UVA and the alleged frat rape - Rolling Stone backpedals

Clear, sucinct and solid analysis with the added benefit of being true. Everything Erdley failed to accomplish.

Notice how MSNBC has been very controlled int he reporting of this story? It's most famous and well connected Journalist is actually a convicted liar about a very similar incident. If Janet Cooke can't get a journalism job why did Al SHarpton?

 

I'm not defending piss-poor journalism, but I'm also having a tough time mustering too much sympathy for the poor victimized UVa frat boys.

While false accusations are obviously wrong, this one is just a bit of payback for the countless assaults that have been committed in the Phi Psi house over the years, will be committed there in the future and won't ever result in any punishment for the offenders.

So if the spotlight has been uncomfortable for the Zima sippers, well gee, tough shit.

Karma.

 

Others have addressed this, but since I'll probably take it a step further, I'll give you my take.

The political agenda was not "advocating for rape victims on college campuses". The political agenda was exposing rape culture.

And, to do so, RS had to show who perpetuates rape culture. This is a misogynistic designed to exert power over women, and keep them in their place. And, it should be obvious to all, that the people most involved in retaining this system are white, powerful men. White, powerful men are oppressors. They are also invested in keeping the poor in their place, and African-Americans in their place.

So, you could not present this story with African-Americans as the villains. It wouldn't work. African-Americans are part of the oppressed in America.

And, it's more than that. Erdely first looked at Ivy League schools in the Northeast. But, that wouldn't work either. Sure, those schools are full of white elites, but they're bastions of liberal thought and policy. The elite white kids at Ivy League schools are future leaders of the Democratic party. They are future Congressmen, Senators, and Presidents. They would not "feel right" in the role of oppressors.

But, UVa, with its student body made up of elite white kids, whose forefathers owned slaves, who grew up on plantations, and tobacco farms, who are steeped in Southern Culture and Republican politics? That would feel perfect.

These were the kind of kids who would be invested in Rape Culture. They would impose it as part of their fraternity initiation process, and they would ensure it would endure for generations.

 

These stories might get written about in the local press, but no one is going to win a National Magazine Award pursuing these stories.

As DD showed, they're were stories that Rolling Stone could have written. Stories that would be backed up by police reports, and court records.

Instead, RS went searching for the "right" story. They dug, and found one that was perfect. That "felt right". Sure, it was all based on the account of one person, which they didn't bother to verify. Sure, there was no police report, or court records. Who cares? it had the right victim, and the right villains.

 

DD, you often drive me crazy -- and you don't need to tell me that this feeling is mutual -- but you are honest, and introspective.

I really appreciate that about you, and not only when you agree, to even some degree, with a point I'm trying to make.

 

You're going to start making people feel sympathetic toward elite southern frat bros the more you keep harping on Erdley's mission to find the "right" story.

Yes, it's Christmas for conservatives like you who have raging hard-ons that a liberal mag tripped over its own dick trying to expose a specific demographic.

So come on, everyone, let's say it in unison: SHE WENT LOOKING FOR THE "RIGHT" STORY!

 

It's not about defending elite southern frat bros. It's about examining the motives for why Erdely and Rolling Stone chose them as the villains in their (false) gang rape narrative.

 

They're elite southern frat brothers.

It was their turn.

 

Because she was tired of black folks getting the short shrift in life and felt like settling the score, if even for a day.

 

"First, I want to apologize directly to the young woman involved in this incident. I want to apologize to her for my behavior that night and for the consequences she has suffered in the past year. Although this year has been incredibly difficult for me personally, I can only imagine the pain she has had to endure. I also want to apologize to her parents and family members, and to my family and friends and supporters, and to the citizens of Eagle, Colo.
I also want to make it clear that I do not question the motives of this young woman. No money has been paid to this woman. She has agreed that this statement will not be used against me in the civil case. Although I truly believe this encounter between us was consensual, I recognize now that she did not and does not view this incident the same way I did. After months of reviewing discovery, listening to her attorney, and even her testimony in person, I now understand how she feels that she did not consent to this encounter.

