Democrats and the Big Lie

The phony sexual assault epidemic on college campuses, concocted by President Obama, wasn’t the biggest lie of 2014, but it was the most persistent and insidious. The lie was born of the Democrats’ cynical strategy of dividing Americans against one another. The goal of the War on Women was to turn women against men, while painting Democrats as the knights in shining armor who would rescue them. The strategy is yielding caustic results.

You remember Lena Dunham, don’t you? Neither do I. In fact, until she appeared dancing in her underwear in a Democrat campaign advertisement, I had never heard of her. But apparently, she matters enough to somebody that a book publisher concluded that her memoirs deserved a multi-million dollar advance. Although what one could possibly learn from a 28-year old, I can’t imagine. 

But Lena Dunham has a more active imagination than I do. And she’s not afraid to use it to make her life sound more interesting than it actually is. Since the publication of her memoir, “ Not That Kind of Girl,” two tales told within have attracted a great deal of attention. First, she described what is arguably her own sexual exploitation of her younger sister. And secondly, she claimed to have been raped by a prominent Republican while attending Oberlin College – a young man named “Barry.”

As it turns out, while Dunham attended Oberlin, there was a prominent Republican student named Barry, although nothing else in her story checks out. But after allowing a rape accusation to dangle over the real Barry’s head for weeks, and after a lawsuit was threatened, Dunham’s publisher claimed that “Barry” was simply the name given to a “composite” character in Dunham’s life

So, like Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te’O and Barack Obama, Dunham felt the need to manufacture dalliances. Except that “The Gawker” discovered an earlier description of this event that provided enough detail of the event to establish that the “offender” was, in fact, a Democrat and the son of a well-known National Public Radio host. And her original version of this story left no doubt that the affair was consensual.

And so, Lena Dunham (whoever that is) wins the Dan Rather Memorial Kozmo for manufacturing facts to fit the narrative.

The Big Lie reached its fullest bloom within The Rolling Stone magazine. That miserable rag published “investigative reporter” Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s shocking tale of a young coed named “Jackie,” who suffered a horrific gang rape as part of a University of Virginia fraternity initiation. The story took off and every liberal believed it. The university’s president announced sanctions against the entire Greek system. 

But something strange happened. We used to call it journalism. 

First, the conservative Daily Caller noticed that there was no effort on the part of Erdely to verify the truth of Jackie’s allegations. Only her story was presented. And how something like that could have occurred without leaving a trace seemed unlikely. 

Then The Washington Post got involved and found numerous inconsistencies. Finally, the Post interviewed the friends whom Jackie went to after the alleged assault and discovered that she told a very different story to them. 

Finally the Post tried to track the boyfriend who allegedly initiated the gang rape and learned that he never existed. The name was made up. The picture that she showed her friend was actually an entirely different person. From all appearances, the whole affair was an attempt to gain the sympathy and affection of another University of Virginia student she had a crush on, but who had declined her advances.

How does something like this happen?

As it turns out, a woman who works in the office of the University of Virginia’s vice president for student affairs, Emily Renda, recommended Jackie to Erdeley. Renda’s other role in life is as one of Obama’s advisors on campus sexual assault. She has visited the White House at least five times and co-authored papers as part of Obama’s White House Task Force To Protect Students From Sexual Assault.

And so the Big Lie came full circle. A woman who helped craft the lie conspired with a Rolling Stone reporter to spread a story meant to bolster the lie. 

And so, we award the Evan Thomas Narrative Kozmo to Emily Renda.  As Newsweek editor Evan Thomas once said of reporting on the Duke lacrosse rape case: “The narrative was right, but the facts were wrong."