Lena Dunham, Liar

Posted on | December 31, 2014 | 211 Comments

The headline at the Daily Caller:

Gawker Thinks They Found
Lena Dunham’s Alleged Rapist
… And He’s A Democrat

The interesting thing about the Gawker story by J.K. Trotter is that Trotter seems to have the idea that he is vindicating Dunham and discrediting Dunham’s conservative critics. Her published account — which identified a Republican named “Barry” as having raped her — was exposed as fraudulent by John Nolte of Breitbart.com, and Dunham was forced to apologize. Yet, Trotter’s story at Gawker insists that Dunham actually was raped while at Oberlin College:

The 2012 proposal for Not That Kind of Girl recounted the same night of unwanted unprotected sex — and supplied enough specific biographical detail to identify the man being described.
His name is Philip Samuel Ungar, a 2006 graduate of Oberlin. Now 30, he’s the son of former All Things Considered host and retired Goucher College president Sanford J. Ungar. Dunham has never explicitly named him, but his biography closely aligns with her characterization of her alleged rapist—“His father was actually the former host of NPR’s All Things Considered” — in an early draft of the chapter where she describes being assaulted.

Whether or not Philip Ungar is a rapist, he is evidently a liberal Democrat, not a conservative Republican, so if Gawker’s story is correct, this has only further damaged Dunham’s credibility, exposing her as having engaged in a deliberate partisan smear.

There is no such thing as partial credibility. Once a source has proven that they are willing to lie — deliberately and consciously — they lose all credibility, and Dunham has proven herself a liar.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

If Lena Dunham says Philip Ungar is a rapist? This means Philip Ungar is probably a nice guy, even if he is a liberal Democrat.

Category: Celebrities, Feminism

Comments

211 Responses to “Lena Dunham, Liar”

RS
December 31st, 2014 @ 3:48 pm

Listen. People who suffer true, violent sexual assault are not glib; they don’t write books; they don’t revel in their status of victim. They are destroyed emotionally. I’ve dealt with it.

You with to defend Dunham. So be it. She is not a hero under whatever version of events she or you with to embrace now or next week when more facts emerge. She defined what occurred as a rape or assault. (It’s no dodge to say a “friend” did. She accepted the definition and profited from it.) The rest of us did not. She accused people who are now being exposed, something to be expected given her public notoriety.

She is now scurrying for cover as kitchen roach when the lights are turned on. And she is doing so because she knows that nothing in her addled New York, posh, pampered existence can match what has happened to real people in real life every day.

She is a poseur. She seeks the validation of a status which neither has nor deserves and she does so with no shred of grace or dignity, because neither of those attributes exist in her soul.

You may believe what you wish. Those of us who’ve lived a life know better. We’ve seen her ilk before, and we know how to respond to them.
blder
December 31st, 2014 @ 4:13 pm

“If memories fail and “it’s commonly known” and are unreliable, then we should get rid of courts and laws and trials which rely on human testimony, evidence and the presumption that people will abide by an oath to tell the truth.”

That would be up to you to decide.

“Why Science Tells Us Not to Rely on Eyewitness Accounts”

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-the-eyes-have-it/
Gunga
December 31st, 2014 @ 4:18 pm

Your statement is false. There are a constellation of traits that she ascribed to “Barry” and several of them apply to “real Barry.” Off the top of my head…his name, age, time of attending Oberlin, working in an Oberlin library, “prominent Republican” (not merely or casually Republican as you have falsely suggested elsewhere in your defense). They found Bin Laden with less information.

So, are you a liar, an “unreliable narrator” or just misinformed?
Gunga
December 31st, 2014 @ 4:22 pm

So, you do support the rape culture then…
blder
December 31st, 2014 @ 4:24 pm

You should read the Breitbart article again, as it makes clear the only similarities between “Barry” and the description in her novel are his name, time of attending Oberlin and that he was a well-known republican. They are very clear that no “Barry” worked at an Oberlin library.

