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UVA Rape Story Collapses; Duke Lacrosse Redux
Topic Started: Dec 5 2014, 01:45 PM (60,434 Views)
Quasimodo



Question:

Could the players have sued Nifong for defamation? (Recall his "stranglehold" pose, as well as his other remarks)

Nifong is not the media; but his statements were repeated everywhere.

The tort therefore took place where the statements were broadcast--meaning, one could sue him in a court in any
jurisdiction in the country, and even overseas.

Defamation is not something that is protected by his work as a DA.

Could that have helped bring out some pertinent information?




Edited by Quasimodo, Apr 8 2015, 01:35 PM.
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Joan Foster

I'm guessing we will find out Jackie's real name when the suit is filed. I hope after that...it is used all the time.
Edited by Joan Foster, Apr 8 2015, 01:48 PM.
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Mason
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Joan Foster
Apr 8 2015, 01:48 PM
I'm guessing we will find out Jackie's real name when the suit is filed. I hope after that...it is used all the time.
.
If you notice, none of the people on TV know Crystal's name. Not even those claiming to have broke the story.

The Media refused to use her name and NPR (your Tax $$$) stated that after the AG declared the Students innocent - they would not use her name.

I don't trust the source that has provided this UVA girl's name. They could be right, but they were wrong as recently as last week (on other issues).

.
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Joan Foster

Mason
Apr 8 2015, 02:01 PM
Joan Foster
Apr 8 2015, 01:48 PM
I'm guessing we will find out Jackie's real name when the suit is filed. I hope after that...it is used all the time.
.
If you notice, none of the people on TV know Crystal's name. Not even those claiming to have broke the story.

The Media refused to use her name and NPR (your Tax $$$) stated that after the AG declared the Students innocent - they would not use her name.

I don't trust the source that has provided this UVA girl's name. They could be right, but they were wrong as recently as last week (on other issues).

.
One of our fine Hooligans posted a link to the Police Chief slipping up....it sounded like "Laurie." Can't find it now.

Personally, I am so tired of all these apologies to campus "victims"....OH, My...this has made it so hard for them....the Re Victimized!

I'm not prepared to offer a blanket expression of empathy...sorry. These "victims" have to earn that title, one by one. Story by story. On campuses these days, it seems you just walk in...and the title of "victim" is automatic. How shameful. They've done for rape victims what they've done for the word "racist." Made an utter mockery of it.

What about the Fraternity? The guys who had to go to motels after paying for housing in that vandalized Frat house? Where is the pervasive expressed sympathy for THEM?!

Spare me all this gushing about these anointed "victims."
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cks
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The word victim is now used willy-nilly. Just another example of the way that the language has become debased - the term hero and the adjective heroic are other such examples. Why is it, for example, "heroic" that Angelina Jolie had her ovaries removed?

Someone who lies (which is what Jackie has done) is no victim. She has inflicted harm on many by her lies.
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Payback
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MikeZPU
Apr 8 2015, 01:13 PM
cks: sorry that you had to deal with such a hideous creature.

You make a really good point questioning on what basis do they
claim that focussing on false rape cases deters real rape victims
from coming forward.

IMHO The deference being shown to "Jackie" is plain wrong.

I was especially appalled by Chief of Police Longo who wasted a
lot of police resources on investigating a false rape accusation
and yet still talked as if Jackie was a victim.

In the best case scenario, she has mental health issues and
needs to seek treatment. But she mainly seems to be a
pathological liar.
The only way to stop this is to treat false accusing as a crime and punish Jackie and people like her. Big fine and long jail terms. The idea that Teresa Sullivan is not expelling Jackie!
Edited by Payback, Apr 8 2015, 03:29 PM.
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cks
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Obviously "fabrication" is not an honor code violation.
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Joan Foster

I read an interview today that stated Erderly originally wanted to center this story at Yale. But she just couldn't find...among their rapes...a rape that suited her needs.

I would suggest...that like the Florida State accuser...most of these "rapes" do not generate the universal outrage and sympathy that this movement needs. They get a mixed response, as they did on this Board. Drunken foolish girls who can't remember if they said "no" softly...or were "raped" by the boyfriend they bedded a few more times prior to making the accusation..this doesn't bring forth exactly the response needed to enact more draconian measures.

She needed a little horror and torture...and a sober, innocent maiden raped for hours as a fraternity initiation. Throw in that broken bottle.

That's what she needed. That's what Jackie "dished up."
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Quasimodo

Quote:
 
http://dailycaller.com/2015/04/08/how-deep-is-this-education-officials-involvement-in-the-rolling-stone-hoax/

How Deep Is This Education Official’s Involvement In The Rolling Stone Hoax?

04/08/2015

A top-ranking official at the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has emerged as a potentially key figure in Rolling Stone’s false article, “A Rape on Campus.”

