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In the 30 hours since the Washington Post’s All-Time Great Scoop about the University of Virginia rape catfishing hoax, all I can find new at the agenda-setting New York Times on the general subject of Virginia and rape are cricket chirps.
Here is the last mention at the NYT of the general situation, from back on Wednesday morning (a few hours before T. Rees Shapiro’s bombshell in the WaPo):
Meltdowns at The New Republic and Rolling Stone: Reporter’s Notebook
By RAVI SOMAIYA DECEMBER 10, 2014 10:00 AM… By contrast, the Rolling Stone story is not one that any reporter would relish. At first, a few critics in a few publications published doubts. Then, when the Washington Post re-reported certain aspects of the article, it became clear a story in a great magazine, about a very sensitive and very emotive issue that few would argue needed further complication, had been undermined.
It is by no means clear what happened on the night in question, and Rolling Stone has not completed its own investigation, so it is difficult to draw any conclusions. But what is certain, as the story continues, is that none of those involved have gained anything.
Now that’s hard-hitting!
A friend writes:
Dear Steve:
Could you reassure me that the investigation of this UVA story will continue? Right now, with the budget, CIA Torture, etc., is a perfect time for the MSM to simply drop the subject, and tip-toe quietly out of the bedroom while the rest of us drift off to sleep. Months from now, if someone on a cable show should refer to the Rolling Stone story as a hoax, Joan Walsh will then be able to do a spit take, and remind the panel that the case was never really resolved, Jackie was discouraged from coming forward and so on, and how anyone can say it was a “hoax” is simply beyond her. This is how these things always end, with no price paid by the guilty. I personally would like to see Sabrina Rubin Erdeley forced out of journalism, and her name become a synonym for agenda-driven lying; I have nothing against Jackie, who seems like a sad creature, and a possible suicide risk, but it is unfair to leave her story right after the cliff-hanger.
Steve, you have your assignment.
It’s pretty funny to read that some democrats, with possible media support, are now considering a shutdown.
So, yup, memory hole.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798124
Diserdeley conduct ??
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798129
I expect the story to drop off because it is no longer fulfilling its cultural “function” as an outrage to get worked up about. At this point it is a debunked horror story.
There will probably be continued discussion of “rape culture”, but, in all fairness, if the media were really serious about this they would pick up the 3 other gang rape stories that Steve itemized a week or so ago.
So I guess it will be back to Bill Cosby, unless one of Woody Allen’s children gets moody during the Holiday season.
On the other hand, for those who live by knowledge and information, there are always new things to know; not necessarily to publicize, but to have in hand.
This is why I read the comment threads. Outstanding.
Keep in mind, the law enforcement... aka - police detectives are just waking up.
Governor of VA is doing his own investigation.
No, the story will not drop off.
"Jackie" will join Tawana and Crystal Gail into the hall of infamy.
The story is just too juicy to be stopped by pc crowd.
It will go on.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798138
Well, Ms. Ederly does have a Twitter account: https://twitter.com/sabrinarerdely
It’s been silent since Nov. 30th. Wonder why?
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798139
Some might argue that the budget and CIA torture are rather more important to Americans at large.
And 50 years ago, they'd have been indisputably correct, but today, matters are a little more ambiguous. Being able rollback the dominant press and their (enormously successful) post-Cold War paradigm of incrementally transforming the USA in a Soviet-style state combined with 19th century "robber baron" capitalism (a sort of nightmarish, worst-of-both-worlds scenario), is pretty darn important. The dominant press and its associated cultural institutons, represent the most powerful force in human history. Getting it out of the hands of people like Ms. Ederly, for example, is hardly a trivial matter.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798142
http://www.sabrinaerdely.com/contact.html
Is that her cell number? Really?
Steve, have you tried reaching Ms. Erdely for comment?
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798149
Yes, it’s harsh, but Erdely’s career should be ended. People on our side of the ideological debate have been Watsoned for much less.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798157
if it were up to vox writer libby nelson the story would be dropped.
she tweeted:
” .@washingtonpost obviously played a vital role discrediting Rolling Stone story. But not sure what the endgame is in continuing to pursue.
— Libby Nelson (@libbyanelson) December 10, 2014″
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2014/12/10/Vox-com-Education-Reporter-Worries-Over-Endgame-Of-WaPost-Fact-Checking-of-Rolling-Stone-Rape-Article
it’s amazing that a supposed reporter would oppose uncovering the truth. i have no doubt that she isn’t interested in questioning erdely’s endgame.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798160
Shoot ze glass
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798164
Erdely’s is toast. Her fate is destined to be worst than that of Steven Glass. Glass is done in journalism, although (how is this for coincidence) Rolling Stone hired him for one article. He attended law school, but has been denied admittance to the bar.
Erdely is not as talented as Glass. She will be the example used in Journalism schools around the country for at least a few years (until someone tops this) of what not to do. Why would anyone want to hire her? Unsullied journalists are available. It isn’t as if she will be missed. And, who really cares enough to take a chance on her?
She is highly expendable.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798171
I am Facebook friends with several members of the young left-wing pundit class, and they are currently arguing among themselves whether they need to take stock and learn lessons from the Rolling Stone debacle or double down on the narrative instead. The divide between the ones who are actually committed to things like facts and the truth and those who want to keep pushing the narrative no matter what is pretty striking.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798174
I don’t think the media is going to drop it just yet, in no small part because as an intrigue it’s just too compelling a ride. People are just going to want to know more about the dramatis personae, and the denouement.
And it’s just too big a deal, it can’t be hauled back in. Even the megaphone can’t take back what the megaphone has blasted out for weeks.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798183
A little late, but here’s the latest Marine Le Pen poll:
She’s in first place no matter who she runs against.
Article: http://www.newsweek.com/far-right-leader-marine-le-pen-twice-popular-france-current-president-hollande-282090
Raw results start on page 12 of PDF: http://www.ifop.com/media/poll/2826-1-study_file.pdf
Unfortunately, it looks like the scenario where she actually wins, when it is her against a left-wing candidate in the run-off, is not likely right now. The left is so unpopular right now in France that the four right/center-right parties are polling over 70%.
She’d probably be crushed 35-65 against Juppe or Sarkozy. That’s looking like the most likely outcome. The left has already united behind a center-right candidate against a Le Pen once, they’ll do it again if they have to.
Here’s some info on the demographics of her support:
Male 30%
Female 28%
Paris Region 19%
Rural 34%
Other Cities 30%
Best age group is 35-49 at 37%
Worst age group is 65+ at 14%
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798191
Didn’t anybody notice how the SPLC stopped finding the smoky ashes of black churches once it became clear to them that those churches were at the center of opposition to same-sex marriage?
Some narratives are more equal than others.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798197
They’re probably in search of a white version of Dr Huxtable that they can publicize so as to achieve some sort of ‘balance’. Seems as if certain groups just dominate the news in a negative way these days.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798208
One thing that’s different about this Narrative breakdown is that it really does seem to be splitting those in the “mainstream” — that is, the so-called left which controls both the horizontal and the vertical. And it almost seems to be doing so pretty much exactly in halves, between the reality-exists crowd and the no-it-doesnt-if-I-say-it-doesnt crowd. It can’t, then, be shoved under the rug as an obsession of the Drudge, Limbaugh, and Fox partisans. It must be resolved, because the great and the good are involved — but I don’t see the potential resolution.
I wonder if we might not see a Narrative Apocalypse on this.
A guy can always hope.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798209
Erdely is not as talented as Glass. She will be the example used in Journalism schools around the country for at least a few years (until someone tops this) of what not to do. Why would anyone want to hire her? Unsullied journalists are available. It isn't as if she will be missed. And, who really cares enough to take a chance on her?
