Judy Baar Topinka, dead at 70

Judy Baar Topinka with Dominic DiFrisco, April 2014

     Judy Baar Topinka was your friend, almost your relation, "a kooky old aunt" in the words of one-time opponent Rod Blagojevich, nailing the sense of kinship but missing the love that Illinoisans felt for her.
     With her red-dyed hair and her thrift shop clothing, Topinka was like no other politician in the state. She played the accordion and danced the polka, once with Dick Cheney. She smoked cigarettes, she guzzled coffee, adored her dogs, and at lunch with a reporter was just as apt to pull out photographs of her beloved son as to discuss financial issues, of which she had a mastery that sometimes got overlooked because of her folksy demeanor.
     Topinka died at 2 a.m. Wednesday, according to Sun-Times reports. She had suffered discomfort, had gone to the hospital in Berwyn where she was undergoing tests when she suffered a stroke. She was 70.
     She was Illinois treasurer for 12 years—the first woman treasurer in Illinois — and newly re-elected comptroller, having defeated Sheila Simon in a tough race. She was also the former chair of the Illinois Republican Party.
    But her importance as a statewide figure came, not so much from her offices or her duties, as from the force of her personality, a brash, colorful, plain-speaking, competent, energetic product of Chicago's near western suburbs, someone who, in an era of bitter partisan divides, wore her Republicanism easily, for instance staunchly supporting both gay and reproductive rights.
     "I'm just a political mutt," she said, during the last election, noting that voters could relate to her. "They think I'm straight talking — one of them. I haven't forgotten where I came from They feel a familiar relationship. And I like that. I've come up the hard way."
      Leaders from across the spectrum mourned the passing of Topinka.
     "The state has lost a treasure," said former Gov. Jim Edgar, whose election in 1994 helped sweep Topinka to her first statewide office, as Illinois' first female treasurer and the first Republican to hold the office since 1962. "She had more spirit than all the rest of us combined in this business, she was always upbeat."
     Barack Obama entered the Illinois State Senate three years after Topinka left it, and the White House issued a statement from the president praising her.
     "Judy was an institution in Illinois politics," Obama said. "Judy was a fierce advocate for her constituents, which I got to see firsthand when she was state treasurer. . . . She was blunt, pragmatic, unfailingly cheerful and energetic, and always willing to put politics aside to find common sense solutions that made a difference for the people of Illinois. She will be greatly missed. Michelle and I extend our deepest sympathies to Judy's family, friends and constituents today."
     Governor-elect Bruce Rauner issued a statement Wednesday.
     "Illinois lost one of its all-time greats," Rauner said. "Comptroller Topinka's magnetic, one-of-a-kind personality brought a smile to everyone she met, and she had a servant's heart, always only caring about what was best for the people of our state."
     "She was a good friend," said former Gov. George Ryan, who praised her devotion as a "very good public servant . . . her main programs were 'How much is it going to cost?' and 'Where is the money coming from?' She was a great watchdog for the taxpayers."
     When she ran for governor in 2006, Topinka was the first woman to be put up for that office by the Illinois GOP. She lost to Gov. Rod Blagojevich. TV commercials showed a clip of her dancing the polka at the Illinois State Fair with ex-Gov. George Ryan, newly convicted of 18 counts of federal corruption, and tried to tie her to her old boss.
     "I dance the polka with everyone," she explained.
     "She was always a lot of fun to be with on the campaign trail," Ryan said Wednesday. "Occasionally, she'd bring her accordion along and play polka music. Occasionally, she'd grab me to do a polka dance."
     Topinka constantly sent journalists clippings of their work, which she would scribble over with compliments and observations, tucked into a rectangular paper folder. She had been a journalist herself, writing a regular column in the Riverside/Brookfield Landmark newspaper. She was also immensely quotable. How could you not love a politician who in 2006 called her Republican opponents "morons" and referred to Rod Blagojevich's "little weasel eyes"?
     She was raised in Berwyn and lived in Riverside. Her parents, William and Lillian Baar, were the children of Czechoslovakian immigrants. Topinka graduated from Ferry Hall, a private girls prep school in Lake Forest in 1962, then went to Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. She began her career as a reporter but, aghast at the corruption she saw, she ran for the State Legislature in 1980, spending four years in the Illinois House and 10 years in the Senate.
     In 1994, she was swept into the treasurer's office on the ticket with Edgar. She was re-elected twice and served until 2007. She was first elected comptroller in 2010, was re-elected in 2014, and was proud of her efforts to modernize the comptroller's office.
     "We have done some really remarkable things with this office," she said. "We are dealing with a 19th century office that we have to get into the 21st century."
     Topinka brought a joy to the dry fiscal aspects of her job and stressed the importance of sound management.
     "You need people who really want to be in those offices and want to deal with fiscal matters of the state, which I happen to like," she told the southern Illinoisan during the recent election. "I liked being treasurer, I love being comptroller . . . we hold the whole place together."
     She was divorced, and is survived by a son, Joseph, and a granddaughter, Alexandra Faith Baar Topinka.

