Patterico's Pontifications

12/5/2014

That UVA Rape Claim: An Apology And Vindication

Filed under: General — Dana @ 7:07 pm



[guest post by Dana]

If you’ve been following the awful claims about the gang-rape of “Jackie” at the University of Virginia, you know that suspicions were raised about the validity of the story. In light of young men being accused of such an horrific act of brutality (and in light of the Duke University debacle), it was troubling that reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely chose, per Jackie’s request, not to interview the accused fraternity pledges. Given that, last week Jonah Goldberg had the audacity to express his own doubts about the story. (Ironically, his doubts were the things that it would seem any professional journalist with a hunger for truth and accuracy would not be able to shake off until solid explanations were given.) Anyway, Goldberg just wasn’t sold:

Rolling Stone has published an incredible story about a rape at the University of Virginia. The story has sent shock waves around the country.

But when I say the story is incredible, I mean that in the literal, largely abandoned sense of the word. It is not credible — I don’t believe it.

He also noted that the media had not challenged the story or done an independent investigation to corroborate the claims made, but instead jumped on the “rape epidemic” bandwagon. And ironically, a master’s candidate (journalist-in training!) at the USC Annegenberg School of Journalism took him to task for his ignorance and ill-informed berating that makes victims of sexual assault afraid to come forward in the first place.

However, vindication of a sort for Goldberg came today in the form of an apology from Rolling Stone to its readers:

In the months Erdely spent reporting the story, Jackie neither said nor did anything that made Erdely, and fact-checkers, question Jackie’s credibility. Her friends and rape activists on campus strongly supported Jackie’s account. She had spoken of the assault in campus forums. We reached out to both the local branch and the national leadership of the fraternity where Jackie said she was attacked. They responded that they couldn’t confirm or deny her story but had concerns about the evidence.

In the face of new information, there now appear to be discrepancies in Jackie’s account, and we have come to the conclusion that our trust in her was misplaced. We were trying to be sensitive to the unfair shame and humiliation many women feel after a sexual assault and now regret the decision to not contact the alleged assaulters to get their account. We are taking this seriously and apologize to anyone who was affected by the story.

In other news, Lena Dunham’s claim of being raped by a conservative at Oberlin College is not holding up under scrutiny.

–Dana

UPDATE: Last night, Rolling Stone quietly edited its apology to readers, without correction or mention of the update:

The new concluding paragraph acknowledged that the magazine made mistakes, then said “these mistakes are on Rolling Stone, not on Jackie.”

The new version’s two concluding paragraphs:

In the face of new information reported by the Washington Post and other news outlets, there now appear to be discrepancies in Jackie’s account. The fraternity has issued a formal statement denying the assault and asserting that there was no “date function or formal event” on the night in question. Jackie herself is now unsure if the man she says lured her into the room where the rape occurred, identified in the story, as “Drew,” was a Phi Psi brother. According to the Washington Post, “Drew” actually belongs to a different fraternity and when contacted by the paper, he denied knowing Jackie. Jackie told Rolling Stone that after she was assaulted, she ran into “Drew” at a UVA pool where they both worked as lifeguards. In its statement, the Phi Psi says none of its members worked at the pool in the fall of 2012. A friend of Jackie’s (who we were told would not speak to Rolling Stone) told the Washington Post that he found Jackie that night a mile from the school’s fraternities. She did not appear to be “physically injured at the time” but was shaken. She told him that that she had been forced to have oral sex with a group of men at a fraternity party, but he does not remember her identifying a specific house. Other friends of Jackie’s told the Washington Post that they now have doubts about her narrative, but Jackie told the Washington Post that she firmly stands by the account she gave to Erdely.

We published the article with the firm belief that it was accurate. Given all of these reports, however, we have come to the conclusion that we were mistaken in honoring Jackie’s request to not contact the alleged assaulters to get their account. In trying to be sensitive to the unfair shame and humiliation many women feel after a sexual assault, we made a judgment – the kind of judgment reporters and editors make every day. We should have not made this agreement with Jackie and we should have worked harder to convince her that the truth would have been better served by getting the other side of the story. These mistakes are on Rolling Stone, not on Jackie. We apologize to anyone who was affected by the story and we will continue to investigate the events of that evening.

248 Responses to “That UVA Rape Claim: An Apology And Vindication”

  1. Hello.

    Dana (8e74ce)

  2. somewhere

    rather far from here

    shia labeouf weeps quietly

    alone in his pain

    happyfeet (831175)

  3. Good evening, Dana.

    “Rape is an accusation which is easy to make and difficult to disprove.” It used to be a jury instruction.

    nk (dbc370)

  4. …but it could’ve been true…

    MSM retort

    in_awe (7c859a)

  5. The feminists on Twitter have been largely hysterical.

    JD (c1679f)

  6. I said what I had to say about this Rolling Stone Rape stuff on Patterico’s open thread because I didn’t know you had started this thread for discussion.

    Lena Dunham is a leftist narcissist twit liar with no class who unfortunately seems to represent many of the qualities of her generation. Hard to believe, but she annoys me even more than that Kim Kardashian woman.

    elissa (252da0)

  7. mostly Lena Dunham is fat

    bless her heart

    she’s a chunk

    happyfeet (831175)

  8. Now if only Rolling Stone would apologize for some of its other “news” stories.

    kishnevi (3719b7)

  9. Regarding this whole campus rape hysteria, Oliver Friedfeld gives us a different perspective as to hows to view rapists.

    http://www.thehoya.com/i-was-mugged-and-i-understand-why/

    What has been most startling to me, even more so than the incident itself, have been the reactions I’ve gotten. I kept hearing “thugs,” “criminals” and “bad people.” While I understand why one might jump to that conclusion, I don’t think this is fair…Not once did I consider our attackers to be “bad people.” I trust that they weren’t trying to hurt me. In fact, if they knew me, I bet they’d think I was okay. They wanted my stuff, not me. While I don’t know what exactly they needed the money for, I do know that I’ve never once had to think about going out on a Saturday night to mug people. I had never before seen a gun, let alone known where to get one. The fact that these two kids, who appeared younger than I, have even had to entertain these questions suggests their universes are light years away from mine….Who am I to stand from my perch of privilege, surrounded by million-dollar homes and paying for a $60,000 education, to condemn these young men as “thugs?” It’s precisely this kind of “otherization” that fuels the problem.

    True, he writes this about a mugging. But this rationale equally applies to rape.

    “They wanted my stuff vagina, not me…While I don’t know what exactly they needed the money for my vagina for, I do know that I’ve never once had to think about going out on a Saturday night to mug rape people.”

    Imagine Oliver Friedfeld being a rape counselor.

    Michael Ejercito (45f52b)

  10. This is what UVA officials did and did not do. And this is what Glen Reynolds had to say about it back on Nov. 24.

    SHOT: Under The Fourth Geneva Convention, “Collective Punishment” Is A War Crime. “Article 33. No protected person may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.”

    CHASER: U-Va. president suspends fraternities until Jan. 9 in wake of rape allegations. “Faced with mounting pressure from students, faculty and alumni, University of Virginia President Teresa Sullivan suspended all campus fraternities Saturday, an action prompted by a searing magazine account of an alleged 2012 gang rape inside a fraternity house at the school. The suspension, which includes sororities and other Greek organizations, will continue until Jan. 9, the Friday before the spring semester is to begin, Sullivan said in a statement posted on the university’s Web site.”

    Snark aside, let’s remember what the University did here. It knew about this for quite a while, but didn’t do anything until there was an article in a magazine. Then it boldly and dramatically took action — against people who didn’t have anything to do with the alleged crime. As Ashe Schow says, another argument why universities shouldn’t be involved in prosecuting rape.

    Teresa Sullivan need to be fired.

    http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/198784/

    elissa (252da0)

  11. Honestly, I would not believe a press account today if it said a dog bit a mailman.

    Ag80 (eb6ffa)

  12. If nothing was learned from or changed as a result of Duke, then this won’t make a difference. How utterly incredible and frustrating.

    Dana (8e74ce)

  13. Has anyone else noticed how often big media stories somehow fit into certain narratives that support whatever progressive issues are popular at the time? Has anyone else noticed that this has gone on literally for decades? And, I mean decades in a literal sense. I am old. Has anyone else noticed that whatever progressive issue is popular at a moment in time usually ends up completely wrong over the course of history?

    Doesn’t it bother anyone else that we are enduring the same old tired arguments that were old when I was a teenager?

    In the age of the Internet, why does anyone listen to the current media? It has played its hand. It is time to move on.

    Ag80 (eb6ffa)

  14. I love this story.

    With the first questioning of the Rolling Stone story, leftists screamed that it is outrageous to question Jackie’s or any woman’s rape allegation.

    Now they are screaming that Jackie should not be blamed for her fabrication of the rape story and, instead, blame Rolling Stone and Will Dana for not performing the due diligence on the woman’s allegations that is required of professional journalists. (On this latter point, I am in full agreement). But it runs deeper that this. It appears that we have reached a point in our cultural evolution a woman who fabricates a rape story and is criticized for lying is somehow the victim. Unbelievable.

    There is a perfect, damned if they do; damned if they don’t, symmetry to this story that speaks volumes about the honesty of lefties and their view of women. They will go to any length to absolve women of any responsibility for their deeds/misdeeds, in very much the same way we absolve children of responsibility. Talk about infantilizing women!

    ThOR (130453)

  15. Oh, yes, and that this infantilization is good politics. It sure seems to work at the ballot box. I guess this is who modern women think they are and how they want to be treated. Next thing you know, Karl Rove is going to tell us that Republicans must start treating women like children if we want to win elections.

    I suppose he’ll get some blow-back from Sarah Palin.

    ThOR (130453)

  16. The biggest problem with this fiasco is that it casts a shadow of doubt on actual victims of rape. The biggest lesson is to come forward IMMEDIATELY. Don’t make accusations years later, or decades in the case of Bill Cosby.

    JB (42cf2b)

  17. I understand and agree with your point that there are a lot of idiot feminists out there. But please try not to put people in boxes, ThOR. Not everybody with XX chromosomes is as you describe. If you spend any time on this blog you will see that the modern women here in this community most definitely do not want to be infantilized or treated like children. Nor do we expect to be absolved of responsibility. I have seen no evidence that the War on Women theme was successful at the ballot box in Nov. 2014 It was, I think actually not well received at all, and in several cases (Wendy Davis, Mark Uterus) it proved to be a catastrophic campaign strategy for them. So I doubt your’re going to be seeing feminism activist banter adopted as Republican talking points or part of 2016 Republican strategy.

    elissa (39257e)

  18. If Rolling Stone, who ran a drug-fueled Hunter S. Thompson for years, apologizes for one of your articles and states “there now appear to be discrepancies in [your] account, and we have come to the conclusion that our trust in [you] was misplaced, I think it’s fair to say you’ve failed at journalism.

    The Ghost of George Parr (565b15)

  19. Sabrina Erdley can prolly find a place at TNR if she has to leave Rolling Stone. Plenty of vacancies now.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  20. elissa – Apparently Erdley did go rape shopping at Harvard, Yale and Penn before UVa and could not find a juicy enough story to lead her article. When you have a narrative and are looking for something to backfill it, sometimes skepticism goes out the door.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  21. I don’t know who the Ghost of George Parr is, but that person is exactly right. As much as I may like Hunter Thompson’s drug-fueled writing, or P.J. O’Rourkes’, for that matter, they were chronicling experiences for a buck. Hunter is dead, P.J. still does it.

    Today’s journalists are not interested in telling the truth. That time passed long ago. All they know is the progressive narrative. The funny thing, though, is they are trying to speak truthy crap to a public that can look around and see what they are purveying is b*llsh*t.

    Ag80 (eb6ffa)

  22. Charles Cooke has a rather amusing satire over at NR accusing Rolling Stone of being rape apologists. It’s always funny when the left eats their own.

    Edoc118 (8b952d)

  23. 6. …Hard to believe, but she annoys me even more than that Kim Kardashian woman.

    elissa (252da0) — 12/5/2014 @ 7:39 pm

    No, it’s not hard to believe. Kim Kardashian has demonstrated that she can keep her clothes on. At least she can more frequently and for longer continuous periods of time than this Dunham creature.

    Warning! What has been seen can not be unseen.

    http://cdn2.blisstree.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/lenadunhamnudecake-640×366.jpg

    What the he33’s that? That belongs on a farm. In a barn. Where people who don’t have to feed it don’t have to look at it. But no. That’s been on the cover of Glamour magazine?!?!?!

    I can’t even stand looking at her clothed. Because she’s never clothed enough. She’s always exposing her tats when she’s not exposing her… never mind. I’ve never been a fan of the burqa but she, singlehandedly has made me a fan. She reminds me of Blacks Beach. It’s a nude beach in Sandy Eggo. All the wrong people would go there. Dunham would fit right in.

    At least when Kim Kardashian strips off she’s somewhat watchable. Or, would be if I could forget I’m looking at a Kardashian.

    And now thanks to excerpts of her book detailing her life as a juvenile sexual predator and rape fantasist I’ve been exposed to Lena Dunham’s naked mind. Uggh.

    Steve57 (c4b0b3)

  24. Elissa,

    Thank you for your comments. In rereading my post I can see why you find it objectionable. My reflex when commenting is that any argument worth stating is worth overstating. My wife tells me this behavior borders on trolling, but it is an old habit that is hard to break. I have noticed that it is also an approach that seems to be shared my a number of commenters on this blog – you know who I’m talking about. Just keep in mind that many of my comments here are deliberate overstatements.

    As to the substance of my complaint, it isn’t that lefties have crafted a political agenda that is, at a minimum, patronizing to those it claims to support (as in, “you can trust a communist – to be a communist), but instead that aspects of that agenda have been embraced by many, including Republicans, who should know better. For example, for as long as I can remember, there has been an unholy alliance between feminists and social conservatives on women’s issues. On a more personal note, I am also troubled that regular people I know – friends and acquaintances – have adopted gender politics that are a disservice to their own children, both boy and girl. Ultimately, my goal in commenting here is to stir the pot on social/political issues that matter to me. I am particularly quick to stir the pot on issues that I think adversely impact children. This is one.

    ThOR (130453)

  25. 16. The biggest problem with this fiasco is that it casts a shadow of doubt on actual victims of rape. The biggest lesson is to come forward IMMEDIATELY. Don’t make accusations years later, or decades in the case of Bill Cosby.

    JB (42cf2b) — 12/5/2014 @ 9:09 pm

    No, that isn’t the biggest problem. I doubt that will be a problem at all.

    The biggest problem is that the lies now will be larger and more outrageous. And that the volume and the monstrosity of the lie will be taken as proof of enormity of the problem.

    Of course, I could be talking about any of the myriad issues that make up the progressive left’s agenda. They are all based upon lies. I could be talking about the recent cases in Ferguson or Staten Island. They were all just refined versions of the Taawana Brawley Hoax. So it’s fitting that the race baiting is led be the despicable Al Sharpton.

    Whatever one might wish to say about the grand jury decision, Eric Garner was not targeted by the NYPD because white officers wanted to kill a black man. I hate sinking to the level of the progressive left and appealing to racial authority (we all know that certain races have absolute moral authority) but his arrest was supervised by a black female police officer. She’s on the video. Even Eric Garner’s daughter has said in at least one TV interview that despite the fact her father was black and the officers who actually wrestled him to the ground were white the arrest was not racially motivated. None of that evidence right before everyone’s eyes will stop people from lying about it. They don’t care it’s a lie.

    We know the Ferguson story, “hands up, don’t shoot,” was a lie. We know from grand jury eye witness testimony the exact evolution of the lie, how it was agreed to, and how those who didn’t agree to the lie were threatened. Snitches get stitches. Many of the eyewitnesses gave honest interviews to investigators later anyway. Which is how we know this. And also because the physical evidence contradicted those who stuck with the lie. The evidence, and also the fact that they couldn’t help but contradict themselves.

