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. DeadMessenger
    January 1st, 2015 @ 6:44 pm

    But if a person is, by her own admission, an “unreliable narrator”, can a book written by her and about herself still be classified as an autobiography? I tend to think not. If someone is hazy about major details of her own life, now we’re talking fiction, aren’t we?

    Dunham needs a lot of therapy. I’d say it’s VERY likely that her personality is completely fractured due to early childhood sexual trauma. Her sexual acting out over the course of virtually her entire life is evidence of that. I doubt that she herself even knows the full truth about her life, and could not therefore write about it with any sort of accuracy. If it’s obvious enough that I can see it, her publisher certainly must have. He/she was no doubt only interested in salacious details as a way of making money off Dunham’s additional trauma.

  2. DeadMessenger
    January 1st, 2015 @ 7:04 pm

    And also, that was the cheesiest, wishy-washiest disclaimer of all time. “Everything I said was completely true…I know it is, because I can’t really remember very much of it. Or not. As far as you know. And as far as Barry knows, or could prove in a court of law. Probably. I’m an unreliable narrator, after all.”

  3. DeadMessenger
    January 1st, 2015 @ 7:12 pm

    The Current Feminist Standard™ states that as long as she was a female college student, then even a handshake from her nursing-home-residing grandfather with demenia constitutes rape. Not even a handshake really; just a glance in her general direction.

  4. K-Bob
    January 1st, 2015 @ 7:49 pm

    Is that the same player who got grabbed in this famous photo?

    http://cdn.pastemagazine.com/www/articles/Jones-Gazza.jpg

  5. Daniel Notloggedin
    January 2nd, 2015 @ 3:29 am

    I agree with all of that, except that she didn’t call it an autobiography. It was a memoir, which has a much lower standard of truth: how you remember it, instead of how it was.

  6. Delaney Coffer
    January 2nd, 2015 @ 9:11 am

    Yeah, I know what you mean, whatever you are. I remember one time I was fingering a girl and she farted. Of course, I called the police. She’s still in jail.

  7. Julie Mckinley
    January 2nd, 2015 @ 12:59 pm

    Her father’s “art” illustrates deviant preoccupation with sexualized, hostile images of women. Be forewarned: I wish I could wash my brain of the sickening stuff that must have surrounded this weird family as the children grew up.

  8. Mike G.
    January 2nd, 2015 @ 4:52 pm

    What “An Amalgamation of Bull Shit.”

    Mzzz Dunham is an inveterate liar.

    If she told me the sky was blue, I’d have to check for myself and get three corroborating witnesses to attest to that fact.

  9. Mike G.
    January 2nd, 2015 @ 5:42 pm

    Like I said below…An Amalgamation of Bull Shit.

  10. Mike G.
    January 2nd, 2015 @ 6:13 pm

    Now that would be “Ear Rape.” Oh, the humanity!

  11. FMJRA 2.0: Day Late And A Dollar Short, New Year’s Edition : The Other McCain
    January 4th, 2015 @ 4:13 pm

    […] Lena Dunham, Liar Inoperable Terran A View from the Beach […]