'Even If She Made Up The Story...'

Sorry I accused you of murder. But the important thing is we must raise awareness about murder.

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) December 11, 2014

So what if innocent men go to jail or have their reputations ruined, right? The important thing is “raising awareness.” Truth? Who cares about that?! Or as the University of Virginia’s Cavalier Daily student newspaper reports, “Student-produced video thanks Jackie for ‘pulling back the curtain’ on rape:”

Atthar Mirza and Elizabeth Ballou — second and third-year College students, respectively — released a self-made video Thursday evening thanking Jackie for telling her story and offering support for sexual assault survivors in the University community.

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“I felt people were fixating on the details and quality of Rolling Stone reporting, and the fact is, whatever happened, something happened to Jackie,” Mirza said. “And even if she made up the story, things like this do happen, and there are sexual assaults that don’t get reported, so I meant to bring the focus back to Jackie. Whatever comes of this, we’re still behind her and we still think she did something brave by coming forward.”

Mirza produced the video himself using Adobe After Effects software. Ballou edited the script and provided the voice-over for the short piece. The pair met after receiving prizes for a contest held last month commemorating the fall of the Berlin Wall.

“We were eating brunch at Pigeon Hole, talking about projects we were both working on, and Rolling Stone came up because I was very angry about the Rolling Stone retraction,” Ballou said. “He said he was doing a video and asked if I wanted to look at the text and do the voice over. We met up in the media lab and I looked over the text and changed some things, and went into the recording booth and voiced.”

Beyond its echoes of the New York Times dismissing Dan Rather’s lying in 2004 as “fake but accurate,” the “Even if she made up the story” line also rhymes eerily with the story of an earlier young fabricator who was manipulated to advance Social[ist] Justice. “Sharpton acknowledged to me early on that ‘The [Tawana Brawley] story do sound like bull—t, but it don’t matter. We’re building a movement.”

In the Washington Examiner, Ashe Schow writes, “We now live in a society where the search for the truth — things like facts and evidence and true investigation — is labeled as victim-blaming and an impediment to justice:”

A society where an accuser’s word — and sometimes, a university’s made-up version of the accuser’s word — becomes gospel, and evidence provided by the accused is ignored. A society where false statistics are repeated and those who disagree are disparaged as “rape apologists.”

The conversation has become so dishonest and hysterical that policies being crafted are rewarding punishment over truth. Until common sense takes over, we are going to see a lurch toward advocacy over facts, where police and the media need to condemn anyone accused of sexual assault without any evidence.

But it has a great upside at the ballot box. And apparently the left isn’t too concerned about the environmental impact of burning huge strawmen in the process:

@AceofSpadesHQ i’m 0-2 on getting a response: pic.twitter.com/MoKIzhdo1Y

— andy levy (@andylevy) December 12, 2014

@instapundit “Rape culture” fake crisis is new strategy for women’s votes in lieu of war on women failure. GOP 2 b labeled as being pro-rape

— DCinAZ (@DCinAZ) December 12, 2014

Update: Rolling Stone “journalist” Sabrina Erdely “Was Once Disciplined By Stephen Glass For Fabrication,” Sean Davis writes today in the Federalist.

Tom Wolfe, Malcolm Muggeridge, call your office — yet another absurd moment no satirist could make up. “But if you can, you might want to send your resume to Rolling Stone,” Davis adds.