    We know that the media reported the lie, and concealed the facts. CNN reporters on the scene proclaimed that the protest were peaceful even as CNN showed pictures pictures of the arson and the looting. CNN reporters were actually threatened with violence (some reporters were actually mugged) and refused to report it. Why? They later defended their actions by saying the violence was not the story. The peaceful protesters were the story. Shorter version; the truth wasn’t the story, the lie was the story.

    We see black protesters shouting FTP as they rob and burn on TV on the one hand, and on the other we have talking heads saying that (just like here) the fact don’t matter. We “all know” the system is irredeemably racist, and proof is that blacks are disproportionally arrested, convicted, and incarcerated. So talking heads say the only possible reason for that is because of their race. The result? The only possible reason a police officer would target those looters and arsonists is because the cops are racists.

    Here we are treated to the spectacle of a whole slew of women who just lied about rape screaming that women never lie about rape. And the very thought of due process at college campuses, which might expose the kind of lies about rape we just witnessed them perpetrating, is evidence of rape culture. Which, for some odd reason, harbors a suspicion that the kind of woman who just publicly lied about rape as these women did, might falsely accuse a man of rape.

    Essentially, the common thread is that noble-sounding lies permit stupid and evil people to convince themselves that they are morally superior to anyone who would call them on their lies. And make no mistake. They are evil. Anyone who would deny someone due process because they’re male or white, and ruin their life by kicking them out of school and smearing them so no other school will accept them, or worse send someone who is innocent to prison because their lies demand the false evidence of statistics, is evil. And they are stupid because they demonstrate the fact that they’re lying as they demand that others go along with what they know and don’t care is a lie. They are committed to the truth of the narrative. They don’t care that if the narrative were true they wouldn’t have to lie about the evidence. They’d have, you know, actual evidence. They wouldn’t have to fabricate it.

    The important thing is believing in the truth of the narrative allows these vile leftists to pretend that they’re not vile creatures. Instead, everyone else is. So they agree not to call each other on their victim group’s lie as long as the courtesy is returned. Then they all turn to the task at hand of calling everyone who sees through their lies names to try and intimidate them into shutting up about the obvious fact that they’re liars.

    Names like racist, homophobe, sexist, rape denier, etc. So these women who lied about rape don’t need to listen to anyone who would call them on their lie, and neither should anyone else, because anyone who would call them on their lies is an apologist for a non-existent rape culture that they have to lie about, too. And who listens to a rapist?

    So the biggest problem is that they will get their concessions. Because believing in the lie not only is a get-out-of-jail-free card for the rank-and-file liars (literally in the case of the Ferguson looters and arsonists, figuratively in other cases as they can get away for being complete a$$holes in their personal lives as long as they pretend to believe in noble-sounding lies) but pandering to them is the key to power for the elected liars.

    Of course those “communities of color” aren’t just making things up, Mr. President. You and your attorney general and Al Sharpton are making it up, too.

    And the concessions won’t satisfy them, since those concessions will be addressing a non-problem. No, those concessions will simply demonstrate that lying is rewarded. So more lies. Bigger lies. And bigger demands from the lying extortionists.

    That is the biggest problem here.

    Steve57 (c4b0b3)

  26. One would have to be blind to rape that Dunham broad.

    mg (31009b)

  27. And deaf. I’ve heard her talk.

    I’m guessing you’d have to have lost your sense of smell, too.

    Steve57 (c4b0b3)

  28. I suppose I should point out two things. First, lots of people have noticed that the progressive left is protesting imaginary injustices.

    http://www.nationalreview.com/article/394111/uva-gang-rape-wasnt-jonah-goldberg

    …So I am having a hard time getting my head around something. All week people have been calling me a “rape apologist” and “pro-rape.” I’m being constantly informed that I don’t understand “rape culture.” These often hysterical accusations tend to come from people who seem to understand rape culture the same way some people understand the geopolitics of Westeros or Middle Earth: They’ve studied it, they know every detail about it, they just seem to have forgotten it doesn’t exist…

    Apart from their lies, the only evidence the progressive left has on their side is the reaction they attempt to force people to make.

    This is why it’s so important not to make any concessions. People mistakenly believe that an innocuous appearing concession is a decent good-will gesture, and it can’t do any harm. That’s why some businesses will agree to hire a more diverse workforce and/or send employees to racial sensitivity training when the settle with race pimps like Sharpton or Jackson, even while insisting they did nothing wrong. And indeed the settlement will not include any admissions of guilt.

    So, they didn’t admit to doing anything wrong, and all they did was agree to change a couple of policies. That proves they’re nice guys, right.

    No. It proves they’re guilty as charged. The only evidence the race hustlers have of systemic corporate racism (outside their lies that it exists) is that companies will settle with them when they accuse those companies of racism. Which is why smart CEOs don’t settle with these people at all. The realize the very act of settling will allow the race pimps to smear them as racists. It also means the race pimps will come back for seconds or thirds. Which is exactly what happens; when a company stands up to the race pimps, the race pimps slink away in search of easier prey. And if they’ve already shaken a company down once, they know where to find it.

    I also need to add that what the lying pols want isn’t just more personal power. It’s more centralized government power. Which, oddly for people now protesting the fact that the NYPD killed a man because an already powerful government wanted them to crack down on people for selling untaxed cigarettes because governments care more about their revenue then lives, is what the protesters want.

    Sharpton conveniently gave the game away when he announce that the grand jury system “at the state level” was broken. What he wants, what everyone in on this lie wants, is more centralized government power. And to accomplish that they need to shred what’s left of the Constitution.

    http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/199224/#respond

    …During a Thursday speech, Obama said he intends to “take more steps” with leaders like New York Mayor Bill de Blasio “in the months ahead to make sure that all Americans have confidence that police and law enforcement are serving everybody equally.”

    “When it comes, as we’ve seen, unfortunately, in recent days, to our criminal justice system, too many Americans feel deep unfairness when it comes to the gap between our professed ideals and how laws are applied on a day-to-day basis,” Obama said…

    We already know the end game. The only way people “all Americans can have confidence that police and law enforcement are serving everybody equally” is to rig the system so that we have guaranteed outcomes.

    Not equality of opportunity, as the Constitution would have it. But equality of result as these cultural Marxists would have it.

    So Holder is leaning on school districts to make sure they meet out discipline “equitably” to all grievance groups. So black children must be punished less, and white and Asian students must be punished more. No matter what they actually do to merit consideration for punishment. Just as Holder tried to force states to mete out the death penalty on a racial quota system. It doesn’t matter how horrific a particular crime an individual committed to be on death row. If a state is executing too many black criminals it is racist. Just as every time a cop kills a black man the only possible explanation is racism.

    Guaranteed outcomes must exist in all areas. That’s why schools must toss due process over the side (and eventually the justice system must as well). It’s just tougher to guarantee outcomes when the accused has rights. Soviet show trials work so much better for the purpose.

    If you’re against “economic justice,” “racial justice,” “gender justice,” or whatever modified form of justice that demands injustice and instead insist on good, old-fashioned justice that actually does treat each American equally then you are pro-rape, a Klansman, a Nazi, etc.

    If you won’t join in shredding the Constitution, or at least get out of the way so they can do it, then the only possible explanation is that you are an evil person. So say the stupid, evil, greedy, and envious people who came thought up that lie.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6jiNMg1PAk

    Laughing at the new Inquisition

    Oh, and when I called these lies “noble-sounding,” I meant the lies sound noble to people who are stupid and evil. The lies sound like something that they imagine would serve a noble purpose. The problem with their lies is that they have no clue what a noble purpose could possibly be. If they could, they wouldn’t be stupid and evil. So their lies, when you think about them, are actually pretty vile. There’s nothing noble about them.

    Steve57 (c4b0b3)

  29. My favorite from all the comments over at instapundit:

    “In response to accusations that one of its female students fabricated a rape story, UVA earlier today suspended all female students until it could fully investigate the charges.”

    jim2 (738a4f)

  30. Another good one, “In ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’, Atticus Finch would now be the bad guy for doubting a rape victim”.

    nk (dbc370)

  31. One would have to be blind to rape that Dunham broad.

    mg (31009b) — 12/6/2014 @ 3:05 am

    Why one would have to suspend ALL blind chubby-chasers.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  32. #10… elissa… put yourself in Dean Wormer’s shoes. What would he have done if the offending fraternity was Delta House? Perhaps we should not judge Teresa Sullivan too harshly.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  33. Just for you, Col. Haiku:

    https://www.threadsquad.com/products/square/80150.png

    The Ghost of George Parr (a5b802)

  34. Lol

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  35. Nineteen years in school and no girl ever accused me of rape. The shame of it. Everybody must have thought I was gay or something.

    I disagree that this resembles Duke. The Duke players hired the lying [lady of negotiable affection] and brought her into their house to provide them with images they could masturbate to later (hopefully later). These boys, at ΦΚΨ, did nothing to subject themselves to this and there was nothing they could have done to avoid it.

    nk (dbc370)

  36. If media coverage of the mindlessly, raunchy debauchery that goes on during Spring Break has even an ounce of truth to it, is it any wonder that non-consensual sex occurs on and off campus?

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  37. You had your nose in teh books, nk, as the ink and wood products were like catnip to you.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  38. I disagree that this resembles Duke. The Duke players hired the lying [lady of negotiable affection] and brought her into their house to provide them with images they could masturbate to later (hopefully later). These boys, at ΦΚΨ, did nothing to subject themselves to this and there was nothing they could have done to avoid it.

    That Messrs Evans and Flannery hired strippers who put on a four minute show (which Evans did not attend) and Messrs Finnerty and Seligman were present during that show (with Seligman looking vaguely displeased in photos of the event) is of no significance (unless you consider it a forseeable risk that one such tradeswoman will later invent a cock-and-bull story to avoid a civil commitment order and the local DA trailing in the polls will launch a cock-and-bull prosecution in order to win a Democratic primary. Most of us make decisions without considering outlandish scenarios.

    Art Deco (ee8de5)

  39. That fratboys think, like you, that hiring a prostitute and bringing her into their house to strip for them is “of no significance” is exactly the problem I was talking about.

    nk (dbc370)

  40. When you worship Bono, instead of worshipping the Supreme Being that BONO HIMSELF WORSHIPS, then these sorts of oopsy-daisy mistakes are bound to occur from time to time.

    Icy (de9d3c)

  41. That the prostitute and Nifong f***ed them over was like the tetanus on a cutter’s self-inflicted arm slashes.

    nk (dbc370)

  42. 42… Agreed! That pathetic excuse for a woman is someone’s sister/daughter/etc. and those young men should’ve shown respect for her even though she had none for herself… let alone, respect for themselves.

    Just my opinion.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  43. when Joel Gibson did it, he only lost his father’s corvette, and got a mobster named Guido after him, this was before he was accepted to Princeton,

    narciso (ee1f88)

  44. The story did have a ring of truthiness, troofiness, whatever.

    DNF (afe862)

  45. Goodson, those who are residents of the Windy City environs can vouch for it’s authenticity. meanwhile
    it seems there are mobs, going after people who live on blood feuds, this can’t end badly,

    narciso (ee1f88)

  46. these ivy league rape barns are a new thing

    we never had ivy league rape barns til obama

    it’s a fundamental transformation to where there’s just loads more rape at these ivy leagues

    me personally it doesn’t really affect me though

    happyfeet (831175)

  47. That is not an apology, Rolling Stone. You apologize for your behavior, not for someone’s being offended.

    htom (bae272)

  48. I’ll emphasize again that these boys did nothing to bring this on themselves, which really should be the most concerning part of the story. That anybody can find himself the victim of a false accusation from a crazy ibtch.

    nk (dbc370)

  49. Repeatedly raped on a bed of shattered glass? Sure, that rings true. Deep scaring on Jackie’s back would tend to lend credence to her tale. Did Erderly even look?

    ropelight (618aef)

  50. I can see how liberalism rose to dominate media: there was no opposition. Today it’s different. We have a long way to go, but we’re getting there.

    Patricia (5fc097)

  51. Teresa Sullivan need to be fired.

    She was briefly. It’s a weird story like most stories about higher education these days, The best writing about this whole incident is by Kevin Willamson and should especially be read by that idiot girl who wrote the Times piece.

    I learned some useful and practical things, one of which was how to go about preventing myself from publishing lies fed to me by others, a useful skill if you spend time around politicians and political activists.

    Rolling Stone could have used the services of the mighty Quinn.

    One does not expect the journalistic home of witless uptown communist Jesse Myerson to be a paragon of journalistic integrity, critical thinking, or good taste, but its getting took by that University of Virginia rape fantasist’s tall tale is an object lesson in journalistic malpractice.

    Read the whole thing. He is one of my favorite writers.

    Mike K (90dfdc)

  52. I had a friend in college who was raped. It destroyed her life in so many ways. So this is a big, big deal to me.

    I think each and every rape accusation needs to be treated like the violent crime accusation that it is. By the police, not by college administrators.

    Amusingly, I spent three years on our campus “Diversity Committee” recently. A discussion of the “rape culture” we supposedly have on campus came up repeatedly. I don’t like to fight, but I calmly argued for my idea: rape is a violent act and needs to be treated as a full on crime, by the police, and not a political talking point.

    Oh, the trouble that ensued. I wasn’t “sensitive.” I didn’t “understand the larger context.” My argument would “chill confidence women could have in reporting sexual assaults.”

    Since I, ahem, have tenure, I pushed back: I want campus to not just feel safe, but be safe for students. Thus, it needs to be known that every single report of this nature will be treated as a full on violent crime. Because rape is a crime of violence.

    No one saluted my point of view. This is politics, not crime fighting.

    So I am delighted that the UVA students pushed back.

    Mind you, any college student who rapes anyone needs to be in front of a judge. A harsh judge, hopefully with teenaged daughters.

    Sorry for being direct, but I feel quite strongly about this issue, and the absolute Soviet style nuttiness on campus.

    Simon Jester (a5eb45)

  53. Amusingly, I spent three years on our campus “Diversity Committee” recently. A discussion of the “rape culture” we supposedly have on campus came up repeatedly. I don’t like to fight, but I calmly argued for my idea: rape is a violent act and needs to be treated as a full on crime, by the police, and not a political talking point.

    Oh, the trouble that ensued. I wasn’t “sensitive.” I didn’t “understand the larger context.” My argument would “chill confidence women could have in reporting sexual assaults.”

    Since I, ahem, have tenure, I pushed back: I want campus to not just feel safe, but be safe for students. Thus, it needs to be known that every single report of this nature will be treated as a full on violent crime. Because rape is a crime of violence.

    How can anyne doubt the ability of college administrations to investigate rape claims. Why, when Jerry Sandusky was accused of raping young boys in the shower rooms in Penn State, Graham Spanier and company took a look and said nothing more to see, move along now. Who was that grand jury to question that conclusion. Spanier and company are well-educated men with degrees. They all know better than us!

    Michael Ejercito (45f52b)

  54. I remember being interviewed on the ground by the Dean after knocking out a screen and dumping panties out a dorm window.

    Ah, to be young again.

    DNF (afe862)

  55. “I had a friend in college who was raped. It destroyed her life in so many ways. So this is a big, big deal to me.

    I think each and every rape accusation needs to be treated like the violent crime accusation that it is. By the police, not by college administrators.”

