My good friend Robert Stacy McCain wrote:

No national controversy is complete until Amanda Marcotte has made a fool of herself about it, and the feminist writer has gotten a good head start on the so-called “Cornell 7” case. The sordid tale of an Ivy League orgy that devolved into accusations of sexual assault prompted Marcotte to indict “Trumpism” as somehow explaining skeptical reactions to the story.

That is an absolutely true statement, and Mr McCain was hardly the only person to make fun of Miss Marcotte’s Salon post blaming the (alleged) rape of Lucy Craig — her identity has been widely disseminated, so I will not use the “Jane Doe” identity concealing pseudonym — on evil, reich-wing conservatives. There are plenty of rape accusations which have been real rapes, but for some strange reason, the author picks the ones which are highly questionable to try to make her case. Remember: she tried to make a case against the falsely accused members of the Duke lacrosse team two decades ago, only to have to eat her words — not really — as the truth came out.

I suggested, on September 30^th, that perhaps she had learned her lesson on jumping the gun, but alas!, I was too optimistic, as she weighed in on October 2^nd.

Like my half-lab, half-Australian shepherd Mochi, who knows only half of the game of fetch — Mochi will chase after the thrown toy, but then absolutely refuses to give it up, to the point of pulling and growling if you try to take it back from her — Miss Marcotte is like a dog with a bone: she will just not give up on a story she likes, even if the story isn’t true:

The fallout from the Cornell assault accusations, however, suggests that it may have been more than fear that was compelling this swift bending of the knee by many universities to Trump. There is also a degree of complicity. Progressive reforms to make campuses more welcoming to women and minority students are often a hassle for university administrators, even those ideologically who are aligned with the left. It means conflicts with board members, donors and alumni with more conservative leanings. It means having to handle student complaints of harassment, discrimination and even sexual abuse that would be easier to sweep under the rug. It means having to confront institutions — like fraternities — that reinscribe racism and sexism but are often simultaneously protected by the most elite and wealthy people connected to the universities. Giving into the Trump administration on DEI means being able to revert to older, easier ways of doing things — even if it comes at the expense of student freedom and safety.

The single hyperlink in that quoted paragraph refers back to a lady named Kate Manne, and her prescription is, from her article title, “Ban the Fucking Frats—and in the Meantime, Avoid Them.” As you can see from her substack bio to the right, Dr Manne is very, very concerned about how horrible men are, especially to fat women, as she described herself. Her Wikipedia biography does not tell us if she is married, though if she is, she has nevertheless chosen to use her maiden name. Regardless, she has made one thing clear: she hates college fraternities.

Wikipedia noted:

Manne coins the term “himpathy“, which she defines as “the inappropriate and disproportionate sympathy powerful men often enjoy in cases of sexual assault, intimate partner violence, homicide and other misogynistic behavior”.

Wikipedia referenced an article with a big picture of Supreme Court Justice Bret Kavanaugh, accused of sexual assault in high school after he was nominated to the Court by Christine Blasey Ford, a woman by a woman with no proof, and an ‘imperfect’ memory, while Mr Kavanaugh had an actual calendar showing him as not being at the party where Dr Ford said he had been. The article lumps together the cases of Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Louis C.K., Charlie Rose, Matt Lauer, Russell Simmons, and Brett Kavanaugh, as though they are all equally guilty, when they are most certainly not.

And so it goes with Dr Manne and Miss Marcotte: the guilt of a few people is conflated to encompass the guilt of many, so that the many can all be lumped as guilty and attacked as such. Harvey Wallbanger Weinstein was actually convicted, in both New York and California, and is currently in prison, while Justice Kavanaugh who is, thankfully for himself, OCD enough to have retained a social calendar from his prep school days, proven not guilty of what Dr Ford claimed. She just wanted to derail his nomination.

Miss Marcotte never apologized for her characterizations and accusations against the Duke lacrosse team members, even though one of the three accused had actual proof, an ATM receipt, for not being present at the time Crystal Gail Mangum accused him of raping her.

Miss Marcotte again:

(Cornell President Michael) Kotlikoff has a public record of flirting with “anti-woke” backlash. Last year, he wrote an op-ed for the New York Times that framed “free speech” as a conservative concern and censorship as a leftist phenomenon, bragging about how his school had invited Ann Coulter and other right-wing speakers to campus, despite student protests. But as reader Michael Handelman wisely pointed out in a letter to the editor, “I was troubled by what he didn’t say. Right now, the greatest threat to academic freedom is the Trump administration.” Kotlikoff’s omission was telling, and left the reader with the impression that a few student protesters are a bigger threat to free speech than the heavy boot of the federal government stomping on academic freedom, which the administration was doing by suing Cornell in the first place.

Given the Times publication of OpEds by Andrew Marantz entitled “Free Speech Is Killing Us,” and Chad Malloy’s^[1]Chad Malloy is a male claiming that he is female, calling himself “Parker” Malloy. claim that the pre-Elon Musk Twitter’s ban on “deadnaming” and “misgendering” actually promoted freedom of speech.

Mr Marantz himself noted, with some apparent glee, that two far-right speakers, Alex Jones and Milo Yiannopoulos, “have been permanently banned from all major (social media) platforms.” That was before Twitter and Facebook deplatformed Donald Trump, or I’m sure he would have celebrated that as well. Salon itself, for which Miss Marcotte writes, had a blurb in her article for Sophia Tesfaye’s article, “The problem with covering extremists,” claiming that journalism is itself amplifying what she sees as a problem, calling attention to people who disagree with her.

The only threats to freedom of speech have been coming from the left.

Earlier this year, Kotlikoff made news by bumping student protesters with his car, claiming he was the victim of “harassment and intimidation, with the direct motive of silencing speech” — an odd statement, as student protest is a form of protected speech. In this case, the students were asking Kotlikoff about the suspensions of pro-Palestinian protesters, which also put them on the “pro” side of the free speech issue the Cornell president claims to hold so dear. The board of trustees cleared Kotlikoff in its investigation and blamed the students, but the student protesters accused the board of bias.

And here we have an outright lie by Miss Marcotte. The very New York Times reference she cited reported that the protesters:

posed questions about the suspension of pro-Palestinian student demonstrators in previous years, walking with him to his vehicle, a black Cadillac SUV.

After the students surrounded his vehicle, Dr. Kotlikoff got in, reversed and bumped one student.

Simply put, the student protesters had a right to ask questions, but Dr Kotlikoff had a right to not answer them and to leave the area.

In the end, I am reminded of ‘Otter’s’ brilliant speech in Animal House, equating the suspension of his fraternity with badmouthing the entire United States.

But you can’t hold a whole fraternity responsible for the behavior of a few, sick twisted individuals. For if you do, then shouldn’t we blame the whole fraternity system? And if the whole fraternity system is guilty, then isn’t this an indictment of our educational institutions in general? I put it to you, Greg – isn’t this an indictment of our entire American society? Well, you can do whatever you want to us, but we’re not going to sit here and listen to you badmouth the United States of America.

That’s what Miss Marcotte and Dr Manne want: to blame the entire Chi Phi fraternity, and all fraternities on campus. Now Cornell has prohibited every fraternity on campus from holding parties, even though only seven members of one fraternity had a problematic, though probably not illegal, gangbang with Miss Craig that she now regrets.