Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for December 28, 2014

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    BE THIS GUY  almost 10 years ago

    Rolling Stone has backed away from its UVa rape story.

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    Argythree  almost 10 years ago

    This isn’t just about the ‘Rolling Stone’ story. And sorry, Garry Trudeau, but there never will be a funny line to end this story.

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    David Huie Green LoveJoyAndPeace  almost 10 years ago

    The problem lies in lies..If nobody ever did, all crimes could be punished.Since some do lie, charges need to be filed, proof needs to be established.Making claims long after the fact is not the way to solve the problem..There is even the problem of consent given then the claim made it was revoked without any proof of the revocation or the consent in the first case..The only way to even hope to deal with it is to make it public as quickly as possible and avoid any possible misinterpretation by such things as flirting, going off alone with someone else, drinking such that limit of consent is in question, being quickly tested in case drugs were used, giving up all pretense of privacy..Women’s advocacy groups have fought against teaching women how to avoid becoming targets or victims because they believe it condemns previous victims rather than worrying about avoiding future ones..Actually, a body cam would be helpful. I would certainly keep my distance from anyone wishing to record my every deed and misdeed, and I’m not even a rapist.

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    BE THIS GUY  almost 10 years ago

    I do not know the facts regarding this event and I am not passing judgement on any involved. Rolling Stone has decided, for whatever reasons, to take a second look at the story.

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    Michael Peterson Premium Member almost 10 years ago

    How about a responsibility to report, and comment, responsibly? Yes, rape is bad. But trashing UVA this long after the report was debunked? Come on, Garry, either give up the screenwriting gig or give up the cartoon, but you obviously can’t keep up with them both.

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    Doughfoot  almost 10 years ago

    Ask someone to give a detailed account of a severely traumatic event that happened several years ago that he or she did not record or even talk about at the time, and that person may get it all wrong. That’s the way memory works. It is a truism in police work that forensic evidence is better than eye-witness testimony. Different witnesses in Ferguson “saw” and more particularly remembered very different things, perhaps based on their expectations and prejudices. Just think how different members of your family tell old family stories, how differently you remember them. The woman at UVa did not just “make it all up” and she probably wasn’t lying in the conventional sense of intentionally telling an untruth. I am reading Malala Yousafzai’s memoir right now (good book), and she gives a detailed account of the day she was shot in the face by a Talib. The actual shooting she does not remember at all, but knows about it from others present. If it turned out that she got details wrong. That the bus was on a different street, that the number of assailants was four not three, that the other girls on the bus were arranged differently, etc. would that prove that she was not shot? RS should have checked their story, or left out out exact names and dates to “protect the innocent” if they could not get better confirmation of the account, and presented it as something remembered.

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    gammaguy  almost 10 years ago

    We all interpret things based on our own experience and expectations. .I myself suspect that that last panel — and maybe the whole episode — is a complaint against what many people think he should be writing. I wonder what his mail has been like.

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    BaltoBill  almost 10 years ago

    That’s why I don’t go to parties anymore. The punch lines are too long.

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    Doughfoot  almost 10 years ago

