Author: Kemberlee Kaye

Had I not known Tomasky's piece in The Daily Beast was not in fact, parody, I'd have thought I was reading something straight from the annals of The Onion. Bereaved over Mary Landrieu's Louisiana Senate loss to Senator-elect Cassidy, Tomasky made the case (and I use that term loosely), that the Democrats should ditch Dixie (emphasis added to highlight adventitious hilarity):

I don’t remember a much sadder sight in domestic politics in my lifetime than that of Mary Landrieu schlumpfing around these last few weeks trying to save a Senate seat that was obviously lost. It was like witnessing the last two weeks of the life of a blind and toothless dog you knew the vet was just itching to destroy. I know that sounds mean about her, but I don’t intend it that way. She did what she could and had, as far as I know, an honorable career. I do, however, intend it to sound mean about the reactionary, prejudice-infested place she comes from. A toothless dog is a figure of sympathy. A vet who takes pleasure in gassing it is not. And that is what Louisiana, and almost the entire South, has become. The victims of the particular form of euthanasia it enforces with such glee are tolerance, compassion, civic decency, trans-racial community, the crucial secular values on which this country was founded… I could keep this list going. But I think you get the idea. Practically the whole region has rejected nearly everything that’s good about this country and has become just one big nuclear waste site of choleric, and extremely racialized, resentment. A fact made even sadder because on the whole they’re such nice people! (I truly mean that.) With Landrieu’s departure, the Democrats will have no more senators from the Deep South, and I say good. Forget about it. Forget about the whole fetid place. Write it off. Let the GOP have it and run it and turn it into Free-Market Jesus Paradise. The Democrats don’t need it anyway.

Gee, what electoral use could Democrats possible have for Florida, or Texas, or Virginia?

We've been skeptical of Rolling Stone's recent and controversial story about a coed simply referred to as 'Jackie' who claimed to have been brutally gang raped at a University of Virginia frat party in 2012. Sabrina Ruben Erdely, the Rolling Stone reporter covering the UVA gang rape story, failed to contact the alleged attackers and corroborate Jackie's story. Any 'new information' Rolling Stone is referring to is simply the product of basic journalistic due diligence. In a reactionary response, and without first conducting an investigation of their own, UVA suspended all campus fraternities until January as a result of the Rolling Stone expose. Today, Rolling Stone posted the following note to readers (emphasis added):

To Our Readers: Last month, Rolling Stone published a story titled "A Rape on Campus" by Sabrina Rubin Erdely, which described a brutal gang rape of a woman named Jackie at a University of Virginia fraternity house; the university's failure to respond to this alleged assault – and the school's troubling history of indifference to many other instances of alleged sexual assaults. The story generated worldwide headlines and much soul-searching at UVA. University president Teresa Sullivan promised a full investigation and also to examine the way the school responds to sexual assault allegations. Because of the sensitive nature of Jackie's story, we decided to honor her request not to contact the man she claimed orchestrated the attack on her nor any of the men she claimed participated in the attack for fear of retaliation against her. In the months Erdely spent reporting the story, Jackie neither said nor did anything that made Erdely, or Rolling Stone's editors and fact-checkers, question Jackie's credibility. Her friends and rape activists on campus strongly supported Jackie's account. She had spoken of the assault in campus forums. We reached out to both the local branch and the national leadership of the fraternity where Jackie said she was attacked. They responded that they couldn't confirm or deny her story but had concerns about the evidence. In the face of new information, there now appear to be discrepancies in Jackie's account, and we have come to the conclusion that our trust in her was misplaced. We were trying to be sensitive to the unfair shame and humiliation many women feel after a sexual assault and now regret the decision to not contact the alleged assaulters to get their account. We are taking this seriously and apologize to anyone who was affected by the story. Will Dana Managing Editor

Yesterday, the Washington Post published a story about Donny Ray Williams, Jr. Williams is a convicted serial sexual abuser and former Democratic Senate aide. Ah what magic that little 'D' affiliation possesses. There was no story on Good Morning America, no major network news coverage of a serial rapist who will not be serving jail time, just a short form piece in the Washington Post. That's it. Mind you, the Washington Post and other media scalped Elizabeth Lauten, the Republican Congressional aide who was mildly critical of the Obama daughter's scant wardrobe choice on her personal Facebook page. Likely at the behest of the White House, WaPo assigned foreign policy reporters to cover Lauten. They began digging into her college papers, sealed juvenile record, and staking out her parent's home. Lauten quit and is currently in self-imposed exile. Credible sources indicate the White House was actively pitching the story of Lauten's unforgivable indiscretions to their favorite media outlets. Amazingly, the obscure Tennessee Congressman who employed Lauten was left completely out of the fray. Forgoing the "guilty by association" schtick, it was Lauten with the glowing red dot on her back. Make an example of Lauten and no one will dare throw shade at the Obama's again, seems to be the message in all of this. Nothing else explains the disproportionate use of force. Watching the inequity in media coverage got me all riled up (as we say in Texas). So I took to Twitter.