    Simon – I dated a woman for several years who was a rape survivor and completely agree. That’s why it infuriates me though for the insane feminists to turn around and say it doesn’t matter if the story is true, if you doubt it, you are a rape apologist. Complete BS. I see nobody raising their hands to say they are pro-rape, but that is what the hysterical feminists are labeling people. They are mentally disturbed.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  56. Our victim culture confers power to those pushing the agenda of the victims and we have seen it in spades this summer with Ferguson and illegal immigration. It encourages an ends supports the means approach to seeking power. With respect to the “rape culture” on college campuses we have seen that specifically direct from Obama’s office from his threat to withhold funding from any college which does not take suitable (to his administration’s liking) steps to combat the fact (not a fact and now debunked) that one in four women are sexually assaulted during four years in college. Such is the party of science’s belief in their received wisdom, if your college does not have statistics to support the 1 in 4 claim, your statistics are wrong, the difference is under reporting or so I was informed by the president of my alma mater.

    Rolling Stone’s admission that its college rape story contained ‘discrepancies’ shows how victim-centric our culture has become—to the exclusion of asking vital questions.

    When Rolling Stone first published its explosive story detailing University of Virginia student Jackie’s alleged gang-rape by seven fraternity brothers, few in the mainstream media doubted its veracity.

    But, much worse, Rolling Stone reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely seemed determined to tell a gang-rape victim’s sensational story—more dramatic lede means more clicks—that she did not do due diligence as a journalist, neglecting to contact Jackie’s alleged assailants in deference to the rape victim.

    And by giving blind faith to Jackie’s story, Erdely obfuscated some of the truth, leading Rolling Stone to acknowledge “discrepancies in Jackie’s account” on Friday.

    “We were trying to be sensitive to the unfair shame and humiliation many women feel after sexual assault and now regret the decision to not contact the alleged assaulters to get their account,” Rolling Stone managing editor Will Dana wrote in a statement.

    And therein lies the problem: in valorizing Jackie’s trauma as a victim of rape (never mind that she was and remains an alleged victim), Rolling Stone ignored glaring holes in a story that was too good to check.

    Erdely’s story did damage to the University of Virginia’s reputation, but more importantly, the story has done a tragic disservice to other victims of sexual violence who might be prevented from coming forward out of fear that their stories will have to withstand the scrutiny and default skepticism of police, university officials, and reporters.

    http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/05/what-the-uva-rape-case-tells-us-about-a-victim-culture-gone-mad.html

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  57. Volkh now has a piece in WaPo on libel law and the case.

    I expect RS will spend a lot of time with lawyers the next year or two.

    Mike K (90dfdc)

  58. I know what you mean, daley. I have seen a small percentage of students and faculty do the weirdest, most antidemocratic things here on campus. And this place isn’t as bad as, say, SFSU.

    One bizarre example: there was a faculty vote a while back about adding a “diversity course” to the curriculum. A few students tried to agitate to get the names of the dissenters released. Their language was chilling; it was as if they had never read about the history of the Soviet Union. They probably hadn’t.

    Another gay student on campus has been saying that unless he is able to speak whenever he likes in class, as long as he likes, he is being oppressed. No kidding.

    At the same time, and this is vital to emphasize, there are a lot of students and faculty who say nothing, and who are actually quite reasonable. It’s important for them to start speaking out. But the labeling is a powerful disincentive.

    Simon Jester (c8876d)

  59. Simon – If you are not already familiar with him, you might enjoy the work of Mike Adams, a columnist at Townhall. Adams is a professor of Criminal Justice at UNC Wilmington. His subject is housed within the Sociology Department, which is largely composed of radical marxist feminist lesbians (BIRM). He was denied tenure, sued alleging the fix was in because of his political and religious views, and although it took him seven years, ultimately won.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  60. Just like Obama’s election ended racial strife, Hilary will end all the sexism. Voting for her will make you feel good about yourself.

    AZ Bob (34bb80)

  61. Simon – The manufacture of victims as props is a cottage industry on the left. If you don’t have them, you manufacture them. We saw it attempting to pass Obamacare, supporting the myth that voter ID = voter suppression, women are paid 79% of what men make, Gasland documentary, Inconvenient Truth, etc., etc.

    The party of science does not care about facts.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  62. “Voting for her will make you feel good about yourself.”

    AZ Bob – I usually feel better after I throw up.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  63. Mike K. — You’re right. I read Kevin Williamson’s NRO piece last night. (You linked it here @53.) There has actually been a surprising amount of good and thoughtful writing on the Erdely/Rolling Stone/VMA mess. IMO, Kevin’s is absolutely the gold standard so far. Everyone should read it.

    I had almost given up on the Columbia Journalism Review ever being relevant again after their ability to ignore the flaws in much of the so-called journalism that has graced the pages and screens of America over the past decade or so. But they came through on this story with a couple worthy pieces. In a piece just out this morning Judith Shulevitz goes deep into the problem of confirmation bias.

    But there’s another argument that needs making. It comes from the philosopher Karl Popper. In a famous 1963 paper called “Science as Falsification,” Popper set out to estimate the scientific value of popular theories—Freudianism, Marxism—that huge numbers of his peers held to be true, because these theories had the power to explain almost everything. Their truths “appeared manifest; and unbelievers were clearly people who did not want to see the manifest truth; who refuse to see it, either because it was against their class interest, or because of their repressions.”
    The problem with these thought-systems, Popper decided, is that they were too true. They explained too much. “It began to dawn on me that this apparent strength was in fact their weakness,” he wrote.
    What Popper had stumbled on was what psychologists would later call “confirmation bias”—our innate urge to see only evidence that confirms beliefs we hold to be self-evident, and dismiss facts that challenge those convictions. Erdely told Rosin that she’d gone all around the country looking for rape survivors and was delighted when she stumbled on Jackie.
    Popper would have said that Erdely and her editors were all in the grip of a myth. He’d have used that word not because rape isn’t a problem in this country ….but because they had never subjected their beliefs to the test of falsifiability. Myths become theories only when they are tested; “Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or refute it,” he wrote. He went even further: He argued that evidence only corroborates a theory if it emerges out of an attempt to falsify it. Had Erdely been open to the possibility that Jackie was wrong and gone out looking for evidence to exonerate the alleged perpetrators but found instead a mountain of sleaze, then that would have been the time to deem Jackie “credible.” (It would not have been the time to stop digging for corroborating facts about the crime, however.) Popper, of course, was talking about the scientific method, not journalism. But remember, the Rolling Stone story was taken as gospel truth for a week after it came out. UVA’s president suspended the school’s fraternities because of it. Editorials everywhere opined that the system for handling campus rape was broken. (I wrote one of them, I’m sorry to say.) –

    http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/rolling_stone_sabrina_rubin_erdely.php?page=all

    elissa (429c60)

  64. There should be no doubt that our popular culture continues to spiral down to the level of the lowest common denominator and that LCD itself continues to be lowered. Children are not being taught the moral and ethical principles or the self-discipline required to grow and mature into happy, productive adulthood. That happens at home with competent, responsible parental involvement… the traditional environment that is also under fire from the same folks debasing the culture.

    Liberalism is a mental disorder.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  65. Wheels fallin’ off, don’t touch it
    Hey, Ray, hey, Sugar, tell ‘em who we are…

    Well, we’re big bull flingers
    We got flyin’ fingers
    And we’re loved by the leftwing mooks…
    We write about doodie that we like to call “Truth”
    And rightwing folks we rebukes…(Right)
    We take all kinds of liberties with the facts
    And we’ll reap just what we’ve sown
    But the suit that’ll hit ya when the WaPo gets ya
    will take everything that we own

    (Rollin’ Stone…) Want so bad for there to be a rapin’
    (Stone…) Even if the truth we are forsakin’ (Yes)
    (Stone…) Wanna see this go away
    Off the cover of the Rollin’ Stone…

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  66. So true, Simon Jester, that on campus it’s all about feeling safe and not feeling safe. The gun-free zone fantasy is another example. They do nothing to enforce it but advertise their helplessness as if it were a good thing!

    Patricia (5fc097)

  67. All PIV = Rape

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  68. Karl Popper prolly would have issues withe the Global Warming crowd and media coverage of it.

    elissa (429c60)

  69. It’s kind of gross they they are laying the blame on this kid’s untrustworthiness, when they had ample opportunity to check her story and didn’t, and kid asked the fancypants reporter to take her out of the story altogether. That’s a red flag of “I don’t want this out there” at the very least. Even if the story were gospel truth, it would have been wrong to say “too late, you are MY victim now.”

    20 year olds are stupid and I don’t know what’s wrong with that one, but maybe she is ill or maybe she is less evil liar than *wrong* about details confabulated after the fact.

    One thing that would have to be true for her not to be deranged or evil is the ID of her date. And one detail that’s potentially falsifiable and verifiable is a big meal in a fancy restaurant before the show (or invented tale) went down. If that detail were ever verified it would make “I never even met her before” a lie and that would turn the story 180 immediately.

    SarahW (267b14)

  70. Another gay student on campus has been saying that unless he is able to speak whenever he likes in class, as long as he likes, he is being oppressed. No kidding.

    He feels entitled, feels abused, and wants an audience? No kidding.

    Art Deco (ee8de5)

  71. That fratboys think, like you, that hiring a prostitute and bringing her into their house to strip for them is “of no significance” is exactly the problem I was talking about.

    She was not hired as a prostitute.

    If you were not devoid of reading comprehension, you would see my point was about rational risk assessment. Arranging your life with the thought that a dancer you crossed paths with for four minutes would fabricate a crime report and pick your mug at random out of a police line up would not be rational risk assessment. Arranging your life with the thought in mind that a crooked DA would secure an indictment against you even though he knew there was no crime would not be rational risk assessment. Arranging your life with both thoughts in mind would be bloody paranoid.

    Art Deco (ee8de5)

  72. However you should arrange your life to not include the likes of any Crystal Magnum as entertainment for a private party.

    Not in anticipation of crime reports, but because it’s vulgar and icky.

    SarahW (267b14)

  73. “She was not hired as a prostitute.”

    Art Deco – You and Sammy have led very sheltered lives.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  74. Is the college rape crisis less important if it does not involve members of the melanin deficient patriarchy?

    http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2014/12/ongoing-rape-crisis-or-all-the-news-thats-fit-to-ignore.html

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  75. Daleyrocks, It’s almost like they feel the need to manufacture rapey-er blondies.

    SarahW (267b14)

  76. Honestly, they don’t care about the crime. These folks only care about Teh Narrative.

    Simon Jester (c8876d)

  77. Art Deco – You and Sammy have led very sheltered lives.

    Whether I do or not, she was hired for a strip show. One of these women turned tricks on the side, but they were both employed as pole dancers at local establishments. These guys didn’t need hookers and if they took an interest in that, they would not have hired Crystal Gail Mangum, who is frankly ugly.

    Art Deco (ee8de5)

  78. SarahW – Exactly. They need that picture perfect rapey situation with all the correct liberal shibboleths.

    Meanwhile, with three sons, I know they are just plain disgusted over being bombarded with what horrible people they are and how they oppress wymyn and people of color on a daily basis. They don’t understand that apart from choosing to do the right things everything else is all a political power game and they should just ignore the constant noise.

    I don’t think anybody is suggesting that nothing happened to Jackie in the Uva case or that she was damaged in some way, just not from the way she described the incident to Sabrina Erdley.

    Meanwhile, in the interest of fairness, we also need to teach women not to rape and Instapundit has been tracking that subject so we don’t have to:

    http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/?s=%22teach+women+not+to+rape%22

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  79. However you should arrange your life to not include the likes of any Crystal Magnum as entertainment for a private party.

    That’s an aesthetic decision, not one that bears on an evaluation of their culpability or prudence. The two were actually hired with minimal specs stated, and their employer sent two dancers who did not meet the specs. The captains collected $20 from each attendee antecedently. (Daleyrocks thinks hookers in 2006 worked for 1969 prices).

    Art Deco (ee8de5)

  80. we need to raise awareness

    happyfeet (831175)

  81. It’s also a moral decision, but if your concerned about that or about aesthetics, you’d be best advised to stay away from frat houses depending on what sort of frat it is.

    Art Deco (ee8de5)

  82. “Whether I do or not, she was hired for a strip show. One of these women turned tricks on the side, but they were both employed as pole dancers at local establishments. These guys didn’t need hookers and if they took an interest in that, they would not have hired Crystal Gail Mangum, who is frankly ugly.”

    Art Deco – Of course they hired a dancer. Prostitution is illegal in all but one state. Who would spend fraternity funds for that you ninny? To pretend that strippers never make money is the height of naivete. Check your files, did the lads specifically request Crystal or just bodies?

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  83. “we need to raise awareness”

    Mr. Feets – I agree

    Moar slutwaks

    Bewbs not bombs

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  84. Frats here are about a quarter mile away as the crow flies. On a Saturday evening in clement weather there is one long low hoot from their general direction. HOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooOOOOOOoooT

    SarahW (267b14)

  85. i was thinking we could make posters

    happyfeet (831175)

  86. I believe the asked for white blondes and were disappointed.

    Donald (08c6c4)

  87. And wristbands.

    Gazzer (cb9ee2)

  88. The manufacture of victims as props is a cottage industry on the left.

    If anyone doubts this, read this.

    http://www.city-journal.org/2014/24_4_racial-microaggression.html

    Right here at UCLA where one of my daughters got two degrees.

    In November 2013, two dozen graduate students at the University of California at Los Angeles marched into an education class and announced a protest against its “hostile and unsafe climate for Scholars of Color.” The students had been victimized, they claimed, by racial “microaggression”—the hottest concept on campuses today, used to call out racism otherwise invisible to the naked eye. UCLA’s response to the sit-in was a travesty of justice. The education school sacrificed the reputation of a beloved and respected professor in order to placate a group of ignorant students making a specious charge of racism.

    It’s an interesting story. An older professor was a victim.

    UCLA education professor emeritus Val Rust was involved in multiculturalism long before the concept even existed. A pioneer in the field of comparative education, which studies different countries’ educational systems, Rust has spent over four decades mentoring students from around the world and assisting in international development efforts. He has received virtually every honor awarded by the Society of Comparative and International Education. His former students are unanimous in their praise for his compassion and integrity.

    He was savaged by the cultists.

    Mike K (90dfdc)

  89. Art Deco, you go right on ahead bringing hookers and strippers into your home. It’s your ass … er … essment.

    nk (dbc370)

  90. @Elissa: What Popper had stumbled on was what psychologists would later call “confirmation bias”

    I know you are quoting, but I don’t think your source understood what Popper was saying at all.

    He wasn’t talking about selecting evidence that supports your argument while ignoring evidence that doesn’t.

    He was talking about arguments that are so constructed that ANY evidence at all can be regarded as “confirmation”.

    He was saying that a theory which can explain ANYTHING is indistinguishable from one that explains NOTHING.

    I don’t really want to belabor it since it’s not the topic, but the falsification is something that propositions are held to, not people.

    For example, the proposition that the universe is just in my imagination is not falsifiable. If this were true, then “evidence” is a meaningless concept. That doesn’t mean it can’t be true, but it does mean that it cannot be tested by the methodology of science.

    In this case, the Jezebel commenters are saying that it doesn’t matter what details turn out to be wrong, the fact that “Jackie” told a story about rape means she was raped; and that gets very close to unfalsifiable. For example, if Jackie recants, they’ll say the rape culture at UVA forced her to do it, and it will be more evidence in support of their proposition instead of evidence against it.

    They’re not just ignoring inconvenient evidence, they are doing something much worse to it.

    Gabriel Hanna (dcffe4)

  91. @elissa: Incidentally, there are people who argue that a theory is not falsifiable and then say that this is evidence that it is false… if it’s not falsifiable, then no evidence can make it false. An unfalsifiable proposition can certainly be true, but its truth cannot be assessed by evidence, so it is not scientific.

    I propose that the things I sense are in the vast majority of cases indicative of real events in the universe around me. This is unfalsifiable, but if I don’t assume it, I can’t do any scientific experiments. Even falsifiable scientific theories depend on unfalsifiable propositions, which must be assumed true in order to do science at all.

