Media Accuses Entire Town of Steubenville, Ohio, of... Something, Maybe Ignoring a Rape, Because the Perpetrators Were Popular and Part of an Important Local Enterprise, Much Like David Gregory

Stuebenville's being "Otherized."

They're different from the media types in New York (or, rather, the media types in New York assume they are different, because they are not within 50 miles of them). Ergo, they can spin wild fantasies about them; they are The Other, The Foreign, The Alien, The Strange, The Strangers.

Ignorant, provincially-minded, and psychologically weak people are frequently fertile breeding grounds for all sorts of panicky rumors about Strangers on the Road.

Meanwhile there's some other football story going around -- star Notre Dame linebacker Burt Mantis -- that's not his name, but that would be a cool name for a linebacker, I think -- anyway, star Notre Dame linebacker Manti T'eo was either the victim of a long, involved hoax of a man posing online as a woman, or an active participant in creating this fictitious woman who then did not die of leukemia and therefore did not inspire Manti.

Warning: This story is more convoluted than it is actually interesting. Deadspin's story is a tick-tock of its detective work, none of which I care about, because I don't really think the story merits it.

Conclusion: This "woman" on Twitter did not exist. (Shockingly enough!) It is either a hoax with a victim or a prank or a hoax to gin up some publicity and money (though how the latter would work, I have no idea -- and why would a top NFL prospect need the incredibly small duckets that might flow from a Twitter personalty account?)

I rate it as two "Meh's" and a half a "Hmmm..."

Great Point... by David French, via Instapundit, on the David Gregory thing:

“Of course prosecuting Mr. Gregory would have been sad and — on many levels — absurd, but so is the law under which he would have been prosecuted. In fact, if absurdity were a defense to prosecutions or other adverse legal actions, an enormous swathe of our regulatory state would be swept away. Can we even speak of the rule of law as a meaningful concept when we combine an explosive regulatory state with near-absolute prosecutorial discretion?”

Exactly. Make nearly everything illegal -- so many things you could not plausibly prosecute even a third of it -- and then leave the decision to prosecute in the hands of the state prosecutor, who will decide whether or not to prosecute you based on your status as a Person Favored by the State or a Person Disfavored by the State.

And thus ends the rule of law. RIP.

posted by Ace at 05:50 PM

| Access Comments