She is highly expendable.
Erdely will be declared a brave survivor on misogynist cyberbullying (rape) who maybe made some minor typos but who helped raise awareness about the epidemic of girls being gang raped on piles of broken glass by imaginary blond frat boys who are in love with them. She will pull in low 6 figures doing speaking engagements on college campuses until 2033, when she will get the Congressional Medal of Freedom From Privilege.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798211
Some things just don’t matter. Like facts.
I know that some high school teachers are very serious about teaching their students that plagiarism is a very serious crime.
I also know that these same teachers are very serious about teaching their students that MLK was one of the greats in world history.
I further know that some of these teachers know that MLK plagiarized much or most of his work, since I told them myself.
Have they changed anything they teach? No.
The modern mind. Conceived in 1948 and perfected today.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798215
“Could you reassure me that the investigation of this UVA story will continue?”
The Washington Post will go for the last drop of blood. And there is the second level of journalistic scavengers who will keep digging. And then there are the awards that the Post will win for this. And then there is the Post continuing to tout those awards.
As far as the facts, there was never any physical evidence. Now there is no evidence of a party, of the ‘prime mover’ guy (Drew?), any of the seven or nine guys. No evidence of injuries.
It will then fall back on Jackie and her personal history. Everyone now tends to feel sorry for her, but that could change.
If the speculation is true that this was the result of her attempt to win over a boy, it will get a huge amount of attention. Then, the story will go from the best example of rape culture to the worst example of rape culture, calling into question the entire narrative.
The Duke hoax stayed in the news for years, because of the disbarment and case against the rogue prosecutor. At least at Duke, a large portion of the blame was rightfully attributed to the DA. And then the victim’s life fell apart at regular intervals. At UVA, there is no one to blame except Erdely, Jackie, and campus rape hysteria. Exaggerations like this are simply not able to sustain themselves for long before collapsing under their own weight.
And, finally, Steve won’t let this one go.
I would say the lesson learned (or the one that should have been learned) is that gang rape is rare — a common point in both the Duke and UVA cases.
All this is classic mass hysteris.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798218
I found another Marine Le Pen poll that has not been reported in English media here:
http://www.ifop.com/media/poll/2864-1-study_file.pdf
Does Marine Le Pen
Understand the problems of people like me – 43%
Have solutions to the problems facing the country – 32%
As a comparison:
Does President Hollande
Understand the worries of Frenchmen? 23%
Tell the truth to his people? 23%
Deserve reelection? 2% strongly yes, 65% strongly no
Strongly approve 3%
Somewhat approve 16%
Somewhat disapprove 28%
Strongly disapprove 52%
So the meltdown of the French left has empowered the center-right and made Le Pen’s path to victory of running against a leftist in the run-off impossible.
Don't give up hope; the left may have bottomed-out too soon (sort of like peaking too soon), and thus may yet bounce back sufficiently in order to bring about a run-off between Hollande (or some other Socialist), and Ms. Le Pen.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798219
Whatever happened to the news story about the Black reverend in Ferguson who claimed his Black church was burned down by the KKK ? The mainstream media dropped that hoax fake hate crime story like a sack of potatoes.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798226
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/12/upshot/unemployment-the-vanishing-male-worker-how-america-fell-behind.html?action=click&contentCollection=Middle%20East®ion=Footer&module=TopNews&pgtype=article&abt=0002&abg=1
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/11/world/middleeast/marcel-ophuls-director-of-the-sorrow-and-the-pity-wants-to-tell-israelis-some-unpleasant-truths.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798229
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798233
“So I guess it will be back to Bill Cosby, unless one of Woody Allen’s children gets moody during the Holiday season.”
This is why I read the comment threads. Outstanding.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798234
Hiding the megaphone is just as powerful as holding it.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798256
I’d like to hear more about this. I know it’s anecdotal, but what do the numbers look like? What are they telling each other to support their takes on things?
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798269
Catfishing – I like that word.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798306
The Erdely story is about to be swamped by the Happy Holidays tsunami (including intensive weather & airport-traveler coverage), by New Year’s lists of Great Events & Men of the Year and 2014′s celeb bucket-kicks (and the usual pro-&-con palaver on New Year’s resolutions), and by the usual megaphone ramp-up frenzy to the Stupor Bowl.
And if none of those media cycles submerges the Erdely story, then there’s the coming evil Republican clutch on both houses of Congress for Enemedia-Pravda to assail.
Into that infotainment cycle mix, toss also the predictable and the unforeseen – most likely more sports figures (mis)behaving; holiday season disasters; a litany or two of ISIS atrocities; Christmassy puff pieces on illegal aliens & other foreigners in our midst; the usual footage of homeless in shelters feasting on donated turkey & fixins’;whatever Putin gets up to (Russian-Eastern Orthodox Christmas follows Western Christmas by a fortnight, giving Putin more time to pull something swift while the Western public is fuzzy from feasting and guzzling eggnog); perhaps a sighting of Kim Jong-Un(seen); the holiday death of some celeb or Big Shot; holiday travel highway accident carnage (& gridlock); a few local and national pieces on Those Heroes In Uniform Far Away Who Keep Us Safe; politicians spewing lies about Peace On Earth & Good Will Toward Persons; at least one “in-depth” report on how The People of Ferguson are Bravely Rebuilding while Finding Ways To Build Bridges Through Holiday Cheer; Marine Corps Reservists handing out Toys For Tots; some “fresh” liberal outrage or two (bet on race angles); a bad fire that Tragically Took Lives At This Time of Year; cute Holiday Fuzzy Puppy Stories; the Still Somehow New Pope’s Christmas Message and Hugging Of All God’s Children; a blurb on Christians’ Christmas pilgrimages to Bethlehem (with just the right amount of mention of “tensions” underlying the peace).
Then there’ll be the usual reports on holiday movie box office (boffos, bombs & sleepers), and loads of other such Happy Holidays infotainment pabulum.
So, you see, loads of mass communication megaphone fodder are massed to submerge the Erdely story, and probably even to eclipse and diminish public interest in “Jackie” herself.
You know the drill.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798311
[…] Source: Steve Sailer […]
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798351
Her last name is Rubin
The Rubin’s are a privileged lineage of the tribe.
Nothing bad ever happens to a member of the tribe!
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798371
There is one way to stop these malicious, feminist-inspired persecutions of White men: Whatever the penalty would have been for an accused man found guilty is given to the woman who maliciously accuses. That is the only way to get off the slippery stairs to a totalitarian feminist state.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798398
Well said! But we’ve hopefully sowed a little distrust in the public’s mind about this ‘rape culture’ business.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798421
“…so it is difficult to draw any conclusions.”
Really;is that form the Onion or the Times? Because there are many logical conclusions we can all take away from this meltdown. with no difficulty at all.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798438
Our country seems to be going insane. When I first saw a news story on the Duke rape allegations I thought to myself “Gee, how terrible.” Then a week or so later the DNA lab reports came back completely negative. It was immediately obvious that the story given by the “victim” was totally bogus. Yet the prosecution of these guys continued for another 6 months with the media doing it’s best to whip up irrationality.
All this is classic mass hysteris.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798444
How can Teresa Sullivan, president of UVA and organizer of the lynch mob, be allowed to continue in her job?
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798457
Erdely is not as talented as Glass. She will be the example used in Journalism schools around the country for at least a few years (until someone tops this) of what not to do. Why would anyone want to hire her? Unsullied journalists are available. It isn't as if she will be missed. And, who really cares enough to take a chance on her?
