Rolling Stone's Rape Article Failed Because It Used Rightwing Tactics to Make a Leftist Point (barf)

If you type in the original page for Rolling Stone’s December 2014 story “A Rape on Campus: The Struggle for Justice at UVA,” you’ll be redirected to "What Went Wrong?,” a report about the article published Sunday by the Columbia Journalism Review. Rolling Stone officially retracted its blockbuster story, which had garnered more than 2.7 million views. The retraction comes on the heels of the Charlottesville Police Department’s announcement that there was not enough evidence to pursue an investigation of the story’s titular rape, which now appears to have been something between a delusion and a hoax. . . snip . . .

In balancing a systematic critique on a single person’s story, Erdely essentially used a rightwing strategy to make a leftist point. The trouble is only that the right is skilled at this game, and correctly deduced that undoing Jackie’s story would go a long way to endangering Erdely’s larger structural point. It’s an opportunity they never should have been given, both for Jackie’s sake, and for the sake of the victims who really do find themselves struggling for protection within a hostile justice system.

And this is complete and utter nonsense. These people do not, will not, live in the real world.

I strongly suspect the most common example of a young woman’s claims of rape being discounted is when black athletes rape white coeds.

They’re protected by the Race Card and the Athlete Card.

Other than that, I think colleges love to jump on rapists.

The trouble is only that the right is skilled at this game, and correctly deduced that undoing Jackie’s story would go a long way to endangering Erdely’s larger structural point.

The "right wing" generally believes that rape is an exceptionally serious crime. They believe that a father has a right and sometimes a duty to apprehend or even kill a rapist caught in the act. They believe that the courts have a duty to lock rapists up for an extremely long time, perhaps life, possibly even the death penalty. They do not want in any way to undermine the point that rape is a horrific violent crime that merits the most extreme penalties. Conservatives deal with the acts of individual criminals as individual crimes.

The "left wing" generally believes that rape is an exceptionally serious social issue. They believe that a parent has a duty to teach children not to commit rape, and that women should not have to change their behavior or arm themselves as a precaution against rape. They believe that the courts have a duty to consider the reasons rapists didn't understand that rape is bad. They do not want in any way to undermine the point that all crime is a result of horrific social conditions that merit the most compassionate understanding. Liberals deal with crime as a symptom of larger structural flaws arising from free choice in capitalism.

“Rolling Stone’s Rape Article Failed Because It Used Rightwing Tactics to Make a Leftist Point”

Thank goodness someone has finally had the guts to point this out. Deep down I strongly suspected that eeeeeviiiiiiiil conservatives were somehow to blame for this Rolling Stone travesty. Clearly if leftwing tactics had been used instead, Rollings Stone’s factually false article would have “succeeded” instead of failed, despite the fact that the article was a completely false smear job against innocent people.

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