It seems that a lot of effort went into discrediting the people who saw Michael Brown get shot.
What chance did Jackie have, when the testimony of witnesses who saw Mr. Brown get killed was not enough?
It seems as if what frequently happens when a crime is perpetrated against less powerful people by more powerful people is that the subsequent investigation, if there is one, focuses not on finding out what happened, but on discrediting the victim and everyone else who has something to say that doesn't either deny the crime or portray it as being the victim's fault.
That's a picture from today of the most current search results on the first page of Yahoo search results for the search term "rolling stone uva."
The "Business Insider" articles both quote a law professor from the University of North Carolina law school. The "crucial distinction" mentioned in the title of and discussed in the first article is whether or not a fraternity is a public or private entity, not whether Jackie's story is true.
I would not be surprised if the men who raped her can't believe that not only are they not going to jail, the effort that is always made to protect rich, young rapists in the South is going past protection of the guilty to public, permanent, life-ruining vilification of their victim and the attempt to get money from Rolling Stone.
The last article is a discussion by a professor at Pennsylvania State University of how dishonest most of mainstream media is. This is a picture of part of the article:
The lies that Brian Williams told about "Making A Difference," and the fraud that he used NBC resources to perpetuate, have been known to the conglomerate for the past 5 years. Not only did he not get punished, he was supported by many parts of the conglomerate for years, and that support hasn't disappeared, even since his suspension from NBC for another set of lies that he told several times.
When a lie serves the interests of powerful people, it is often supported, no matter how obviously and grotesquely false it is.
There are other Rolling Stone articles that seem to continue to be available online. One is called "Rape at UVA: Readers Say Jackie Wasn't Alone," and lists messages from people who say they were raped or knew people who were raped at the University of Virginia; people writing about incidents from decades ago say that nothing about the university's culture of sexual violence and denial has changed, not even the method of a particular fraternity that was called "The Coke bottle fraternity" for one of the ways that it sexually assaulted young women.
The other article is from 2012, about hazing at Dartmouth. That article didn't seem to get nearly as much national attention, or criticism, as the article about gang rape at the University of Virginia. It could be that the attention it didn't get is a sign of cultural apathy toward men who are first victims of violence and then taught to perpetuate the cycle which has damaged them. It could also be that nobody decided to attack that story seriously because it was about a white man.
Copyright L. Kochman, April 16, 2015 6:05 a.m.