She is highly expendable.
While that would undoubtedly be the case if she was a WASP, Erdely has the privilege of belonging to a tribe that looks out for its own no matter what.
Yeah, Erdely is one very rotten egg and the "miserable, jealous Jew" straight out of central casting, but enough already.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798463
NYT reporter Ravi Somaiya:
> what is certain, as the story continues, is that none of those involved have gained anything.
Actually, Mr. Somalya, it’s pretty easy to identify people who have “gained something.”
1. The fraternity members who were falsely accused of gang rape and torture by Sabrina Rubin Erdely. True, everybody at UVa knows their identities, and “where there’s smoke there’s fire” suspicion will dog them for years. But ask the Duke Lacrosse Rape Hoax students what it means to have the media give the full Google Mud treatment to your name.
2. Rolling Stone‘s insurers. The settlements on the libel cases are sure to be less than they would have been, had the progressive hate-porn fantasy played out more fully.
3. Future victims of false accusations of rape.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798471
I have to laugh at people who think Erderly’s (or whatever the hell her name is) career is over. Was Doris Kearns Goodwin’s career over? Was Dan Rather’s Career over? What about all the people who mis-reported the Trayvon Martin story?
You don’t get punished for being Too Enthusiastic in pushing the approved MSM Narrative.
You don’t get punished for being Too Enthusiastic in pushing the approved MSM Narrative."
Exactly. Erderly will be portrayed as a victim of another victim. Her shoddy journalism will be portrayed as misfeasance rather than malfeasance. Eventually, this story will be seen as another example of the evil consequences of the rape culture found everywhere white males congregate.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798476
These false campus rape stories will continue appearing with monotonous regularity. Editors, journalists, readers, and SJWs have an endless appetite for them.
It’s as if the search for the Great White Defendant is passé – nowadays the defendant must be nothing less than an organised group of overprivileged white men.
It is a lesson in the things that people want to believe. Social Science professors ought to understand this, but in fact they are among the most credulous and suggestible people on the planet. The reason is that they genuinely believe they are agents of social change: in fact, the vanguard of a social revolution.
These dangerous, deluded people should be kept away from any proceedings that have the power to wreck the lives of innocent men.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798477
Open up the kimono. Let us know what they are saying. Is it a young/old divide?
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798479
Open up the kimono, and let us know what they are saying. Is it a young/old divide?
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798481
I would argue the opposite. The “rape culture” problem, or the “rape crisis”, is a stand in for (or perhaps simply the feminist take on) the more general dissatisfaction and confusion around mating rites.
The topic of mating rites in the modern world covers a lot of ground; but isn’t it safe to say that there used to be mating rites and now there are not? Mating rites were courtship and marriage; now the rituals of sex are hookup culture.
“Rape culture” is how the purveyors of the narrative describe the reality on the ground of hookup culture. There is nothing obscure or removed about the topic. It has more to do with the life of any person looking to procreate, and the well being of society at large, than the doings of the CIA.
If society wants to get straight, it must first mind its hearth, and the rest will follow. People, except for jews, are not evolved to exist at a level where their focus and concern is the congressional budget.
White people, for instance white Americans, are not evolved to form a working social structure the size of this country. White Americans – and just about everyone! except the managerial class! – want to live at the neighborhood level.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798502
How much should we attribute the truth coming out in the UVA case to Washington metro SWPLs wanting to send their kids to UVA? It’s possible that Erdely just got her “who, whom” wrong, by targeting what she saw as a “Southern” school without realizing that it was the UCLA-equivalent for her cousins in the country’s hottest real estate market of the last decade. If she had picked, say, Clemson, would any prestige press have ever been interested in telling the truth? It was really only WaPo that brought legitimacy to the true story, and they have a local interest.
Oh, it's huge. If she had set the evil gang-raping frat at Auburn or U. of South Carolina the story would still be going gangbusters. Actually it's hard to understand how she blew this one so badly. She travelled to Charlottesville and surely must have noted that it's only a two-hour drive from the Beltway. If she was on campus any length of time at all she would have noticed all the students from Alexandria, Fairfax, Rockville, Bethesda, etc. Perhaps it just didn't occur to her that the WaPo would cover this as a local story, or that anyone on staff would go against her narrative.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798514
They may very well just drop it. This Agent Provocateur or Useful Idiot, as I noted previously, was highly assistive in shifting the question of who exploited Jackie to the skeptics:
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/susan-milligan/2014/12/09/charles-c-johnsons-cruel-trolling-of-uva-rape-survivor-jackie
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798522
Here’s a (“responsible,” calm) take from Slate’s Double XX.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/12/11/_istandwithjackie_and_the_feminist_response_to_the_unraveling_of_rolling.html
Officials at UVA have also reaffirmed their commitment to taking sexual assault reports on the campus seriously, even as Jackie’s story has come undone. This makes sense, as UVA’s responsibility to its students in this regard is not predicated on coverage in Rolling Stone but is mandated by the federal government, which is keeping a watchful eye on the administration and has for years.
It is just a little bit funny that people on the left take comfort in the fact the government is monitoring the schools. Snark aside, though, credit to Double XX. They published Cathy Young on false rape claims some time back (debunking the “only 2% of all rape claims are false” statistic); they published Yoffe’s fine article on campus sexual assault adjudication; and their interview with Erdely in late November alerted people that (i) she hadn’t spoken to the accused, and (ii) was evasive about it.
Anyway, intelligent feminists realize they have nothing to worry about, because all the institutional and social forces that led to this crazy story getting published in the first place remain. This morning the Today Show featured Bill Cosby’s latest accuser, a former supermodel, who set her accusation in the now-standard feminist frame: 1 in 5, this is not just about me but about all women, Bill Cosby took my power away and now I am taking it back.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798523
I recounted in the “Megaphonics” thread on Dec. 10th that my civil, on-topic, thoughtful submission to an All Things Considered story had failed moderation. In contrast, my follow-on stupid, bombastic comment passed without difficulty. My approved comment has now run away with “Best of Thread”, garnering 57 Likes (second place got only 10 votes).
Here is that comment.
Will these cretins ever realize they were punked?
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798527
Erdely is not as talented as Glass. She will be the example used in Journalism schools around the country for at least a few years (until someone tops this) of what not to do. Why would anyone want to hire her? Unsullied journalists are available. It isn't as if she will be missed. And, who really cares enough to take a chance on her?
She is highly expendable.
Erdely’s cultural value has gone up. Her name is known, and anything bad that happens to her makes her a survivor of patriarchal, triggering cyberbullying (aka rape). She can travel across the country telling adoring college audiences how white cismen tried to use the fact that she made a couple of typos to obscure the epidemic of girls being gang raped on piles of broken glass by imaginary blond boyfriends. She’ll be on a postage stamp in 20 years.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798530
“FWIW says:
Erdely’s is toast. Her fate is destined to be worst than that of Steven Glass.”
Probably not. She is on the “right side of history” – meaning, she is on the right side of the people who decide what history is going to be. She thinks all the right thoughts. Has all the right connections. All she needs is a little shamelessness, and she’ll do fine.
As Al Sharpton has proved, shamelessness works.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798534
http://www.sabrinaerdely.com/contact.html
Is that her cell number? Really?
Steve, have you tried reaching Ms. Erdely for comment?
This is incredible. Her bio a list of BS!!
Looking at her articles, I wonder how much of her career is composed of making things up!!!
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798538
“AMac says:
Here is that comment.
Kudos to NPR for covering the campus rape crisis.”