Contributing: Mitch Dudek, Scott Fornek     
Listen to Judy Baar Topinka talk about her job by clicking here.

Judy Baar Topinka, front and center, watches Gov. Quinn sign the gay marriage law at the UIC Forum last November.

Ransom is un-American, but wasn't always

Thomas Jefferson's home, Monticello

                                     

     When I began writing this, I was hoping to contemplate the ethical, almost philosophical, arguments against paying ransom. Then I stumbled upon the struggle our Founding Father's went through, trying to decide whether to pay tribute to the Barbary pirates, or raise an navy and fight them.  If you finish this and are just dying to learn more, historian Michael Oren delivered a captivating lecture on the topic at Columbia University in 2005 that you can read online, that was the source for the quotes used below. 

     Had the Navy SEAL team been successful Saturday in rescuing photojournalist Luke Somers from al-Qaida in Yemen, Somers would no doubt be back in the States by now, on the “Today” show, recounting his ordeal.
     But the raid turned into a firefight, and Somers was murdered by his captors, along with fellow hostage Pierre Korkie, a South African teacher who, it was later discovered, was hours from being released, thanks to a $200,000 ransom to be paid by his family and his employer, a charitable group.
     And there public interest ends, with a sad shake of the head. Such raids are enormous tactical challenges, this one didn’t succeed, and too bad that the South African fellow died, with freedom in his grasp, magnifying the tragedy for his family.
     That is the natural way to feel; it’s the way that I felt, at first. But then I thought about it a bit. The United States doesn’t pay ransom for kidnapped citizens because such payments only encourage more kidnapping, and the cash funds more terrorism. European countries do cravenly pay ransoms, to their shame, funneling tens of millions of dollars to al-Qaida and groups like it.

     South Africa, like the U.S., has a policy against paying ransoms. But families and private groups do pay, ignoring the fact that it is morally wrong. You are purchasing your loved one's freedom at the expense of the suffering of many others down the line.
     Not that such a moral calculus is ever easy. When it is your son in the video, begging for his life, focusing on what is best from an international policy perspective can seem irrelevant, even cruel.
     It might help to imagine another scenario. Let's say, instead of being kidnapped, the South African was instead delivering $200,000—the amount his family was about to pay—to al-Qaida out of zeal. The SEALs intercept and shoot him first. They would be doing their job and nobody would mourn the dead courier. You could argue that whether he is a captive or not is beside the point of a clear moral directive: Don't support terrorists; oppose them at all costs.
     If you wonder why the United States, normally bending over backward when it comes to the lives of our citizens abroad, takes this hard line, remember that our country has faced this exact problem since it began.
     Longer, in fact. Our split from Britain removed the protection of the powerful Royal Navy from our merchant fleet, which was then set on by Barbary pirates—privateers operating out of North Africa. The forging of our Constitution and the uniting of the colonies was done, in part, to better face what James Madison called "the rapacious demands of pirates and barbarians."
     Then, as now, the temptation was to just pay the tribute, and for years our new country did just that, at the urgings of people like John Adams, who deemed it better to give "one Gift of two hundred Thousand Pounds" in tribute than to risk "a Million annually."
     The trouble was, once begun, payments never end, and others want in on the action. The U.S. Navy was created in March 1794 by a timid Congress (nothing changes; if you think it dithers now in the face of disaster, just look at the agonized debates Congress had while pirates were capturing American ships and parading their sailors in chains through the streets of Fez before selling them into slavery). The first U.S. naval warship was used not to fight the pirates, but to convey tribute to them. Talk about shame.
     By 1800, 20 percent of federal expenditures were payments to North African pashas, according to historian Michael Oren.
     Only Thomas Jefferson assuming the presidency in 1801 led to a change in policy. He sensed that our spirit was better suited to "raise ships and men to fight the pirates into reason than money to bribe them."
     Not that doing so was ever easy. In 1803, 15 Marines from the USS Philadelphia were ambushed and slain in Tripoli—the first U.S. servicemen to die on foreign soil—and 308 crewmen were taken prisoner after the ship foundered on a reef. (The "shores of Tripoli" line in the Marine hymn immortalizes not that military fiasco but an 1805 victory.)
     Adams said something during the debate about the pirates that bears remembering.
     "We ought not to fight them at all unless we determine to fight them forever"—prophetic words, though Adams underestimated the mettle of his nation by adding, "this though, I fear, is too rugged for our people to bear." But bear it we did, and do. Americans turned out to be made of stronger stuff. We value each life, true, but prefer to lose a few citizens by standing for our values than to try to save them all by living on our knees.