    Gabriel Hanna (dcffe4)

  92. A thought occurs;

    It seems to be the general assumption (other than by the idiots who are still saying about this AND the Duke case”Something happened”) that Jackie is a little twit who spun a fake rape story to make herself important.

    What if she is a moderately sensible young woman who, confronted with an idiot reporter from The Rolling Stone who was trolling for “Rape Culture” horror stories gave in to the perhaps pardonable impulse to feed the fool the plot of a paperback dirty book (CO-ED SEX SLAVE anyone?) on the assumption that any non-brain-damaged editor would spike it as obvious nonsense?

    Nah. Never happen. But if it did, THEN the Feministas would be mad at her.

    C. S. P. Schofield (848299)

  93. I believe that what the idiots at Jezebel and Marcotteland are saying is that it’s better for 1,000 innocent men to be convicted of rape than for one frail flower to be proven a fabulist flake. And I’d bet that they’re saying it exactly that way when they’re only talking to each other.

    nk (dbc370)

  94. Alabama is up 14 points over Mizzou at just under 12 minutes left in the 2nd qtr. Mizzou’s best defensive player has been ejected for targeting.

    ropelight (618aef)

  95. Here is the feminist take:

    In last month’s deep and damning Rolling Stone report about sexual assault at the University of Virginia, a reporter told the story of “Jackie,” who said she was gang raped at a fraternity party and then essentially ignored by the administration. It helped dramatize what happens when the claims of victims are not taken seriously.

    Now the narrative appears to be falling apart: Her rapist wasn’t in the frat that she says he was a member of; the house held no party on the night of the assault; and other details are wobbly. Many people (not least U-Va. administrators) will be tempted to see this as a reminder that officials, reporters and the general public should hear both sides of the story and collect all the evidence before coming to a conclusion in rape cases. This is what we mean in America when we say someone is “innocent until proven guilty.” After all, look what happened to the Duke lacrosse players.

    In important ways, this is wrong. We should believe, as a matter of default, what an accuser says. Ultimately, the costs of wrongly disbelieving a survivor far outweigh the costs of calling someone a rapist. Even if Jackie fabricated her account, U-Va. should have taken her word for it during the period while they endeavored to prove or disprove the accusation. This is not a legal argument about what standards we should use in the courts; it’s a moral one, about what happens outside the legal system.

    Author writes for Feministing and The Nation…

    Dana (8e74ce)

  96. Joy To The World — Flash Mob: The U.S. Air Force Band at the Smithsonian

    http://commoncts.blogspot.com/2014/12/flash-mob-us-air-force-band-at.html

    Steve (06ec7b)

  97. Crystal Magnum and Duke? Jackie and UVA? Boone, Otter, Bluto and Flounder at Farber?

    Fraternities have been around for a hundred years and they differ greatly national to national, chapter to chapter, school to school, era to era. The only thing they have completely in common is that they usually house randy young men between the ages of 18 and 21 who are away from home for the first time and are testing their boundaries and values. Some members make lifelong friendships and connections. Sometimes some of them drink too much and some make poor-even devastating- choices. But it is folly and dishonest for anyone to try to mold external impressions of one campus’ Greek community or one’s personal experience with members of any individual fraternity on any one campus into some sort of universal truth-either positive or negative.

    Now, did Ms Erdely have a stereotype in mind? Why yes. Yes I think she did. From Wemple at WAPO:

    Observe how Erdely responded to a question about the accused parties in Jackie’s alleged gang rape. In that Slate podcast, when asked who these people were, she responded, “I don’t want to say much about them as individuals but I’ll just say that this particular fraternity, Phi Kappa Psi — it’s really emblematic in a lot of ways of sort of like elitist fraternity culture. It’s considered to be a kind of top-tier fraternity at University of Virginia…It’s considered to be a really high-ranking fraternity, in part because they’re just so incredibly wealthy. Their alumni are very influential, you know, they’re on Wall Street, they’re in politics.”

    The next time Erdely writes a big story, she’ll have to do a better job of camouflaging her proclivity to stereotype.

    elissa (fb33a1)

  98. All this rape talk will end when HILLARY!!!!! is elected president in 2016. Just ask Juanita Broaddrick.

    Ipso Fatso (10964d)

  99. Thank you Gabriel for reading my comment above that mentioned confirmation bias as a huge problem in this UVA thing. But I’m pretty sure you missed the point. Maybe because of confirmation bias? This thread is about bad journalism, btw. Not atheism.

    elissa (fb33a1)

  100. Dana, on FB, one person wrote that if a man is falsely accused of rape, all that happens is that he loses a couple of FaceBook friends.

    Huh.

    So if a woman is falsely accused of being a slut, how is that different?

    It’s actually much worse to falsely accuse someone of a crime.

    This hypocrisy is maddening. I have heard repeatedly that men should “toughen up” about false accusations, but women should have great sensitivity. I could see it all one way, or the other.

    But the progressive Left is all about different identity groups, and differential treatment among them. Which is ironic, given the gibbering about “check your privilege.”

    Marxists in 300 dollar shoes.

    Simon Jester (c8876d)

  101. “The next time Erdely writes a big story,…”–elissa

    elissa, hopefully this will be the last story that Ms. Erdely ever writes. She has certainly proven beyond a reasonable doubt that she is not even up to the very low professional standards of modern day journalism. Something tells me that she will be dumped from RS and end up with the EPA or IRS. Lefties take care of their own.

    Ipso Fatso (10964d)

  102. rape is the common denominator of fraternities, the us military, the public school system, disney world, walmart, new jersey, arby’s bathrooms, and the Kennedy family

    happyfeet (831175)

  103. You forgot Hollywood, happyfeet.

    Dana (8e74ce)

  104. yes yes

    it’s just the whole shia thing is still so fresh in everyone’s hearts

    happyfeet (831175)

  105. **trigger warning**

    happyfeet (831175)

  106. I gave my love a cherry that had no stone
    I gave my love a chicken that had no bone
    I gave and gave until I’d no more to give
    A van down by the river, that’s where I live

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  107. Hillary 2016! Because Vagina!

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  108. Colonel,

    Sample the first song clip and then rap the second set of lyrics over it

    steveg (794291)

  109. I didn’t read Gabriel’s comment as being about atheism. It’s true Gabriel could have used “Does God exist?” as an example of something Popper would claim isn’t scientific because it isn’t verifiable or falsifiable, but I read Gabriel’s comment as focusing on Popper’s theory — something that applies to this journalism case, too. What am I missing?

    DRJ (a83b8b)

  110. “who said she was gang raped at a fraternity party and then essentially ignored by the administration”

    Dana – Ignored by the Administration? I was under the distinct impression that Jackie made a deliberate choice not to report the 2012 to the Administration. If I’m correct, these feminists are continuing to spread a false narrative.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  111. Dear God man have you no decency?
    Hillary Clinton and vagina. I need one of those memory vaporizers from Men in Black.
    Anyhow, I think it’d be kinda like the old joke that compares her lady parts to one of those storage war shows… the ones where they open up a dusty old box no ones been in for years

    steveg (794291)

  112. hands up don’t rape

    i can’t breathe

    WHERE ARE MY DRAGONS

    happyfeet (831175)

  113. Just piss poor journalism by Rolling Stone which now they attempt to fob off by victim blaming. They need to take responsibility for their own crap reporting, not blame others.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  114. I got your dragons right here in my pocket.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  115. ==I don’t really want to belabor it since it’s not the topic, but the falsification is something that propositions are held to, not people.== (Gabriel)

    I want to apologize to you Gabriel because I think I came off more rudely @ 102 than I intended. The sentence above is the one that set me off, so please let me try again and explain why.

    It absolutely WAS a proposition (an event) that had been posited for national publication and needed to be vetted but was not. The proposition was that a woman was gang raped for three hours on broken glass in a specific fraternity house on a specific date by five –no make that seven–young men as part of a traditional pledge induction game that was set up by someone she worked with as an employee at a specific aquatic center and nobody ever did anything about it. If you count them, this proposition at its most basic had at least eight initial important avenues to follow and check off for verification and authentication. There were about 20 more avenues if one wanted to be thorough.

    elissa (03b28a)

  116. that doesn’t always end well Mr. daley

    happyfeet (831175)

  117. 58. Our victim culture confers power to those pushing the agenda of the victims and we have seen it in spades this summer with Ferguson and illegal immigration. It encourages an ends supports the means approach to seeking power. With respect to the “rape culture” on college campuses we have seen that specifically direct from Obama’s office from his threat to withhold funding from any college which does not take suitable (to his administration’s liking) steps to combat the fact (not a fact and now debunked) that one in four women are sexually assaulted during four years in college. Such is the party of science’s belief in their received wisdom, if your college does not have statistics to support the 1 in 4 claim, your statistics are wrong, the difference is under reporting or so I was informed by the president of my alma mater…

    daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 12/6/2014 @ 9:56 am

    Out preezie spent his formative years working with people such as Bill Ayers and of similar ilk on the boards of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, the Woods Fund of Chicago, and the Joyce Foundation where one of their favorite activities was funding anti-gun groups willing to fabricate statistics and historical revisionism to provide “academic” support to gun control groups. Then as soon as he was preezie he set out to take direct action; he ran guns to Mexican drug cartels in order to create the statistics he once had to fabricate. These other efforts of his need to be seen in the same light. No, those “communities of color” aren’t making things up; they’ve been indoctrinated to believe what they believe. Not unwillingly, because along with the victim mantle comes absolute moral authority as well as all sorts of exemptions from the rule. But now that he’s preezie, Prom Queen can use his DoJ to do the police race crime equivalent of running guns into Mexico.

    The same goes with this whole “rape culture” project.

    Rape is a violent crime committed against identifiable victims. This gives evil progressive leftists like Amanda Marcotte a sad (see the link @51). She hasn’t been raped. She is jealous of all women who have been raped. What to do, what to do? Aha! Rape culture! All women now can be victims of rape culture. They don’t even need to lie about their own rapes which didn’t happen. They just have to call people names if they don’t quietly accept all the other lies women come up with about rapes. And that’s what makes their lives worthwhile to begin with.

    You can’t even call Lena Dunham a liar. When you get down to it, who really hasn’t been raped by a straight white Republican, when you get down to it? That’s what global warming is about. The whole planet is being raped by straight white Republicans. Just see James Cameron’s Avatar for further instruction on the concept of planet-raping Republicans (I guess the entire universe is now the victim of the evil white male patriarchy and its sexism, racism, militarism, capitalism, classism, homophobia, Islamophobia, blue peoplephobia, etc.; Karl Marx would be so proud).

    Make no mistake. These people are evil. That’s why entry into the club of Absolute Moral Authority only requires immorality. Just a willingness to lie. If entry into the club of Absolute Moral Authority required an act in keeping with any actual concept of morality they’d never qualify. And once in the club, they are free from the restraints of morality so they are free to be the a$$holes they were born to be. They can dine and dash, they can shoplift, they can be anything from obnoxious jerks demanding the world quit offending their tender sensibilities to arsonists, looters, and bombers and it’s all ok because they bought a Prius and believe in rape culture, that blacks are victims of generational systemic racism and that the facts just don’t matter. The only way America can atone for its sins is to give into their demands for free stuff, to live at somebody else’s expense like a parasite, and that no one ever call them on it or even acknowledge reality.

    It leads to this:
    http://theconservativetreehouse.com/2014/12/05/denver-police-officer-crushed-by-vehicle-during-school-mike-brown-walkout-students-cheered-yelling-hit-him-again-hit-him-again/#more-93304

    …One officer was horrifically injured as his body was run over and dragged by a vehicle. Details now surface of the protesting students cheering the injury and chanting “hit him again, hit him again” while marching around the fallen officers. (video included below)…

    Cops are evil because they’re cops. Protesters are good because they’re lying about how they think “black lives matter” and that they want to end “rape culture” (they don’t; they want in on it as honorary victims of it).

    So when a cop gets run over, dragged and mangled, protesters can laugh and cheer and it’s good. Because once you have Absolute Moral Authority you are not only absolved of America’s original sin (slavery) but all it’s other sins (rape culture) and will remain free of sin forevermore because sin is entirely dependent upon what group you belong to. Not what you do. What you do, such as assaulting an officer in Mike Brown’s case, are those pesky little facts that don’t matter anymore.

    It is evil. And it is stupid. They are being way, way too obvious in their overreach. I honestly think Barack Obama represents the peak of this idiotic and vile wave. I am also glad he’s preezie because anybody else might fugg it up. Prom Queen’s track record gives me a warm fuzzy on this.

    Steve57 (c4b0b3)

  118. I agree with your point, elissa. Popper might call it an existential fact that can’t prove something happened but can be used to prove something didn’t happen.

    DRJ (a83b8b)

  119. Steve57, if you read Dunham’s report and simply take it at face value she wasn’t even raped in her own words. After the guy made some unbidden grabby move in the parking lot, she still willingly went home with him. In her own words they performed 69, but it was only the next morning when she felt he had been a bit rough with her that she decided it was rape.

    Gazzer (cb9ee2)

  120. nicely said Mr. 57

    happyfeet (831175)

  121. Gazzer, I’ve read excerpts of Dunham’s account (which is how I got exposed to her naked mind; it goes with the body [retch]). She never decides herself that its rape. She tells friends about it, who then say it’s rape.

    She’s too much of a moral coward to make the accusation herself. She let’s others make the case that she’s a “victim” of rape. Then puts it in her book and lets it stand. All the benefits of being a member of the sisterhood of victims then accrue, while she can pretend that she’s not accountable for the accusation of rape that wouldn’t have been made public if she hadn’t chosen to put it in her idiotic autobiography.

    Steve57 (c4b0b3)

  122. I recommend Clara Peller over Karl Popper. Safe, 30 secs. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ug75diEyiA0

    nk (dbc370)

  123. The college social scene is very different from my college days almost 60 years ago. We used to drink too much but the women were sheltered by the university which acted “in loco parentis.” I still remember the race to get girls back to the dorm by midnight and, if girls didn’t keep a C average, they were not allowed out after 10:15.

    Now we are in an era where girls are considered too mature for in loco parentis actions but they are too delicate to say no to sex, or to accept their bad choices the next morning. My youngest daughter graduated from U of Arizona last year and she is a very pretty girl. Her social life was quite active and continues to be so. For example.

    The closest she came to trouble in her five years was when she was out with two friends, neither U of A students, and the guy started to beat up his girlfriend. Annie yelled at him to stop and when he started after her, locked herself in her car and called the cops. Last spring she testified at his trial. She saw NONE of the “rape culture.”

    She did laugh once when she saw a guy she had dated on TV as a sexual assault suspect. He was a football player and had never done anything to her. I just don’t believe these wild stories. If that fool of a writer wanted a rape story, there was one right there. Of course the rapist and probable serial killer doesn’t fit “the rich white narrative.”

    Mike K (90dfdc)

  124. If this were not about men and uh, rape, “Where’s the beef” would have been a very great title for one of the lofty opinion pieces criticizing Rolling Stone, nk. It sounds like something Treacher or IowaHawk or Ace would put out there, though!

    elissa (03b28a)

  125. When I mentioned the movie Avatar I grew nostalgic. Not for the movie. Here’s a link to the greatest review of Avatar ever (“The best part of waking up is acid in your cup”).

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJarz7BYnHA

    Avatar Review (Part 1 of 2)

    It’s better than the movie, I promise. The best thing about it is that everything the guy says about the flick applies to every liberal project ever. They’re all make-believe, and they all follow the same pattern. For instance:

    Make the audience hate the villain
    In any way you can
    No matter how cheap.

    Hating the villain makes you a good person, in what passes for logic in the cartoon world of liberalism. Recall how people in these audiences were committing suicide so that they could be reincarnated as the Navi? The thing about the cult that holds things like “rape culture” and “systemic generational racism” as essential tenets of its theology is you don’t have to kill yourself to join it.

