The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

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”

  1. M. Thompson
    December 31st, 2014 @ 10:00 am

    Disgusting.

  2. Jim R
    December 31st, 2014 @ 10:11 am

    Just when you thought her story couldn’t get more bizarre.

    O’ course, the elephant in the room is that Dunham ADMITS that the sex was – by any normal standard – consensual, with her playing quite an active role.

    But, then again, “rape” apparently doesn’t mean what I think it means…

  3. Dana
    December 31st, 2014 @ 10:12 am

    Nothing to see here, folks. Please, move along.

  4. blder
    December 31st, 2014 @ 10:17 am

    Well she refers to it as sexual assault – how else would you describe a guy secretly taking off a condom? Do you not think that is a problem?

  5. blder
    December 31st, 2014 @ 10:19 am

    This is such a desperate article. He is a registered democrat, as of 2012. How on Earth do you know he didn’t switch affiliations in the years between? You have no idea, and you don’t care – you have you narrative to stick to, not facts.

    Funny how you get on your high horse about someone losing credibility the second they’re known to have lied, when there is no such evidence she “lied”, but mounds of evidence that you have no shame in spreading rumors as truth. You, if anyone, are the discredited liar.

  6. exdemocrat
    December 31st, 2014 @ 10:23 am

    He “secretly” took off the condom and then “secretly” threw it across the room? Hmm..

  7. robertstacymccain
    December 31st, 2014 @ 10:25 am

    Are you being deliberately obtuse? Can you not grasp the significance here? Are you incapable of basic logic?

    How can we believe ANYTHING Lena Dunham says about ANYTHING?

    Answer: We can’t. She is a proven liar.

  8. IceBerg77
    December 31st, 2014 @ 10:25 am

    How low down the intelligence ladder do you have to be to defend a human shit stain like Lena Dunham? It’s obvious she depicted him as a conservative in the spirit of disgusting partisanship. She’s a lowlife for not only lying about a rape but sexually abusing her sister. The fact that you see her as someone to emulate speaks volumes about how rock bottom so much of the culture is.

  9. kilo6
    December 31st, 2014 @ 10:28 am

    She should ask Garry Trudeau do a Doonsebury strip about this one.

  10. IceBerg77
    December 31st, 2014 @ 10:33 am

    I think you need to reject feminist stupidity.

  11. robertstacymccain
    December 31st, 2014 @ 10:35 am

    You want to use the comments on my site to accuse me of lying? OK, here’s some truth:

    [email protected]
    IP 38.101.104.42 — registered to Cogent Communications, Long Island, NY

    That’s the information on you, “blder.”

    My name is Robert Stacy McCain.

    I wrote this, and put it on the Internet.

  12. kilo6
    December 31st, 2014 @ 10:38 am

    Funny how you can fit that much straw into such a small comment

  13. Jim R
    December 31st, 2014 @ 10:39 am

    1. She claims it was “rape”, which is (obviously) a type of sexual assault. People, sometimes innocently and sometimes not, confuse the two terms. For example, a pervert flashing a girl or groping a little boy is “sexual assault”, not rape

    2. Again, perhaps “rape” means something different than what I think it does, but when a woman is an active and willing participant (as Dunham admits that she was), it’s not rape in my mind. Indeed, it apparently wasn’t rape in HER mind:

    The following day, when Dunham tells her roommate, Audrey, about the encounter, Audrey is horrified by her admission and tells Dunham, “You were raped.”

    “I burst out laughing,” Dunham writes of her initial reaction.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/02/lena-dunham-rape-story_n_5915328.html

    3. The very ex post facto claim of rape seems to hinge on the magical automotive condom. She “thought” he was wearing a rubber but – somehow – he wound up not to be? She’s apparently not sure how that happened, but allegedly she got up, put her clothes back on and left when she had the revelation that the guy wasn’t gloved up any longer. That was the end of the encounter. Again, not rape in my mind

    4. RSM has already made my final point: Dunham has already been unmasked as lying about much of this event so that we cannot readily believe ANYTHING she has to say about it

  14. Jim R
    December 31st, 2014 @ 10:40 am

    Give him time. I gather that he’s presently working on a strip about the memo that proves that Bush was AWOL from the TXANG.

