostly at the hotel where the team was staying," he told me. "We just hit off. In a short time, we got to know a lot about one another. It was all done in a respectful way, nothing hurried."

"So you never had the feeling she felt bad about having sex with a black guy?" I asked.

"No, no, no, nothing like that," Rice said. "Even after I left Alaska, we talked a lot on the phone. I think right up until the time she got married. She was a gorgeous woman. Super nice. I was blown away by her. Afterward, she was a big crush that I had. I talked about her for a long time. Only good things. She was a well-rounded young lady. It's amazing the way that's stayed with me. I think the utmost of her and I felt that way from the start."

Good golly. What's that from?

We did a thread on this story when it broke. I still chuckle a little at the guy who said that Palin was on him like white on rice.

Edit: Credit goes to Leroy Hoard.

Amazing. Would have been a forum record for likes if we'd have the feature at the time.

What's stopping you?

 

[TobiasFunke]

We did a thread on this story when it broke. I still chuckle a little at the guy who said that Palin was on him like white on rice.

Edit: Credit goes to Leroy Hoard.

Amazing. Would have been a forum record for likes if we'd have the feature at the time.

What's stopping you?

My own stupidity, of course.

 

[FlapJacks]

Here's Dunham's statement/apology.

Guessing there will be some sort of settlement as well. Hopefully everyone can now move on. Maybe people will show 10% of the concern for actual rape victims that they showed for a guy they thought was maybe wrongly accused of rape but wasn't really.

That's a non-apology. She's "sorry about all he [barry] has experienced" but explicitly absolves herself of any fault and lays the blame with everybody else.

I barely know who Lena Dunham is. I know she exists and she has a television show that is apparently widely-watched and controversial. That's literally it. Everything else I know about her I've learned from this little episode, and I only know about her book and her false rape allegation because it happened to get linked up with the UVA story. What I do know, though, is that if you're a celebrity and you accuse somebody of raping you, you can't really come back in good faith and criticize journalists for trying to track down the guy who you accused of a serious felony. That's just stupid and shows a profound ignorance about the world works.

I haven't been following this thing very closely. I like Girls and think that Dunham is a talented writer. She also appears to be very self-absorbed and probably pretty annoying if you have to spend much time around her in real life. (I could easily be wrong about that; it's just the vibe I get. But I've never spent any time around her in real life to confirm it.)

I think you've correctly identified what she should have apologized for but did not. She should have taken extra precautions to make sure that nobody would mistake her pseudonym for a real name. She should have made it clearer that she was changing the details to make the identity of her attacker indiscernible. Her failure to do so was negligent, and she should have directly apologized to the real Barry for her mistake.

On the other hand, I think a lot of the criticism she's gotten for this has been off base. She made a mistake, but it appears to have been an innocent one -- caused by naivety and a lack of foresight, not caused by malice. (I guess it's possible that she had it out for the real Barry, but it seems rather unlikely if they'd never met.)

I'm not Barry, and he may have a different perspective, but from where I sit, Dunham's mistake seems pretty easy to forgive. It would even be easy to sympathize with, IMO, if only she seemed more genuinely sorry about it.

Giving the benefit of that doubt, I wouldn't characterize it as an "innocent mistake," but more as a reckless and callous action. A rape accusation is a loaded gun. Her insensitivity to this would make it difficult for many to sympathize....

 

[Steve Tasker]

One thing in Dunham's favor: She didn't get pregnant. Under the legitimate rape standard, I think this is an open and shut case of rape.

Times like this I wish we had a :gavel: smiley

 

[Baloney Sandwich]

UVA update:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/u-va-students-challenge-rolling-stone-account-of-attack/2014/12/10/ef345e42-7fcb-11e4-81fd-8c4814dfa9d7_story.html

 

[rockaction]

UVA update:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/u-va-students-challenge-rolling-stone-account-of-attack/2014/12/10/ef345e42-7fcb-11e4-81fd-8c4814dfa9d7_story.html

Just linked to another, of the fabulist variety.

