| UVA Rape Story Collapses; Duke Lacrosse Redux | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Dec 5 2014, 01:45 PM (60,464 Views) | |
| kbp | Dec 31 2014, 06:28 PM Post #586 |
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That is the "Adler" in the "Cannon and Adler" team which made the illegal subsidies provided through federal healthcare exchanges so famous. |
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| Walt-in-Durham | Dec 31 2014, 11:05 PM Post #587 |
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I think we all know what BS is. Well, M.S. means: "More of the Same. And, Ph.D means "Piled higher and Deeper." Walt-in-Durham Edited by Walt-in-Durham, Dec 31 2014, 11:05 PM.
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| Duke parent 2004 | Jan 1 2015, 07:29 AM Post #588 |
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Alas, the more things change . . . .. Here’s George Orwell, from the summer of 1948, in his “Writers and Leviathan”: A modern literary intellectual lives and writes in constant dread — not, indeed, of public opinion in the wider sense, but of public opinion within his own group. As a rule, luckily, there is more than one group. But also at any given moment there is a dominant orthodoxy, to offend against which needs a thick skin and sometimes means cutting one's income in half for years on end. Obviously, for about fifteen years past, the dominant orthodoxy, especially among the young, has been ‘left’. The key words are ‘progressive’, ‘democratic’ and ‘revolutionary’. While the labels which you must at all costs avoid having gummed upon you are ‘bourgeois’, ‘reactionary’ and ‘Fascist’. Almost everyone nowadays, even the majority of Catholics and Conservatives, is ‘progressive’. Or at least wishes to be thought so. No one, so far as I know, ever describes himself as a ‘bourgeois’. Just as no one literate enough to have heard the word ever admits to being guilty of anti-Semitism. We are all of us good democrats, anti-Fascist, anti-imperialist, contemptuous of class distinctions, impervious to colour prejudice, and so on and so forth. Nor is there much doubt that the present-day ‘left’ orthodoxy is better than the rather snobbish, pietistic Conservative orthodoxy which prevailed twenty years ago, when the Criterion and (on a lower level) the London Mercury were the dominant literary magazines. For at the least its implied objective is a viable form of society which large numbers of people actually want. But it also has its own falsities which, because they cannot be admitted, make it impossible for certain questions to be seriously discussed. |
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| kbp | Jan 1 2015, 08:40 AM Post #589 |
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Somewhat OT... It's amazing what comes attached with the federal FREE MONEY! Within all the policies and rules you must follow to get that FREE MONEY, the Department of Education is so kind to include an Office for Civil Rights. It's like every department or agency of our federal government has its own little Constitution and Bill of Rights hidden in their system, which seem to only slightly resemble the originals. Just think about what "Civil Rights" mean as you read this article!
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| MikeZPU | Jan 1 2015, 12:56 PM Post #590 |
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Bravo Walt, and thanks DP for sharing that quote from George Orwell from 1948! Wow -- liberal group-think has been around for a long time. Of course, I realize there is some conservative group think too, but liberal group-think is far worse and far more pervasive, and far more problematic IMHO. |
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| Duke parent 2004 | Jan 1 2015, 01:59 PM Post #591 |
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No one in the past one-hundred years has been better at lampooning the intellectual classes for their “smelly little orthodoxies” than was Orwell.. Here he is again, this time from 1941, in his justly celebrated essay, “The Lion and the Unicorn”:. It is a strange fact, but it is unquestionably true, that almost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during “God Save the King” than of stealing from a poor box. |
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| kbp | Jan 2 2015, 09:14 AM Post #592 |
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The Federal Reserve popped up in my mind as I read "stealing from a poor box." They manage the value of the tokens in all those boxes! |
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| abb | Jan 2 2015, 01:19 PM Post #593 |
