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Dead Constitution See other Dead Constitution Articles Title: The Hoaxing of Roy Moore’s Jailbait Adventure We can learn much about the nature of fake news from the hoaxing of Roy Moore’s jailbait adventure. This just came out. The Hill: A former colleague of GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore said Saturday that it was “common knowledge” that the Alabama Republican dated high school girls when he worked in the Etowah County District Attorney’s Office in the 1980s. In a statement to CNN, Teresa Jones, who served as deputy district attorney for Etowah County, Ala., from 1982 until 1985, said that multiple people thought it was unusual that Moore dated high school girls, but that no one ever raised the matter with him. “It was common knowledge that Roy Moore dated high school girls, everyone we knew thought it was weird,” Jones told CNN. “We wondered why someone his age would hang out at high school football games and the mall … but you really wouldn’t say anything to someone like that.” Moore, now 70, served as the assistant district attorney for Etowah County from 1977 until 1982. Jones’s comments come two days after an explosive Washington Post report detailed allegations that Moore pursued sexual and romantic relationships with teenage girls when he was in his early 30s. One of Moore’s accusers, Leigh Corfman, told the Post that the former Alabama Supreme Court justice initiated a sexual encounter with her in 1979, when she was just 14 and he was 32. Moore has vehemently denied Corfman’s allegation. But in an interview on Sean Hannity’s radio program on Friday, he did not rule out that he dated girls in their late teens when he was in his 30s, saying that he did not remember doing so. So let’s deconstruct what has happened here. Dating Teenage Girls It was common knowledge that in his early thirties he was pursuing teenage girls. I can see that this part could be true. That may be unusual, but it is not illegal or immoral. I am in my early thirties and wouldn’t date a girl over 20, and this was back in the 70s before feminism went crazy and a lot of girls would prefer to just get married right after high school. Four girls were interviewed for the WaPo piece. Three of the four were legal. And the three that were legal all said that there was nothing sexual about their encounters, none of it went beyond kissing. This sounds like a normal situation of a man who is ready to get married, after getting his life and career in order, looking for a girl to marry. Why would he want to be with a thirty-something woman who is already jaded, had multiple sex partners, possibly divorced with children and so on when he can just pick up a fresh one from the high school football game? Moore is a conservative Christian man, he wants a traditional relationship, and an age gap of 10-15 years is traditional. So they establish the fact that he did date teenage girls with three interviews, then they add a single fake girl that is slightly too young for it to be appropriate for a man in his thirties to date her. But only slightly too young. They then add the claim that he was sexually aggressive with her – they say that he drove her somewhere remote and tried to get her naked. But again – the other three said that he was not sexually aggressive with them. The fact that he was not sexually aggressive with three of them makes it seem like he was keeping it traditional – no sex before marriage, as would be in keeping with his Christian value system. I am certain this is what they have done. Found something slightly odd – that he liked high school girls – and been able to confirm that, then added this more odd element: that he went with a girl who was slightly too young and that he was sexually aggressive with her. Also note that the 14-year-old we cannot find any photographs of. There is no video interview of her. She isn’t making public appearances. She isn’t giving follow-up interviews to other media. We have no idea what her political affiliations are, we do not know if she was paid by the Post for the interview, we really don’t even know if she exists as no one has gone through and fact-checked the Post piece. Defenders Make the Lie More Credible The fact that she is only slightly too young, and the fact that he didn’t actually have sex with her even, makes it defensible for people who are far right wing and believe in traditional values. So I was saying “even if this is true, who cares?” Others in Alabama were saying that. But see what that does – when people defend it – it makes it seem more likely to be true. Defending the behavior that is in the lie makes it seem more credible, which is why they went with a lie that was borderline defensible. If they would have had the girl say “he took me out and raped me when I was 14,” everyone would have just said “this is fake news” instead of “who cares if this is true.” Perfecting the Art of the Hoax This is effectively the perfect fake news hoax. It was believable based on things he actually did was not outrageous enough that people would simply dismiss it immediately. Compare that to Hillary Clinton’s #Pissgate hoax against Donald Trump: as soon as Buzzfeed released this, people started laughing at it. Because sex involving urine – plus the Obama bed thing – immediately sounds made-up. They were in an awkward position there, because Donald Trump has never claimed to be a conservative Christian and has been rather open about his dalliances, so if they would have said “Trump slept with hookers in Moscow” people would have been like “okay, whatever – why wouldn’t someone do that?” But they should have been able to gauge the fact that the piss sex claim was too much. They learned from that. And Roy Moore is a big deal. This is way bigger than Virginia. If Democrats win a Senate seat – in Alabama of all places – not only will it upset the current balance in the Senate, where Pence is regularly brought in to break ties because of the sick and twisted behavior of the traitor John McCain and the autist Rand Paul, it will make people lose faith as we head into the 2018 midterms. I think these fake news hoaxes are going to be much more sophisticated moving forward, and I think a lot of them are going to work. This ties directly into shutting down Alt-Right outlets, both in the way the Daily Stormer was shut down and simply closing social media. They are removing the ability to push back against lies as they prepare to tell bigger lies than they ever have before. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 8.
#8. To: Ada (#0)
Why does this article create a dichotomy between women in their thirties and teenagers as possible sexual choices? Do women in their twenties not exist?
#10. To: strepsiptera (#8)
Article suggests it was not considered strange in the 1970s.
Amen. When 31, I wed a 23yo 39 years ago. So far, so good.
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