Catherine Lhamon, who heads the Department’s civil rights wing, was identified in a letter sent last month by University of Virginia Dean of Students Allen Groves to Steve Coll and Sheila Coronel, the two Columbia Journalism School deans who conducted a review of the Nov. 19 article, written by disgraced reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely.

Groves’ letter was included as a footnote to the Columbia deans’ report, which was released on Sunday and cataloged the failures and lies that led to the article’s publication.

In the letter, Groves wrote that he has suffered “personal and professional” damage as a result of Erdely’s reporting and comments Lhamon made about him which were included in the article.

As the Rolling Stone article fell apart, Lhamon’s involvement has gone virtually unmentioned. But a deeper look reveals her ties to Emily Renda, a University of Virginia employee and activist who put Erdely in touch with Jackie, the student whose claim that she was brutally gang-raped by seven members of a fraternity on Sept. 28, 2014, served as the linchpin for the 9,000-word Rolling Stone article.

President Obama nominated Lhamon to become the Education Department’s Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights in July 2013. The Senate approved her unanimously the following month.

She has served as the Education Department’s designee to the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault which Obama created on Jan. 22, 2014. Renda served on the same task force.

Besides that link, both spoke at a February 2014 University of Virginia event entitled “Sexual Misconduct Among College Students.”

Lhamon has been invited to the White House nearly 60 times, according to visitor’s logs. Renda has been invited six times. Both were invited to the same White House meeting on three occasions. One, held on Feb. 21, 2014, was conducted by Lynn Rosenthal, then the White House Advisor on Violence Against Women. Twenty-one people, mostly activists, were invited to that meeting. Lhamon and Renda were invited to two other larger gatherings — one on April 29 and the other on Sept. 19.

It is unclear if both attended the three meetings. Renda did not respond to an emailed request for comment.

Renda and Lhamon also testified at a June 26, 2014, Senate hearing on campus sexual assault. It was at that hearing that Renda cited Jackie’s story that she was brutally gang-raped by five fraternity members — a statement that was inconsistent with Jackie’s claim to Erdely that she was raped by seven men. According to the Columbia report, Renda first told Erdely about Jackie’s allegation on July 8, nearly two weeks after her Senate testimony.

During her testimony, Lhamon claimed that “The best available research suggests that 20% of college women, and roughly 6% of college men, are victims of attempted or completed sexual assault.” That “one-in-five” claim about the prevalence of sexual assault on campus has been heavily disputed.

Lhamon’s and Renda’s coverage of two different aspects to campus sexual assault highlights exactly what Erdely tried — but failed — to accomplish with her article. The reporter used Jackie’s story about a gang-rape to introduce readers to what she asserted was a systemic failure on the part of universities, police, and society to prevent and investigate sexual assault.

In their review, Coll and Coronel determined that Erdely cherry-picked the most compelling narrative she could find to support her thesis that universities fail to take sexual assault victims seriously. She had interviewed students at other schools but chose to report Jackie’s gruesome tale.

She also reported that university officials and local police failed to properly investigate claims made by Jackie and other victims. But it turns out that school administrators and police investigators actually went to great lengths to investigate Jackie’s alleged rape. But she was unwilling to name her attackers or file a police report. Coll and Coronel also discovered that some of the other rape allegations Erdely reported in her article came from a single source: Jackie.

In his letter, Groves wrote that he filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking correspondence between Lhamon and Erdely. Likewise, The Daily Caller filed a FOIA request but expanded the inquiry to include emails Lhamon and her assistant sent to Renda.

In his letter to Coll and Coronel, Groves wrote that he was “one of the professionals vilified by name” in Erdely’s article.

He claimed that Erdely completely mischaracterized remarks he made at a Sept. 2014 meeting with university trustees about sexual assault and that Lhamon disparaged him with comments she made to Erdely.

He took issue with how Erdely characterized his comments and demeanor during the meeting.

Erdely’s passage on Groves dripped with contempt:

Dean of students Allen Groves, in a blue suit and orange necktie of his own, swooped in with a smooth answer. He affirmed that while like many of its peers UVA was under investigation, it was merely a “standard compliance review.” He mentioned that a student’s complaint from the 2010-11 academic year had been folded into that “routine compliance review.” Having downplayed the significance of a Title IX compliance review – which is neither routine nor standard – he then elaborated upon the lengths to which UVA has cooperated with the Office of Civil Rights’ investigation, his tone and manner so reassuring that the room relaxed.

Groves pointed to the next passage in Erdely’s piece which includes commentary from Lhamon about his remarks. She told Erdely that his comments were a “deliberate and irresponsible” mischaracterization of her agency’s investigation into sexual assault at UVA.

“Nothing annoys me more than a school not taking seriously their review from the federal government about their civil rights obligations,” she told Erdely.

In his letter, Groves wrote that he took all sexual assault allegations and investigations seriously and urged Coll and Coronel to watch a YouTube video of the meeting in question. He disputed Erdely’s assertion that he “swooped in” to deflect a question.

“I was asked a question and responded to it directly,” Groves wrote.