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http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/01/02/u-va_reaction_to_rape_claim_worse_than_at_duke.html U-Va. Reaction to Rape Claim: Worse Than at Duke? By KC Johnson and Stuart Taylor Jr. - January 2, 2015 Depressing similarities link the two highest-profile allegations of campus sexual assault in recent years -- the fraudulent gang rape claims against Duke lacrosse players in 2006, and Rolling Stone writer Sabrina Erdely’s multiply discredited portrayal in November of a sadistically brutal gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity. Even more depressing is another comparison between the two cases. While campus journalists and many other students at Duke were refreshingly open to evidence and critical thinking as the case there unfolded, the vast majority of U-Va. students have been sheep-like. They have emulated -- or at least tolerated -- the anti-male prejudices of U-Va. academics and administrators. Some have even called for secret criminal trials in rape prosecutions. As to lacrosse case similarities, the most obvious was the initial mob-like rush to judgment at U-Va. by left-leaning faculty, administrators, and news media in embracing the now-infamous claim by “Jackie” of being gang-raped on a bed of shattered glass. By presuming the guilt of college men accused of implausibly barbaric crimes against women and minorities, these academics were oblivious to the lessons from Duke. Not unlike the 88 Duke professors who signed a public statement in 2006, which included a thank-you to protesters who had urged the team captains’ castration, those U-Va. professors who individually spoke up immediately after the Rolling Stone article were eager to see it as exemplifying a campus “rape culture” of which there is little hard evidence. Then there is the lamentable performance of school President Teresa Sullivan, who has rivaled the shameful indifference to due process shown by Richard Brodhead, who is, alas, still Duke’s president. Sullivan’s sins include using the Rolling Stone article as an excuse to accuse seven unnamed fraternity members of “evil acts” and to suspend all U-Va. fraternities both before and after the accuser’s story unraveled. And while The Washington Post’s excellent work exposing Rolling Stone’s errors of omission and commission was a welcome change from the newspaper's own shoddy journalism in the lacrosse case, the New York Times continued its pattern of presuming the guilt of accused males. Its Duke coverage was exposed long ago as so appallingly biased as to prompt apologies from multiple editors. True to form, the Times disgraced itself yet again in early December by running an article aggressively defending Erdely’s piece just as it was collapsing. The one encouraging on-campus aspect of the Duke case was the reaction of many students, including the award-winning news and editorial team at the student newspaper, The Chronicle. During the many months when Brodhead and his professors were treating lacrosse players as presumptively guilty pariahs, student journalists dispassionately analyzed events and repeatedly scooped the national and local news media. Chronicle commentators, most notably Kristin Butler, eviscerated the cowardice of campus elders. Students also recognized Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong’s lies far sooner than did their teachers, and worked to change the system by registering voters to oppose Nifong at the ballot box. The responses of the vast majority of U-Va. students to the Rolling Stone fiasco were far less inspiring. It was, of course, predictable that self-styled victims’ rights activists would embrace Rolling Stone’s version of events. Less predictable, and more striking, was the uncritical acceptance of Jackie’s wild tale by the student newspaper, the Cavalier Daily. Until late December, its coverage mirrored Rolling Stone’s, even as various off-campus publications shredded Jackie’s varying accounts. Instead, the newspaper’s executive editor, Katherine Ripley, was busy sending tweets with the hashtag #IStandWithJackie about how the Jackie story “resonated with me.” (Ms. Ripley hasn’t revealed which of Jackie’s mutually contradictory stories she believes; her most recent tweets have utilized the #IStandWithSurvivors hashtag.) Assistant Managing Editor Julia Horowitz proclaimed that “to let fact checking define the narrative would be a huge mistake.” Even U-Va. fraternity members, President Sullivan’s most immediate targets, meekly accepted their ill-considered suspension without critical scrutiny either of Jackie’s now-discredited claims or of their own alleged complicity in a supposed “rape culture.” While a national organization of fraternities demanded that Sullivan apologize, the fraternities at U-Va. made no such demand. Indeed, the school’s fraternity council recently joined with the student council and various victims’ rights groups to recommend that