Using “kudos” was a nice touch. It’s a very NPR kind of word.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798540
Steve, check out this article in R&R. You’re mentioned at length…
http://www.radicalandright.com/conservatism/gun-rights-ferguson/
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798543
While you’re at it, Steve, why not have one of your interns start fact-checking all of Rubin-Erdley’s oeuvre. Rapists start off as peepers, serial killers start off torturing cats and wetting the bed, and fake journalists are going to leave a trail of small lies on their way to the Big One that finally trips them up.
Steve's interns....
While they're busy at work, let's have the Christmas elves come and cobble all his children's shoes.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798555
Canada’s CBC Radio did a piece on this Rolling Stone, UVA story:
Rolling Stone campus rape story scandal a lesson to journalists
http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/episode/2014/12/11/rolling-stone-campus-rape-story-scandal-a-lesson-to-journalists/
Oddly enough, that transgendered fellow who called himself “Vanderbilt”, invented a golf club and then killed himself, gets mentioned briefly.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798560
Do they really need to bring in a South Asian to attempt to pull the wool over the goyishe kops’ eyes?
In a word: B******LLSH*******T!!!!
Folks are searching for ultimate motivation for SRE’s fabulism. It’s worth taking note of the following:
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabrina_Erdely
Steve has mentioned the visual themes and cinematic elements in SRE’s “journalism”. Perhaps Steve was on to more than he knew.
Also see.
The Girl Who Conned the Ivy League
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esther_Reed
The Rolling Stone article: http://www.sabrinaerdely.com/docs/IvyLeague.pdf
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1621437/
http://variety.com/2013/film/news/lovelace-directors-on-the-girl-who-conned-the-ivy-league-1200406083/
Seyfried and McG Join ‘The Girl Who Conned The Ivy League’:
http://screenrant.com/girl-who-conned-ivy-league-movie-crosen-49104/
Gangster Princess Of Beverly Hills
http://www.biography.com/people/lisette-lee-21241483
http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/the-gangster-princess-of-beverly-hills-20120831
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2741510/
Something tells me you can find quite a bit of “dramatic license” in the above stories and even more in the film treatments.
Want to bet SRE has long had it figured out what she planned on doing after a career in “Journalism”? Looks like she is bound go the Kardashian route and turn scandal into ever greater riches and fame.
Look, Stephen Glass got his movie and his own book deal. There are those who admire Glass for his chutzpah.
Hard not to see SRE not only having her own movie but a screen writing credit, a cameo and a percentage of the gross.
Hell!!! Why not??? To a certain small yet powerful demographic of the American population, SRE is already a SJW and yenta goddess.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798567
Erdely is a nasty piece of work and her husband might be, too, but there have been way too many Jewish people out front on this story. Especially the younger ones. I’m guessing the cub reporter behind the bombshells at WaPo is Jewish, Shapiro. And in the very beginning there was Hanna Rosin and Judith Shulevitz.
Yeah, Erdely is one very rotten egg and the “miserable, jealous Jew” straight out of central casting, but enough already.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798570
My bet is that the media will now just drop the UVA story, but you will see a rather studied lack of interest in the questions surrounding Ms. Dunham’s story.
Veeery studied.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798572
Just in time for your panhandling drive comes the North Korean dictatorship ripping open the secrets of the Hollywood Elite.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798578
A possible comedy skit would involve a couple louts who go to U-Va. and pledge with that fraternity specifically because of what they read in Rolling Stone, and being kind of dim they missed out that the depiction of the fraternity was a fabrication. They become disillusioned as their fraternity brothers lead them on endless community service projects and fundraisers and networking socials and leave them out of the gang rapes that they keep trying to find. False alarms involving broken glass get their hopes up a few times, but it’s always an errant ball or careless table clearing that’s responsible.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798586
The latest in a recurring Steve topic.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798612
At the tail end of the CBC Radio clip I linked to earlier one of the guests says:
The person who said that is a professor at the Columbia Journalism School; which is kind of cool I guess:
http://www.journalism.columbia.edu/profile/29-helen-benedict/10
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798618
Screw that. Distrust of the mass media is infinitely more important. Let’s hope this makes a bit of a dent in our reflexive trust in the authority of the mass media.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798636
Here is that comment.
Your approved comment on NPR with all its “likes” was outstanding.
Will these cretins ever realize they were punked?
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798646
http://www.theimaginativeconservative.org/2014/12/new-republic-new-barbarians.html
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798649
Yes, we do need to cultivate a strong distrust of the mass media, whether it be TV or print media. They don’t have our best interests heart.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798666
OT:
Does anyone have a good, non biased English language source for keeping up with the Russia-Ukraine war?
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798670
Or a barrow of watermelons.
Investigators no doubt found, not the debris of a burning wooden cross, but that of a flaming pink triangle.
Pink trumps black in the Hierarchy of Narratives.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798673
Cosby isn’t going away anytime soon:
http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2014/12/bill-cosby-beverly-johnson-story
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798676
,
Did you notice that Heartiste tweeted your comment with the note “trolling NPR”? I’ll bet the majority were trolling likes from people like me who saw the tweet.
How utterly despicable is NPR? A supposedly “news” organization that accepts charitable donations and solicits listener donations, and meanwhile shamelessly spews state propaganda, and deletes reader comments that do not fit their narrative.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798701
“I have nothing against Jackie, who seems like a sad creature, and a possible suicide risk, but it is unfair to leave her story right after the cliff-hanger.”
You have nothing against an adult woman who concocted a story about getting raped?
Are you insane? What exactly is “sad” about her? Have you not seen her despicable crap in her pinterest account?
:facepalm:
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798703
BREAKING VIDEO: #RollingStone #UVAHoax Author #SabrinaRubinErdely: ‘I Absolutely Shop For Victims’
http://gotnews.com/breaking-video-rollingstone-uvahoax-author-sabrinarubinerdely-absolutely-shop-victims/
D’uh!!!
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798713
There is a dimension missing from Jackie’s narrative on the gang rape she allegedly experienced … and that is female rape fantasies. Think about it: Here is a coed who tells the tale of the secret “hot” date taking her to a secret fraternity party. At the party, she is so irresistible that five (or was it seven) young men throw their lives and futures away to force sex with her. “Wow! The rest of you young women take that … I can give the world a hard-on. How about you?”
The feminist ideology is that NO young woman has a rape fantasy … men who cannot resist their irresistible estrual charms. The reality is that the recent fad of Vampire Movies are, via analogy, nothing but rape fantasies. Lots of women have them … women so irresistible that legions of vampires cannot keep their hands off of them. Enter the hero, a vampire who loves her so much he will save her and her virtue from the masses so excited by her that they cannot control themselves.
All of this would be conjecture except that I experienced a similar case in the workplace … a young woman who threw her sexuality on the floor and hoped someone would trip over it. If someone did, she could not wait to tell everyone about it (including me, her supervisor). This was almost 30 years ago. When asked to take her complaint forward, I refused. I was counseled: how dare you do that … say that about a woman. But I have eyes and could see. The young woman flirted with everything in long pants and then complained if anyone took the bait. “Look how irresistible I am … men cannot control themselves around me.”
Somehow, Jackie, I think I have already met you before. Let the trolling begin ….
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798723
“Some might argue that the budget and CIA torture are rather more important to Americans at large.”