    It makes you wish James Cameron would keep making sequels to Avatar. That way there’d be fewer idiots blocking the freeways.

    Steve57 (c4b0b3)

  126. Every time I hear “philosopher” and “science” in the same breath, I remember that Aristotle said that men had two more teeth than women, and laugh. I can’t help it. He was married twice; he could have counted his wives’ teeth. What’s worse, 2,000 years later, with the Catholic Church having adopted him as their pet philosopher, counting your wife’s teeth might get you burned at the stake as a heretic. 😉

    nk (dbc370)

  127. Good point Steve57. My sister in law was an internal affairs investigator in the Air Force and she said a lot of the rape allegations turned out to be a CYA after too many drinks when hubby was on tour.

    Gazzer (cb9ee2)

  128. Steve57, I think “Mr. Plinkett” is hysterical. I hadn’t seen that one; thank you.

    The amusing part is that there is actually good cinema criticism in his reviews.

    Simon Jester (a97f5c)

  129. it was troubling that reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely chose, per Jackie’s request, not to interview the accused fraternity pledges

    It turned out these people didn’t even exist. That’s why “Jackie” didn’t want the magazine to contact them.

    Sammy Finkelman (7e7e58)

  130. Six Simple Rules To Follow: How Not To Get Your Ass Kicked By The Police…

    1. Obey the Laws (think of them as “hints”)
    2. Use Common Sense
    3. When you see flashing police lights in your car’s rearview mirror, stop immediately
    4. If you’re listening to loud rap music, turn that sh*t off
    5. When an officer approaches your car, be polite and stay in your car with both hands on the wheel
    6. If your wife or girlfriend is mad at you, leave her at home

    Sent from my iPad

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  131. 36. nk (dbc370) — 12/6/2014 @ 6:58 am

    I disagree that this resembles Duke. The Duke players hired the lying [lady of negotiable affection] and brought her into their house to provide them with images they could masturbate to later (hopefully later). These boys, at ΦΚΨ, did nothing to subject themselves to this and there was nothing they could have done to avoid it.

    There’s another way this does not resemble Duke.

    The Duke players were real people, while all the alleged rapists in the UVA case are imaginary people.

    Sammy Finkelman (7e7e58)

  132. they are called neuralizers, I rooted for Steven Lang’s Colonel, as an act of rebellion, it’s curious how Sigourney Weaver has advanced up the worker class in Alien, to top executive, in Avatar and Joss Whedon’s unsubtle slasher, the Cabin in the Woods, for a Buddhist he has a nasty mean streak

    narciso (ee1f88)

  133. while all the alleged rapists in the UVA case are imaginary people.

    So are the Jews who are alleged to use the blood of Christian babies for their Passover matzos. There’s still a libel against a group and the individuals who happen to belong to that group.

    Here’s a legal analysis by Eugene Volokh http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/12/06/libel-law-and-the-rolling-stone-uva-alleged-gang-rape-story/

    nk (dbc370)

  134. 87.i was thinking we could make posters

    89.And wristbands.

    The poster should say “Are you aware? Ask me how.” (h/t DRJ)

    The wristbands should be Pepto-Bismal pink and say “Live aware!.”

    felipe (40f0f0)

  135. Jackie, the fool, should have told the reporter: you publish one word of my story and I’ll deny it in every detail. And I’ll tell them you didn’t care one way or the other.

    Frankly I’m one of the ninnies who thinks maybe she did have a date with the person she names, and some kind of sexual sandbagging situation. I’m prepared for him to be caught lying about never meeting her – and everything going upp och ned. It was a different frat, maybe. She just got talked into it being another one.

    Or maybe the date just didn’t happen at all. But the evening did. A contemporaneous version of her tale was given the night-of. She called her friends (the story she told was different in details, according to one friend there but not questioned by the reporter), they came and got her, they talked about getting her help, they stayed with her. That part happened. So what would make a girl do that?

    SarahW (267b14)

  136. Dunham may have inadvertently been injured as Barry One frantically attempted to gnaw his arm off.

    Gazzer (cb9ee2)

  137. Also, sayonara Landrieu.

    Gazzer (cb9ee2)

  138. SarahW,

    How might Erdely “lead” the convos with Jackie, and how much so? She was hunting for rape stories. Clearly the more *awful the circumstance, the juicier the story and the more widely-read it would be. And judging from her twitter feed, she got big kudos from notables for the story… If something awful had happened to Jackie, would someone influential and with power be able to lead her to a bigger rendering of what occurred?

    *Is it necessary to qualify that of course all rape circumstances are horrible, this one just is particularly so (at least according to the article).

    Dana (8e74ce)

  139. Frankly I’m one of the ninnies who thinks maybe she did have a date with the person she names,

    Who? “Drew”, or a Phi Kappa Psi brother or someone who works at the Aquatic center? Is there anyone who fits any two of these three categories?

    Art Deco (ee8de5)

  140. Dana, not so fast. Renowned expert Whoopie said sometimes it’s not rape rape.

    Gazzer (cb9ee2)

  141. Heh.

    http://hotair.com/archives/2014/12/06/eric-garner-protesters-shut-down-capitalism-because-capitalism/

    When the protests over the grand jury decision in the case of Eric Garner broke out I was expecting them to take place around police stations. It was also expected that the marchers would take to streets and sidewalks in popular areas where the media could easily film them. But there are new targets in their sights, and as you might expect they shut down business at the Apple Store and Macy’s.

    …So you’re upset about race relations between police and the black community, so you are going to… shut down capitalism? Okay, then…

    Hasn’t Jazz Shaw caught onto cultural Marxism and its M.O. by now? Economic arguments didn’t catch on. But if the oppressed are recast from the proletariat to downtrodden ethnic groups or however the he## many genders there are now, and the bourgeoisie are recast from economic exploiters of the proletariat to rich white frat boys preying on those victim groups, then Marx’s oppressor-oppressed narrative remains intact.

    And the fix is always the same. End capitalism. Except instead of ending capitalism because it exploits the proletariat economically, we must end capitalism because the oppressor exploits the oppressed (in the case of “rape culture”) sexually. Or racially or whatever.

    Capitalism is the source of racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, blah, blah, blah.

    But that aside, you know what’s really funny about this? Eric Garner was killed because the socialist mayor NYC elected was shutting down capitalism. He was selling untaxed, unregulated cigarettes and socialists just can’t have that going on.

    So the f*&^tards protesting to shut down capitalism are, in the name Eric Garner and his memory, demanding the same police state that killed him produce more Eric Garners.

    Steve57 (c4b0b3)

  142. Sarah W. and Dana–To be sure, there are people stupid enough to win the Darwin award every year and congenital liars who will lie at the drop of a hat. But for “the”/a guy at the aquatic center, apparently by now a graduate of UVA, to say he never met her–especially after this past week’s publicity and the fact that we live in the iphone camera era– strikes me as a lie he would not risk.

    I think at worst, she had a bad experience possibly involving alcohol and BJs or HJs. Where, or with whom IDK. Possibly somebody besides Erdely and the UVA “activists” did use her or take advantage of her trust or naivete. But inevitably when names are named and the full and documented account of this story is recorded as I firmly believe it will be since so many people are working on it, I bet we find out it’s a sad little story not remotely related to “endemic violent college rape culture” (gawd I despise that phrase.)

    elissa (03b28a)

  143. @Elissa:It absolutely WAS a proposition (an event) that had been posited for national publication and needed to be vetted but was not… If you count them, this proposition at its most basic had at least eight initial important avenues to follow and check off for verification and authentication. There were about 20 more avenues if one wanted to be thorough.

    Right, so this statement that Jackie made was “falsifiable”, in that there is empirical evidence that could exist which could disprove it. Even if here statement was true it was still falsifiable.

    The statement that the Jezebel commenters are making, that Jackie was raped regardless of how the empirical evidence turns out, because victims get details wrong, because in “rape culture” the victim is never believed, etc, etc, this is NOT falsifiable, because any empirical evidence at all they consider to be “confirmation”. Even Jackie’s recantation, should she make one in the future, will be evidence of rape culture to them. “Rape culture” is an unfalsifiable explanation for what happened to Jackie.

    A proposition is falsifiable whether or not any sort of evidence has ever turned up or ever will, and falsifiability is a completely different issue from confirmation bias.

    Granted that a lot of people were “victims” if that’s the word of confirmation bias, I agree that many people were exhibiting this, but confirmation bias is not what Popper was talking about.

    I want to apologize to you Gabriel because I think I came off more rudely @ 102 than I intended.

    Indeed you were very rude, not to mention unfair; I did not introduce atheism into the discussion, you did. But the internet ain’t beanbag, I didn’t go home crying about it.

    Gabriel Hanna (dcffe4)

  144. John Stewart, how proud they must be at William and Mary, didn’t understand that argument, or didn’t care when Rand Paul proferred it,

    narciso (ee1f88)

  145. Gabriel Hanna–since I posted a link to the entire Columbia Journalism Review article in which the Popper-confirmation bias connection was discussed in great detail you might find it more intellectually satisfying to post your comments in disagreement there rather than here or at me. As far as I am concerned whatever it was in Popper’s writings that made this author (Shulevitz) recognize and then inspire her to write about the depth of confirmation bias she noted in the RS piece is a good thing and that is the point i was trying to make.

    elissa (03b28a)

  146. SCIENCE!!!!!!!

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  147. She blinded us with science!

    felipe (40f0f0)

  148. Funny guys.

    Dana (8e74ce)

  149. elissa @ 146,

    It would be so sadly ironic if victim Jackie was actually further victimized by journalist Erdely in her determined efforts at all costs to expose the suffering of victims in our rape culture.

    Dana (8e74ce)

  150. @elissa: If I read something that interested me, and someone who knew a little more about it were to tell me that my source was mistaken, I would be grateful and probably go check out the original.

    I simply thought you might like to know that the CJR article was wrong about what Popper had said. Evidently I was mistaken. If you ever get around to reading Logik der Forschung you can sort it out for yourself, of course.

    Gabriel Hanna (dcffe4)

  151. I thought it was interesting, Gabriel, although I confess it doesn’t really surprise me when CJR gets things wrong.

    DRJ (a83b8b)

  152. To clarify, your comments were interesting.

    DRJ (a83b8b)

  153. Gabriel– There is really no reason for you to be so immediately offended that there is insufficient gratitude shown here toward your assessment that CJR the “source was mistaken”. CJR made it quite clear that it knew Popper’s works are about philosophy and scientific methodology, not journalism, but it thinks that there are methods of discovery– research approaches–ways to pin down knowledge and to draw out fact from myth– that have at least some basis in Popper’s once revolutionary thinking. As a non scientist but someone who is still very interested in real world truth, that makes quite a bit of sense to me. You seem very focused on the literal of the Logik der Forschung rather than opening your mind to ways similar critical experimentation and investigation can be used outside of hard science.

    elissa (b169da)

  154. @elissa: A lot of assumptions here about a person you don’t know.

    1) There is really no reason for you to be so immediately offended that there is insufficient gratitude shown here

    Not offended a bit. It’s not as though you asked anyone to tell you that what you were reading was incorrect. And I’m not looking for gratitude. I saw that you had been misled and I called your attention to it and you took it very personally and were quite rude.

    2) CJR made it quite clear that it knew Popper’s works are about philosophy and scientific methodology, not journalism, but it thinks that there are methods of discovery– research approaches–ways to pin down knowledge and to draw out fact from myth– that have at least some basis in Popper’s once revolutionary thinking.

    As I keep pointing out, “confirmation bias”, the topic of the CRJ article, has NO basis in Popper’s thinking because he was talking about something completely different. The article was name-dropping Popper but it was very clear the author had not understood what Popper was saying about “falsifiability”.

    “Falsifiablilty” has nothing to do with whether you seek evidence to refute a proposition or don’t. It refers to a class of propositions that are, in principle, empirically disprovable.

    3)You seem very focused on the literal of the Logik der Forschung rather than opening your mind to ways similar critical experimentation and investigation can be used outside of hard science.

    Again, an assumption about someone you don’t know. I apply scientific techniques outside of hard science all the time, and have tried to get others to do the same, my entire adult life–and I am no longer a working scientist, but I have built a second career out of applying what I have learned from hard science to other fields. I have not anywhere said that methods of science should not have been used to evaluate Jackie’s story or anything else where it might be applicable.

    It’s fine if you don’t want to read Popper. It’s fine if you prefer not to know that an ignorant person misled you. It’s even fine to call me out as an atheist in a thread where that is completely irrelevant–don’t bother me none and other people will draw appropriate conclusions about your behavior.

    It’s fine if you don’t to listen, but why waste your time criticizing me for pointing it out that what you quoted was wrong? It’s not like I blamed you, how would you know it was wrong if no one said anything? If you want to know about what Popper really thought, why don’t you go read the Wikipedia article if you don’t have time for an 80 year-old book? Not everyone does have that kind of time and the Wikipedia article is quite a good summary.

    Gabriel Hanna (dcffe4)

  155. @elissa: In fact in my post #147 I actually DID apply what Popper REALLY said to the topic at hand, and so it was quite unfair for you to say that I resist “opening your mind to ways similar critical experimentation and investigation can be used outside of hard science,” because I just DID that VERY THING.

    Anyway, none of this is the real topic of the thread, so do feel free to say something personally critical again if you like, you shall have the last word if you want it.

    Gabriel Hanna (dcffe4)

  156. Gabriel,

    I want to make sure I understand. Popper was concerned with whether something could be proven scientifically. He objected to treating ideas as scientific that couldn’t be disproven — what he refers to as falsifiable — because that is the antithesis of science. So Popper would object to a claim we can scientifically prove God exists, not because he thinks God doesn’t exist but because it can’t be proven or disproven scientifically.

    Confirmation bias is selecting facts that support a preferred belief and ignoring those that don’t, regardless of whether they are falsifiable.

    As I understand your point, what some people are doing with the Rolling Stone story is worse than confirmation bias, because they’re using the mantle of science to justify claims that can’t be proven or disproven. In other words, in addition to the selective use of facts (confirmation bias), their claim that “colleges are rape cultures” is a scientific-sounding claim that can’t be disproven (and thus, according to Popper’s theory, it can’t be scientific). As a result, all facts can be used to support the rape culture narrative and not just selective facts as would be the case with confirmation bias.

    DRJ (a83b8b)

  157. What it’s not Jackie’s story that’s fictional, but Jackie herself? (A la Stephen Glass)

    NickM (f8e14b)

  158. Same Two-Faced Yellow Dog, Same Dirty Rag, Same Leftist Character Assassination:

    Here’s an excerpt from Gotnews reporter Charles C Johnson, dated 12/6/14.

    BREAKING: Fraud Rolling Stones Reporter Blamed Rep. Bachmann for Teen Suicides in Another Fake Story.

    Rolling Stones journalist Sabrina Rubin Erdely has written yet another problematic story, GotNews.com has learned.

    Erdely may be in the news these days for a botched story on an alleged gang rape at the University of Virginia but writing thinly sourced problematic stories isn’t a new occurrence for her.

    One of Erdely’s most celebrated works of journalism, also for Rolling Stone, is full of unsubstantiated claims and tentative connections written in a ham-handed attempt to politicize a series of personal tragedies. The story, published in 2012 and titled “School of Hate,” tries to drag then-Congresswoman Michele Bachmann into complicity in a wave of suicides that struck a school district she represented…

    ropelight (618aef)

  159. It’s hard to tell. “Jackie” reportedly has gone around campus making speeches saying she was gang raped. That’s how Rolling Stone found her.