the state of Virginia change its laws to hold secret trials, with the public excluded, in all criminal prosecutions for rape -- a stunning call for star-chamber-style railroading of accused males. The student coalition also expressed hope that the university would provide accusers access to legal counsel (their recommendations contained no reference to accused students’ need for lawyers), while ordering all future U-Va. students to take a course in “Women and Gender Studies.” At Duke eight years ago, by contrast, a similar curricular proposal won support only from the most extreme anti-lacrosse faculty members, and even the Brodhead administration elected not to embrace it. What explains this difference between students at Duke in 2006 and U-Va. now? We cannot be sure. But we do know that the past eight years have witnessed a profound effort to devalue due process for students accused of sexual assault, regardless of the merits of the accusation. This trend, which was ably analyzed by Peter Berkowitz, has been accelerated by Obama administration demands that campuses significantly weaken their already weak procedural protections for accused students or face crippling cutoffs of federal funds. The inevitable result will be more convictions -- whether the accused was guilty or not. Today’s students have been bombarded with the president’s assertions that “one in five women on college campuses has been sexually assaulted during their time there” and similar claims by other officials, journalists, and academics. As Slate’s Emily Yoffe has observed, this absurd figure (which since has been discredited by the Bureau of Justice Statistics) implies that the typical college campus has the same rate of rape as war-torn areas of the Congo. Yet powerful media voices, ranging from the New York Times to Huffington Post to BuzzFeed, have touted the claim while aggressively promoting the dubious “rape culture” narrative. They’ve done so through dozens of articles portraying sexual assault accusers who failed to prevail in campus disciplinary cases as victims of gender discrimination. And the nation’s most prestigious universities, including U-Va. and Duke, have pushed such ideologies of resentment -- in their reeducation-camp-style “orientation” sessions for new students, in the extremist race/class/gender teachings that dominate many humanities courses, and in the kangaroo-court disciplinary systems that have censored expression of “offensive” political views as well as railroading dozens of students on rape charges that appear to be based on flimsy evidence. In such an environment, it might be understandable that few students would risk being branded as “rape apologists” by defending due process. In this respect, the U-Va. student response may evidence a troubling trend over the last eight years. In any event, it surely illustrates a poisoned campus culture that has implications far beyond Charlottesville. // KC Johnson is a history professor at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center. Stuart Taylor Jr. is a Washington writer and Brookings Institution nonresident senior fellow. They co-authored the 2007 book “Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case.” |
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| cks | Jan 2 2015, 01:39 PM Post #594 |
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A masterful piece - sadly an expose on how little has changed for the positive. I would not want to be the mother of a son in college. |
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| MikeZPU | Jan 2 2015, 02:27 PM Post #595 |
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Well put cks. My sentiments exactly about KC's piece. I haven't found time yet, but I am definitely writing a letter to President Sullivan. Not that it will do any good but alas, we try
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| Payback | Jan 3 2015, 09:55 AM Post #596 |
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TERESA SULLIVAN HAS NO SENSE OF SHAME. Now, will she get OJ released? By K. BURNELL EVANS The Daily Progress University of Virginia President Teresa A. Sullivan wrote the federal judge presiding over Bob McDonnell’s case in October asking for leniency for the former governor. The two had a good relationship, shared cell phone numbers and met one-on-one to discuss official business, Sullivan wrote Judge James Spencer on Oct. 11. McDonnell never pressured her for help with Star Scientific, the company at the heart of McDonnell’s corruption scandal. “I hope that these observations are helpful to you as you consider sentencing, and I hope that you will consider a lenient sentence,” Sullivan stated, at the close of a five-paragraph note she said was not an official statement of the university. Edited by Payback, Jan 3 2015, 10:00 AM.
