Yesterday, the Police Chief of Charlottesville, Virginia gave a remarkable press conference, the upshot of which was, as the New York Times headline put it :. Not only was there "no evidence" that the horrific gang rape at the frat house party took place, there was "no evidence" that the party took place. Indeed, there was "no evidence" that the man "Jackie" described as her date that night even exists. And yet last fall Rolling Stone ran a 9,word story on the "horrific gang rape" that spurred a media frenzy about the alleged "epidemic" of campus rape across America.
Even as the story disintegrated, the feminist lobby took the view that "Jackie" was a brave woman who had performed a useful service. As I wrote last year :. That's the purpose of "news" as social engineering.
The great, messy, contradictory, complexities of reality have to be streamlined and organized into the half-a-dozen approved narratives of the age.
At its most absurd, you wind up with "Jackie", the "victim" of the University of Virginia "gang" "rape", to whom we all owe a debt of gratitude for having the courage to come forward and raise awareness by "pulling back the curtain on rape" - even if behind the pulled-back curtain there was no actual rape going on.
And again :. And even if there was no rape going on behind the curtain she raised awareness of how rape culture is so prevalent that women are being traumatized into making up stories that they've been gang-raped by seven Phi Kappa Psi men even when they haven't been. The blogger Oliver Willis thinks it's "super dangerous" that the right is seizing on the implosion of Rolling Stone's story to insist that "all rape allegations can be ignored".