                                                 

"Better racist police than ignorant thugs"

    In Hamlet, the melancholy Dane asks Rosencrantz if he has heard any news. 
     "None, my lord," the courtier replies, "but the world's grown honest."
     "Then is doomsday near," Hamlet quips — the idea being the if people start saying what they think, candidly without draping it in artifice and deceit, that would be such a radical departure from the usual it would mean that the world must be coming to an end.     
     I thought of that line Monday, looking over my dozens of emails responding to my column dipping a toe into the racial tempest over police roiling over the country in the wake of the Ferguson and chokehold cases. I expected a lot of poison, but was impressed by the thoughtfulness, the intelligence of the replies. As of 4 p.m. I hadn't received a single foaming hater, which is odd, even on days when I don't stick a trembling hand between the bars of the police department. 
      Two stuck out —one from a white reader, one from a black. As they are lengthy, I'll keep this intro to a minimum. I found them interesting, and thought you might find them interesting too.

Dear Neil:

     We may be a nation of laws, but we're also a nation of habits, some of them very old and very destructive.
     A few weeks ago I was driving around the Northwest Side with an old friend from my teenaged years, a retired Chicago cop.  I dared to broach the subject of local politics and he ran down a list of current politicians who were gang members back in the day.  I remarked on how much I enjoyed all my Mexican neighbors who moved to my block and all he could relate to was all the gang and drug activity related to his policing of Hispanic neighborhoods.
     Not for a moment did I think this was blind racism.  After all, he had been married to a Hispanic woman and was never one to throw around racial epithets.  But the years of having different experiences and forming different habits determined how we viewed the same city.  Eventually he had moved out to a farm in Wisconsin to save his nerves and sanity.
     Neil, you have a legitimate point about our not losing the cop's point of view amid the reaction to the Grand Jury's ruling on the death of Eric Garner.  But it is disingenuous for the Second City Cop to say that police officers are merely carrying out the duty to enforce laws that others have passed.  
     It would have been more accurate for him to say that police officers are enforcing the order that we expect them to protect, because it is a physical impossibility for the police to deal with every infraction of the law that takes place.  It always comes down to responding to situations that pose the greatest perceived threat to the public order and to reacting on the spot and by practicing the learned behaviors that are appropriate to the moment and that will be supported by officials after the fact.
     Whether the police like it or not, these behaviors often reflect a much larger context.  They reflect a justice system that has incarcerated way too many blacks, as you pointed out in your column.  They reflect a law enforcement system that has, at least in Chicago, failed to protect poor black neighborhoods from horrendous acts of gun violence.
     The most interesting question, at least to me, is whether the action of the police in the Garner case also reflects the persistence of Jim Crow.  We whites tend to forget how recent Jim Crow laws were on the books, even in the North up to the late 1960s in such forms as protective covenants on real estate.  We also tend to forget that it may take many generations to wean ourselves from the attitudes and habits that provided a basis for the enactment of Jim Crow laws and the deliberate segregation of our city.
     The outrage over Eric Garner is more than "Racial Catharsis No. 342."  What we lost through the Grand Jury decisions in the Eric Garner and the Ferguson cases was the present opportunity to bring to light any of the underlying factors that may have led to the deaths of two unarmed black men at the hands of white policemen. We badly need these opportunities.  That is because the current outrage also expresses a hidden shame in our body politic that it is 2014 and we are still fighting the Civil War.
     The wisest response I have heard to the two recent incidents came from two African American journalists, one old and one young.  They both said that they were surprised, but not shocked, by the Grand Jury verdicts.  They also said that the fight for equality is a long, long struggle and this is just another milepost.  Many miles to go.
     As for my old cop friend and me, we just shook our heads and wondered how we had such different perceptions of the city in which we both had grown up.  We went on to the next topic of conversation, as if to say, not in our generation.
                                                                   –Tom Golz

And then there was this:

     I am a Black man. I agree with you article 100%. And I believe that other Black folk will suffer the most from this latest round of highly emotional, explosively-charged mass hysteria. I see a complete ignoring of facts. I wonder, when the police powers/functions are good and nullified, who will protect me from my fellow anarchist Black brother? You see,    Blacks victimize Blacks more than any other race.
     Forget that we are extra cautious and vigilant when we walk in our own communities, often afraid when someone walks to close.
     I watched that Ferguson stuff. Now this giant of a guy strong armed a store owner. He took what he wanted. He showed no stealth when he left the store, he walked out in the open. Now, I was always taught to weigh out all the potential consequences of your behavior and choose what you could live with. I would've never challenged a cop with a gun after I robbed a store, nor would I have walked down the middle of the street once I robbed the store. I would've made my escape in the shadows. The audacity.
     Adrenaline high, I just strong armed a store and took what I want, I could take on a cop with a gun. WRONG!
     My mother said, "Boy. Some lessons cost you. And some a lot."
     I'd prefer racist police than to let some ignorant thugs who would love to run things, be in charge.
     A fine time for White American to rally for a cause. It would cause a state of anomie in my neighborhood if they are successful. It doesn't make our neighbor any less the example of what's wrong.
                                                                         —Sherman Johnson 

What about the cops' side of the story?

     

     So when does somebody speak up for the police? 

 Believe me, I have no interest in being that person. It’s a lose-lose proposition. 

 The public — in one long howl of outrage, based on two fatal encounters between young black men and police officers, in Ferguson, Missouri and New York City — won’t appreciate having the perspective of the bad guys of the moment defended, even a little. 

 The cops — a closed-rank echo chamber if ever there were — sure don’t want the support of the media, whom they universally despise, and particularly not from me. 

 And, to complete the circle — making it, then, a lose-lose-lose situation — I don’t want to do it. Not to say the issue is unimportant — it is important, particularly if you are one of the African-Americans killed by excessive police force. But if I were to start listing the huge, festering issues facing black America: lack of capital, lack of jobs, bad schools, bad health care — it would be a while before we even got to the legal system skewed against them, incarcerating black men unfairly en masse, and we’d have to list a few more pressing judicial wrongs before we even got around to cops killing folk.

 But hey, I understand, public attention is not parceled out coolly by the Jedi Council based on objective analysis of our most pressing problems. Debate flashes and strobes, echoing off rare emotional episodes, and one video is worth a thousand studies.

 Back to the cops.
    When I set out to write today's column, I figured it was high time I joined in the clamor. You can only blather on so long about obits and Santa letters while the nation is going through Racial Catharsis No. 342 without feeling a little superfluous.
     Not that I was eager to swan dive into Ferguson, with my white-guy naivete. Pundit comments on the situation have tended toward the painfully obvious (one New York Times star began a column "We Americans are a nation divided," and ended, "There are no easy solutions. But let's talk.") Well, duh.
     But I thought I had an interesting twist. I'd begin the column, "You don't need me to tell you that cops are angry and racist; they'll tell you so themselves," then hopped onto that mighty online river of anonymous police anger and bile, Second City Cop. I figured I would pluck out a few of the more bitter blasts of thin blue line contempt, vastly familiar to anyone who has ever visited the site, probably the most public face of the Chicago Police Department, given the reactive, we'll-be-under-this-rock-if-you-can-find-us stance that the administration takes.
     I started reading Friday' post, headlined, "Protests Over What Exactly?"

     "Then there's the fact of the deceased weighing 350 pounds, his extensive heart disease, his asthma, the fact that he was able to yell not once, not twice, but TEN times that he couldn't breathe - if you can yell, you can breathe, you're just wasting the breath fighting. Oh, and he didn't die of 'choking,' he died of a heart attack an hour later. But those facts don't get reported on in the mainstream media."

     Hmm. I paused. SSC is correct, sort of. The cops sitting on Eric Garner's chest didn't help, but it isn't as if he was strangled.
     He quotes a reader:
     ". . . we actually pay them [the police] to use force when a law-breaking suspect (even one breaking a trivial law) resists arrest. That is the job we've given them."
     That also makes sense.
     "To say this guy is guilty of murder or manslaughter seems to me to be a case of scapegoating the people we've tasked with implementing a policy that we have imposed ourselves . . . If trivial laws should not provide grounds for arrest, We should change the laws to say so."
     To which Second City Cop says: "The bottom line—if you don't want cops enforcing the law, then stop passing laws and telling the police to enforce them. When arrested, you don't get to resist arrest. Period. The law says so. You resist, there are rules in place to overcome your resistance. You are not a 'jury of one' deciding what laws apply to you. Cops are authorized by the duly elected authority to overcome resistance."
     You can debate whether that is true, but it struck me as an opinion worth airing. We are a nation of laws, and we call on police to enforce those laws. They don't always do it in a pretty fashion, but to judge all police by these public incidents is to make the same mistake as those cops who treat every black person as a thug who hasn't yet reached for his weapon. So to echo my betters at The New York Times, yes, we need a dialogue about all this. But you can't have a conversation if only one side is doing all the talking.