And Dunham is coming under massive scrutiny from major media outlets.

http://reason.com/blog/2014/12/10/rolling-stones-uva-rape-story-just-took

 

[Baloney Sandwich]

Erdely on Stephen Glass:

http://www.upenn.edu/gazette/0104/0104arts02.html

Perhaps she will get a movie made in her lies and he can write a review

 

[Zow]

UVA update:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/u-va-students-challenge-rolling-stone-account-of-attack/2014/12/10/ef345e42-7fcb-11e4-81fd-8c4814dfa9d7_story.html

Call immediate BS on Randall. He was pursued but turned her down??

 

[tommyboy]

"Jackie's" Friends: Yeah, She Made Up This Guy She Had a Date With That Night —AceCooke excerpts a Washington Post piece which is absolutely damning, and, as he says, if not the final nail in the coffin, at least the one that pins the lid shut.

The three friends who heard her claims the night they allegedly occurred now say that the story presented in Rolling Stone is very unlike the story they heard that night.

The three said Jackie did not specifically identify a fraternity that night.
. . .
Okay, that's problematic, but we already sort of knew that, given that another friend had to point out the fraternity and tell "Jackie" "That's where you were raped."

They said there are mounting inconsistencies with the original narrative in the magazine. The students also expressed suspicions about Jackie's allegations from that night.
They said the name she provided as that of her date did not match anyone at the university, and U-Va. officials confirmed to The Post that no one by that name has attended the school.


And photographs that were texted to one of the friends showing her date that night actually were pictures depicting one of Jackie's high school classmates in Northern Virginia. That man, now a junior at a university in another state, confirmed that the photographs are of him and said he barely knew Jackie and hasn't been to Charlottesville for at least six years.

There's more. Sabrina Rubin Erdley -- who can now be credibly accused of being a straight-up fabulist -- claimed previously that one of the friends, "Randall," refused to be interviewed, citing, she claims, "loyalty to his frat."

Randall says he was not asked for an interview by Erdley at all but if he had been asked he would have agreed.

This is a major, major problem for Erdley. If true -- and I am finding it difficult to think of reasons to give Erdley the benefit of the doubt -- this is not a case of "Jackie" misleading her, but of Erdley on her own behalf lying to readers and the public.

The article's writer, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, did not respond to requests for comment this week.
You don't say.

It's an interesting, and I'm sure entirely unrelated, quirk of history that Sabrina Rubin Erdley was a colleague of Steven Glass' on the Daily Pennsylvanian newspaper. Both were UPenn, Class of '94.

 

[Zow]

Cliff's notes on Stephen Glass?

 

[trader jake]

Cliff's notes on Stephen Glass?

He looks a lot like a young Darth Vader.

 

[Todd Andrews]

UVA update:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/u-va-students-challenge-rolling-stone-account-of-attack/2014/12/10/ef345e42-7fcb-11e4-81fd-8c4814dfa9d7_story.html

wow

 

[jonessed]

It will be interesting to find out much of this was purported by Jackie and how much was purported by Erdely.

 

[IvanKaramazov]

UVA update:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/u-va-students-challenge-rolling-stone-account-of-attack/2014/12/10/ef345e42-7fcb-11e4-81fd-8c4814dfa9d7_story.html

wow

Both Jackie and the reporter come off looking horribly here.

 

[Todd Andrews]

UVA update:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/u-va-students-challenge-rolling-stone-account-of-attack/2014/12/10/ef345e42-7fcb-11e4-81fd-8c4814dfa9d7_story.html

wow

Both Jackie and the reporter come off looking horribly here.

Really, really bad. Unbelievably bad.

 

[Baloney Sandwich]

UVA update:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/u-va-students-

challenge-rolling-stone-account-of-attack/2014/12/10/ef345e42-7fcb-11e4-81fd-8c4814dfa9d7_story.html

wow

Both Jackie and the reporter come off looking

horribly here.