You’re also ignoring the many descriptors which do not fit “Barry”, such as the prominent mustache every person that knew “Barry” knew he didn’t have.

His age is unknown, so that alone makes it clear you’re making things up.
blder
December 31st, 2014 @ 4:27 pm

It may very well be that the word “rape” is a poor description of what Dunham believes happened to her. From her writing, it is clear she herself is hesitant to describe it as clearly as such.

In this case, I didn’t intend to imply that she was saying that she had an impairment of memory regarding the event. The way I interpreted her claim of being an “unreliable narrator” was in regards to her tone when she described the events originally, not the facts of the matter.

This doesn’t have much of a consequence on the discussion of Dunham, but it is interesting and worth reading:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-the-eyes-have-it/
Dianna Deeley
December 31st, 2014 @ 4:27 pm

I hope he sues the pants off everyone involved, but particularly Gawker.
Dianna Deeley
December 31st, 2014 @ 4:31 pm

I am trying to figure out how he “secretly” removed the condom. Being female, I really don’t understand how one does not notice all the fuss and bother.

I think Lena Dunham wrote a piece of what she considered instructive fiction, and is probably beyond shocked that people have an issue with whether the story is factual or not. She still should be sued within an inch of her life.
Art Deco
December 31st, 2014 @ 4:31 pm

She lied. The discrepancies are how everyone knows she lied. However, his identifying information is readily accessible by a potential employer. His name was nearly unique on the Oberlin campus at that time and organizational affiliations were exceedingly unusual.

Not accessible to the general public is whether or not he had a mustache in 2006, or a set of lavender cowboy boots, or a campus radio show. It required journalist spade-work to demonstrate that that character does not exist.
Dianna Deeley
December 31st, 2014 @ 4:35 pm

In reality, yes. In fiction it’s a really interesting and useful technique for introducing ironic depth.

Lena Dunham would have been better served had she written a “semi-autobiographical novel”, and then she’d have been free to create as sleazy a story as she liked, and no one would have been angry. Now? I really hope she gets sued.
McGehee
December 31st, 2014 @ 5:02 pm

How will he sue Hyena though, since nobody wants her pants to be off, ever.
Dianna Deeley
December 31st, 2014 @ 5:12 pm

Stop shifting the goal posts.
Jim R
December 31st, 2014 @ 5:20 pm

It may be that’s she’s convinced herself that the thing happened, or that it happened differently than it actually did, or that it means something that it doesn’t. I have no idea. Some years have passed; who knows what has happened in her head in the meantime?

O’ course, all this further begs the question of why anybody should believe her.

Apropos of nothing, I’ve written elsewhere that I feel rather sorry for her. I don’t excuse her for what she’s done, which I regard as infamous, but I still feel sorry for her.

There is a Twitchy commenter called Michelle who puts her finger on it:

I find it harder these days to trash her (DO NOT mistake that with agreeing with her). With all the revelations from her book coupled with the fact she was raised by a father who paints vaginas for a living and a mother whose mind is so open her brains fell out, I can’t help but have the impression that Lena is a very troubled adult. Everything about her screams her mind is fucked up – and for that reason, I can’t bash her, but absolutely hope she finds the help she needs.

https://disqus.com/home/user/PhonyScandal/

I add only that Dunham is a chunky, not very attractive woman in an industry that values looks above just about everything else. Her show gets rave reviews… but virtually nobody watches it. She’s feted because of her politics. She owes her success in large part to having rich, connected parents. She’s led the sort of privileged life that her politics tells her she ought to despise. I suspect that, somewhere inside her confused and miserable self, she knows these things. It must be hard to live with it.
Adobe_Walls
December 31st, 2014 @ 5:33 pm

The lying in her book started with the title.
Art Deco
December 31st, 2014 @ 5:57 pm

Sanford Ungar’s lived in the Baltimore-Washington corridor at least since 1980. Given his father’s employment history, young Ungar likely attended school in Washington. Supposedly his mother’s a physician and there are only two children in the family, so private school would have been an option, especially if the family lived in DC or Prince George’s County. Some noodling around with Whitepages and MyLife suggest that the family has lived in DC rather than Montgomery County, Md. or NoVa and owns a second home in a village near Gettysburg, Pa. That’s the part of Pennsylvania more in the Baltimore-Washington sphere of influence than in the Philadelphia or New York sphere.

