While promoting her memoir, “Not That Kind of Girl,” feminist and 2012 Glamour “Woman of the Year” Lena Dunham found herself in the awkward position of apologizing for her “comic use” of the term “sexual predator.”
If you recall, it was in a particularly disturbing passage that Dunham referred to herself as a young girl acting as a sexual predator. In the meantime, mainstream and feminist media lauded a chapter in which Dunham recounted a college rape by Barry, “a mustachioed campus Republican” in purple cowboy boots, as “a must-read.”
So now why is the book back in the news? Breitbart.com’s John Nolte today writes that after a month-long investigation:
… Breitbart News could not find a Republican named Barry who attended Oberlin during Dunham’s time there who came anywhere close to matching her description of him. In fact, we could not find anyone who remembered any Oberlin Republican who matched Dunham’s colorful description.
Under scrutiny, Dunham’s rape story didn’t just fall apart; it evaporated into pixie dust and blew away.
That hasn’t stopped others from searching for (and allegedly identifying) “Barry,” and Nolte mentions that an Oberlin graduate he calls “Barry One” who is under particular suspicion has hidden his Facebook page and retained an attorney.
In response to the Breitbart investigation, Eugene Volokh is asked in the Washington Post today, “Could ‘Barry’ sue Lena Dunham over her memoirs?” His answer? Sure; however, “even if he prevails in court, or gets Dunham to publish an apology, some people will have learned of the accusation but won’t hear (or remember or believe) the vindication.”
Will “Barry” sue?