    There is now apparently one other real person here involved – but I would want to make sure there is some3 contemporaneous record, or at least other witnesses – this person – “Andy” – is supposed to have been contacted by “Jackie” after the event.

    http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/12/06/rolling_stone_uva_rape_story_continues_to_unravel_jackie_s_friend_andy_speaks.html

    He said Jackie told him that she had been at a frat party and a group of men forced her to perform oral sex, although she did not specify which frat. He said she did not have any visible injuries but the friends offered to get her help, and then spent the night with her in her dorm room to comfort her at her request. (Update, Dec. 7, 2014: It appears Erderly also did not talk to the friend identified in the Rolling Stone article as “Cindy,” who told the Washington Post a similar story to Drew’s.)

    Sammy Finkelman (7e7e58)

  160. re #163: that is not how Erderly found the UVA story. Erderly was shopping around for a story to fit her narrative and after attempts at various colleges someone who had an official position at UVA heard about the shopping spree and contacted Erderly about ‘Jackie’.

    The fact that Erderly never bothered to confirm if there was a party that night at that frat is really all we need to know.
    And I really don’t care what happened to Jackie that night, she is still pulling a Dunham.

    Still waiting for MSM to give attention to Terry Bean.

    seeRpea (9676d4)

  161. Washington Post story:

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/u-va-fraternity-to-rebut-claims-of-gang-rape-in-rolling-stone/2014/12/05/5fa5f7d2-7c91-11e4-84d4-7c896b90abdc_story.html

    A group of Jackie’s close friends, who are advocates at U-Va. for sex-assault awareness, said they believe that something traumatic happened to her, but they also have come to doubt her account. A student who came to Jackie’s aid the night of the alleged attack said in an interview late Friday night that she did not appear physically injured at the time but was visibly shaken and told him and two other friends that she had been at a fraternity party and had been forced to have oral sex with a group of men. They offered to get her help and she said she just wanted to return to her dorm, said the student, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

    But since these people are all part of the U-VA sex-assault awareness community, this could be damage control – i.e. she’s not a complete fraud, and they had something to go on when they supported her. “Andy” actually says maybe nothing happened. “Cindy” if that’s who is “Cindy” graduated in 2014, and now works for the University of Virginia as a sexual violence awareness specialist. She said “Jackie” initially told her it was Phi Kappa Psi, bit gave the number of students was attacked by as five. She was the one who introduced “Jackie” to Erdely.

    After being interviewed “Jackie” actually asked to be taken out of the article, according to the Washington Post. “Jackie” says she consented after Erdely agreed to let her fact check what it said about her. The Washington Post was not able to get any comment from her or Rolling Stone.

    Jackie’s former roommate, Rachel Soltis, said she noticed emotional and physical changes to her friend during the fall semester of 2012, when they shared a suite.

    but she apparently didn’t tell her anything about being raped until January, 2013.

    “Jackie” claimed to know two of the attackers by name, but has refused to name them.

    Sammy Finkelman (7e7e58)

  162. I don’t understand these two paragraphs by the end of the Washington Post article:

    Jackie contradicted an earlier interview, saying Thursday that she did not know whether the attacker she knew actually was a member of Phi Kappa Psi.

    “He never said he was in Phi Psi,” she said, while noting that she was positive that the date function and attack occurred at the fraternity house. “I know it was Phi Psi, because a year afterward, my friend pointed out the building to me and said that’s where it happened.”

    Who pointed out the building??

    Sammy Finkelman (7e7e58)

  163. re #133: loud noise of any kind, turn it off when police approach you.

    seeRpea (9676d4)

  164. re #166: the friend pointed out the building. As to identifying it as the ‘place’, i think only the WAPost writers are not confused as to whether the friend said that is the ‘place’ or Jackie recognized it as the ‘place’.

    hmm, Yale came to conclusion that having sex with a drunken ex when the drunken ex wants the sex is not rape. Well, with their endowment they don’t need Federal money.

    seeRpea (9676d4)

  165. It would be so sadly ironic if victim Jackie was actually further victimized by journalist Erdely in her determined efforts at all costs to expose the suffering of victims in our rape culture.

    On second thought, she already has been victimized by Rolling Stone in there non-apology which essentially appears to blame Jackie for *their* lack of meeting their own journalistic standards.

    Dana (8e74ce)

  166. Lena Dunham’s alleged rapist is fighting back:

    The man identified as “Barry One” in a Breitbart News investigation debunking Lena Dunham’s story of being raped in college by a “mustachioed campus Republican” named Barry, has made his first official statement since the release of that report. Through his attorney, identified as Aaron Minc, Barry One has set up a legal fund to cover current legal expenses, clear his name, and to potentially file suit against Ms. Dunham.

    For more than two months, and to no avail, Barry One has asked Dunham (through her representatives) to clear his name. Obviously, she has refused.

    “All proceeds will be spent by Barry on legal costs and related fees associated with defending Barry’s reputation,” the statement reads, “including, but not limited to, potentially pursuing Lena Dunham and Penguin Random House for harm caused to Barry’s reputation from the publication and sale of Ms. Dunham’s memoir.”

    Dana (8e74ce)

  167. Oops. 169 is no longer so… Seems RS must’ve gotten lot of grief over their non-apology:

    Major changes appeared Saturday in Rolling Stone’s apology for a widely-read story alleging a female student was gang raped at the University of Virginia.

    The original three-paragraph note was published Friday and came in the wake of a storm of criticism over Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s story about an unidentified student named “Jackie.” The note concluded with a paragraph that said “discrepancies” in Jackie’s story had appeared and that the magazine “misplaced” its trust in her.

    But Saturday, much of that language was suddenly missing, despite the post’s continued publication date of Dec. 5 and without mention of an update or correction. The new concluding paragraph acknowledged that the magazine made mistakes, then said “these mistakes are on Rolling Stone, not on Jackie.”

    Dana (8e74ce)

  168. @DRJ:Gabriel,

    I want to make sure I understand. Popper was concerned with whether something could be proven scientifically. He objected to treating ideas as scientific that couldn’t be disproven — what he refers to as falsifiable — because that is the antithesis of science.

    Close. He was looking for a principle to distinguish science from not-science, and that is the criterion he chose.

    So Popper would object to a claim we can scientifically prove God exists, not because he thinks God doesn’t exist but because it can’t be proven or disproven scientifically.

    It would depend on what you consider to be proof that God exists, and what you mean by God. Popper was raised a Lutheran, I don’t know how religious he was but the impression I have from reading his works is that he was a Christian. But consider a millenarian cultist who predicts that if God exists then He will cause the world to end on a specific date; that claim is certainly scientifically testable.


    Confirmation bias is selecting facts that support a preferred belief and ignoring those that don’t, regardless of whether they are falsifiable.

    Close. An unfalsifiable belief cannot have contrary evidence, by definition–all evidence is confirmation.

    As I understand your point, what some people are doing with the Rolling Stone story is worse than confirmation bias, because they’re using the mantle of science to justify claims that can’t be proven or disproven. In other words, in addition to the selective use of facts (confirmation bias), their claim that “colleges are rape cultures” is a scientific-sounding claim that can’t be disproven (and thus, according to Popper’s theory, it can’t be scientific). As a result, all facts can be used to support the rape culture narrative and not just selective facts as would be the case with confirmation bias.

    Very close. Anything Jackie does or doesn’t do is due to “rape culture”. The falsity of Jackie’s story is evidence of “rape culture” because if “rape culture” didn’t exist so many people would not have found the story plausible, and of course the truth of Jackie’s story is ALSO evidence of “rape culture”.

    They’re not actually making any serious attempt to use science. They’re straining at gnats and swallowing camels, is another way to put it.

    Gabriel Hanna (dcffe4)

  169. re #172: sounds very close to Global Warming/Climate Change , doesn’t it?
    They make no predictions that can be checked and
    any changes in observation up or down are due to Global Warming/Climate Change

    And I’m sticking with calling it the Big Bang Theory , not the Big Bang Fact

    seeRpea (9676d4)

  170. re #171: Dana I don’t think saying

    glad we did it facts be damned as it caused a conversation and action

    qualifies as an apology.

    seeRpea (9676d4)

  171. “They’re not actually making any serious attempt to use science. They’re straining at gnats and swallowing camels, is another way to put it.”

    Gabriel – Sabrina did not use investigative techniques to test the truth(falsity) of what happened to Jackie. The incident supported what she wanted to find about the “rape culture” on college campuses.

    Finding that the incident Jackie described did not occur or something else occurred would do nothing to dispel the myth of the rape culture in the eyes of rad fems. It remains a myth, supported by bogus statistical sampling now used to strong arm behavior changes from colleges nationwide under threat of loss of federal funds for failure to comply. Typical thug behavior from the Obama Administration, non-science based conclusions cloaked as science to justify government interventions.

    The rad fems do not care whether Jackie’s story is true. Have you ever tried to have a serious discussion with a rad fem after her crazy volcano has erupted? It’s impossible. You have Washington Post columnist Zerlina Maxwell saying there should be a presumption of guilt prior to investigation in every alleged incidence of rape. Other rad fems are calling those doubting Jackie’s story rape apologists. It’s just an out of control crazy train that isn’t going to make it around the bend.

    Meanwhile, you’re pompously telling people they should be grateful for why they were misled by CJR with a bunch of virtually impenetrable word salad about what is falsifiable or not.

    It’s not that hard. You have an incident. Investigate. You have an unproven myth about rape cultures on college campuses clung to as an article of faith.

    You are welcome.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  172. @ daley,

    It’s not that hard. You have an incident. Investigate. You have an unproven myth about rape cultures on college campuses clung to as an article of faith.

    An investigation can only proceed as far as true believers can allow it to without threatening their espoused beliefs. The ethical compromise is made well in advance of even finding the story for it has already taken place in the presuppositions held and in the needed advancement of the narrative.

    Whether or not she cared or was even truthful about the story, Jackie (and certainly the accused) didn’t stand a chance of being honestly and accurately presented. And even if Jackie was lying, she still was being pressed into telling the full truth, because out of necessity, she couldn’t be.

    Dana (8e74ce)

  173. Dana – Exactly. Gabriel seems to believe we can attribute rational behavior to irrational people. We have seen time and again that is not possible with agenda driven journalism, epistemic closure and the confirmation bias of the left.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  174. she still wasn’t going to be pressed

    Dana (8e74ce)

  175. Dana – The falsification of temperature data by Michael Mann and his cohort does nothing to discredit AGW mythology even though those temperature time series serve as a basis for so many climate models.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  176. “she still wasn’t going to be pressed”

    Dana – Could Sabrina could have moved on to less sensational incidents where she had solid documentation or was this one just too juicy?

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  177. I don’t think she could have, daley. This was the biggest and baddest catch of all. What if someone else scooped it? She couldn’t let that happen. And it was the needed puzzle piece of perfection that fit into the narrative and furthered the cause.

    Re science: Althouse neatly points out the necessary lack of variables in The Atlantic’s graph in order to support their narrative.

    Dana (8e74ce)

  178. daleyrocks,

    I don’t view Gabriel’s comments the way you do. I don’t think he’s being arrogant nor is he trying to undermine the points you and elissa have made. I think his simple point is that CJR erroneously used Popper’s name in connection with confirmation bias, when that’s not what his theory is about.

    DRJ (a83b8b)

  179. And I say that as someone who took philosophy in college and probably made my professor weep. It seemed like something that spun people in circles for no practical benefit, but that was my weakness. Of course, Beldar took the same courses I did and aced them. Where is he when I need him?

    DRJ (a83b8b)

  180. i’m skeptical about all these claims of rape people keep nattering on about

    happyfeet (831175)

  181. If anything, I think Gabriel is being harder on feminists because his point is that they’ve convinced themselves their arguments are philosophically and scientifically superior to everyone else’s arguments — so much so that other arguments aren’t even allowed. It is like climate change.

    DRJ (a83b8b)

  182. “I don’t view Gabriel’s comments the way you do.”

    DRJ – Then we disagree.

    @elissa: If I read something that interested me, and someone who knew a little more about it were to tell me that my source was mistaken, I would be grateful and probably go check out the original.

    I simply thought you might like to know that the CJR article was wrong about what Popper had said. Evidently I was mistaken. If you ever get around to reading Logik der Forschung you can sort it out for yourself, of course.

    Not offended a bit. It’s not as though you asked anyone to tell you that what you were reading was incorrect. And I’m not looking for gratitude.

    As I keep pointing out, “confirmation bias”, the topic of the CRJ article, has NO basis in Popper’s thinking because he was talking about something completely different.

    It’s fine if you don’t want to read Popper. It’s fine if you prefer not to know that an ignorant person misled you.

    It’s fine if you don’t to listen, but why waste your time criticizing me for pointing it out that what you quoted was wrong? It’s not like I blamed you, how would you know it was wrong if no one said anything? If you want to know about what Popper really thought, why don’t you go read the Wikipedia article if you don’t have time for an 80 year-old book?

    @elissa: In fact in my post #147 I actually DID apply what Popper REALLY said to the topic at hand, and so it was quite unfair for you to say that I resist “opening your mind to ways similar critical experimentation and investigation can be used outside of hard science,” because I just DID that VERY THING.

    Anyway, none of this is the real topic of the thread, so do feel free to say something personally critical again if you like, you shall have the last word if you want it.

    A lot of words from somebody who claims not to have been offended. I find some of Gabriels comments interesting. His lectures, not so much.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  183. And, the hits just keep on comin’

    Here’s an excerpt from Ralph Cipriano’s blog Bigtrial.net

    Before Rolling Stone Was Conned By “Jackie” They Fell for “Billy”

    Before a writer for Rolling Stone ever made the mistake of believing an alleged gang-rape story told by a student named “Jackie,” she bought an alleged multiple-rape story told by a former altar boy named “Billy.”

    On Nov. 19th, Rolling Stone published an article claiming that “Jackie,” a student at the University of Virginia, had been allegedly gang-raped by seven men at a fraternity party. [“A Rape on Campus; A Brutal Assault and Struggle for Justice At U-VA.”]…

    There’s lots of irony here folks for readers of this blog. The writer of the story in question, Rolling Stone contributing editor Sabrina Rubin Erdely, is from Philadelphia. Before she bought Jackie’s story, she fell for a story told by a former altar boy dubbed “Billy Doe” by a grand jury.

    In Rolling Stone, it seems rape is bigger than rock. On Sept. 15, 2011, Erderly wrote a story for Rolling Stone that accepted as gospel Billy Doe’s fantastic claims about being passed around as a rape victim among two priests and a school teacher. [The Catholic Church’s Secret Sex-Crime Files.] In Erdely’s defense, she, like many other members of the media, made the mistake of relying on an intellectually dishonest grand jury report containing more than 20 factual errors.

    Attention Rolling Stone: if you think the factual discrepancies in Jackie’s story are “deeply unsettling,” wait till you read all the factual discrepancies in Billy’s story, documented for the past two years on this blog. Sadly, the stakes here are a lot higher than in Virginia, where none of the alleged attackers have even been outed. In Philly, three priests and a school teacher wound up going to jail over Billy’s story, which has since unraveled. One of those priests died in prison last month after he spent his last hours handcuffed to a hospital bed while suffering from untreated coronary disease…

    Read more at http://www.bigtrial.net/2014/12/before-rolling-stone-was-conned-by.html#wGwiCpy5CjsVqqJ0.99

    ropelight (618aef)

  184. @daleyrocks:The rad fems do not care whether Jackie’s story is true. Have you ever tried to have a serious discussion with a rad fem after her crazy volcano has erupted? It’s impossible. You have Washington Post columnist Zerlina Maxwell saying there should be a presumption of guilt prior to investigation in every alleged incidence of rape. Other rad fems are calling those doubting Jackie’s story rape apologists. It’s just an out of control crazy train that isn’t going to make it around the bend…You have an unproven myth about rape cultures on college campuses clung to as an article of faith.