The primo private school for boys in DC is St. Alban’s. The St. Alban’s alumni I know best turns up in a site search, even though he finished in 1945 and is a private citizen. P. Ungar does not, so I do not think he’s from there. I’d wager the Georgetown Day School.
daveinboca
December 31st, 2014 @ 6:25 pm

Lipstick-painted pig is more hittable than that sack of shite.
JadedByPolitics
December 31st, 2014 @ 6:40 pm

Come on Stacey you allow this kind of stupidity on this fine upstanding blog? I do believe, no I KNOW this idiot was dropped on his head as a baby and I’m going to write a book and put that in my draft and then come back and allude that she beat the crap out him.
JadedByPolitics
December 31st, 2014 @ 6:49 pm

those are called beer goggles.
Fail Burton
December 31st, 2014 @ 6:59 pm

If you think this boils down to a he-said, she-said which you ride above like calm clouds it’s possible you have no moral compass and are lost.
Fail Burton
December 31st, 2014 @ 7:00 pm

3-D aliens with beer goggles made for a fun movie.
Fail Burton
December 31st, 2014 @ 7:02 pm

Yes, you put out one fire by starting another. Too bad she’s not a forest ranger. I think this one has gotten away from her. That will happen when one lies a lot; you forget what the truth is.
Fail Burton
December 31st, 2014 @ 7:11 pm

Mr. Near-Rapist displays the perils of being unable to have a hot steady girlfriend and being unable to hide one’s disdain for the third-class meat thrown through the bars of one’s cage. Feminists like Dunham mistake the fact such men will bonk anything that moves for their own charm. When they realize that charm is an illusion they get fairly upset. Hook-up culture can be fairly predatory and cold-blooded in a its drunken pursuits. I have my own funny story from my youth when an unknown substance combined with drink gave me my own beer goggles and I allowed myself to be seduced in a club. Once back at her place I came down, saw what I was with and had her give me a ride home untouched. She was not happy. Thankfully that was the one and only time that happened. I’m not really a drinker.
Fail Burton
December 31st, 2014 @ 7:14 pm

Rape is when you force a woman to have sex against her will using force and intimidation. There is no other.
JadedByPolitics
December 31st, 2014 @ 7:16 pm

are you sure you weren’t there? I have it on good authority that you are the next one to be named by Daily Kos as the Lena Dunham rapist.
Fail Burton
December 31st, 2014 @ 7:16 pm

What nonsense. Only an entitled drama queen with serious mental health issues would be traumatized for a decade over a drunken misunderstanding involving a condom.
JadedByPolitics
December 31st, 2014 @ 7:19 pm

She actually turned out to be exactly that “kind of girl” with her sister and that Democrat NPR child, imma say it, she is a slut.
Quartermaster
December 31st, 2014 @ 7:34 pm

I’d never heard that one. Consequently, it’s hilarious.
Quartermaster
December 31st, 2014 @ 7:39 pm

That disturbance would have been felt billions and billions of light years away.
LCDR Roo
December 31st, 2014 @ 7:40 pm

Especially at the Bachelors’ and Spinsters’ Ball

https://media.8chan.co/meatpie/thumb/1411779857694.gif
Quartermaster
December 31st, 2014 @ 7:46 pm

There are several ways to parse that.
Quartermaster
December 31st, 2014 @ 7:53 pm

That concert would have been rape rape.
Quartermaster
December 31st, 2014 @ 8:02 pm

IN my observation of these things, he has more than a fighting chance of winning. She has a fighting chance of going down fighting, however.
Quartermaster
December 31st, 2014 @ 8:03 pm