    Boopsie is wrong that colleges “cover up” sexual assault in some kind of cynical way. The fact of it is, these cases are complex. Very few rapes are of the “a stranger with a knife jumped out of the bushes” variety. Most are of the betrayal/seduction variety, and most involve alcohol. Just because you regret what you did last night does not necessarily mean you were raped. On the other hand, it might. Institutions have in fact a responsibility to protect their members, and that includes accused and accuser. A college has many parts and they do not act as one. In misbehavior matters, different parts of the college must act as counselor, prosecutor, defender, investigator, etc. Of course there will be mixed messages. David Huie Green is correct that, if the facts were always perfectly clear, if everyone always told the truth and all agreed on exactly what happened, then all crimes could be punished. Absent that, and given our society’s proper emphasis on punishing only those proven to be guilty rather than accused or suspected of being guilty, “better that many guilty go unpunished than one innocent suffer” (to paraphrase John Adams), it is incumbent on all of us not only to avoid doing wrong, but take some responsibility for keeping out of harm’s way and protecting ourselves. That being said, Born Talking Back is also correct in saying that the society as a whole bears responsibility. I don’t know of any cases in this country where a raped woman has been raped again by those she went to for help, but consider the case of a woman told by her friends not to officially report an incident because it would make her unpopular (!), or the woman who is reluctant to report an incident because she doesn’t want to get the man in trouble (!), because she didn’t think he really understood what had happened. If we don’t want secret courts that operate behind closed doors, crimes have to be made public. The story of the crime has to be repeated and repeated. This is very hard or many victims. Prosecuting the person responsible is hard, and when women are told the truth about it, some would rather do nothing than face that ordeal. Are they wrong? Is it wrong to warn them about what is ahead? Is warning them of the reality of it the same as trying “cover up” the crime? As a society, it is difficult to simultaneously represent sex as a form of “recreation” to be entered into casually, and represent sex in which mild coercion is involved (if you don’t, you can get out of this car and walk home) or consent is impaired (I would never have done that if I was sober), as a heinous crime. The message should be simple, clear, and unambiguous: avoid making yourself vulnerable, and if anything does happen, don’t shrug it off, or hide in shame, it IS a big deal: a crime has been committed and the evidence must be collected, and the guilty party must be exposed. You should not be ashamed, you should be damned angry! — And for those who would initiate sexual activity, the message should be equally clear: if the object of your desire is reluctant, or even if enthusiastic but drunk, you are in immanent peril of committing a serious crime the consequences of which could ruin your life. If sexual assaults were always, or even usually, as blatant, as violent, as in the RS story, the problem would be a lot simpler to deal with.

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    roberta.star.hirshson  almost 10 years ago

    Trudeau is showing, as opposed to telling, the difficulty of having a public conversation about rape, the prevalence of rape, the conflict of views about definitions of consent, gender wars, and so on.

    I think, that by using the voices of Sam and BD, he calls attention to his own admission that he himself does not have all the answers. Perhaps he would like his readers/viewers to recognize the complexity and stumbling blocks preventing a calm conversation. As we see in many of these comments today.

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    johngregor Premium Member almost 10 years ago

    Institutions “cover up” sexual abuse for the same reason that Governments “cover up” contact with aliens. These rape-fantasists live in an imaginary world where sexual brutality lurks around every corner. When reality fails to cooperate with their imaginations, instead of admitting that they are deluded, they add new levels to their fantasy world about giant cover-ups aimed at hiding “the truth”. It’s all BS, but it sells newspapers.

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    Squoop  almost 10 years ago

    You’ve come a long way, Boopsie.

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    nicholst  almost 10 years ago

    I guess Trudeau did this before the story disintegrated. Tough to keep the fires of progressive outrage going when reality keeps getting in the way.

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    Pointspread  almost 10 years ago

    People trust the military + universities? Where?

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    montessoriteacher  almost 10 years ago

    Yes, GT was saying that there is nothing funny about rape. That is precisely his point. Amen.

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    nosirrom  almost 10 years ago

    Universities are interested in protecting their image. Campus police report to the president of the university. This creates a conflict of interest where “to serve and protect” the students and faculty is overshadowed by university interests.

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    Kenneth Books Premium Member almost 10 years ago

    “Jackie” seems to think that every guy on earth raped her. Funny, I don’t remember that. Meanwhile, Trudeau grasps on to the latest left-wing pseudo-cause and, as usual, the facts be damned.

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    jenifer flower  almost 10 years ago

    this is for all of you MEN hat think YOU are qualified to say one single thing about rape- YOU’RE NOT!!!i have been raped several times- and once, the man i went to for consoling & protection afterwards- a supposed friend- his response was to begin fondling & kissing & groping me… just because one rape victim stretched the truth doesn’t mean that other rapes didn’t happen- and just because one officer-involved shooting was supposedly justified doesn’t make it so

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    wadiglow  almost 10 years ago

    Proof Garry Trudeau’s agenda driven and devoid of factual relevence. Also why he is showing repeats instead touching anything about the criminal gangs of the present president. Not even an icon.