  15. Phil_McG
    December 31st, 2014 @ 10:48 am

    http://i1.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/007/346/pwned4.jpg

  16. Jim R
    December 31st, 2014 @ 10:50 am

    I don’t know why you’re casting apparent doubt on this issue. Why, many was the time back in my college days that, totally drunk and in the groping confusion of scoring on a chick that I barely knew, I nevertheless managed to unglove AND sink a figurative three-pointer in the trash can from across the room AND watch all the Rambo movies in order AND get her roommate’s number without her realizing that a thing was amiss.

    But, I AM an unreliable narrator…

  17. RS
    December 31st, 2014 @ 10:51 am

    You have no idea, and you don’t care – you have you narrative to stick to, not facts.

    My Irony-meter just ‘sploded all over the place.

  18. Dana
    December 31st, 2014 @ 11:00 am

    She also said that she thought that he thought — do we have enough pronouns there? — that she would be either too drunk or too into it or too eager to please to either notice or care. What she doesn’t indicate is that she said anything about stopping until he put the rubber on, which means that either she really was too drunk or too into it or too eager to please to have really noticed or cared during the act to have raised an objection.

    I s’pose that by the Current Feminist Standard™ it was rape, because she was, by her own admission, drunk. That he might have been intoxicated as well does not seem to mean that she raped him. The fact that this incident occurred years ago, before the Current Feminist Standard™ was proclaimed is irrelevant: the standards are certainly applicable ex post facto.

  19. RS
    December 31st, 2014 @ 11:03 am

    Forget the politics and the feminism for a moment. The thing that angers me is that the Dunhams and UVA “Julies” along with their defenders are truly damaging the cause of those who are true victims of violent sexual assault. By appropriating the terms “rape” and “sexual assault” for behavior which would normally be characterized as “misjudgment” or immaturity, they detract from those cases where women have truly been victimized by violent predators. I know whereof I speak, having dealt with someone very close to me who was the victim of a break-in, knife to throat, in the middle of the night forcible rape. It is horrific for the victims and for those near and dear to them. And none of them write books and bask in the adulation of media for their “courage.” Ms. Dunham attempted to shoe-horn herself into a narrative merely to derive money and fame. It is despicable.

  20. RS
    December 31st, 2014 @ 11:08 am

    Query: If men who lie about using a condom during an otherwise consensual tryst are guilty of “sexual assault” and deserve the full weight of society’s opprobrium, what then to we call women who lie about using contraception in order to conceive and trap a man into 18-22 years of child-support?

  21. Jim R
    December 31st, 2014 @ 11:10 am

    [No actual rape victims] write books and bask in the adulation of media for their “courage.” Ms. Dunham attempted to shoe-horn herself into a narrative merely to derive money and fame. It is despicable.

    Hear him! Hear him!

  22. kilo6
    December 31st, 2014 @ 11:16 am

    http://i.imgur.com/ntNUsgU.png

  23. Pablo
    December 31st, 2014 @ 11:23 am

    How do you know he wasn’t a woman back then? You don’t. Therefore, you’re a stupid asshole meanypants. QED.

  24. blder
    December 31st, 2014 @ 11:28 am

    That was very mature of you. I still don’t understand how you can call someone a liar with no evidence of them lying.

    Am I mistaken or did you write,

    “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.”

    Is that not you, Robert Stacy McCain, claiming that it is factual that Philip Ungar was a liberal Democrat at the time of the alleged sexual assault?

    That would imply you have knowledge of his registration, or leanings, at that time. Unless you have information not publicly available, you do not.

    Finally, given that you don’t know she is lying about him being a conservative, and given that the identification of Philip Ungar indicates she might not have simply invented an assault – Where is the original lie that you claim discredits her? The color of his boots, or the name of his radio show?

  25. blder
    December 31st, 2014 @ 11:37 am

    If your bar for becoming a “proven liar” is obscuring details, then I still fail to see how you do not smack your head against the bar with this speculation:

    “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.”

    The alleged assault occurred in 2005. He registered as a Democrat in 2012.

    Do you have a justification for your leap in logic, or do you simply believe nothing of significance could have happened between 2005 and 2012 that could have changed his political views?