I issue this statement today fully aware that while one part of this case ends today, another remains. I understand that the civil case against me will go forward. That part of this case will be decided by and between the parties directly involved in the incident and will no longer be a financial or emotional drain on the citizens of the state of Colorado."-alleged rapist

 

AP has spoken to all three friends, as has Erdely, who apparently is among those at RS "re-reporting" the story that she fucked up on the first go around.

"Cindy" was really treated unfairly:

The Associated Press also spoke with the other two friends portrayed in the article: third-year, 20-year-old U.Va. students Kathryn Hendley and Alex Stock, known as "Cindy" and "Andy" in the article. None of the three friends was contacted by the Rolling Stone's reporter, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, before the article was published; each of them rejected multiple assertions made in the article, which has since been retracted.

All three say Erdely has since reached out to them, and Hendley told the AP Erdely apologized to her for portraying her the way she did.

...

As described in the Rolling Stone article, a distraught Jackie met her three friends at a picnic table in the shadows of the frat house and tearfully told them what had happened.

While the article said Duffin suggested they take her to the hospital, it described Stock and Hendley as carrying on a debate about what would happen to her reputation and theirs should word get out.

"The three friends launched into a heated discussion about the social price of reporting Jackie's rape, while Jackie stood beside them, mute in her bloody dress, wishing only to go back to her dorm room and fall into a deep, forgetful sleep," the article said. "Detached, Jackie listened as Cindy prevailed over the group: 'She's gonna be the girl who cried rape, and we'll never be allowed into any frat party again.'"

However, Hendley told the AP that not only did she not say any of that, she had arrived with Stock to the picnic table only to have Jackie say she didn't want her to be part of the conversation. She said she watched from afar while Stock and Duffin talked with Jackie.

Stock confirmed this account.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/0559.../friends-say-they-pushed-uva-jackie-call-cops

 

Glen Reynolds -- Instapundit -- takes a look at the truthiness of the greater narrative of the epidemic of rape on college campuses:

Americans have been living through an enormously sensationalized college rape hoax, but as the evidence accumulates it's becoming clear that the entire thing was just a bunch of media hype and political opportunism.

No, I'm not talking about the Rolling Stone's lurid and now-exploded fraternity gang-rape story. Whatever the truth behind that story, it's now clear that basically nothing that Rolling Stone reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely told us happened, actually happened. But the hoax is much bigger than one overwrought and perhaps entirely fictional tale of campus goings-on.

For months we've been told that there's a burgeoning "epidemic" of rape on college campuses, that the system for dealing with campus rape is "broken" and that we need new federal legislation (of course!) to deal with this disaster. Before the Rolling Stone story imploded, Sens. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., and Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., were citing the Virginia gang rape as evidence of the problem, but now that the story has been exposed as bogus, they're telling us that, regardless of that isolated incident, there's still a huge campus rape problem that needs to be addressed as soon as possible.

And that's the real college rape hoax. Because the truth is that there's no epidemic outbreak of college rape. In fact, rape on college campuses is — like rape everywhere else in America — plummeting in frequency. And that 1-in-5 college rape number you keep hearing in the press? It's thoroughly bogus, too. (Even the authors of that study say that "We don't think one in five is a nationally representative statistic," because it sampled only two schools.)

Sen, Gillibrand also says that "women are at a greater risk of sexual assault as soon as they step onto a college campus."

The truth — and, since she's a politician, maybe that shouldn't be such a surprise — is exactly the opposite. According to the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics, the rate of rape and sexual assault is lower for college students (at 6.1 per 1,000) than for non-students (7.6 per 1,000). (Note: not 1 in 5). What's more, between 1997 and 2013, rape against women dropped by about 50%, in keeping with a more general drop in violent crime nationally.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opini...risis-rolling-stone-politics-column/20397277/