And 50 years ago, they’d have been indisputably correct, but today, matters are a little more ambiguous. Being able rollback the dominant press and their (enormously successful) post-Cold War paradigm of incrementally transforming the USA in a Soviet-style state combined with 19th century “robber baron” capitalism (a sort of nightmarish, worst-of-both-worlds scenario), is pretty darn important. The dominant press and its associated cultural institutons, represent the most powerful force in human history. Getting it out of the hands of people like Ms. Ederly, for example, is hardly a trivial matter.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798725
I’d argue that neither is more important than our cultural nervous system being under the control of a hostile elite.
Showing your entire profession (notable exceptions excluded) as a pack of liars who oppose the “endgame” of exposing you as such, would be my endgame, Lib.
Any details? I’d hope it wouldn’t have anything to do with anything disclosed prior to his enrolling, because that would be naked fraud and theft on the part of the university in question.
Leftist media ignores/hates darling of the youth vote, sides with the old fogies, film at 11.
Leftist Law of Matter-Antimatter. You can’t go bringing one leftist “fact” close to another leftist “fact,” because chances are too high that they’ll destroy one another.
I’m all for that, but it doesn’t really apply here, as Jackie went to the press, not the police.
Looking out for The Tribe sometimes means sacrificing a member.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798726
Tawana Brawley.
Those ignorant of history are doomed to . . .
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798727
What the CIA did to 3 terrorists really isn’t on my radar at all, much less more important than the fact that our media is run by a hostile elite.
a. They did it to a lot more than three people.
b. They lied to the folks allegedly doing oversight on them, destroyed evidence, broke a bunch of laws, and faced no consequences more severe than an embarrassing report being published with all the names blacked out.
(b) is a much bigger deal than (a). Countries where the intelligence agencies are so powerful nobody dares cross them and they can do whatever they want are usually *not* places you want to live. Though giving the government the power to torture anyone they think might be a terrorist is also the kind of thing you can imagine going *really badly* for us in the future.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798730
You don't get punished for being Too Enthusiastic in pushing the approved MSM Narrative.
“I have to laugh at people who think Erderly’s (or whatever the hell her name is) career is over. Was Doris Kearns Goodwin’s career over? Was Dan Rather’s Career over? What about all the people who mis-reported the Trayvon Martin story?
You don’t get punished for being Too Enthusiastic in pushing the approved MSM Narrative.”
Exactly. Erderly will be portrayed as a victim of another victim. Her shoddy journalism will be portrayed as misfeasance rather than malfeasance. Eventually, this story will be seen as another example of the evil consequences of the rape culture found everywhere white males congregate.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798735
@But
huh? Who exactly do you think is writing these articles at the post? Doesn’t that seem to contract what you are saying? How do you explain this away.
prima facie stupidity like this is why anti-semitism has a bad rep… well that and the nazi atrocities..
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798738
By the way, one issue you should consider covering is the problem of campus feminist echo chambers, in which the participants spin tall tales and compete to see who can tell the biggest whopper. Seriously, from what I hear, if you are in one of those groups it’s instant credibility if you are a “rape survivor” — or at least the victim of a male sexual assault.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798743
Quote:
Wishing things to disappear is reserved domain for 5 years old; I think you already passed that mark.
Keep in mind, the law enforcement… aka – police detectives are just waking up.
Governor of VA is doing his own investigation.
No, the story will not drop off.
“Jackie” will join Tawana and Crystal Gail into the hall of infamy.
The story is just too juicy to be stopped by pc crowd.
It will go on.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798745
http://www.ifop.com/media/poll/2864-1-study_file.pdf
Does Marine Le Pen
Understand the problems of people like me - 43%
Have solutions to the problems facing the country - 32%
As a comparison:
Does President Hollande
Understand the worries of Frenchmen? 23%
Tell the truth to his people? 23%
Deserve reelection? 2% strongly yes, 65% strongly no
Strongly approve 3%
Somewhat approve 16%
Somewhat disapprove 28%
Strongly disapprove 52%
So the meltdown of the French left has empowered the center-right and made Le Pen's path to victory of running against a leftist in the run-off impossible.
“So the meltdown of the French left has empowered the center-right and made Le Pen’s path to victory of running against a leftist in the run-off impossible.”
Don’t give up hope; the left may have bottomed-out too soon (sort of like peaking too soon), and thus may yet bounce back sufficiently in order to bring about a run-off between Hollande (or some other Socialist), and Ms. Le Pen.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798747
“It is a lesson in the things that people want to believe”
I would have to agree. They can talk about “rape culture” all they want, but the real story is the culture of hatred towards the Evil White Bogeyman.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798748
The young left-wing pundits and writers are being extremely careful in their language, but it’s clear that nearly none of them are “standing with Jackie” like Jessica Valenti still seems to be. The last Washington Post story torpedoed any remaining credibility the story may have had, and none of them are trying to pick apart the reporting the way a few idiots on Twitter and in the Jezebel comments section.
The big divide is between those who want to brush it aside, move on (“the fact that the charges fell apart so quickly shows that we don’t need to worry about false accusations!”) and try and bring the focus back to campus rape in general, and those who want to actually examine how and why the story was accepted so uncritically and for so long. The fact that the Post reporter Shapiro seems to be someone they know and trust and the fact that certain high profile female writers (especially Yoffe and Hess at Slate) broke ranks fairly early has clearly emboldened the wing of young, liberal writers who still seem to value facts.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798753
You can see this kind of reporting (the alleged UVA rape, or the shooting of Michael Brown, or even the torture of captives by CIA agents) in two different ways:
First, they’re reporting about specific events. Jackie was allegedly gang-raped, and there are a bunch of details attached to that. Getting those details right is important because it helps us know whether the whole story is true or not. Similarly, Michael Brown was undoubtedly shot by a cop, but the details of what happened are critical to knowing what to make of that. (Was he surrendering or charging the cop?) KSM was allegedly tortured by CIA agents, and again, the details matter–did it really happen, what was done, who gave the orders?
A big part of what we want from journalists (and scientists and detectives and many other people) is an accurate account of the details. What exactly happened, when, how, who dunnit, etc.
Second, there’s some broader pattern that may be illuminated by this particular case. Jackie’s gangrape might demonstrate a broad culture of rape in fraternities and indifference in university administrations. Brown’s shooting might demonstrate a problem of police being too quick to shoot or needlessly hassling black men. The specific instances of torture may demonstrate an unaccountable CIA or a pattern of misbehavior by US officials.
The problem is, these single-instance reports don’t really illuminate the broad patterns well. I mean, the CIA Torture Report describes a broad pattern, but any single instance isn’t all that illuminating. (If the whole torture scandal was KSM being waterboarded by some over-zealous CIA agents in some basement somewhere, it wouldn’t be much of a scandal–the real story there is the widespread program approved from the top.) Jackie’s story and Brown’s story are awful incidents which are being used to illuminate a bigger story. But journalists are *awful* at telling a broad story like this. Anecdotes are usually all they can find.
What’s good for illuminating broad patterns is either a really big, multi-year investigation (the sort of thing a very few top level investigative journalists get to do) or some large organization gathering and vetting statistics to figure out what the problem looks like.
To know whether there’s a problem with rape on college campuses, Jackie’s story is almost useless–in a country of 300 million people, all kinds of horrible crimes happen. If her story had been true, it would have told us almost nothing about the prevalence of actual rape on college campuses. (Most of that is much less spectacular stuff–date rape and getting girls drunk and taking advantage of them.) But it made a nice rallying point for protests and anger.
To know whether there’s a problem with police use of violence in America, Brown’s story is similarly almost useless. In a country of 300 million people, there will inevitably be some cases where a cop shoots someone he shouldn’t have shot. (And probably a lot more less spectacular but still bad cases where someone gets his teeth knocked out for mouthing off to the wrong cop.) But again, it makes a good rallying point.