    I have said nothing different from this. I agree 100% with what you have written here.

    you’re pompously telling people they should be grateful for why they were misled by CJR with a bunch of virtually impenetrable word salad about what is falsifiable or not.

    It’s better to have the facts than not have them, is it not?

    Gabriel seems to believe we can attribute rational behavior to irrational people.

    This is something you’re making up; you can’t locate it in anything I’ve actually said.

    I do not accuse you of being unable to read. I accuse you of willfully refusing to read what I have actually written and instead attributing things to me which I did not say.

    Gabriel Hanna (dcffe4)

  185. @DRJ:I think his simple point is that CJR erroneously used Popper’s name in connection with confirmation bias, when that’s not what his theory is about.

    That is indeed all I was trying to say about it. Because I was challenged, and in a rude way, I explained what Popper had actually said, but without being rude.

    The comment that elissa made that puzzled you explains the hostility, it’s from a recent thread on an unrelated topic, where elissa and daleyrocks and I were commenting.

    Gabriel Hanna (dcffe4)

  186. Oh, good Allah. Someone was rude to you. Wah. Elissa should have never apologized to you for her extraordinarily mild criticism that didn’t bother you at all, yet caused comment after comment after comment of verbose, pompous responses.

    JD (86a5eb)

  187. 177. Dana – Exactly. Gabriel seems to believe we can attribute rational behavior to irrational people. We have seen time and again that is not possible with agenda driven journalism, epistemic closure and the confirmation bias of the left.
    daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 12/7/2014 @ 11:46 am

    No, I read his comments to say that it’s possible to rationally describe irrational people and their behavior.

    I’ve not read popper, but I’ve watched Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson all my life. So I’m familiar with their M.O. Which is why I said it’s wrong to settle with them when they try to shakedown your company (and now your police force or entire municipality, with the aid of Prom Queen’s DoJ). Because if you settle with them, that will be taken as an admission that that they were right all along about your racist behavior. Why else would you settle unless you knew they were right, and you were wrong?

    The other side of the coin of course is that if you refuse to settle then that too is proof of institutional racism.

    So I suppose I was describing confirmation bias. No matter what the result, Sharpton, Jackson, et al will take it as proof that this country is irredeemably racist. If Americas addresses its original sin of white racism, that’s proof America is irredeemably racist. If America refuses to address its original sin of white racism, that’s proof America is irredeemably racist. If the sun rises tomorrow, that’s proof America is irredeemably racist (this is why where rational people see progress, the race hustlers claim this country is just a breath away from reinstating slavery and public lynchings).

    I don’t consider this rational behavior. This is how cults operate. One of the disginguishing features of a cult is that it breaks down an individual’s self-confidence and his or her ability to discern cause-and-effect on their own. They are rewarded for adopting the group’s view of cause and effect, and punished for deviating from it.

    So in Sharpton’s world, everything is caused by racism. In the feminazi world everything is caused by “rape culture.” And everybody is a victim of our racisty rapey white culture.

    Just because you can study a cult, and determine how cult’s operate, doesn’t mean you’re assigning rational motives to irrational people. How could that be? Cult’s depend on their ability to destroy an adherent’s ability to reason.

    Steve57 (938124)

  188. @JD:Oh, good Allah. Someone was rude to you. Wah. Elissa should have never apologized to you for her extraordinarily mild criticism that didn’t bother you at all, yet caused comment after comment after comment of verbose, pompous responses.

    There’s little point in misstating what happened; anyone can read the thread for themselves.

    I responded to direct criticisms and personal insults. I’m of course the bad one for responding to them, not for making them.

    Gabriel Hanna (dcffe4)

  189. @steve57:Just because you can study a cult, and determine how cult’s operate, doesn’t mean you’re assigning rational motives to irrational people.

    While the arguments they make are not rational, their behavior is quite rational in that they more often than not get what they want by acting this way.

    Gabriel Hanna (dcffe4)

  190. Well, yes, Gabriel. That’s true. If the cult is successful the behavior of the cultists is rewarded. But then if the cult is successful it’s no longer called a cult.

    It’s called the Democratic party.

    This is why the leftists spend so much time trying to psychoanalyze conservatives. Since there can’t be any counterargument to leftism, something must be wrong with people for not buying into the cult’s religious tenets.

    If you scroll up you’ll see that I did mention the rewards for buying into the cult. One is Absolute Moral Authority. The other is political power. Another is license to be as nasty as you want, especially to non-believers. Because since there is no rational argument against meeting the cult’s extortionist demands, the only possible explanation as to why people won’t meet their demands is because they’re racist, sexist or otherwise evil. So one can feel morally superior as they dance around a horribly injured cop and chant and laugh.

    From my post @120:

    http://theconservativetreehouse.com/2014/12/05/denver-police-officer-crushed-by-vehicle-during-school-mike-brown-walkout-students-cheered-yelling-hit-him-again-hit-him-again/#more-93304

    …One officer was horrifically injured as his body was run over and dragged by a vehicle. Details now surface of the protesting students cheering the injury and chanting “hit him again, hit him again” while marching around the fallen officers. (video included below)…

    This behavior isn’t rational, though, because it can (and I believe has) become counterproductive. These people putting on the above display really believe in the moral superiority of their cause. While they are displaying the moral bankruptcy of anyone who would adhere to it. When the backlash comes there’s no way they’ll be able to correct their behavior. Who do you moderate behavior that’s based upon Absolute Moral Authority? What is about the absolute nature of that moral authority their critics don’t understand.

    The behavior and the beliefs remain irrational even when those behaviors and beliefs are rewarded. When those behaviors and beliefs stop getting rewarded, the true believers have no idea why. Of course, because the beliefs that produced the behavior have no logical connection to their intended goal. The left becomes a cargo cult. Once the hard work of hacking airfields out of the jungles of the Solomons and New Guinea was rewarded with magical metal birds filled with wonderful food and magical devices descending from the gods. The ancestors of the people of the Solomons and New Guinea saw it with their own eyes. Now, though they imitate that behavior and even put out magical bird decoys, the gods don’t send the metal birds.

    The solution, the left would tell them, is to do more of the same, with greater intensity, and to punish non-believers because clearly they are making the gods angry.

    Intimidation can bring its own rewards. And cults do employ it, against members and non-members alike. But that doesn’t change the underlying irrationality of the beliefs or cultic behaviors. Many of the cultists don’t even know why they’re getting rewarded. Some believe it’s because of the power of their ideas. Not knowing it’s do to their thuggish behavior.

    Now of course irrationality can be exploited by the very rational and immoral. But that’s a wall of text for another comment.

    Steve57 (938124)

  191. Gabriel,

    This is a public website but many of us have been reading and commenting here for years. I want it to be an interesting and successful website because I’m a big fan of Patterico. The website will benefit from new and interesting commenters and comments. However, it’s also a group of people who know each other — to the extent that can happen in an online community — and we feel protective of each other. It’s an interesting place to read the comments because we often disagree about things, but I think most of us agree on the important things.

    In this instance, I agree with daleyrocks that the tone of this conversation leaves something to be desired, especially insofar as it involves elissa. She is a thoughtful, articulate, intelligent and elegant lady. It’s unusual for her to mix it up in the comments because she’s courteous and doesn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. Typically, that’s something I’m not only comfortable doing but enjoy. Unfortunately, I’m not here as much as I used to be and I’ve said enough. I hope you decide to stick around, If so, considering finding a way to start fresh.

    DRJ (a83b8b)

  192. That didn’t come out the way I intended. While I like to mix it up in the comments, I don’t like to hurt anyone’s feelings.

    DRJ (a83b8b)

  193. “I do not accuse you of being unable to read. I accuse you of willfully refusing to read what I have actually written and instead attributing things to me which I did not say.”

    Gabriel – Rudeness and accusation are your stock in trade. I read everything you said in this thread and based my comments thereon. It is good that you pointed out CJR’s description of Popper’s theory and/or its misapplication to the UVa situation. It was tits up after that.

    “There’s little point in misstating what happened; anyone can read the thread for themselves.”

    I agree, you claimed not to be offended but after elissa’s apology doubled down with rudeness and pedantry.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  194. Well, here’s a to do. Charles C Johnson has claimed to have confirmed the id of “jackie” – and says he has information that he will publish that she has a history of false rape claims, that is,if she fails to”tell the truth” about the UVA claims by midnight. He says he’s already forwarded all the information he has to Virginia law enforcement secret.

    Frankly I think if he has something to publish, he shouldn’t play games with it. Publish or don’t. The delay makes me think it’s probably pretty weak information, or rumor.

    As for her name, it was unkind of him to reveal it, though it would inevitably have been; since so many people know who she is, it would never have remained secret.

    SarahW (267b14)

  195. Whoops pasted “secret” in there at random somehow.

    SarahW (267b14)

  196. Charles C. Johnson has revealed “Jackie’s” real name on Twitter. Further, he tweeted:

    I’m giving Jackie until later tonight to tell the truth and then I’m going to start revealing everything about her past.

    Dana (8e74ce)

  197. He’s a dlck.

    JD (335973)

  198. Oh, didn’t see you there, Sarah W.

    I don’t know if the delay means he’s got very little substantiated or what, but I wish he wouldn’t. If the police now have the information, why release it? While of course, it’s not the same, it does remind me of Darren Wilson’s personal info being published in the NYT, and the subsequent release of the reporter’s home address and phone number being released in turn (and IIRC, by the same media outlet), which a majority of commenters approved of.

    Dana (8e74ce)

  199. SarahW (267b14) — 12/7/2014 @ 4:46 pm

    Frankly I think if he has something to publish, he shouldn’t play games with it. Publish or don’t. The delay makes me think it’s probably pretty weak information, or rumor.

    As for her name, it was unkind of him to reveal it, though it would inevitably have been; since so many people know who she is, it would never have remained secret.

    This kind of teaser would be done to get more attention for what he has to say. He would want her to confess, because it would be stronger evidence, but that’s highly unlikely. Still, he could say he gave her a chance to avoid humiliation, and salvage a bit of integrity.

    It might be very strong evidence, not weak at all, because since few people know her name, few people therefore would have an ability to check into previous rapes she has claimed happened to her. There might be reasonably strong evidence that other things she has reported to have happened to her are false. That is, she is serial liar.

    Of course we will see soon what he is talking about.

    Sammy Finkelman (7e7e58)

  200. A name is one thing. Addresses / location is something else again.

    As I said up thread (somewhere) she should have backed out, and when the reporter put the screws on, screwed right back, and promised to let the air out of the reporters reputation.

    SarahW (267b14)

  201. Sammy, of course it’s a teaser. Too much attention whoring to complain about an attention whore.

    SarahW (267b14)

  202. Sarah W., his tweet does include her home address, and email.

    Cue the NYT to start screaming about how horrible this is. They won’t be able to see their own hypocrisy. Of course, they will say she is a rape victim being exposed and exploited. Yet, if it’s indeed the case, they won’t be able to see that if there wasn’t a rape, she was never a victim.

    Dana (8e74ce)

  203. The multiple prior false allegations allegation might change my view of this, if true. But he is still a dlck.

    JD (86a5eb)

  204. it will be interesting to see how this plays out

    happyfeet (831175)

  205. 204. I think this is @71 and @139.

    She actually did back out, but claims that she agreed not to on condition she could fact-check what the article said about her.

    There are no details as to whether any fact checking was done, or if done, listened to, or any comment by Rolling Stone or the reporter as to whether or not it was promised.

    Of course backing out is consistent with the idea this had gone too far. “Jackie” is supposed to have spoken about this at campus forums, and was steered to Erdely by someone who now works for ow works for the University of Virginia as a sexual violence awareness specialist, but that night was someone “Jackie” was taken to. And you have to wonder how much of that happened.

    “Cindy” – the University of Virginia sexual violence awareness specialist who put Sabrina Rubin Erdely in touch with “Jackie” – now claims to have become a little bit suspicious of accuracy of “Jackie”‘s story several months later, because “Jackie” raised the number of men who assaulted her from five to seven.

    Sammy Finkelman (7e7e58)

  206. sexual violence awareness specialists are a key part of the solution to this campus rape pandemic

    happyfeet (831175)

  207. ..and wristbands, if you want to be taken seriously these days.

    Gazzer (cb9ee2)

  208. 202. …it does remind me of Darren Wilson’s personal info being published in the NYT, and the subsequent release of the reporter’s home address and phone number being released in turn (and IIRC, by the same media outlet), which a majority of commenters approved of.

    Dana (8e74ce) — 12/7/2014 @ 4:55 pm

    I can’t speak for the others but I certainly did. And I explained why. Beldar brought up the war analogy. US forces fight according to the Law Of Armed Conflict (LOAC), sometimes called the Laws of War, even when the enemy doesn’t.

    Which is true. But then, the LOAC specifically provides for something called reprisal. Violations of the LOAC almost never see the inside of a courtroom. And in the rare case that they do, that will take place years later and won’t repair the harm done be the violation (as well as the harm done by subsequent violations, which you permit by allowing your enemy to continue to act illegally). When you fight lawfully and ethically, and your enemy doesn’t, you can commit an act of reprisal to punish them for their behavior. And with an eye toward making sure that your enemy fights ethically and lawfully in the future. So the reprisal must fit the crime. As in, it has to actually be punishing enough to achieve the desired effect.

    I found Beldar’s war analogy apt, just not the way I believe he intended. When you’re in a conflict and both sides remain on the field, it’s only through acts of reprisal that you can correct your enemies behavior. And those acts of reprisal would be unlawful under different circumstances. But your enemies prior unlawful act makes it lawful. It also makes it necessary.

    This isn’t childish tit-for-tat behavior. This is a legal principle, enshrined in international law. I have absolutely no problem to resorting to it. In fact, when it’s necessary it’s immoral and derelict not to resort to using it.

    Which has no bearing on this particular instance. If Johnson has something to bring to law enforcement’s attention then he should just do so. It would be unethical to withhold that information to compel “Jackie” to do anything one way or another. Who cares? If he has evidence she broke the law then its his obligation to bring that to the attention of the authorities. Not to use it as a bargaining chip, and then withhold the information under certain circumstances. If “Jackie’s” criminal acts were serious enough, then to keep that information from the authorities could be “misprision of a felony.” So withholding the information could in itself be a criminal act.

    Steve57 (938124)

  209. i don’t have me any fashionable rape awareness accessories yet Mr. Gazzer

    but I told Santa to bring me some

    happyfeet (831175)

  210. Have you tried supercharging the vagina in your life, Mr. feets?

    …A crowd of distinguished art enthusiasts stood by and watched the entire thing.

    The woman wanted to show how humans have become dependent on technology and she felt a super-charged vagina would help make her point. We totally get it…

    Read more: http://www.tmz.com/2014/12/04/usher-charges-iphone-from-naked-girl-photos/#ixzz3LGgMPw26

    I was a little late to the whole vagina warrior thingy, but if I have the jargon down, this is the very definition of “empowering.”

    Steve57 (938124)

  211. it is truly an age of wonders Mr. 57

    happyfeet (831175)

  212. Is the point of releasing Jackie’s personal information to compel her to come forward and tell her story? That might make Jackie to come forward, but it doesn’t seem necessary. Is Johnson afraid of losing his scoop if he waits?

    DRJ (a83b8b)

  213. The media will treat this as the horrible outing of a rape victim or, at a minimum, as bullying. The bullying works in today’s world even if Jackie lied about being raped, because bullying is considered wrong no matter what the bullying victim did.

    DRJ (a83b8b)

  214. while the college officers had some sense, the students do not:
    http://www.nationalreview.com/node/392257/print

    Why would a male go to a co-ed college now-a-days?

    seeRpea (9676d4)

  215. O/T today I had my flag at half staff as a measure if respect. Running errands I came across 10-12 Flags and not a one was lowered!
    That included the library and the VFW, ferrcrissakes. The VFW.