Contrary to what Erdely wrote, Groves did tell the trustees that UVA was being investigated as part of both a general compliance review and a specific complaint. He said that both inquiries had been folded into the Office of Civil Rights’ single investigation. He then turned to UVA’s Associate Vice President Susan Davis to ask if he had covered everything pertinent to the issue, and she agreed that it was a “very fair summary.”

“I can see no basis for the approach that Ms. Erdely took other than bias and malice,” Groves wrote in his letter to Columbia’s deans. “The personal and professional damage inflicted as a result was quite real.”

Despite the context provided by Groves, the Department of Education is not backing off of Lhamon’s comments to Erdely.

“We stand by the statement Catherine made during her interview with Rolling Stone,” Dorie Turner Nolt, the agency’s press secretary, told TheDC.

Groves is not the only UVA official to call foul on Erdely’s reporting. Dean Nicole Eramo, the first official to whom Jackie claimed she was raped, told the Columbia deans that Erdely completely misquoted her. Erdely reported that Eramo called UVA “the rape school” and said that parents would never “want to send their daughter” there. Eramo adamantly denied ever uttering those words.


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Mason
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Quasimodo
Apr 8 2015, 10:38 PM
Quote:
 
http://dailycaller.com/2015/04/08/how-deep-is-this-education-officials-involvement-in-the-rolling-stone-hoax/

How Deep Is This Education Official’s Involvement In The Rolling Stone Hoax?

04/08/2015

A top-ranking official at the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has emerged as a potentially key figure in Rolling Stone’s false article, “A Rape on Campus.”

Catherine Lhamon, who heads the Department’s civil rights wing, was identified in a letter sent last month by University of Virginia Dean of Students Allen Groves to Steve Coll and Sheila Coronel, the two Columbia Journalism School deans who conducted a review of the Nov. 19 article, written by disgraced reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely.

Groves’ letter was included as a footnote to the Columbia deans’ report, which was released on Sunday and cataloged the failures and lies that led to the article’s publication.

In the letter, Groves wrote that he has suffered “personal and professional” damage as a result of Erdely’s reporting and comments Lhamon made about him which were included in the article.

As the Rolling Stone article fell apart, Lhamon’s involvement has gone virtually unmentioned. But a deeper look reveals her ties to Emily Renda, a University of Virginia employee and activist who put Erdely in touch with Jackie, the student whose claim that she was brutally gang-raped by seven members of a fraternity on Sept. 28, 2014, served as the linchpin for the 9,000-word Rolling Stone article.

President Obama nominated Lhamon to become the Education Department’s Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights in July 2013. The Senate approved her unanimously the following month.

She has served as the Education Department’s designee to the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault which Obama created on Jan. 22, 2014. Renda served on the same task force.

Besides that link, both spoke at a February 2014 University of Virginia event entitled “Sexual Misconduct Among College Students.”

Lhamon has been invited to the White House nearly 60 times, according to visitor’s logs. Renda has been invited six times. Both were invited to the same White House meeting on three occasions. One, held on Feb. 21, 2014, was conducted by Lynn Rosenthal, then the White House Advisor on Violence Against Women. Twenty-one people, mostly activists, were invited to that meeting. Lhamon and Renda were invited to two other larger gatherings — one on April 29 and the other on Sept. 19.

It is unclear if both attended the three meetings. Renda did not respond to an emailed request for comment.

Renda and Lhamon also testified at a June 26, 2014, Senate hearing on campus sexual assault. It was at that hearing that Renda cited Jackie’s story that she was brutally gang-raped by five fraternity members — a statement that was inconsistent with Jackie’s claim to Erdely that she was raped by seven men. According to the Columbia report, Renda first told Erdely about Jackie’s allegation on July 8, nearly two weeks after her Senate testimony.

During her testimony, Lhamon claimed that “The best available research suggests that 20% of college women, and roughly 6% of college men, are victims of attempted or completed sexual assault.” That “one-in-five” claim about the prevalence of sexual assault on campus has been heavily disputed.

Lhamon’s and Renda’s coverage of two different aspects to campus sexual assault highlights exactly what Erdely tried — but failed — to accomplish with her article. The reporter used Jackie’s story about a gang-rape to introduce readers to what she asserted was a systemic failure on the part of universities, police, and society to prevent and investigate sexual assault.

In their review, Coll and Coronel determined that Erdely cherry-picked the most compelling narrative she could find to support her thesis that universities fail to take sexual assault victims seriously. She had interviewed students at other schools but chose to report Jackie’s gruesome tale.

She also reported that university officials and local police failed to properly investigate claims made by Jackie and other victims. But it turns out that school administrators and police investigators actually went to great lengths to investigate Jackie’s alleged rape. But she was unwilling to name her attackers or file a police report. Coll and Coronel also discovered that some of the other rape allegations Erdely reported in her article came from a single source: Jackie.