I think that’s how the stage is set for narrative collapse. First, because people who believe there’s a big problem with, say, campus rape, really want to find a rallying point. They aren’t all that concerned with the truth of the rallying point, so much as with getting an effective one. That means they often choose a rallying point that’s got a lot of problems, like making George Zimmerman the example of racist white thugs murdering little black kids, without bothering to look into any of the messy details. Second, because once the rallying point has been chosen, whether or not the claims made about the case are true becomes a question of team membership instead of a question of fact. If you doubt Jackie, you’re doubting rape victims and empowering rapists. Alternatively, if you believe that Brown shouldn’t have been shot, you’re choosing a side–that of the police. Or if you believe KSM was tortured (rather than “harshly interrogated” or whatever the euphemism of the week is), you’re on the side of the terrorists or at least against the CIA.
People are consistently *awful* at thinking about questions of fact once they’re linked to their political teams, and even worse when one side of a question of fact is linked to some bogeyman like terrorists or racists or rapists or witches or commies or whatever. So lots of people go along with the narrative about the rallying point case, even when it’s pretty obvious that the details of the case are not much like what’s been asserted.
You would think, given the stakes involved, that the left would choose their poster boys and girls with more care. Back in the day, apparently Rosa Parks was carefully vetted in advance so that she could not be smeared. Why do they keep getting it so wrong? Are there really NO sympathetic victims? Are they so eager to promote the most spectacular righteous anger inducing stories that they overlook the fact that the reason these stories seem so unbelievably horrid is because they are unbelievable period?
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798763
The desire to hunt and gather are basic human instincts that served us well for nearly all of our evolutionary history.
The instinct to gather can be fulfilled in many ways, most obviously by retail therapy.
What about the urge to hunt? A few of us still go hunting for sport; but the instinct remains even in those who do not.
The instinct to kill, either for food or to destroy vermin, remains equally strong in people who fashionably deplore blood sports, gun ownership, meat eating and so on. How do they satisfy that urge?
I suggest that they gain a primal satisfaction from bringing down members of the only species that they regard as “fair game”: our own.
In fact, if you read supposedly liberal discussion boards, you will find that they use the same dehumanising language to describe conservatives that the worst kind of racist uses when talking about minorities.
It is a prime example of hypocrisy that those who use jargon like “othering” do not notice that they practise this vice themselves. There are no holds barred when describing conservatives, or even white (gentile) men, in terms normally used for vermin. Liberals don’t even notice when people who are “fair game” are actually killed by members of the liberal “in-group”.
However, the hunting instinct is usually satisfied without actually killing the quarry: it is sufficient to deliver professional or social death.
[1] Often this was a preface to saying, but that they were nevertheless entitled to due process - as if this was a magnanimous concession and not a basic civil right of all people.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798769
In other news regarding feminist bullshit, the DOJ just released a report that debunks the “1 in 5 college women will be raped” bologna.
The actual number is 6.1/1,000 for college students, and 7.6/1,000 for non-college students.
http://thefederalist.com/2014/12/11/new-doj-data-on-sexual-assaults-college-students-are-actually-less-likely-to-be-victimized/
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798770
NOTA wrote:
Your entire piece sort of just assumes that “the broad patterns” exist.
As I noted elsewhere, it’s sort of funny that despite being told that we are living in a veritable forest of middle-class white-boys behaving sexually beastly en masse, there an odd inability to produce many (if any) single trees representing same.
And then there’s the odd lack of interest in things like this:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/five-william-paterson-university-students-charged-with-sexual-assault/
Or this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murders_of_Channon_Christian_and_Christopher_Newsom
I imagine many people in the past were convinced that much human suffering was caused by the devil, and finding a couple friendless old women who could be plausibly described as witches provided a good rallying point. Now we can all be on the same page about the horrible danger posed to us by the devil's machinations and evil minions on earth. And nobody doubts the story that this old lady had sexual congress with the devil and hexed Farmer Brown so his cow would die, right? I mean, you're not on the devil's side, are you?
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798777
The actual number is 6.1/1,000 for college students, and 7.6/1,000 for non-college students.
http://thefederalist.com/2014/12/11/new-doj-data-on-sexual-assaults-college-students-are-actually-less-likely-to-be-victimized/
Do they break it out by the race of the perp?
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798780
You don't get punished for being Too Enthusiastic in pushing the approved MSM Narrative.
You might also have said, Was Al Sharpton’s career over after Tawana Brawley?
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798785
LOVE the letter from a friend. Agree 100%.
“Unresolved” and forgetting it happened is what the lying weasels want. God…
This is a “teachable moment” Steve. Thanks for your good work, sir.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798831
You can’t make this stuff up:
http://thefederalist.com/2014/12/12/sabrina-erdely-was-once-disciplined-by-stephen-glass-for-fabrication/
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798852
The problems with that are:
a. They did it to a lot more than three people.
b. They lied to the folks allegedly doing oversight on them, destroyed evidence, broke a bunch of laws, and faced no consequences more severe than an embarrassing report being published with all the names blacked out.
(b) is a much bigger deal than (a). Countries where the intelligence agencies are so powerful nobody dares cross them and they can do whatever they want are usually *not* places you want to live. Though giving the government the power to torture anyone they think might be a terrorist is also the kind of thing you can imagine going *really badly* for us in the future.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798897
As I noted elsewhere, it's sort of funny that despite being told that we are living in a veritable forest of middle-class white-boys behaving sexually beastly en masse, there an odd inability to produce many (if any) single trees representing same.
And then there's the odd lack of interest in things like this:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/five-william-paterson-university-students-charged-with-sexual-assault/
Or this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murders_of_Channon_Christian_and_Christopher_Newsom
Actually, that wasn’t my intent. The activists start out convinced the pattern exists and wanting to illustrate it, and they choose examples to help them rally people to the cause. That mechanism works the same way whether the actual pattern is there or not.
I imagine many people in the past were convinced that much human suffering was caused by the devil, and finding a couple friendless old women who could be plausibly described as witches provided a good rallying point. Now we can all be on the same page about the horrible danger posed to us by the devil’s machinations and evil minions on earth. And nobody doubts the story that this old lady had sexual congress with the devil and hexed Farmer Brown so his cow would die, right? I mean, you’re not on the devil’s side, are you?
"Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. "
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798905
And as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-798916
Stupid comment. There’s stupidity under every banner (like yours, in the name of anti-ANTI-SEMITISM!!!). Anti-racist, liberal, philo-semitic, and commie stupidities and atrocities abound. The “why” is who runs the media, and their propaganda campaign. Or, “who-whom?” for short.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-799031
Still don’t care. The Great and the Good are all over it. That isn’t the kind of problem that concerns me.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-799034
I’m very encouraged by how many millennial generation white males I know who are on to what the media is doing in cases like this. These are people who are largely unpolitical and not reading dissident material.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-799035
And milquetoast conservatives still can’t bring themselves to say it. Rush was talking about this the other day, and rolled it into other examples of “hating America.” Like it’s all about a flag, or something. He can’t even bring himself to say “hating whites.” Can’t admit there’s a War on Whites. Until they get over this, they will continue to lose.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-799037
Sharpton might just have the best survival skills of any living political figure, seeing as he managed to survive both the Tawana Brawley hoax and instigating the anti-Jewish Crown Heights Riot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_Heights_riot)
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-799134
Sharpton might just have the best survival skills of any living political figure, seeing as he managed to survive both the Tawana Brawley hoax and instigating the anti-Jewish Crown Heights Riot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_Heights_riot)
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-799137
How much should we attribute the truth coming out in the UVA case to Washington metro SWPLs wanting to send their kids to UVA? It’s possible that Erdely just got her “who, whom” wrong, by targeting what she saw as a “Southern” school without realizing that it was the UCLA-equivalent for her cousins in the country’s hottest real estate market of the last decade. If she had picked, say, Clemson, would any prestige press have ever been interested in telling the truth? It was really only WaPo that brought legitimacy to the true story, and they have a local interest.