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    Space_cat  almost 10 years ago

    As a former Orthodox Jew, I can testify to the “boys will be boys” school of thought. The inertia of such institutions are very hard to overcome, especially if they have the weight of centuries behind them.Anyone ever wonder why they make their women dress so drab and unattractively?It’s because they believe men cannot truly control their desires and therefore held blameless for their actions. They took great efforts to reduce this kind of unwanted attraction towards women and girls. It may have slowed things down quite a bit but not stopped them entirely, since men cannot help themselves in the face of temptation.I’m not saying this is a solution to a problem that has no easy fix. Just providing a backstory to provide referential context to the current discussion.We are all animals and subject to our baser desires, despite thousands of years of conditioning to control them.

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    smalltownbrown  almost 10 years ago

    Trudeau, through Boopsie, brought out the salient points. Why is anyone complaining?

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    Edward Hansen  almost 10 years ago

    The “victim” made up her tale. Of course, readers of this strip would prefer to ignore that part of the story and make comments according to their beliefs rather than the facts. No wonder this country is going to hell. Common sense has been tossed aside in favor of political correctness and banal leadership wherever we look.

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    David Huie Green LoveJoyAndPeace  almost 10 years ago

    As Dr. House mentioned a time or two, “Everybody lies.”.Do you believe the accused in To Kill A Mockingbird was guilty?Okay, that was fictional.Joseph accused by Potipher’s wife?Probably never heard of him or figure He was fiction too.The Lacrosse Team?Tawanna Brawley’s account?Yeah, you must..Accusations are made against some people who could not be guilty. You sexists think men are always guilty and women never lie.

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    colo61  almost 10 years ago

    Hoax. What flavor is that Kool-Aid? For those digging in on this lie: you do a genuine disservice to genuine victims. They ARE out there, and they need truth, not false narratives. Stop hurting them AGAIN.

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    KaiserDerden  almost 10 years ago

    whats next a comic about Hands Up Don’t Shoot … the Rolling Stone story is a hoax … he may as well start doing comics about unicorns and fairy tales …

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    connie  almost 10 years ago

    Thank you, Trudeau for this strip. The saddest part of all is reading the comments and realizing how many — mostly men — still don’t get it about rape and assault. How many still want to blame the victim.

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    ceylondiver  almost 10 years ago

    OK, but the flack surrounding the Rolling Stone article does not really have much to do with the “victim” or with rape. It’s about journalistic ethics. As in, the author of the article had none. Or she cared so passionately about her cause that she temporarily mislaid her ethics. As a result, her story was picked apart and she ended up trivializing a very serious problem and hurting her own cause.

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    Californio  almost 10 years ago

    What about a strip about how the Gulf of Tonkin TOTALLY justified the Vietnam war…..oh wait….the Gulf of Tonkin incident NEVER HAPPENED. So rather than ignoring what is FALSE (and for the love of all that is holy – please read the original RS article and all of the follow up articles in the washington post before talking about the larger “narrative”..) – focus on the problem. IF whatever you say is a major problem (and I am NOT saying it is not) – then WHY WHY WHY use a story that was shaky from the outset and appears to be demonstrably FALSE? If problem is REAL – no need for FAKE but “accurate” stories.

    Doonesbury……as relevant as an 8-track player today.

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    Witness Statement 23  almost 10 years ago

    I agree with Mr. Trudea. Why on Earth do Universities get play-act show-trials? Since when is a college professor of Woman’s Studies able to determine guilt or innocence? It seems to me that male students who have seen their reputations, and hundreds of thousands of dollars collect investments destroyed on the word of a teenage girl will have a very real lawsuit against the college. This could be one of the few growth industries available to lawyers.