In his letter, Groves wrote that he filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking correspondence between Lhamon and Erdely. Likewise, The Daily Caller filed a FOIA request but expanded the inquiry to include emails Lhamon and her assistant sent to Renda.

In his letter to Coll and Coronel, Groves wrote that he was “one of the professionals vilified by name” in Erdely’s article.

He claimed that Erdely completely mischaracterized remarks he made at a Sept. 2014 meeting with university trustees about sexual assault and that Lhamon disparaged him with comments she made to Erdely.

He took issue with how Erdely characterized his comments and demeanor during the meeting.

Erdely’s passage on Groves dripped with contempt:

Dean of students Allen Groves, in a blue suit and orange necktie of his own, swooped in with a smooth answer. He affirmed that while like many of its peers UVA was under investigation, it was merely a “standard compliance review.” He mentioned that a student’s complaint from the 2010-11 academic year had been folded into that “routine compliance review.” Having downplayed the significance of a Title IX compliance review – which is neither routine nor standard – he then elaborated upon the lengths to which UVA has cooperated with the Office of Civil Rights’ investigation, his tone and manner so reassuring that the room relaxed.

Groves pointed to the next passage in Erdely’s piece which includes commentary from Lhamon about his remarks. She told Erdely that his comments were a “deliberate and irresponsible” mischaracterization of her agency’s investigation into sexual assault at UVA.

“Nothing annoys me more than a school not taking seriously their review from the federal government about their civil rights obligations,” she told Erdely.

In his letter, Groves wrote that he took all sexual assault allegations and investigations seriously and urged Coll and Coronel to watch a YouTube video of the meeting in question. He disputed Erdely’s assertion that he “swooped in” to deflect a question.

“I was asked a question and responded to it directly,” Groves wrote.

Contrary to what Erdely wrote, Groves did tell the trustees that UVA was being investigated as part of both a general compliance review and a specific complaint. He said that both inquiries had been folded into the Office of Civil Rights’ single investigation. He then turned to UVA’s Associate Vice President Susan Davis to ask if he had covered everything pertinent to the issue, and she agreed that it was a “very fair summary.”

“I can see no basis for the approach that Ms. Erdely took other than bias and malice,” Groves wrote in his letter to Columbia’s deans. “The personal and professional damage inflicted as a result was quite real.”

Despite the context provided by Groves, the Department of Education is not backing off of Lhamon’s comments to Erdely.

“We stand by the statement Catherine made during her interview with Rolling Stone,” Dorie Turner Nolt, the agency’s press secretary, told TheDC.

Groves is not the only UVA official to call foul on Erdely’s reporting. Dean Nicole Eramo, the first official to whom Jackie claimed she was raped, told the Columbia deans that Erdely completely misquoted her. Erdely reported that Eramo called UVA “the rape school” and said that parents would never “want to send their daughter” there. Eramo adamantly denied ever uttering those words.


.
Feds are involved, like the Trayvon case.

Remember Shirley Sherrod?

These are Activists and Radicals getting paid to whip up other Activists and Radicals.


.
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http://www.contracostatimes.com/nation-world/ci_27866737/rolling-stone-retraction-rare-blemish-journalist-sabrina-rubin

Rolling Stone retraction a rare blemish for journalist Sabrina Rubin Erdely
By Geoff Mulvihill Associated Press

Posted: 04/07/2015 02:22:27 PM

The retracted Rolling Stone article about an apparently fictional gang rape at the University of Virginia is a blemish on an otherwise illustrious career for the journalist who wrote it.

Freelance writer Sabrina Rubin Erdely has made a living out of long, provocative articles, but none as contentious as the piece in November that turned a national conversation about campus sexual assault into a louder debate. Other journalists quickly found inconsistencies in the story titled "A Rape on Campus," and on Sunday, Rolling Stone published a review that it had asked the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism to undertake.

The report was scathing, saying it was a "story of journalistic failure that was avoidable." That came after a finding last month by police in Charlottesville, Virginia, that there was no evidence to support the claims of the woman identified in the story only as "Jackie" that she had been raped by seven men at a fraternity house. In a New York Times interview, Rolling Stone publisher Jann S. Wenner described "Jackie" as "a really expert fabulist storyteller" who manipulated the magazine's journalism process.

The Columbia report did not support what some critics have speculated -- that Erdely made it up.

Such criticism is rare for Erdely, 42, who went to work at Philadelphia Magazine when she graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1994 and has written for several other magazines, including Self and GQ, over the years.
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Some of her most prominent stories have been about the seedy underbelly of prestigious worlds. She has written about a suburban mother addicted to heroin and another who ran a prostitution service; she told the story of an autistic boy busted for selling marijuana to an undercover police officer who had befriended him. She has twice been a finalist for National Magazine Awards for pieces on harassment of gay students at a Minnesota high school and sexual misconduct by a doctor.

The Philadelphia resident, who is married and has two children, repeatedly declined to speak to a reporter for this article. But she apologized for the Rolling Stone article in a statement Sunday, saying, "Reading the Columbia account of the mistakes and misjudgments in my reporting was a brutal and humbling experience."