    Gazzer (cb9ee2)

  216. “The behavior and the beliefs remain irrational even when those behaviors and beliefs are rewarded.”

    Steve57 – The above is from your #194 and I believe directly conflicts with your #191, but I think I know what you are trying to say. I don’t think it is possible to argue that these loony rad fems who many of us agree are acting irrationally can be described as rational because they wind up getting things they want. To me the logic is circular. To me the people giving them things they want are also behaving irrationally, responding to crazy with crazy and I think you have said as much.

    Below is a sample of tweets on the subject:

    I can’t state this more emphatically: If Jackie’s story is partially or wholly untrue, it doesn’t validate the reasons for disbelieving her.

    — Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) December 5, 2014

    “Discrepancies” is all it takes to convince most of the world Jackie is a liar. Welcome to the rape culture.

    — Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) December 5, 2014

    If the threshold for reporting on rape is 100% verifiable facts, there’s going to be a lot less reporting on rape. And there’s the point.

    — Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) December 5, 2014

    Interesting how rape apologists think that if they can “discredit” one rape story, that means no other rape stories can be true, either.

    — Amanda Marcotte (@AmandaMarcotte) December 5, 2014

    What I don’t get is if rape apologists are so sure rapes are hoaxes, why oppose investigating them and getting out that fact?

    — Amanda Marcotte (@AmandaMarcotte) December 5, 2014

    Wow, @JonahNRO, I’m curious when you last demanded that reporting on a burglary be independently corroborated by other outlets? Or a murder?

    — Sally Kohn (@sallykohn) December 2, 2014

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  217. “Why would a male go to a co-ed college now-a-days?”

    seeRpea – Easy, to improve the chance of getting laid.

    Why would a woman given the purported probability of getting sexually assaulted?

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  218. Sarah W., his tweet does include her home address, and email.
    …..
    Dana (8e74ce) — 12/7/2014 @ 5:31 pm

    Uncool

    SarahW (267b14)

  219. Which is why rapes should be investigated by the police and not by media whores or academic whores.

    (No, happyfeet has not corupted me. Sometimes it’s the only word that fits.)

    nk (dbc370)

  220. there is vast category error, in that collection of tweets, spot the logical errors there,

    narciso (ee1f88)

  221. Oh Amanda. It really wasn’t that hard to verify a guy climbed in my bedroom window, didn’t find me, walked with his knife to my new roommates bedroom and made his acquaintance with her, and his knife with the tendons of her artists hand. There was plenty of verifiable evidence. I’m just glad there wasn’t more.

    SarahW (267b14)

  222. It’s two mobs screaming at each other now, narciso.

    nk (dbc370)

  223. Best solution: investigate each and every accusation of rape as the serious violent crime charge it is. End of story.

    Several years ago, a young woman where I taught claimed to have been Rohypnoled at a party. I pleaded with her to get a blood test for evidence, so we could go after the situation.

    She refused. Her right.

    But darn it, rape is a serious violent crime. Period.

    Not a political football.

    Except I think it is exactly that to a number of college administrators and many pundits.

    Simon Jester (f31ec6)

  224. why oppose investigating them and getting out that fact?

    Right cos that’s what everyone’s been advocating. Strawman much?

    Gazzer (cb9ee2)

  225. But that’s the unpopular kind of rape, where a person of color is out scouting for a not very worldly wise 20 year old blond on the first floor with sheer curtains basically asking for his corrective measures, or trolling the college town pavilions, or hiding in the Harris teeter parking lot.

    SarahW (267b14)

  226. re #221: very good daleyrocks, thumb up 🙂

    seeRpea (9676d4)

  227. elitest rape is legal
    http://www.breitbart.com/

    mg (31009b)

  228. seeRpea – Thanks. Let’s just say my sons were less than interested in dad’s helpful handicapping of the coed situation at the various schools we visited.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  229. 220. …The above is from your #194 and I believe directly conflicts with your #191, but I think I know what you are trying to say. I don’t think it is possible to argue that these loony rad fems who many of us agree are acting irrationally can be described as rational because they wind up getting things they want. To me the logic is circular. To me the people giving them things they want are also behaving irrationally, responding to crazy with crazy and I think you have said as much.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 12/7/2014 @ 8:00 pm

    Yeah, that’s it. It gets hard keeping track of teh krazy sometimes.

    Steve57 (938124)

  230. If nothing was learned from or changed as a result of Duke, then this won’t make a difference.

    Actually, feminists and Leftists and other haters learned quite a lot. Instead of beginning with a police report by a phony victim, have assets in place (e.g. the president of UVa) then use the press to present the phony victim and her accusations. Immediate suspension of the chosen victim class was the result, without the problem of the police investigating.

    Feminists will learn from this error, as they learn from the Duke error, and try again in a year or two until they find their Horst Wessel and Reichstag Fire. It’s who they are.

    ErisGuy (76f8a7)

  231. After reading many, many comments above on the state of various university campuses in the America, I conclude the Maoist fringe elements of the Left on campuses in the 1960s have become the overwhelming majority fifty years later.

    ErisGuy (76f8a7)

  232. america?

    needs moar rape!

    “I think it’s fair to say that there will always be some degree of a gap between (data) and the latest innovations,” Mitch Zeller, director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Tobacco Products, said in a recent interview with The AP. “But that’s the beauty of regulation because over time, regulation closes that gap… We will get to a point where new products have to come through us first.”*

    happyfeet (831175)

  233. Feminists will learn from this error, as they learn from the Duke error, and try again in a year or two until they find their Horst Wessel and Reichstag Fire. It’s who they are.

    The three young men at Duke were put through 13 months of vilification and the legal bills were indubitably in the seven digits. This mess lasted less than two weeks before the publication ate crow, the author is incommunicado, and the suspension supposedly ends in a month. Their technique is not getting improved results. (By the way, the weasels Richard Brodhead and Robert K. Steel count as assets in place as well).

    Art Deco (ee8de5)

  234. Dickless Johnson made good on his threat. Pictures too. An obituary to show her relatives. What a fag.

    nk (dbc370)

  235. NK, no he didn’t. He totally punted, as I half expected. Previous false allegation history – ? Nuthin. He says he’ll roll it out in the coming days”. It’s just what I thought. Weak sauce friend of friend stories more likely.

    He put up a (pretty standard really, for a feminist/progressive trope infected college kid) “change the world” pinterest board. Which is not even close to his teased “evidence” – it isn’t evidence at all, just a partial picture illustrating what people already knew about her before they knew her name.

    It’s probably hers; assuming it is, the pinterest boards she has don’t shed much light one way or the other about her interest the subject and why she has it. You do get the idea she fancies herself a survivor – but, she might be. Selfharm, self-hate, her RS described history of “not feeling good enough” for daddy; it’s your basic 2006 live journal maunderings, mixed in with fashion and save the tigers.

    SarahW (267b14)

  236. “Ultimately, though, from where I sit in Charlottesville, to let fact checking define the narrative would be a huge mistake.”

    -Julia Horowitz, “assistant managing editor at The Cavalier Daily, the University of Virginia’s student newspaper,” writing in the Politico, in a piece titled “Why We Believed Jackie’s Rape Story.”

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  237. Because we really really really wanted it to be true is why. They needed it to be true.

    SarahW (267b14)

  238. SarahW – IOW, we don’t need to rely on fact checking because even if we do not have rapes we still have a RAPE CULTURE!

    Can you say patriarchy? Sure you can.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  239. I know at first blush it may seem O/T to keep bringing up the whole “systemic racism” dealio on a comment thread about “rape culture.” But that was one of the main goal of the cultural Marxists. To convince people that all these different grievance groups were entirely separate, spontaneous reactions to an oppressive culture. When all they did was divide the proletariat up into smaller physically or behaviorally identifiable parts. Like in the movies when a crew approaching their objective says “let’s split up” and then proceeds with the assault.

    http://www.nationalreview.com/article/394165/department-social-justice-ryan-lovelace

    …As investigators combed through Ferguson, DOJ’s Community Relations Service began holding the town-hall meetings, which excluded press and everyone from out of town. Ferguson resident Audrey Watson, 47, attended one of the meetings. She says federal officials organized the attendees into small groups and asked questions such as “What stereotypes exist in our community?” “How does white privilege impact race relations in our community?” and “Is there a need for personal commitment to race relations?”

    Hundreds of people attended the fall meetings, including Ferguson mayor James Knowles III, who says many people at the initial meetings were angry and screaming. Knowles says the Community Relations Service officials told him they had previously responded to Trayvon Martin’s death in Sanford, Fla., and that they were there to help. During the meetings, he says, the DOJ officials talked about underlying racism that people may not perceive, and the issue of white privilege.

    “I mean, I think it was really just trying to get people to understand what that [white privilege] means, because the average white person wakes up and says, if you’re just a middle-class white person, you say, What privilege do I have?” Knowles says. “But until you really understand the systemic issues and maybe some of those not-visible things that exist in society, which affect African Americans or other persons of color, you may not really understand what that is…”

    Here we see some of the common elements. There are systemic issues that continue the oppression. People will not perceive these underlying unless they are indoctrinated to perceive them. Here, the indoctrinators are from the DoJ. They are invisible. Your average white racist can’t see it. They need an indoctrinated, highly trained, authentic person of color to describe it to them. And the white person will never be able to see it. They will always need an indoctrinated, highly trained, authentic person of color to tell them how to navigate the invisible minefield of white privilege.

    Here a feminist writes about “invisible privilege.”

    http://www.nymbp.org/reference/WhitePrivilege.pdf

    …Through work to bring materials from Women’s Studies into the rest of the curriculum, I have often noticed men’s unwillingness to grant that they are over privileged, even though they may grant that women are disadvantaged. They may say they will work to improve women’s status, in the society, the university, or the curriculum, but they can’t or won’t support the idea of lessening men’s. Denials, which amount to taboos, surround the subject of advantages, which men gain from women’s disadvantages. These denials protect male privilege from being fully acknowledged, lessened or ended.

    Thinking through unacknowledged male privilege as a phenomenon, I realized that since hierarchies in our society are interlocking, there was most likely a phenomenon of white privilege, which was similarly denied and protected. As a white person, I realized I had been taught about racism as something which puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege which puts me at an advantage.

    I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege…

    The reason the author of this drivel finds it impossible to talk about “male privilege” without talking about “white privilege” is the same reason I can’t. It’s baked into the cake. There are no interlocking hierarchies in cultural Marxism. What the cultural Marxists set out to do is to indoctrinate these idiots to believe they’ve discovered something entirely separate from the other idiots who have been led to the same thing. After all, universities aren’t in the business of education anymore. They’re into propaganda. Education teaches people to think critically; propaganda leads people to a conclusion. They appear like the blind men describing an elephant. But they aren’t blind, they’ve been taught not to see. Then the propagandists led them to the elephant they wanted them to describe. Which is capitalism.

    And then everyone must demonstrate a “personal commitment” to fight privilege in all its forms. If anyone dares not demonstrate that personal commitment, that means that person is actually in favor of the social evil these holy warriors are out to fight. So in Ferguson, that means anyone who doesn’t buy into the narrative is a racist. As with the University of Virginia story it means whoever doesn’t believe the “rape culture” narrative despite the falsity of Jackie’s story is actually pro-rape.

    (Note how the story of Jackie nailed the “interlocking privilege hierarchy” trifecta by placing the rape at the rich, white, male institution of Phi Kappa Psi? That wasn’t an accident, and it’s also why the feminazis are so invested in the story. It’s not about a rape. It’s about rape culture. Rape as a rite of initiation into rape culture.)

    daley was right to call me on apparent contradictions when I talked about irrational beliefs and behaviors, while at other points I talked about rewards that logically flow from buying into the lie. There are multiple strands of whacko here. It’s hard to keep them sorted out at all times. To the degree the feminist, Peggy McIntosh, who wrote the article White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack actually believes what she wrote she’s irrational. To the degree that minimum wage workers protesting McDonald’s actually believe the way to higher earnings is to shut down their employer, they are behaving irrationally. But the people exploiting the irrational are behaving rationally. If you’re a revolutionary Communist (look at link to the website on the bottom of the professionally-produced “Justice for (insert name here)” signs) and you want to shut down capitalism anyway it makes perfect sense to use these people as dupes. With the added bonus that when Mickey D’s replaces these idjits with machines, the Marxists can tell their crash dummies that’s a failure of capitalism. And they’ll believe them.

    Peggy McIntosh is an irrational idiot if she believes what she wrote. Her Marxist-feminist professors who were collecting six figure salaries so they could mess with her mind and then bang her on the side were acting coldly and rationally.

    Steve57 (f8196f)

  240. …There are multiple strands of whacko here. It’s hard to keep them sorted out at all times…

    This is why I keep falling back on the demonstrable fact that progressive leftistm/Marxism/Socialism appeals to people who are stupid and evil. These can be at times different groups. But if you drew a Venn diagram the two circles would mostly overlap.

    Compare and contrast. I mentioned this earlier in the thread:

    http://theconservativetreehouse.com/2014/12/05/denver-police-officer-crushed-by-vehicle-during-school-mike-brown-walkout-students-cheered-yelling-hit-him-again-hit-him-again/#more-93304

    Denver Police Officer Crushed by Vehicle During School “Mike Brown Walkout” – Students Cheered, Yelling: “Hit Him Again, Hit Him Again”….

    …One officer was horrifically injured as his body was run over and dragged by a vehicle. Details now surface of the protesting students cheering the injury and chanting “hit him again, hit him again” while marching around the fallen officers. (video included below)…

    Does it remind you of anything?

    http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2014/10/22/cnn_anchor_laughs_at_bristol_palin_describing_assault_the_best_audio_weve_ever_come_across.html

    CNN Anchor Laughs At Bristol Palin Describing Assault: “The Best Audio We’ve Ever Come Across”

    CAROL COSTELLO, CNN: OK, I’m just going to come right out and say it. This is quite possibly the best minute and a half of audio we’ve ever come across. Well, come across in a long time anyway. A massive brawl in Anchorage, Alaska, reportedly involving Sarah Palin’s kids and her husband. It was sparked after someone pushed one of her daughters at a party. That’s what Bristol Palin told police in an interview after the incident. And now police have released audio of that interview. It does include some rather colorful language from Bristol. Here now is Bristol’s recollection of how that night unfolded.

    So sit back and enjoy.

    It’s who these people are.

    Also, while it’s coldly rational for people to exploit other people’s irrationality, I’m not actually sure that they’re really sane either.

    Look at that Gruber guy. He’s bragging about taking advantage of other people as he’s being recorded. Is that rational? Even idiots will finally get it if you take every opportunity to brag about how you’re taking advantage of the idiots.

    The ringleaders can take advantage of the hopelessly irrational. But the preening, narcissistic, sociopaths who are attracted to such leadership positions have their own issues, methinks.

    But like I said sometimes it’s hard keeping track of all teh krazy. It’s like herding cats.

    Steve57 (f8196f)

  241. Your way of putting it is better, SarahW. He did not really “make good”. He did nothing more than doxx a girl, who may or may not be the “Jackie”, with privacy-invading but otherwise “no business of the public” stuff.

    nk (dbc370)

  242. yes, Carol Costello, laughed at the attack on the offspring of a public figure, because unperson, it wasn’t that long ago, that Wemple of the Post, was so cavalier in entertaining slander published by Joe McGuinness,

    narciso (ee1f88)

  243. Lena Dumbham refuses to apologize , says doubting her is – i dont know, something bad. You tell me:

    But I don’t believe I am to blame. I don’t believe any of us who have been raped and/or assaulted are to blame. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what is written about me individually. I accept the realities of being in the public eye. But I simply cannot allow my story to be used to cast doubt on other women who have been sexually assaulted.

    seeRpea (01f6d3)


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