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| cks | Jan 3 2015, 11:36 AM Post #597 |
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Bob and his wife should spend time behind bars. How much do you want to bet that her letter was written on UVA stationary and typed by a UVA employee? And for that matter the postage paid for by the good citizens of Virginia? |
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| MikeZPU | Jan 3 2015, 01:23 PM Post #598 |
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So, now in addition to having no common sense, we now know that Sullivan has no sense of shame either. I guess we already knew that, as she will not admit that she was wrong in her over-reaction to the Rolling Stone article. And if she had an ounce of common sense, she would have sensed that Jackie's story didn't pass the smell test whatsoever. |
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| abb | Jan 4 2015, 05:15 AM Post #599 |
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http://www.roanoke.com/news/virginia/uva-continues-reforms-despite-magazine-story-s-problems/article_783d3000-135c-5fbe-bfff-605c59fafae6.html UVa continues reforms despite magazine story's problems By Karin Kapsidelis Richmond Times-Dispatch | Posted: Saturday, January 3, 2015 8:30 pm Declared “the worst journalism of 2014” by the Columbia Journalism Review, Rolling Stone magazine’s account of a gang rape at a fraternity house nonetheless continues to cloud collegiate life at the University of Virginia. UVa President Teresa Sullivan did not lift the suspension of fraternal organizations after The Washington Post found discrepancies in the story that forced the magazine to back away from the allegations. Instead, Sullivan said, the university will use the harsh national spotlight it is under as an opportunity to lead efforts to combat sexual assault on campus. UVa’s four Greek leadership councils were given a Dec. 31 deadline to submit their ideas for a new Fraternal Organization Agreement, which Sullivan will review with the goal of having new agreements in place by Friday, university spokesman Anthony de Bruyn said. That would allow fraternities and sororities to resume all social activities, which were halted before the Rolling Stone story was discredited. De Bruyn said the “pause” in Greek activities “is not a punishment of any kind, and applies to social activities, not to philanthropic or other work.” He said the revision to agreements also is being requested of all student-led organizations that have such agreements with the university. The Nov. 19 Rolling Stone article, which detailed allegations by an undergraduate identified only as Jackie, led others to speak out about their experiences of sexual assault. And at a board of visitors meeting, the president of the Inter-Fraternity Council acknowledged that sexual violence “is a cultural problem in our fraternities.” The story was published a month after a statewide task force appointed by the governor began studying how best to prevent and respond to incidents of sexual violence on campuses. The task force will meet Thursday to review the work so far of three subcommittees, but it will not look at specific cases such as the UVa gang-rape allegations, according to Michael Kelly, spokesman for Attorney General Mark Herring and chairman of the task force. Herring appointed an independent counsel to investigate the UVa case, as is the Charlottesville Police Department. Sullivan also named an Ad Hoc Group on University Climate and Culture to make recommendations on ways to enhance student safety. For its part, Rolling Stone has asked the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism to investigate what went wrong with its reporting. The school’s Columbia Journalism Review already has labeled the story as winner of the year’s “media-fail sweepstakes” among blunders that made its worst-journalism list. UVa and Rolling Stone have pledged full public disclosure of the investigations of Jackie’s story. |
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| abb | Jan 4 2015, 05:20 AM Post #600 |
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http://www.thewrap.com/rolling-stone-trouble-for-columbia-journalism-guest-blog/ Rolling Stone Could Spell Trouble for Those Tasked With ‘Independent’ Review (Guest Blog) Media | By Ross Johnson on January 3, 2015 @ 4:56 pm Individuals and institutions should be wary of association with the disgraced publication, warns PR pro As a public relations practitioner, my ears pricked on Dec. 22 when Rolling Stone’s maximum leader Jann Wenner sent out this missive — right in time for Christmas break — that he was recruiting the Columbia Journalism School to review Rolling Stone’s now-infamous Nov. 19 “A Rape on Campus” story. My first thoughts? Why would a venerated school of journalism carry the water for what could be a Wenner public relations gambit; i.e., the ol’ “independent