She called the past few months "among the most painful of my life" and apologized to "Rolling Stone's readers, to my Rolling Stone editors and colleagues, to the U.V.A. community, and to any victims of sexual assault who may feel fearful as a result of my article."

Some of those who have worked with her see her as diligent and sensitive.

Lisa DePaulo, a longtime magazine journalist who also worked with Erdely for a time at Philadelphia, acknowledged it will be different for her now.

"Everything she does is going to be under scrutiny," DePaulo said. "The best indicator of future behavior is past behavior. Except for this -- and that's a big exception -- her work is solid."

Stephen Fried, a magazine writer and author who hired Erdely, said he supports her. He usually has her speak to a magazine-writing class he teaches at Columbia, but with the investigation of her work being conducted there, this year's appearance was scrapped. He still wants to have her in next year, though.

"I have nothing but admiration for Sabrina's work," Fried said Monday. "I have nothing but admiration for how she has handled all of this."

Said Larry Platt, who was the top editor at Philadelphia Magazine when Erdely worked there, in an interview with the AP in December: "As an editor, if I had to pick a reporter to nail a story based on their reporting chops, Sabrina would have been right up there. She's just dogged."

No other publications have said whether they plan to review Erdely's work, and Rolling Stone didn't say whether it plans to review her previous work for the magazine.

In a question-and-answer session with reporters Monday at Columbia, journalism dean Steve Coll said the review team did read some of her earlier pieces but didn't "go out and re-report them." They didn't ask to see her files on any stories, he said, and doesn't know what Rolling Stone would have said if they had.

Sheila Coronel, the journalism school's dean of academic affairs, said that the team spent two days with Erdely and that she cooperated "fully and professionally."

"The moment that was, that really she nearly broke down, was that moment when she was narrating, when she realized that Jackie's account was not true," Coronel said. "It was very painful for her, and I think more painful than all of the things written about her was the feeling that she had been betrayed by a source that she trusted and invested a lot of time and emotional energy on."

Asked whether Erdely should ever write again for a national magazine, Coronel said: "I don't believe that's our decision. This would be the decision of people who ask her to write for them."

------

Associated Press writer Deepti Hajela in New York contributed to this report. Follow Mulvihill at http://www.twitter.com/geoffmulvihill
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http://townhall.com/columnists/derekhunter/2015/04/09/truth-is-for-suckers-n1982374

April 9, 2015
Truth Is For Suckers
Derek Hunter
4/9/2015 12:01:00 AM - Derek Hunter

What’s the point in telling the truth? Moreover, what’s the point in not lying? In many cases a lie will get you much further, much more attention, more money or power, so why bother telling the truth? Is the truth for suckers?

Rolling Stone magazine published a lie about a fraternity at the University of Virginia and made a lot of money from it. “A Rape On Campus” was one of its most popular stories ever, getting more than 2.7 million page views. The advertisers who paid for those impressions aren’t getting their money back from the magazine.

None of the editors involved in overlooking such obvious and glaring holes in the story were fired of suspended.

The writer of the story, Sabrina Erdely, wasn’t disciplined in any way either, even though she perpetrated the fraud every bit as much as the subject did.

And then there’s “Jackie,” the “star” of the fable. (Her last name is out there if you really care to know, but I’d rather not feed her ego.) She’s lost friends but has gained supporters. Her future may not seem bright at the moment, but it will be. She’ll be giving TED talks and be considered for a future spot on The View alongside Monica Lewinski before you know it.

Even UVa President Teresa Sullivan, who punished every Greek organization on campus because of false allegations, more than likely will skate without consequences.

So what’s the point in not lying?

Lying will get you stuff. It can get you attention. It can get you dates. It can get you just about anything you want if you’re good enough at it and willing to live the lie as long as you have to.

It’s even better if the lie is “the truth” someone else is desperate to hear. Tell people a lie they wish were true, and you’ll have a clear path to whatever you want.

Politicians deal in lies the way Picasso worked in paint. It’s their currency. “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan.” “I deleted only personal emails, then wiped the server clean,” “We will do everything in our power to ensure the president’s illegal amnesty is defunded.” All lies … that worked.

It’s almost to the point that telling the truth hurts you.

Tell students on a college campus that the “one in five women in college are sexually assaulted” statistic is a bald-faced lie cooked up to advance the left-wing’s victimhood agenda, and you’ll be chased off campus by an ignorant mob.

Tell a progressive Democrat that when you remove people forcibly enrolled in Medicaid and those who had the insurance they liked cancelled, Obamacare has increased the out-of-pocket costs for health care in this country significantly while “helping” very few, and you’ll get roughly the same reaction as you would by showing them a picture of their parents naked.

A large swath of the country simply has no use for the truth. Many of them don’t care when they’re lied to. Willful ignorance is bliss.

