The Gang That Must Have Thought Rape Was a Joke

Ari L. NoonanEditor's Essays

Twenty days after reeling Rolling Stone magazine broke the made-up story of the delusional girl at the University of Virginia who was raped by seven fictional men, it is hilarious to study the responses of liberals, female and male feminists.

They believe. My God, do they believe.

Without exception among prominent liberal personalities, they know the rape happened. Because. Well, because a girl with imagination and a chance for attention said so.

Rape is a sizzling subject du jour for the left.

Boys and Their Rapier Wit

The story starts a few months ago: A left-wing “study” that would not pass a smell test among dumb people ludicrously claimed that 20 percent of all college girls will be raped. Hey, baby. The New York Times, naturally, picked up the story. Like sycophants, the entire media fell in line behind them, as the boys reliably do when a liberal talking point requires exposition. That the bombshell assertion has been thoroughly discredited matters not at all on the left. Picky, picky, the boys say.

The more obvious it became that the story was one girl’s delusion, a fairy tale for the fiction file, the more stubbornly liberals, especially feminists, have proclaimed its undoubted accuracy.

Rolling Stone loved the I Am Doomed to be Raped concept.  It plays so coolly into their War on Women.

The magazine dispatched delegates to numerous campuses, we are told, to find a sexy storyline related by just the right girl.

When you can’t find one, what do you do?

Tell Me a Story, Huh, Please

They happened upon “Jackie,” a girl with a raging imagination who agreed to play stooge, at the University of Virginia. She was a liberal journalist’s dreamgirl.

Sabrina Rubin Erdely, the remarkably ignorant Rolling Stone reporter, reacted as if a heaping plate of drugs had been placed before her hungry eyes.

My favorite part was when “Jackie” asked the journalist not to contact the seven men who raped her.  Obviously, the boys were not in on it. Well, just because, the “girl” said. This is a violation of rudimentary journalism principles – to tell one side of the story.

Where Is Dr. Seuss?

Since the act did not exist the rapists did not exist, and a fraternity, a favorite bullseye of feminists on the campus, did not has been dreadfully smeared. But hey. Baby. The left-wing talking point is the main event. Sabrina had her story, all that mattered.

A left-wing copy editor with a pulse should have sensed a danger sign when he read that part – except that he was in on the joke among drooling liberals to spring this story on sober, vulnerable Americans.

It was one of the most heavily overplayed stories of recent days because I Was Raped at College has been designated a can’t-miss talking point by the left.

Comes now one of the pathetic dimensions of this hoax.  Left-wing politico.com reported this amazing reaction from surely the dumbest girl on campus at the University of Virginia, Julia Horowitz, the assistant managing editor of UVA’s daily newspaper.

(Don’t laugh. She could move here and succeed Karen Bass in Congress or Holly Mitchell in the state Seate. Horrors.)

“[I]t is becoming increasingly clear that the story that blew the lid off campus sexual assault has some major, major holes. Ultimately, though, from where I sit in Charlottesville, to let fact checking define the narrative would be a huge mistake….

“It is no accident that the article came out, and it became apparent almost immediately that there were very tangible things we needed to discuss.

“Yes, the story was sensational. But even the most sensational story, it seems, can contain frightening elements of truth.”