UVA and the alleged frat rape - Rolling Stone backpedals

Re: Rolling Stone on rape at UVA

I wouldn't be surprised if she has PTSD or something similar, which would make building the narrative strictly on her recollection of the event a particularly bad idea.

 

Re: Rolling Stone on rape at UVA

Joan Baez' most complex lyric.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cl3_5X_FLwI

 

Re: Rolling Stone on rape at UVA

Based on this story?

Or the sum of the whole "UVA Frat rape culture?"

 

Re: Rolling Stone on rape at UVA

Can't wait to the see WAPO story ...

 

Re: Rolling Stone on rape at UVA

As a non-journalist, I'm finding the professional aspect of this interesting, but what I feel more than anything else is a bit of a sense of relief if it is made up at least in part that this poor girl didn't actually endure what I originally read.

 

Re: Rolling Stone on rape at UVA

The New York Times story on this quotes a couple of journalism professors who don't find it to be a very big deal that Erdely didn't reach out to the accused;

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/03/us/magazines-account-of-gang-rape-on-virginia-campus-comes-under-scrutiny.html?ref=us&_r=0

I think they have a point, although I wouldn't compare it to a mugging. These men were semi-identified because of the fraternity.

But really, I think by focusing on Erdely not talking to the accused, people are trying to find a way to dance around the real issue (which some have addressed, including the story that quoted the sexual assault expert who said she had never encountered anything resembling Jackie's story): This didn't happen.

 

Re: Rolling Stone on rape at UVA

Times article barely scratches the surface of the problems with the story.

 

Re: Rolling Stone on rape at UVA

From the Jonah Goldberg column referenced by the Times:

Erdely’s story may be proven true after a needed investigation, but I suspect it will turn out to have been one of those stories too useful to verify.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/393824/story-too-useful-verify-jonah-goldberg

 

Re: Rolling Stone on rape at UVA

It's really, really safe to just zero in on the fact that she didn't talk to the accused. And, to be fair, she does a horrible job defending that decision.

I was curious to see how the New York Times would handle this. The answer is with a milquetoast news story in the National section, and a Frank Bruni column about how fraternities still suck, you know.

I'm starting to notice that nobody - not even Jonah Goldberg, I don't think - will go ahead and say that Jackie might be lying. Have you see anyone say that? Even here, I think, people seem to have come around to this idea that she was raped by multiple people and, well, the rest is just her memory playing tricks on her. This is how she remembers it. She didn't have a pad of paper and pen, for gosh sake's.

That would be somewhat believable if there were a couple of details that seemed off, but that's not the case here. It is one exactingly detailed after school special trope after another. That's not misremembering. That's inventing, most likely. Read other accounts of experiences like this. Read the book that LongTimeListener promoted early on the thread as corroboration for Jackie's account. A lot of times, these recollections are very hazy, and lack even the broadest details of what went on. It all occurs in the midst of an alcohol- or drug-induced stupor.

When I was in college, a freshman woman was abducted, raped, and murdered on her way home from work. (She was a commuter.) It took a few days to catch the guy who did it, who was actually just recently ruled incompetent to be executed, and hysteria, of course, started to set in. A woman who was pretty normal, and actually ended up marrying (now divorced) one of my fraternity brothers, told people around campus that she had been grabbed by the ankle or leg or something while walking from her car to her dorm. Of course, people went ape shit.

But she made it up, and she admitted it when pressed by the administration, once she realized how deep in she was. Why did she make it up? I don't know. I'm not sure she knew. Sometimes, people make shit up.

 

Re: Rolling Stone on rape at UVA

Apparently Eric Cantor's son is a member of the fraternity at the center of this, and was a freshman in fall of 2012.

The plot thickens.

http://dailycaller.com/2014/12/02/eric-cantors-son-is-a-member-of-the-uva-fraternity-accused-of-gang-rape/

 

Re: Rolling Stone on rape at UVA

Perhaps that's because nobody (relatively speaking) thinks she is. Or perhaps because nobody is up for the shit-storm that would accompany such a declaration. I know there's no way in hell I would say it publicly.

 

Re: Rolling Stone on rape at UVA

Rationally speaking, it seems to me to be by far the most likely scenario.