Suspended NBC News anchor Brian Williams may well end up being the last person publicly punished for lying, and he’s due back in his old job soon.

So why not lie? It is the easier path to getting what you want in many cases.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid recently justified his lie that Mitt Romney hadn’t paid any taxes in 10 years by saying, “Romney didn’t win, did he?” Reid knew he was lying and did so with premeditation. He even did it on the Senate floor, where he has absolute immunity to slander whomever he likes.

Leftists in the media feigned disgust but moved on quickly. For them to dwell on Reid's or any politician’s lies would be to indict themselves for unquestioningly perpetuating those lies. Or worse, facilitating them, which the media also does with regularity.

If you are on the political left or a member of a progressive “victim class,” the sky is the limit when it comes to how far a lie can carry you.

It begs the question, “Why shouldn’t the rest of us join in and bask in the spoils of lies?” The answer is integrity. The truth still matters. It’s not yet a quaint notion of the past. But it’s not far from being that way.
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http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2015-04-08.html#read_more

CAN THE LEFT COME UP WITH ONE TRUE STORY?
April 8, 2015


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Yesterday, up on the stair,

I saw a rape that wasn't there,

It wasn't there again today!

Oh why, oh why did it go away ...


From the Duke lacrosse team, the Columbia mattress girl and the University of Virginia, the left has not been able to produce one actual rape on a college campus. It's beginning to look as if the rape of the Sabine women never happened, either. Someone's going to have to go back and investigate.


The big finale to the latest college rape fable, Rolling Stone's whimsical "A Rape on Campus," about a fraternity gang rape at the University of Virginia that never happened, is the Columbia Journalism Review's "investigation" of the story, released Sunday night. It's more of a house of mirrors than a finale, inasmuch as CJR's report is so preposterous that it demands its own investigation.


The CJR treats "reporting" as if it is some sort of learned craft, requiring years of study, as opposed to basic common sense. For example, if someone has an incredible story that he's dying for you to publicize, but loses interest every time you try to confirm any of the facts, a normal person would say: Oh, that's because it's probably a lie.


Without even knowing that the rape accuser, "Jackie," had refused to let Rolling Stone check the most basic elements of her narrative, every human being who read Sabrina Rubin Erdely's piece knew it was nonsense by around the second paragraph. It was like a Lifetime TV version of a fraternity rape.


The Washington Post knew. Slate magazine knew. Much-maligned journalist Richard Bradley knew.


But the CJR diligently ticks off Rolling Stone's failures to follow the "essential practices of reporting," including "editing, editorial supervision and fact-checking." Rolling Stone's Reporter of the Year, Erdely told CJR, "I wish somebody had pushed me harder." Her managing editor, Will Dana, admitted that he should have "pull(ed) the strings a little harder ... question(ed) things a little more deeply."



Yes, maybe the editors were just not pushing hard enough.


It's as if a doctor attacked his patient with an ax, and the Columbia Medical Review responded with a forensic report concluding that the procedure failed to follow clinical protocols on hand hygiene, scrubs and restricted areas, while the doctor gallantly admitted that mistakes were made.


How about not allowing reporters to go off on politically driven crusades against liberal hate-objects, like fraternities, the military and athletes? How about not basing entire stories on the uncorroborated dream sequences of fantasists?


The false rape accuser, Jackie, had been trying to get the attention of a guy she liked by inventing a fake boyfriend. His name was "Haven Monahan." Wouldn't a person in his right mind drop the story right there?


Jackie had developed a whole online presence for her imaginary boyfriend, using the photo of some guy from her high school who had never spoken to her, and creating a fictitious text message account for her nonexistent boyfriend, replete with dialogue lifted directly from the TV show "Dawson's Creek."


For these among other reasons, the entire world has known the truth about the Rolling Stone rape since about eight minutes after the story was published. The CJR's report was only necessary for The New York Times to find out the truth.


The report lamented that Rolling Stone's "journalistic failure" would encourage "the idea that many women invent rape allegations." To dispel this danger, the CJR quickly cited a handout from a Violence Against Women symposium alleging only 2 to 8 percent of rape claims are false. In fact, all serious studies of false rape claims put that figure at 27 percent to 40 percent.


If the CJR followed its own recommendations of "fact-checking," they'd know that.


Erdely's editor, Sean Woods, bemoaned the "disservice" Rolling Stone's article had done to Jackie -- the woman who made up the story about being raped.


You know who else Rolling Stone's story kind of did a disservice to? I think, personally -- as long as we're ranking victims -- a very close second to the woman who lied about being raped, as well as all the unnamed college rape victims who might have their claims taken less seriously in the future, are THE INNOCENT FRATERNITY MEMBERS WHO WERE FALSELY ACCUSED OF A VIOLENT GANG RAPE.


The UVA fake rape is even worse than the Duke lacrosse team fake rape. The accused fraternity hadn't even courted danger by hiring a stripper. They were going about their lives, minding their own business, when, out of the blue, Rolling Stone, the president of their university, and a fiendish coed decided to accuse them of a monstrous crime.


