This Washington Post article is everywhere today, and with good reason. I just want to catch up anyone who may have missed it.
It appears that the fakery we’ve been discussing in the Rolling Stone / U-Va rape case is worse than we thought, and may have come from both “Jackie” (the alleged rape victim) and Sabrina Rubin Erdely (the Rolling Stone writer who turns out to be a past writing associate of the infamous fabulist, Stephen Glass).
First, a bit about Jackie’s seeming fakery. Going by the WaPo article, it’s possible that she invented her admirer “Drew”, whom Rolling Stone identified as her rapist:
Jackie told her three friends that she accepted the upperclassman’s invitation for a dinner date on Friday, Sept. 28, 2012.
Curious about Jackie’s date, the friends said that they tried to find the student on a U-Va. database and social media but couldn’t. Andy, Cindy and Randall all said they never met the student in person. Before Jackie’s date, the friends became suspicious that perhaps they hadn’t really been in contact with the chemistry student [via text messages to “his” number which Jackie had given the friends] at all, they said.
U-Va. officials told The Post that no student with the name Jackie provided to her friends as her date and attacker in 2012 had ever enrolled at the university.
Randall provided The Post with pictures that Jackie’s purported date had sent of himself by text message in 2012. The Post identified the person in the pictures and learned that his name does not match the one Jackie gave friends in 2012. In an interview, the man said he was Jackie’s high school classmate but “never really spoke to her.”
The man said he was never a U-Va. student and is not a member of any fraternity. Additionally, he said that he had not visited Charlottesville in at least six years and that he was in another state participating in an athletic event during the weekend of Sept. 28, 2012.
“I have nothing to do with it,” he said. He said it appears that the circulated photos were pulled from social media Web sites.
The WaPo article covers much other ground, including tidbits such as Erdely having painted Jackie’s friends as callous and as having refused Erdely’s interview requests, while the friends say that they had always encouraged Jackie to report her rape story to the police and that Erdely never made the slightest effort to interview any of them.
It looks as though 2 troubled women, acting somewhat separately (or deceiving each other), managed between them to cook up a fraternity-blaming hoax that liberals rushed to believe because it fit liberals’ prejudices. Or as V says, because it fit The Narrative that liberals are out to push. Get this:
U-Va. President Teresa A. Sullivan…wants the university community to focus on prevention of sexual assault.
That may be good, but perhaps Sullivan should have the U-Va. community also focus on *prevention of hoaxes and/or witch hunts* that only punish scads of innocent U-Va. students.
UPDATE: A link to Erdely putting down Stephen Glass. Your daily dose of irony.
If I was in the frat that was wrongly accused and persecuted for this hoax, I’d have lawyers who’d be willing to make sure I ended up owning a Virginia University and a magazine.
I sure would like to know what Stephen Glass is doing now. Don’t be surprised to find out he’s on the payroll for some organization like the Apollo Alliance or the Tides Foundation.
Normally not a big fan of litigation but I hope both the author of these lies and UVA get sued into the ground.
Let me go further. I hope that EVERY university who tries to handle a “rape case” that does not include a formal police investigation gets sued into the ground.
One group at UVa has taken action and issued a screed:
http://quaa-at-uva.tumblr.com/post/104779286642/statement-on-recent-events
This, again, points out the narcissism of the left. If the story fits what they believe, it must be true. If it is later shown to not be true, that doesn’t matter, the story behind the story is true.
This is why we get the Duke University LaCrosse team scandal from.
This is why we get DanRathergate.
This is why we get the Lois Lerners and the Grubers of the world.
Their blind believe in that what they are doing is right keeps them from examining their methods and motives.
#1: I sure would like to know what Stephen Glass is doing now.
See Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Glass
Perhaps now it’s time to name and shame this pseudonymous “Jackie”.
Erdely admits that she “shops for victims,” but apparently, only victims that fit The Narrative. People who lose their homes and businesses because of the predations of Big Government are not interesting to her.
http://twitchy.com/2014/12/10/uva-rape-story-writer-sabrina-erdely-admits-she-shops-for-victims-video/
An academic question. Rapists and liars are both bad. But who’s worse? The real-life rapist, or the person who pollutes the public discussion space and/or the justice system with false, witch-hunt accusations?
All the players in this scandal are tarnished. But the real disgrace in this whole scene is the U-V, accepting the narrative on prima facia evidence, and shutting down fraternity and sorority houses without conducting an investigation. The admin istration is setting a bad example for its students. Most of our colleges and universities are no longer a place to have free and open discussions but institurions of higher indoctrination into radical leftist ideology, political correctness, and activism for credit can be earned.
Once upon a time, the university acted in loco parentis which stemmed from the English common law to protect students from themselves by controlling their behavior “in the place of (the student’s) parent.”
There were no coed dorms, because sane parents don’t let boys bunk with their daughters. Now coed dorms come equipped with birth control and Sandra Fluke demands that it be provided free to the users.
Now the University has become a horny hive where the “adults” look the other way and students “govern” themselves. Had gang-rape been a part of initiation to a fraternity, what are the chances that the students in general were unaware of it?
The relationship between town and gown when it comes to policing is often a matter of public relations. Students don’t much like drinking-under-age or drunk-in-public confrontations with the townie cops. Campus cops try to keep their charges from having confrontations with the townie cops. Meanwhile, townie hoods stalk the university environs looking for an assortment of predatory activities which students simplistically fall prey to.
If this rape tale had legs, it should have been reported by the students who first learned of it. Those reports, apparently, do not exist. Why not? It is protecting the status quo of the student “culture” or some immature form of McCarthyism?
The president of the university has to get her diversity people, dean of students, student government, leaders of the minority activist groups, Greek leaders and officers of psychobabble together and do sand play and Lego therapy until they come up with an indecipherable plan of action.
After all, rape is not rape anymore. The act must be videotaped and each action must be agreed upon before the next action may proceed in order to escape the liability of intellectualized rape.
In light of this, how can the university even consider sanctioning any mixing of the sexes if there is any evidence that hormones may be in play?
What, then, does one expect the president of the institution to do?
I would say the narrative collapsed so much you are beating a dead horse except the main stream media has not picked up the story yet.
Hey jeff what do you think about this?
http://freebeacon.com/issues/treasury-department-seeking-survival-kits-for-bank-employees/
Stephen Glass, meet “George Tropicana”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEw7dN28nrU
Jeff did you see the latest John Corzine move?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-12-16/russian-ruble-hereby-halted-until-further-notice