Oh, it’s huge. If she had set the evil gang-raping frat at Auburn or U. of South Carolina the story would still be going gangbusters. Actually it’s hard to understand how she blew this one so badly. She travelled to Charlottesville and surely must have noted that it’s only a two-hour drive from the Beltway. If she was on campus any length of time at all she would have noticed all the students from Alexandria, Fairfax, Rockville, Bethesda, etc. Perhaps it just didn’t occur to her that the WaPo would cover this as a local story, or that anyone on staff would go against her narrative.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-799308
First, they're reporting about specific events. Jackie was allegedly gang-raped, and there are a bunch of details attached to that. Getting those details right is important because it helps us know whether the whole story is true or not. Similarly, Michael Brown was undoubtedly shot by a cop, but the details of what happened are critical to knowing what to make of that. (Was he surrendering or charging the cop?) KSM was allegedly tortured by CIA agents, and again, the details matter--did it really happen, what was done, who gave the orders?
A big part of what we want from journalists (and scientists and detectives and many other people) is an accurate account of the details. What exactly happened, when, how, who dunnit, etc.
Second, there's some broader pattern that may be illuminated by this particular case. Jackie's gangrape might demonstrate a broad culture of rape in fraternities and indifference in university administrations. Brown's shooting might demonstrate a problem of police being too quick to shoot or needlessly hassling black men. The specific instances of torture may demonstrate an unaccountable CIA or a pattern of misbehavior by US officials.
The problem is, these single-instance reports don't really illuminate the broad patterns well. I mean, the CIA Torture Report describes a broad pattern, but any single instance isn't all that illuminating. (If the whole torture scandal was KSM being waterboarded by some over-zealous CIA agents in some basement somewhere, it wouldn't be much of a scandal--the real story there is the widespread program approved from the top.) Jackie's story and Brown's story are awful incidents which are being used to illuminate a bigger story. But journalists are *awful* at telling a broad story like this. Anecdotes are usually all they can find.
What's good for illuminating broad patterns is either a really big, multi-year investigation (the sort of thing a very few top level investigative journalists get to do) or some large organization gathering and vetting statistics to figure out what the problem looks like.
To know whether there's a problem with rape on college campuses, Jackie's story is almost useless--in a country of 300 million people, all kinds of horrible crimes happen. If her story had been true, it would have told us almost nothing about the prevalence of actual rape on college campuses. (Most of that is much less spectacular stuff--date rape and getting girls drunk and taking advantage of them.) But it made a nice rallying point for protests and anger.
To know whether there's a problem with police use of violence in America, Brown's story is similarly almost useless. In a country of 300 million people, there will inevitably be some cases where a cop shoots someone he shouldn't have shot. (And probably a lot more less spectacular but still bad cases where someone gets his teeth knocked out for mouthing off to the wrong cop.) But again, it makes a good rallying point.
I think that's how the stage is set for narrative collapse. First, because people who believe there's a big problem with, say, campus rape, really want to find a rallying point. They aren't all that concerned with the truth of the rallying point, so much as with getting an effective one. That means they often choose a rallying point that's got a lot of problems, like making George Zimmerman the example of racist white thugs murdering little black kids, without bothering to look into any of the messy details. Second, because once the rallying point has been chosen, whether or not the claims made about the case are true becomes a question of team membership instead of a question of fact. If you doubt Jackie, you're doubting rape victims and empowering rapists. Alternatively, if you believe that Brown shouldn't have been shot, you're choosing a side--that of the police. Or if you believe KSM was tortured (rather than "harshly interrogated" or whatever the euphemism of the week is), you're on the side of the terrorists or at least against the CIA.
People are consistently *awful* at thinking about questions of fact once they're linked to their political teams, and even worse when one side of a question of fact is linked to some bogeyman like terrorists or racists or rapists or witches or commies or whatever. So lots of people go along with the narrative about the rallying point case, even when it's pretty obvious that the details of the case are not much like what's been asserted.
This is called being hoisted on your own petard. As you say, the leftist press would rather sell us click worthy horrific anecdotes than boring statistics where math is required. As a substitute for thinking and analysis, they told us that Jackie was the very symbol of rape culture in America. Well, you can’t have it both ways – now that she is fraud, suddenly she is not emblematic of anything, just a troubled young woman.
You would think, given the stakes involved, that the left would choose their poster boys and girls with more care. Back in the day, apparently Rosa Parks was carefully vetted in advance so that she could not be smeared. Why do they keep getting it so wrong? Are there really NO sympathetic victims? Are they so eager to promote the most spectacular righteous anger inducing stories that they overlook the fact that the reason these stories seem so unbelievably horrid is because they are unbelievable period?
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-799515
I imagine many people in the past were convinced that much human suffering was caused by the devil, and finding a couple friendless old women who could be plausibly described as witches provided a good rallying point. Now we can all be on the same page about the horrible danger posed to us by the devil's machinations and evil minions on earth. And nobody doubts the story that this old lady had sexual congress with the devil and hexed Farmer Brown so his cow would die, right? I mean, you're not on the devil's side, are you?
The witch burners (and Rolling Stone) were just following Alinsky’s Rules. This is Rule #12:
“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. “
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-799522
As I noted elsewhere, it's sort of funny that despite being told that we are living in a veritable forest of middle-class white-boys behaving sexually beastly en masse, there an odd inability to produce many (if any) single trees representing same.
And then there's the odd lack of interest in things like this:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/five-william-paterson-university-students-charged-with-sexual-assault/
Or this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murders_of_Channon_Christian_and_Christopher_Newsom
The Duke “rape” story was especially egregious because it was meant to illustrate the “pattern” of white men raping black women which had existed from the earliest days of the colonies and which had resulted in so many blacks (esp. the more middle class ones) bearing the taint of having their pure African blood diluted – every glance in the mirror reminds them of the whities who raped their ancestors. Of course, in modern America, whites actually raping blacks is virtually unheard of – a statistical zero in the FBI reports. And it turns out that in colonial times, things were much more complicated – while many of these relationships might be considered “rape” by the modern feminist definition where any relationship between people not of equal power is rape, by any sane definition they were mostly consensual – the slave and the master both derived benefits from the relationship, in the complicated way that characterizes most real human relationships.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-799543
The instinct to gather can be fulfilled in many ways, most obviously by retail therapy.
What about the urge to hunt? A few of us still go hunting for sport; but the instinct remains even in those who do not.
The instinct to kill, either for food or to destroy vermin, remains equally strong in people who fashionably deplore blood sports, gun ownership, meat eating and so on. How do they satisfy that urge?
I suggest that they gain a primal satisfaction from bringing down members of the only species that they regard as "fair game": our own.
In fact, if you read supposedly liberal discussion boards, you will find that they use the same dehumanising language to describe conservatives that the worst kind of racist uses when talking about minorities.
It is a prime example of hypocrisy that those who use jargon like "othering" do not notice that they practise this vice themselves. There are no holds barred when describing conservatives, or even white (gentile) men, in terms normally used for vermin. Liberals don't even notice when people who are "fair game" are actually killed by members of the liberal "in-group".