If UVA's much vaunted "honor code" means anything, it ought to mean the permanent expulsion of a girl who was willing to ruin the lives of men she had never met by accusing them of gang-rape -- just to get the attention of a guy she liked.


To the contrary, even after this unprovoked attack on blameless UVA students, the associate dean of students, Nicole Eramo, said that college rape accusations required "balancing respect for the wishes of survivors while also providing for the safety of our communities."


Again, isn't someone missing from all that delicate "balancing"? I'm thinking of: the men falsely accused of rape. Colleges might want to consider adopting a concept that's been around since the second century: "innocent until proved guilty."
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Apr 9 2015, 04:38 AM
http://www.contracostatimes.com/nation-world/ci_27866737/rolling-stone-retraction-rare-blemish-journalist-sabrina-rubin

Rolling Stone retraction a rare blemish for journalist Sabrina Rubin Erdely
By Geoff Mulvihill Associated Press

Posted: 04/07/2015 02:22:27 PM

The retracted Rolling Stone article about an apparently fictional gang rape at the University of Virginia is a blemish on an otherwise illustrious career for the journalist who wrote it.

Freelance writer Sabrina Rubin Erdely has made a living out of long, provocative articles, but none as contentious as the piece in November that turned a national conversation about campus sexual assault into a louder debate. Other journalists quickly found inconsistencies in the story titled "A Rape on Campus," and on Sunday, Rolling Stone published a review that it had asked the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism to undertake.

The report was scathing, saying it was a "story of journalistic failure that was avoidable." That came after a finding last month by police in Charlottesville, Virginia, that there was no evidence to support the claims of the woman identified in the story only as "Jackie" that she had been raped by seven men at a fraternity house. In a New York Times interview, Rolling Stone publisher Jann S. Wenner described "Jackie" as "a really expert fabulist storyteller" who manipulated the magazine's journalism process.

The Columbia report did not support what some critics have speculated -- that Erdely made it up.

Such criticism is rare for Erdely, 42, who went to work at Philadelphia Magazine when she graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1994 and has written for several other magazines, including Self and GQ, over the years.
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Some of her most prominent stories have been about the seedy underbelly of prestigious worlds. She has written about a suburban mother addicted to heroin and another who ran a prostitution service; she told the story of an autistic boy busted for selling marijuana to an undercover police officer who had befriended him. She has twice been a finalist for National Magazine Awards for pieces on harassment of gay students at a Minnesota high school and sexual misconduct by a doctor.

The Philadelphia resident, who is married and has two children, repeatedly declined to speak to a reporter for this article. But she apologized for the Rolling Stone article in a statement Sunday, saying, "Reading the Columbia account of the mistakes and misjudgments in my reporting was a brutal and humbling experience."

She called the past few months "among the most painful of my life" and apologized to "Rolling Stone's readers, to my Rolling Stone editors and colleagues, to the U.V.A. community, and to any victims of sexual assault who may feel fearful as a result of my article."

Some of those who have worked with her see her as diligent and sensitive.

Lisa DePaulo, a longtime magazine journalist who also worked with Erdely for a time at Philadelphia, acknowledged it will be different for her now.

"Everything she does is going to be under scrutiny," DePaulo said. "The best indicator of future behavior is past behavior. Except for this -- and that's a big exception -- her work is solid."

Stephen Fried, a magazine writer and author who hired Erdely, said he supports her. He usually has her speak to a magazine-writing class he teaches at Columbia, but with the investigation of her work being conducted there, this year's appearance was scrapped. He still wants to have her in next year, though.

"I have nothing but admiration for Sabrina's work," Fried said Monday. "I have nothing but admiration for how she has handled all of this."

Said Larry Platt, who was the top editor at Philadelphia Magazine when Erdely worked there, in an interview with the AP in December: "As an editor, if I had to pick a reporter to nail a story based on their reporting chops, Sabrina would have been right up there. She's just dogged."

No other publications have said whether they plan to review Erdely's work, and Rolling Stone didn't say whether it plans to review her previous work for the magazine.

In a question-and-answer session with reporters Monday at Columbia, journalism dean Steve Coll said the review team did read some of her earlier pieces but didn't "go out and re-report them." They didn't ask to see her files on any stories, he said, and doesn't know what Rolling Stone would have said if they had.

Sheila Coronel, the journalism school's dean of academic affairs, said that the team spent two days with Erdely and that she cooperated "fully and professionally."

"The moment that was, that really she nearly broke down, was that moment when she was narrating, when she realized that Jackie's account was not true," Coronel said. "It was very painful for her, and I think more painful than all of the things written about her was the feeling that she had been betrayed by a source that she trusted and invested a lot of time and emotional energy on."

Asked whether Erdely should ever write again for a national magazine, Coronel said: "I don't believe that's our decision. This would be the decision of people who ask her to write for them."