  26. Whoops: Lena Dunham’s original book proposal identifies the “Republican rapist”, and he’s actually a liberal Democrat who’s dad was an NPR personality
    December 31st, 2014 @ 11:39 am

    […] at this point everything she says can be assumed to be a lie until proven […]

  27. Art Deco
    December 31st, 2014 @ 11:44 am

    Lucas Duncan, she left a trail of breadcrumbs in her book to one particular individual. There was only one male student in three graduating classes at Oberlin with the Christian name ‘Barry’. He was also active in the small College Republican club at Oberlin. He’s not difficult for someone to identify because he has had a LinkedIn profile. She cannot argue that her identifying information was coincidental and have any non-idiot believe her. She gave ‘Barry’ the brush off when he asked she state for public record that he was not her assailant. Yet, this man fits none of the other descriptors she gave of her assailant and a reporter for Breitbart could find no individual who did fit these other descriptors during his visit to the campus. Bottom line: Dunham’s assailant is a composite if not entirely fictional. She lied.

  28. RS
    December 31st, 2014 @ 11:45 am

    The sentence upon which you seem to be fixated, specifically “. . .he is evidently a liberal Democrat . . .,” is written in the present tense. Please note, the sentence is not, ” . . . . he was a liberal Democrat . . .” That would be the past tense.

    Further, even without knowledge of his political affiliation at the time of the occurrence, there is an inference that his political leans then mirror those he has now, especially given the locus of the alleged “assault,” i.e. Oberlin College, which will never be confused with Hillsdale, for example. You may disagree with the inference, but an inference is not a lie.

  29. TheAmishDude
    December 31st, 2014 @ 11:45 am

    If you want to stick to the fantasy that Ungar was a “Republican in his heart”, feel free, but Lena Dunham specifically called her sexual assaulter a “campus’ resident conservative” and a “mustachioed campus Republican” and specifically named him “Barry”.

    There was a short-lived campus Republican group at Oberlin at the time that Dunham went there and they had a website (which was still up) listing the names of the various officers. One of the few was “Barry”.

    Guess who isn’t on that webpage?

  30. RS
    December 31st, 2014 @ 11:47 am

    I saw “The Magical Automotive Condoms” open for the Sex Pistols in L.A. in 1979.

  31. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    December 31st, 2014 @ 11:48 am

    But Stacy, she is a feminist. Emotion trumps facts every time.

    You are such a patriarch!

  32. blder
    December 31st, 2014 @ 11:48 am

    Hmm, you make a good point..

  33. Art Deco
    December 31st, 2014 @ 11:49 am

    The son of an NPR host enrolls at Oberlin College and is active in the College Republican club at age 20 then re-registers as a Democrat at age 28. This is not altogether inconceivable. You would not, however, make an assessment under the assumption that it did happen.

  34. SDN
    December 31st, 2014 @ 11:50 am

    Brave single mothers. /leftard

  35. Art Deco
    December 31st, 2014 @ 11:51 am

    You’re forgetting: women have options. Men have obligations.

  36. RS
    December 31st, 2014 @ 11:51 am

    You forgot, “victims of the Patriarchy.”

  37. TheAmishDude
    December 31st, 2014 @ 11:54 am

    Fine. She says he was a “Republican”. She lied. He wasn’t registered with a party.

    Happy?

  38. Alec Leamas
    December 31st, 2014 @ 11:56 am

    It’s caddish behavior (if true, and you now have reason not to trust Dunham’s account) but certainly not rape.

  39. blder
    December 31st, 2014 @ 11:56 am

    Do you have a link to where she explicitly describes the event as “rape”, because in everything I’ve seen from her on it, including your link, she is clearly pretty conflicted on it,

    “I feel like there are fifty ways it’s my fault […] I never gave him permission. In my deepest self I know this, and the knowledge of it has kept me from sinking.”

    I also haven’t seen her calling for him to face any sort of justice. I am having trouble understanding why there is so much anger directed at her over this. It seems like everyone just KNOWS she is a liar, so she MUST be lying about this.

    In her own words, where she talks about this at length, she describes it as “sexual assault” and makes it clear she isn’t seeking criminal punishment.

    http://www.buzzfeed.com/lenadunham/lena-dunham-why-i-chose-to-speak-out

    When did conservatives become the thought and feelings police, demanding that people are not allowed to have their own interpretations of their own life experiences?