However, the hunting instinct is usually satisfied without actually killing the quarry: it is sufficient to deliver professional or social death.
I notice in many of the liberal comments to Jackie stories, the liberals, even the moderate ones, would openly acknowledge, even proudly, that they really didn’t like frats or frat boys [1]. It seemed totally lost on them that this was a form of prejudice in itself, that they would never allow if you substituted some other group for their designated hate target. It’s all who-whom with these people – they really have
[1] Often this was a preface to saying, but that they were nevertheless entitled to due process – as if this was a magnanimous concession and not a basic civil right of all people.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-799595
You don't get punished for being Too Enthusiastic in pushing the approved MSM Narrative.
Was Doris Kearns Goodwin’s career over? Was Dan Rather’s Career over? What about all the people who mis-reported the Trayvon Martin story?
1. No;
2. Any sort of position he might have aspired to is closed to him and his name is a punchline, even if CBS treated him with kid gloves (allowing him to ‘retire’ after 16 months rather than firing him for cause).
3. Other than the slander concocted by the local NBC affiliate and the delays in publishing telling photographs of Zimmerman in the aftermath, the media was a secondary problem when it was a problem. The problem in that case was gross prosecutorial misconduct aided and abetted by one of the three judges assigned to the case.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-799616
Don’t forget Freddie’s Fashion Mart.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-799728
First, they're reporting about specific events. Jackie was allegedly gang-raped, and there are a bunch of details attached to that. Getting those details right is important because it helps us know whether the whole story is true or not. Similarly, Michael Brown was undoubtedly shot by a cop, but the details of what happened are critical to knowing what to make of that. (Was he surrendering or charging the cop?) KSM was allegedly tortured by CIA agents, and again, the details matter--did it really happen, what was done, who gave the orders?
A big part of what we want from journalists (and scientists and detectives and many other people) is an accurate account of the details. What exactly happened, when, how, who dunnit, etc.
Second, there's some broader pattern that may be illuminated by this particular case. Jackie's gangrape might demonstrate a broad culture of rape in fraternities and indifference in university administrations. Brown's shooting might demonstrate a problem of police being too quick to shoot or needlessly hassling black men. The specific instances of torture may demonstrate an unaccountable CIA or a pattern of misbehavior by US officials.
The problem is, these single-instance reports don't really illuminate the broad patterns well. I mean, the CIA Torture Report describes a broad pattern, but any single instance isn't all that illuminating. (If the whole torture scandal was KSM being waterboarded by some over-zealous CIA agents in some basement somewhere, it wouldn't be much of a scandal--the real story there is the widespread program approved from the top.) Jackie's story and Brown's story are awful incidents which are being used to illuminate a bigger story. But journalists are *awful* at telling a broad story like this. Anecdotes are usually all they can find.
What's good for illuminating broad patterns is either a really big, multi-year investigation (the sort of thing a very few top level investigative journalists get to do) or some large organization gathering and vetting statistics to figure out what the problem looks like.
To know whether there's a problem with rape on college campuses, Jackie's story is almost useless--in a country of 300 million people, all kinds of horrible crimes happen. If her story had been true, it would have told us almost nothing about the prevalence of actual rape on college campuses. (Most of that is much less spectacular stuff--date rape and getting girls drunk and taking advantage of them.) But it made a nice rallying point for protests and anger.
To know whether there's a problem with police use of violence in America, Brown's story is similarly almost useless. In a country of 300 million people, there will inevitably be some cases where a cop shoots someone he shouldn't have shot. (And probably a lot more less spectacular but still bad cases where someone gets his teeth knocked out for mouthing off to the wrong cop.) But again, it makes a good rallying point.
I think that's how the stage is set for narrative collapse. First, because people who believe there's a big problem with, say, campus rape, really want to find a rallying point. They aren't all that concerned with the truth of the rallying point, so much as with getting an effective one. That means they often choose a rallying point that's got a lot of problems, like making George Zimmerman the example of racist white thugs murdering little black kids, without bothering to look into any of the messy details. Second, because once the rallying point has been chosen, whether or not the claims made about the case are true becomes a question of team membership instead of a question of fact. If you doubt Jackie, you're doubting rape victims and empowering rapists. Alternatively, if you believe that Brown shouldn't have been shot, you're choosing a side--that of the police. Or if you believe KSM was tortured (rather than "harshly interrogated" or whatever the euphemism of the week is), you're on the side of the terrorists or at least against the CIA.
People are consistently *awful* at thinking about questions of fact once they're linked to their political teams, and even worse when one side of a question of fact is linked to some bogeyman like terrorists or racists or rapists or witches or commies or whatever. So lots of people go along with the narrative about the rallying point case, even when it's pretty obvious that the details of the case are not much like what's been asserted.
I believe KSM was “tortured,” and I’m just fine with that. The man planned an attack that killed 3,000 people, and it was worth finding out if he knew about any similar plans in the works.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-799764
I sometimes wonder why waterboarding is so effective, without actually caring enough to research the subject. KSM reportedly set the record at resisting waterboarding, at something like 70 or 90 seconds. Man, that’s some effective torture.
All I know about waterboarding is that it’s simulated drowning. The subject’s lungs are elevated above his head, so there’s no (?) danger of drowning. Apparently it just feels like drowning.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-799790
So you think there’s nothing to worry about, they only torture terrorists, hate-criminals and anti-Semites? OK, maybe other racists as well. But I guess nothing to worry for the rest of us, at least until the guys pulling the strings for the intelligence agencies realize what kind of power they have.
I personally wouldn’t be worried about torture if it wasn’t used by a government run by a hostile elite. But I’m not sure I’d willingly grant such a power even to a friendly government.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-799798
No. I think I’ve got other priorities. Like I said, it’s a big flap, and the corporate media megaphones are all over it. The Great and the Good are all over it. I’m more concerned with the stuff the corporate media sweeps under the rug, and the Great and the Good ignore.
And the Great and the Good are making huge noise but I somehow think they will do nothing about it. Gitmo was not closed down even though Obama ran with the promise. I suspect the same thing regarding torture.
I wouldn't be too surprised to see racists and suspected hate criminals being tortured in my own lifetime.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-799827
It’s not like the NYT doesn’t have the resources to _mention_ the catfishing narrative apocalypse. Their newsroom is something like 1,000 people. They’ve been covering things like the rain in California and the banana harvest in Somalia.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-799828
While you’re at it, Steve, why not have one of your interns start fact-checking all of Rubin-Erdley’s oeuvre.
Steve’s interns….
While they’re busy at work, let’s have the Christmas elves come and cobble all his children’s shoes.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-799832
My priorities are also elsewhere, but it’s kinda frightening that they also have torture.
And the Great and the Good are making huge noise but I somehow think they will do nothing about it. Gitmo was not closed down even though Obama ran with the promise. I suspect the same thing regarding torture.
I wouldn’t be too surprised to see racists and suspected hate criminals being tortured in my own lifetime.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-799838
And the Great and the Good are making huge noise but I somehow think they will do nothing about it. Gitmo was not closed down even though Obama ran with the promise. I suspect the same thing regarding torture.
I wouldn't be too surprised to see racists and suspected hate criminals being tortured in my own lifetime.
There’s this obnoxious, smiling youth who appears in unwanted ads trying to get me to buy an airplane ticket to Atlanta. I consider that to be torture.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-799882
[…] seeking to revivify the undead outrage while sending the inconvenient facts of the case down the memory hole. She wants it to eat our brains, as it did to social media feminists the first time […]
http://www.unz.com/isteve/will-the-media-now-just-drop-the-uva-rape-hoax/#comment-945741