review” that’s not really “independent” and not really a “review”? Does the Columbia J School actually have the guts to deeply examine its client’s editorial process while the threat of a defamation suit is hanging over Rolling Stone’s head? And whatever happened to all the additional internal reviewing that Rolling Stone has been promising in rapidly changing editor’s notes thrown on top of its “A Rape on Campus” story since the story began unraveling in the first week of December? Also Read: Rolling Stone Outsources Internal Investigation of Botched UVA Rape Story to Columbia Journalism School The bottom line: Rolling Stone magazine has issues that go way beyond a public relations perception problem. It’s problem is one of reality: It is has been widely accused of cooking up a story in a manner that is not only negligent, but, also, might fall under the far more damning umbrella of having reckless disregard for the truth. The accusations go to the core of Rolling Stone ever putting out an investigative story in the future that will have any credibility. In the crisis communications biz, there is this chestnut: When under fire, stall if the facts are not on your side. Just promise an independent review conducted by a coalition of a board of advisors with a “czar” ultimately stuck giving out a report, preferably well down the road, that will cover the ass of the person under fire. Also Read: Rolling Stone UVA Rape Controversy: Friends of Alleged Victim Remember It Differently National Football League commissioner Roger Godell got the drill down awkwardly last September in the Ray Rice fiasco. Godell’s report “czar” just happens to work for the law firm with close ties to the NFL, and no one has heard a peep about when this report is coming out. (Does anyone want to take the over/under on the final whistle of this year’s Super Bowl?) New Jersey Governor Chris Christie also worked the same strategy in his bridge-closure PR calamity. But if Rolling Stone is in a different business than the NFL or the political business of running New Jersey. Rolling Stone is in the truth business. Whoever is whispering into Wenner’s ear should remember this. When the Washington Post announced on April 15, 1981, that Janet Cooke’s Pulitzer Prize–winning story “Jimmy’s World” was a fabrication, Post publisher Phil Graham assigned Post ombudsman Bill Green to explain to Post readers the flawed process of how the story ever went to print and how it was subsequently nominated for a Pulitzer. Four days after reading about the fabrication, the Post readers were presented with a 13,000-word post-mortem by Green. Also Read: Rolling Stone Managing Editor Tweets About UVA Rape Story: ‘The Failure Is On Us’ In other words, the Post tried to clean up its own mess, and did it quickly. Other examples of self-review in similar circumstances can be found at the New York Times in the wake of the Jayson Blair scandal and at the Los Angeles Times after the Staples Center pay-to-play calamity. If the Columbia Journalism School puts out a report quickly that attempts to tell the whole truth and includes details of any legal causes of action that the alleged raping and pillaging Phi Kappa Psi fraternity might have against Rolling Stone, hats off to Columbia. (In the earlier cited example, the Washington Post was not facing the same kind of legal exposure in the wake of “Jimmy’s World.”) But does Jann Wenner really think that the Columbia J school has the audacity to tell the truth about what Wenner knew about his magazine’s awful fact-checking of the campus rape story, and when did he know it? Just look at the first paragraph of the two paragraph statement that Wenner released on December 22: In RS 1223, Sabrina Rubin Erdely wrote about a brutal gang rape of a young woman named Jackie at a party in a University of Virginia frat house [“A Rape on Campus”]. Upon its publication, the article generated worldwide attention and praise for shining a light on the way the University of Virginia and many other colleges and universities across the nation have tried to sweep the issue of sexual assault on campus under the rug. Also Read: Rolling Stone Backpedals on Bombshell UVA Rape Story: ‘Our Trust Was Misplaced’ Yes, for a brief time, “A Rape on Campus” generated “worldwide attention and praise.” But his magazine’s story then quickly generated worldwide condemnation as the facts of how the story was cobbled together became clear and Rolling Stone’s own promised internal review has been hushed. Thus, it looks like the statement announcing the “independent review” has all the earmarks of a burgeoning spin-control campaign by Mr. Wenner. It’s not too late for the Columbia Journalism School. If the school has any inkling that its review even smells of a whitewash, it should immediately cease participation. And run as fast as it can away from Jann Wenner. |
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9:15 AM Jul 11