    Granted, I understand any anger that might come from thinking she was attacking conservatives by making up his partisan affiliation, but damn, is this not a bit of an overreaction? Do we really need to get so furious and personal over a partisan attack from admittedly partisan individual? I mean, I don’t see McCain jumping all over Coulter’s anectdotes, or Schlichter’s… it seems like stretching for an excuse to be angry to me…

  40. Jim R
    December 31st, 2014 @ 11:57 am

    I think that one can safely cast Dunham as a “proven liar” without merely accusing her of (as you put it) obscuring details. This is from the FRIENDLY Gawker article:

    The final manuscript of Not that Kind of Girl contains a significantly altered version of Dunham’s original account. It was this modified narrative, which used a new pseudonym for the alleged rapist (“Barry’), that jump-started a months-long effort to discredit Dunham’s claims. [emphasis mine – JR]

    So, according to the friendly, supportive J.K. Trotter, Dunham’s story about her “rape” was “significantly altered” between the time she proposed her book and when it was actually published. Now, perhaps we have different definitions of “lying” as we appear to have different definitions of rape, but I would say that when somebody “significantly alters” such a story, it’s very reasonable to call her a liar.

    I would also point out that Dunham refers to herself as an “unreliable narrator”, which is rather a polite way of saying, “I make sh!t up all the time.”

    Finally, Dunham’s publisher has offered to pay such legal fees as the defamed “Barry” has racked up, which is a de facto admission that Dunham defamed him. Which is to say, she LIED about him.

  41. blder
    December 31st, 2014 @ 11:59 am

    You obviously know one can identify as Republican without being registered…

  42. Dustoff
    December 31st, 2014 @ 12:03 pm

    Once you are found to be a liar.
    Nothing more you say matters.

    She is a liar.

  43. TheAmishDude
    December 31st, 2014 @ 12:03 pm

    See my comment below.

    Ah, the liberal. For whom no evidence can disprove the theory.

  44. Dustoff
    December 31st, 2014 @ 12:04 pm

    WOW, talk about reaching.

  45. G Joubert
    December 31st, 2014 @ 12:04 pm

    Seems like an ex post facto effort to defuse the defamation lawsuit she was facing from the real-life “Barry.”

  46. blder
    December 31st, 2014 @ 12:05 pm

    I think that some of your claims are a bit of a stretch. Dunham’s publisher offering to pay the legal fees of “Barry” may be an admission that he was defamed, but it is absolutely not an admission that it was intentional, which is what matters, isn’t it? Not to Barry, obviously, but one can obviously cause harm to another unintentionally. By resolving the matter quickly and out of court, the publisher is surely trying to just put the issue behind it.

    As for her altered version of the account, I suppose we’ll have to just disagree here. In the context of her writing the account in an autobiographical book, and her admission that she is an “unreliable narrator”, it seems hard to translate a deliberate alteration in a story as a lie, given that the entire point of the story wasn’t to indite the accused, but to tell a narrative. When we tell stories, are we all liars? I don’t think so.

  47. RS
    December 31st, 2014 @ 12:07 pm

    When did conservatives become the thought and feelings police, demanding that people are not allowed to have their own interpretations of their own life experiences?

    When they accept a gargantuan book advance, write a book, and bask in the fame, glory, money and adulation of those who then use her story to advance a specific narrative which seeks to smear, inter alia an entire group of people. She was the one who made this public. She was the one who sought to use this counterfactual anecdote for her benefit. She was the one who sat by while others reported her experience as historical fact while doing nothing to disabuse them or reinforce her own self-description as “unreliable narrator,” i.e. a fabulist.

  48. Dustoff
    December 31st, 2014 @ 12:08 pm

    guy secretly taking off a condom? Do you not think that is a problem?

    ****************************

    How would she know, if he did it (secretly)

  49. Dustoff
    December 31st, 2014 @ 12:09 pm

    I’ll just stick with lair. (-:

  50. blder
    December 31st, 2014 @ 12:09 pm

    I mostly agree with you, but again I don’t understand the big deal. This was all in the context of an autobiographical narrative, told without the intention of bringing the man she accused to some sort of justice. In her explanation of this whole thing after, she consistently refers to it as “sexual assault”,

    http://www.buzzfeed.com/lenadunham/lena-dunham-why-i-chose-to-speak-out

    Anyway, this all seems like we’re litigating how Lena Dunham is allowed to feel about her own personal experiences in her own life, explained in her own book.