------

Associated Press writer Deepti Hajela in New York contributed to this report. Follow Mulvihill at http://www.twitter.com/geoffmulvihill
how is this article possible in light of her discredited stories about the navy and priests in Philadelphia??
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http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/columnist/wolff/2015/04/08/rolling-stone-story-and-rape-culture/25464501/

Wolff: At Rolling Stone, 'rape culture' stopped questions
Michael Wolff, USA TODAY 2:20 p.m. EDT April 8, 2015

In a melodramatic act of chest baring, Rolling Stone magazine asked the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and its dean, Steve Coll, to investigate the false accusations and fabrications in the magazine's story published late last year about a rape at the University of Virginia. The story's failures had been acknowledged and widely covered in the press after it appeared, but the 13,000-word report rehashes in even greater detail the journalistic missteps and failures that allowed the magazine to publish the story. Coll's report concluded that the magazine's editing procedures were at fault and that there was a pervasive lack of skepticism on the part of the magazine's writer and editors.

But the Columbia J-school review, like the story's author and editors, also steered far afield of any skepticism about the larger subject, what is called "campus rape culture," which, as a story, has become quite a media phenomenon, not to mention accepted truth.

While almost all of the facts of the U.Va. story were determined to be lies, the central premise of the piece remained, for Columbia and the many journalists analyzing the story's fallout, unexamined and apparently sound: College campuses are predatory environments where all women of a certain age are at high risk (enter dramatic statistics of uncertain provenance repeated by the media). Given such numbers, a significant portion of men on college campuses of a certain age are, it's not unreasonable to conclude, out of control, violent, pathologically misogynistic. It's a war out there.

In fact, the general theory of rape culture is that it exists precisely because of skepticism: The system has long questioned and doubted the victims. Hence, in some sense, the very basis of the Rolling Stone story, that disbelief denies victims justice, precluded anything like real disbelief.

The central question asked by the Columbia report and by everybody else — Clay Shirkey, writing in The New Republic, said you don't need 13,000 words to identify the problem: a story too good to be true — is how could these knuckleheads at Rolling Stone have fallen for the bilge they were fed by their source, code-named, "Jackie." And certainly almost everything in the story seemed staged and melodramatic, the dialogue and internal thoughts ridiculous; it's not only obviously false, it's a cliché.

The Columbia report says this knuckleheadedness comes from lapses in editing procedures and practice, curiously accepting the premise that the main point of the article was the story itself instead of its value in illustrating the larger story: a crisis so immediate and generationally defining that it survives every instance that might discredit it. Indeed, at Columbia University itself, a young woman who brought rape charges against a fellow student that were dismissed by the university took to carrying a mattress with her to dramatize her burden as the accuser, becoming a media cause célèbre even though her email correspondence with the man she accuses seriously confounds her claims.

Indeed, in a difficult contortion, a great deal of anger has now been directed at the Rolling Stone story by other journalists and issue advocates, not because it made unjust accusations, but because it might now discredit other people who make such accusations.

Rolling Stone says it was duped by Jackie and has now come under considerable criticism for "blaming the victim." But Jackie was able to dupe the magazine in some considerable measure because of this strong new bias against close scrutiny of women making sexual abuse claims.

Lena Dunham, the writer and star of HBO's Girls and, increasingly, a self-styled voice of her generation, took to social media to declare: "Strength to every person who is afraid to report, feels unheard and alone. This failure on the part of one publication cannot define or hurt you. You are loved."

The Guardian columnist Jessica Valenti insisted after the Rolling Stone article was first exposed and discredited that she still believed Jackie, so she could "sleep at night for having stood by a young woman who may have been through an awful trauma."

While Rolling Stone's editorial vetting procedures may have failed, its editorial positioning was quite on target. It had precisely identified a demographic and brand issue. Rolling Stone, journalistically and commercially, is ever trying to position itself in left-leaning, 18- to 35-year-old, socially conscious territory. It would not, we might fairly assume, write the opposite story: a detailed and sympathetic account of the pain and anguish of a male student — a drunken, fraternity lout, let's say — falsely accused of rape. Indeed, Rolling Stone's problem is not really a procedural issue, it's a fog of war issue. There is only one side here, one moral cause, one permissible outcome, hence everything bends to that narrative. And even if it's false, it can at least support the greater, undeniable truth.

The journalist George Packer, writing in The New Yorker, identifies Rolling Stone's once novel, now tired, fiction-imitating style of journalism — "the use of characters, scenes, description, and dialogue; the creation of tension through pacing, foreshadowing, and recapitulation; the omniscient narrator whose sources are semi-hidden in order to preserve the elegance of storytelling —" as fundamentally requiring, or at least encouraging, too-good-to-be true facts. But he also says of the article's author, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, "Like most journalists worth reading, she approached the story with a passionate purpose, a sense of injustice, of a wrong that needed to be righted." Like most journalists worth reading.

In a different time, one might have said journalists worth reading approached their stories with dispassion and a cold eye.
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