Don't leave out Rolling Stone

 

[IvanKaramazov]

UVA update:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/u-va-students-

challenge-rolling-stone-account-of-attack/2014/12/10/ef345e42-7fcb-11e4-81fd-8c4814dfa9d7_story.html

wow

Both Jackie and the reporter come off looking

horribly here.

Don't leave out Rolling Stone

Oh yeah. Them too.

This is sounding more and more like a messed up young person looking for attention (or something -- I'm not comfortable psychoanalyzing here but this story seems now to be completely fabricated and this seems the most charitable explanation), a reporter pushing an ideological agenda, and an editorial staff that fell victim to ideological bias.

I'm fairly comfortable in classifying myself as a skeptic/critic of the "rape culture" narrative. I have absolutely no doubt that rape and other forms of sexual assaults occur regularly on college campuses, but I'm deeply troubled by the way that universities are increasingly forced to deal with these situations under the DOE's interpretation of Title IX, I think false or mistaken (not the same thing) rape accusations occur at least moderately often, I think many of the statistics that folks throw around about this subject have no validity, and I really hate the brain-dead approach that extremists take of automatically believing every claim of sexual assault that comes their way and using loaded terminology like "survivor" that gets attached to no other crime besides attempted homicide. I also dislike the tendency to group all sorts of grey-area at best sexual issues under the umbrella of rape, like slipping off a condom halfway through.

So in many respects, I'm primed to be the bizarro version of Rolling Stone. This particular story of a crazy (?) girl who made it all up and an ideologically-driven reporter and a magazine that was hoping to tap into the ideological trend of the day just sounds so perfect. Just like the Emily Yoffe story that's floating around about evil/incompetent college administrators who set up Kafkaesque -- in the true sense of the word if you read her counter-anecdote -- proceedings to railroad young men, resonates with me because it matches up with what I sort of think already.

Which is why I need to file this away and remember that I fell for Rolling Stone's story to begin with, so how easy would it be for me to fall for other stories that are even more agreeable to my biases?

 

[SaintsInDome2006]

UVA update:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/u-va-students-challenge-rolling-stone-account-of-attack/2014/12/10/ef345e42-7fcb-11e4-81fd-8c4814dfa9d7_story.html

wow

Both Jackie and the reporter come off looking horribly here.

Horrible? Sounds worse than horrible.

 

[SaintsInDome2006]

In an interview Tuesday, U-Va. President Teresa A. Sullivan said her administration will continue to cooperate with authorities to investigate the case; she wants the university community to focus on prevention of sexual assault.

This woman is out of her mind. She is reacting to what increasingly looks like a fictitious event.

 

[SacramentoBob]

Right on cue, we're back from debating Dunham to UVA.

 

[Todd Andrews]

UVA update:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/u-va-students-

challenge-rolling-stone-account-of-attack/2014/12/10/ef345e42-7fcb-11e4-81fd-8c4814dfa9d7_story.html

wow

Both Jackie and the reporter come off looking

horribly here.

Don't leave out Rolling Stone

Oh yeah. Them too.

This is sounding more and more like a messed up young person looking for attention (or something -- I'm not comfortable psychoanalyzing here but this story seems now to be completely fabricated and this seems the most charitable explanation), a reporter pushing an ideological agenda, and an editorial staff that fell victim to ideological bias.

I'm fairly comfortable in classifying myself as a skeptic/critic of the "rape culture" narrative. I have absolutely no doubt that rape and other forms of sexual assaults occur regularly on college campuses, but I'm deeply troubled by the way that universities are increasingly forced to deal with these situations under the DOE's interpretation of Title IX, I think false or mistaken (not the same thing) rape accusations occur at least moderately often, I think many of the statistics that folks throw around about this subject have no validity, and I really hate the brain-dead approach that extremists take of automatically believing every claim of sexual assault that comes their way and using loaded terminology like "survivor" that gets attached to no other crime besides attempted homicide. I also dislike the tendency to group all sorts of grey-area at best sexual issues under the umbrella of rape, like slipping off a condom halfway through.