It’s clear cut. For Barry, not for Dunham.
richard mcenroe
December 31st, 2014 @ 8:29 pm

I’m sensing a little confusion here. Is the “Barry” the publisher is offering to buy off the NPR punk’s shambling get, or the “Barry” who was originally “outed” by the pro-Lena lynch mob online? Or are they the same?
theoldsargesays
December 31st, 2014 @ 8:46 pm

Can this also be so for an unregistered Democrat or doesn’t it cut both ways?
theoldsargesays
December 31st, 2014 @ 8:59 pm

But it’s Lena Dunham for God’s sake!
Fail Burton
December 31st, 2014 @ 9:34 pm

First Barry.
Nan
December 31st, 2014 @ 10:28 pm

The problem here is that we don’t rely on science to determine defamation; the publication of false information that injured someone’s reputation is enough. Publication doesn’t mean literal publication; it could be enough to start a rumor on campus that injured someone’s reputation with peers.
Nan
December 31st, 2014 @ 10:34 pm

Oh, and another thing, she’s making money in part off this story; she defamed someone for profit.

Most crimes have a statute of limitations so extremely doubtful that rape could be prosecuted as a criminal act at this point. And she has a self-described credibility issue.
Nan
December 31st, 2014 @ 10:38 pm

The publisher was negligent for not reviewing the content and making sure there was a disclaimer that “Barry” was a pseudonym and that the name and description couldn’t be linked to a real person.
Nan
December 31st, 2014 @ 10:39 pm

“Not that kind of girl” holds a different meaning these days; means “I’ma slut.”
Nan
December 31st, 2014 @ 10:41 pm

This is about Lena Dunham profiting by damaging the reputation of another. See Jesse Venturas settlement with the estate of Chris Kyle.
Daniel Freeman
December 31st, 2014 @ 11:56 pm

Sorry to interject, but “unreliable narrator” is a term of art in storytelling circles. It’s like how you read The Odyssey and suddenly realized that half of it is just stories that a notoriously crafty man told to his hosts while recovering from washing up on their beach naked and alone. Wait… That thing with the cyclops? Maybe he just made it up to keep the gravy train rolling!

It’s not quite a synonym for liar, but it defintely means someone that you can’t trust to tell the truth; and given her profession, Lena Dunham would know that.
holygoat
January 1st, 2015 @ 12:21 am

If true, it is a problem. It is not a problem, however, that rises to the level of “sexual assault” or “rape.” Are you saying that it DOES rise to that level?
DukeLax
January 1st, 2015 @ 1:25 am

I can understand why American conservatives are particularly disgusted with modern feminism…..because “meg Lankers” and other recent false rape accusers target “conservative men” with their false rape accusations.
DukeLax
January 1st, 2015 @ 1:31 am

If false rape accusations have become a political weapon in the US…than those that support false rape accusations ( even if its law enforcement itself)…must be called on the carpet, and the tea party has the guts to do it!!
Jim R
January 1st, 2015 @ 7:58 am

Hah! That might make a good anti-drinking PSA:

A poster featuring a really unattractive woman lying in a rumple bed with the caption, “Guys, you could wake up next to this… carrying your child. Think ten times before you have that next drink!”
Matthew Lane
January 1st, 2015 @ 9:29 am

“But, I AM an unreliable narrator…”

And a boss…. Those mid coitus 3 pointers are difficult.
Chris Dagostino
January 1st, 2015 @ 11:57 am

This is the same “memoir” in which Ms. Dunham admitted to using the same techniques that a “sexual predator” would use to get her younger sister to quite literally open up to her. She really needs to go away.
DeadMessenger
January 1st, 2015 @ 6:29 pm

I agree with you here; I also pity her. Parents like hers are enough to conflict a person to the point of madness. The 19th-century definition of sociopathy applies here, I believe: “moral insanity”. Dunham needs real help, and it does not help her when her enablers (e.g. her publisher) and apologists (e.g. blder) excuse away her numerous pathologies.