Rolling Stone Loses

A jury in Virginia has found Rolling Stone magazine and its reporter Sabrina Erdely liable for defamation in connection with Erdely’s now-refuted story of a gang rape at the University of Virginia. The plaintiff in the case is university dean Nicole Eramo, who was portrayed as callous in Erdely’s article. The verdict would have been more satisfying if it had been on behalf of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity and its members, who were the principal parties defamed by Rolling Stone.

The linked article is in the Washington Post, whose reporting contributed greatly to the unraveling of Erdely’s fiction. And yet the Post can’t resist incorporating into its story the very canard that the Rolling Stone article sought to perpetuate:

Once its flaws were exposed, the article’s deeper message of the effects of campus rape — a pervasive national problem — was lost amid the allegations of shoddy reporting.

But is campus rape a “pervasive national problem”? That is what Rolling Stone tried, and failed, to demonstrate. In fact, college-age women who are not students are more than 50% more likely to be raped than coeds. So why isn’t the pervasive problem non-campus rape? This strikes me as a clear case of classism.

And the incidence of rape, like other violent crimes, has declined dramatically in recent years. According to FBI statistics, rape is at a 40-year low. So why, suddenly, is it “pervasive”? The current hysteria about campus rape is driven by lust–lust for money and power, on the part of feminists and their enablers.

The Washington Post doesn’t quite dare to tell the truth about Rolling Stone’s fabricated rape story, but it does quote the magazine’s lawyer, who, facing a jury that had heard the evidence, acknowledged what really happened:

Sexton said that, in effect, Erdely and Rolling Stone had fallen victim to what he called at points a “hoax,” a “fraud” and a “perfect storm.”

The entire campus rape culture theme is a hoax and a fraud.

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