So in many respects, I'm primed to be the bizarro version of Rolling Stone. This particular story of a crazy (?) girl who made it all up and an ideologically-driven reporter and a magazine that was hoping to tap into the ideological trend of the day just sounds so perfect. Just like the Emily Yoffe story that's floating around about evil/incompetent college administrators who set up Kafkaesque -- in the true sense of the word if you read her counter-anecdote -- proceedings to railroad young men, resonates with me because it matches up with what I sort of think already.

Which is why I need to file this away and remember that I fell for Rolling Stone's story to begin with, so how easy would it be for me to fall for other stories that are even more agreeable to my biases?

I dont know about any of the statistics, and I am already skeptical of everything and everyone, but Jackie seems like a straight up loon. And the reporter is just as bad because she gave her a megaphone and helped her focus and broadcast her lunacy.

 

[Steve Tasker]

UVA update:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/u-va-students-challenge-rolling-stone-account-of-attack/2014/12/10/ef345e42-7fcb-11e4-81fd-8c4814dfa9d7_story.html

This is all very Manti Te'o-esque.

 

[sublimeone]

An interesting thought experience for me: What if one of the Palin girls (or some similar polarizing conservative figure) said that 6 years ago she was raped by Marcus, the black fiscal liberal with dreadlocks who went to Oral Roberts university. And it turns out there was, indeed, a black guy named Marcus who went to Oral Roberts University, and he was known to be, I don't know, a Keynseian liberal. But he was bald, no dreadlocks.

Would I think differently than I do here? I dunno.

Exactly. Anyone with an ounce of intellectual honesty knows Dunham had a motive. She's now been exposed as just another left wing nut willing to accuse a man of rape for ideological points. Sick.

 

[chauncey]

UVA update:http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/u-va-students-challenge-rolling-stone-account-of-attack/2014/12/10/ef345e42-7fcb-11e4-81fd-8c4814dfa9d7_story.html

Call immediate BS on Randall. He was pursued but turned her down??

My first thought too. He is either lying, gay, a complete #####.... Or maybe he saw the crazy in her and didn't want to get involved.What kind of crazy do you have to be to make up an imaginary suitor, complete with stolen fb pics of a guy in hs who barely knew you and fake text conversations? All in an attempt to apparently get the attention of a friend who wasn't interested in you.

My guess is she thought her "rape" story would garner sympathy from Randall that she would be able to manipulate into attraction and lock him down. When that plan didn't work she spiraled into depression that semester and only found solace in the attention she got from others based on her being a "victim" of "rape". She accepted her own fiction as truth and probably still does to this day.

 

[pantherclub]

UVA update:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/u-va-students-challenge-rolling-stone-account-of-attack/2014/12/10/ef345e42-7fcb-11e4-81fd-8c4814dfa9d7_story.html

This is all very Manti Te'o-esque.

Jackies gay?

 

[parasaurolophus]

UVA update:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/u-va-students-

challenge-rolling-stone-account-of-attack/2014/12/10/ef345e42-7fcb-11e4-81fd-8c4814dfa9d7_story.html

wow

Both Jackie and the reporter come off looking

horribly here.

Don't leave out Rolling Stone

Oh yeah. Them too.

This is sounding more and more like a messed up young person looking for attention (or something -- I'm not comfortable psychoanalyzing here but this story seems now to be completely fabricated and this seems the most charitable explanation), a reporter pushing an ideological agenda, and an editorial staff that fell victim to ideological bias.