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    Witness Statement 23  almost 10 years ago

    I’ve got an idea for a punchline – how about pointing out to the self-righteous, hysterical woman that there’s no evidence the rape actually happened? Just look up old Salem Witch Hunts/Commies/crazed hippie jokes, file off the serial numbers, and point out that the story that 20% of female college student’s get raped is closer to one sixth of one percent.

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    kipallen  almost 10 years ago

    The truth? Liberals can’t handle the truth!

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    Carl  Premium Member almost 10 years ago

    How about a punch line on fact checking?

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    pakurilecz  almost 10 years ago

    I guess Mr. Trudeau hasn’t been following the news of late

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    BillEverman  almost 10 years ago

    I think it is important to be aware that claims that "Jackie"’s allegation is false are not about misremembered details. You can check Reason’s or the Washington Post’s coverage for the full story, but it appears that the accused victimizer was invented well before the allegations of rape by Jackie and was used in an attempt to get one of her friends romantically interested in her. The invented guy was “Haven Monahan”. Jackie claimed that a photo of a high school classmate was “Haven”, and apparently used a text spoofing site to impersonate “Haven” to her friends. She even plagiarized dialogue from Dawson’s Creek in this correspondence! For whatever reason, she later claimed that the imaginary Haven was instrumental in luring her into the assault described in the Rolling Stone article.

    It may be that Jackie is a very disturbed woman. It may be that she is mentally ill. And it may also be that she experienced some trauma that led her to make these claims, whether on the night she claims or perhaps many years in her past…or the entire thing may have been manufactured from whole cloth. But this is not a case of “those evil frat boys must have done something, and she just got the details wrong”.

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    Sheik Yerbouti  almost 10 years ago

    The punch line to this episode is in the comments. People, wake up: There. Is. No. Such. Thing. As. Rape. Culture. It’s made up feminist gobbledygook.

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    Sheik Yerbouti  almost 10 years ago

    This story – along with the Lena Dunham fabulism – cement the liberal/progressive orthodoxy as the most myth-based religion inflicted on mankind since Mohamedism.

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    BeniHanna6 Premium Member almost 10 years ago

    Love the comments, the left admits the Rolling Stone falsely reported a rape, but backed away from condemning a LIAR who chose to libel another person and institution. Double standard, horrible upper class white males, all they want is to rape and pillage, never mind the facts.

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    GEAH  almost 10 years ago

    The irony of this is that Boopsie probably had all sorts of regrettable hook-ups that she later could decide was rape, but she was too mature at the time to do something so juvenile.

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    Haven Monahan  almost 10 years ago

    What’s amazing is that there was a huge case of rape culture in Rotherham,England where more than 1400 poor working class under-age girls were raped. This is all well documented and some of the rapists were jailed. Instead “progressives” rant and rave about rich privileged women being "raped by imaginary rapists at UVa. What is it about Rotherham that makes progressives nervous about highlighting to plight of all the poor girls?

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    kipallen  almost 10 years ago

    It appears that Trudeau either doesn’t know or care that the UVA rape story was a hoax. Shame on him for perpetuating it!

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    jdsaunders03  almost 10 years ago

    This strip is a joke or exercise in snark, right?

    The Rolling Stone UVa rape story has been thoroughly discredited. It was a girl trying to win a boy’s affections in the most unwise of ways. The “guy” who supposedly “set up” the rape (“Drew” in the RS article) is a fictional creation.

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    OldOllie  almost 10 years ago

    Humor requires an element of truth, which is why this is an epic fail.

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    Simon.Jester  almost 10 years ago

    Yea, so… this never happened. Good job being accurate, Mr. Trudeau.

    http://reason.com/blog/2014/12/29/doonesbury-cartoon-somehow-unaware-that

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    Elvanion  almost 10 years ago

    Church? Trusted institution? Snort. They’ve been up to this stuff for more than a thousand years. Even the Catholic church’s official history shows this let lone ones more open and honest.

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    trueholygoat  over 9 years ago

    Ah, good ol’ Garry Trudeau, still speaking Truth to Power after all these years. LOL!

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