University of Virginia Professor and Hoover Institution Fellow James Ceaser has an insightful piece in the Weekly Standard on the disgraceful "journalism" and -- let's face it -- copious lying that went on in the Rolling Stone's reporting of a gang rape. It's a rape that, I have come to believe from the available evidence, is a 100% hoax. It is, in that respect, like the Duke lacrosse rape hoax of a few years back: It's not just that the rape did not occur as reported; it's that it never occurred, period.
Kent noted in this post that rape is a serious, ugly crime, and that its victims deserve justice. I could scarcely agree more.
What has happened in this episode shows at least two things are needed to start down the path to justice: Go to the police instead of Rolling Stone, and tell the truth.
And one more thing. Going on a date is not rape, getting offended is not rape, and being groped is not rape (although it is a battery). Intercourse without consent is rape. Words have meanings, and credibility depends upon respecting this fact.
There are several paragraphs in Prof. Ceaser's article I thought particularly noteworthy. First, there's his lead:
The university is often said to be the first place in our society to look for the truth. Unfortunately, it is now one of the last places to find it.Events surrounding a recent Rolling Stone article that chronicles an account of a gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity make clear how little the critical spirit operates today on our nation's campuses. The story, which Rolling Stone no longer supports, begged to be treated with skepticism. Appearing in a magazine that trades in sensationalism--last year it put a glamour photo of the Boston marathon bomber on its cover--the narrative is so pat and faithful to a formula that common sense dictated caution. And most readers, one suspects, did feel at least a tinge of suspicion. Yet opinion leaders and campus activists across the nation quickly embraced the story as gospel truth, with some looking to convert it into a national movement to stem sexual violence.
Prof. Ceaser continues:
The abandonment of a critical spirit on our campuses is as much a failure of moral courage as of intellectual blindness. Every adult, if not every student, knows what happened at Duke eight years ago, where, under pressure from the same kind of academic crowd behavior, members of the men's lacrosse team were tainted and criminally prosecuted for rape, under charges that ultimately proved baseless. Every professor in media studies and public opinion is fully aware of the spectacular hoaxes of modern journalism, from the gripping accounts of urban poverty by Janet Cooke in the Washington Post to the multiple fabrications of Stephen Glass in the New Republic. And scholars of literature and history cannot be ignorant of the psychology of false accusation, from the biblical story of Potiphar's wife down to the rape charges by Tawana Brawley, cynically perpetuated by Al Sharpton. Yet, in the climate of the moment, none of the perspective that these teachers could have offered, even if they had wished to do so, was ever brought to bear. A crowd does not listen, particularly when it is convinced it is on the side of the angels.
I doubt the banshees here ever thought they were on the "side of the angels," exactly, unless we're talking about avenging angels. And vengeance, make no mistake, is what this is about.
Vengeance against the White Devil, against "privilege," against men, against the Ruling Class, against, eventually, America. It was not, however, against truth. It was merely that, in Fighting for The Cause, truth doesn't count.
Leave a comment