I'm fairly comfortable in classifying myself as a skeptic/critic of the "rape culture" narrative. I have absolutely no doubt that rape and other forms of sexual assaults occur regularly on college campuses, but I'm deeply troubled by the way that universities are increasingly forced to deal with these situations under the DOE's interpretation of Title IX, I think false or mistaken (not the same thing) rape accusations occur at least moderately often, I think many of the statistics that folks throw around about this subject have no validity, and I really hate the brain-dead approach that extremists take of automatically believing every claim of sexual assault that comes their way and using loaded terminology like "survivor" that gets attached to no other crime besides attempted homicide. I also dislike the tendency to group all sorts of grey-area at best sexual issues under the umbrella of rape, like slipping off a condom halfway through.

So in many respects, I'm primed to be the bizarro version of Rolling Stone. This particular story of a crazy (?) girl who made it all up and an ideologically-driven reporter and a magazine that was hoping to tap into the ideological trend of the day just sounds so perfect. Just like the Emily Yoffe story that's floating around about evil/incompetent college administrators who set up Kafkaesque -- in the true sense of the word if you read her counter-anecdote -- proceedings to railroad young men, resonates with me because it matches up with what I sort of think already.

Which is why I need to file this away and remember that I fell for Rolling Stone's story to begin with, so how easy would it be for me to fall for other stories that are even more agreeable to my biases?

I dont know about any of the statistics, and I am already skeptical of everything and everyone, but Jackie seems like a straight up loon. And the reporter is just as bad because she gave her a megaphone and helped her focus and broadcast her lunacy.

Anybody else think the reporter knew it was fake? I do. She literally did zero homework. So she is either incredibly lazy and literally the worst reporter ever or knew that if she didnt do any homework she couldnt be accused of any sort of cover up of facts.

 

[pantherclub]

She had to know it was fake. Way too over the top to be real.

 

[pantagrapher]

“The main message we want to come out of all this is that sexual assault is a problem nationwide that we need to act in preventing. It has never been about one story. This is about the thousands of women and men who have been victims of sexual assault and have felt silenced not only by their perpetrators, but by society’s misunderstanding and stigmatization of rape.”

This is exactly why I originally said I found it sad that well-meaning people were clinging to Jackie's story. Now they can't let it go, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that it didn't happen. And it's making them look silly. And it's not helping their cause and could be doing the opposite.

Advocates for sexual assault victims need to acknowledge that false rape accusations happen, and devote part of their cause to recognizing the pathology behind it and helping people who feel that's the only way they can be heard. This stubborn denial is counterproductive, and it actually leaves women like Jackie who probably need help in a worse predicament because it adds tremendous pressure to what probably started out as a small lie.

 

[SacramentoBob]

How long before Dunham tries the "the rape was made up, but I hope it starts a dialogue in this country about America's woman-hating rape-culture" deflection?

She'll skip that and go straight to "I'm being attacked by pro-rape victim blamers!"

Good call. Looks like the UVA story is going the way I predicted though.

 

[TobiasFunke]

“The main message we want to come out of all this is that sexual assault is a problem nationwide that we need to act in preventing. It has never been about one story. This is about the thousands of women and men who have been victims of sexual assault and have felt silenced not only by their perpetrators, but by society’s misunderstanding and stigmatization of rape.”

This is exactly why I originally said I found it sad that well-meaning people were clinging to Jackie's story. Now they can't let it go, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that it didn't happen. And it's making them look silly. And it's not helping their cause and could be doing the opposite.

Advocates for sexual assault victims need to acknowledge that false rape accusations happen, and devote part of their cause to recognizing the pathology behind it and helping people who feel that's the only way they can be heard. This stubborn denial is counterproductive, and it actually leaves women like Jackie who probably need help in a worse predicament because it adds tremendous pressure to what probably started out as a small lie.

I haven't heard many people clinging to Jackie's story- are there a lot of people doing that?

Not to diminish the importance of the sexual assault/false accusations angle, but I also don't see how Rolling Stone survives this, which is kind of a big story too. They have completely lost their credibility.