God of the car keys

 

Rev. Otis Moss

                                        And almost every one, when age,

                                          Disease, or sorrows strike him,

                                        Inclines to think there is a God,

                                          Or something very like Him.

                                                                                      —Arthur Clough

   "So what's your connection to all this?" I said, my standard opening line at weddings of strangers and luncheons such as the one I found myself at last week. I was standing awkwardly at a large round table, waiting for the program to begin and people to sit down.
     "Well, I'm a man of faith, and I care about the environment," he said, explaining that he's highly placed at  the Department of Natural Resources. "And you?"
      "Well," I said, not really thinking. "I'm not a man of faith, and I've never cared much about the environment. But Rev. Sauder asked me to come." 
     Rev. Brian Sauder, a Mennonite minister, and executive director of something called Faith in Place. (Slogan: "Stronger Congregations for a Sustainable World.") He had invited me to their "annual celebration and fundraiser" and not having anything better to do, I shrugged and went.
     The Chicago-based group, as best I could glean by the speeches, attempts a heretofore unimagined union of religious faith and environmentalism. Usually those two forces are at odds. Christianity's basic take on the Earth and its riches is that God gave the whole ball of wax to mankind to ruin however we please and it's all going to come to a fiery end any moment anyway, which is a good thing, because then the blessed goes to heaven, where nobody worries about recycling. Judaism is fairly mum on conservation too—the environment is what you scurry through to get to synagogue—though some of the newer, touchier-feelier offshoots, such as Reconstructionism, try to correct that by occasionally holding a service outdoors.
      But this group not only promotes the idea that religious values are environmental values, but are gathering all faiths under the same tent in their efforts to heal the world physically while nurturing it spiritually. Christians. Muslims. Jews. The invocation was delivered by Dr. Manish Shah, of the Jain Society of Metropolitan Chicago—Jainism is an ancient Indian faith that stresses nonviolence toward all living things, so he fit right in. Dr. Shah brought his mother up to deliver the benediction he had known as a child. 
     The main speaker was Rev. Doc. Otis Moss III, senior pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ on West 95th Street, who spoke of putting a green roof on the church (some old school parishioners wondered aloud at the barber shop why he was putting a putting green on top of the church) updating Malcolm X's "by any means necessary" in to "by any greens necessary," and was so forceful and entertaining that I was tempted to go up to him after and say, "Is there still time to get you to run for mayor in February? Because we need someone to scare Rahm." Maybe next time.
     The luncheon—vegetarian, natch—ended, and I never really got the chance to talk to my host, Rev. Sauder, which was too bad. He has a degree in natural resources and environmental sciences from the University of Illinois, a masters in religion from the Urbana Theological Seminary and and MBA, which makes him not quite your stereotypical Bible thumping preacher from Tazewell County, where he grew up. Some other time perhaps.
     On my way out the door, an interesting occurrence. I hurried to the coat closet, but my raincoat wasn't there. I went through each hanger carefully, Once, twice, three times. It still wasn't there. My good Burberry raincoat. Ah, but there was a second closet -- I had never been to the hall before, on the second floor of UBS Tower. Relieved, I went to that closet. The coat wasn't there either. Meanwhile, another man arrived and announced that he couldn't find his coat. "No kindness goes unpunished," he said. Having company seemed to confirm that we had been robbed. A spree. I felt a sinking feeling, an awful, is-this-happening? pit of the stomach feeling. A big sign on the closet said, in essence, "If you lose your coat, tough." I would have to go report my loss to Rev. Sauder. That seemed necessary, but really, what could he do about it? The poor man would be embarrassed. Why had I come to this at all? I looked one more time. The number coats were thinning out. Nothing on the floor. Maybe somebody had taken it by mistake...nah. That wouldn't happen to two coats. The do-gooders have been fleeced while listening to talks about bees and flowers.
    I was slowly walking back into the hall to deliver the bad news to the minister when I noticed a third closet. There my coat was. I put it on with joy.
     "Thank you God!" I exuded, out loud, quite the departure from my attitude at the beginning of lunch. I smiled at myself, recognizing how, in moments of duress, or relief, suddenly the long-scorned deity takes form before your eyes. As I once told my older son: "When you find yourself in jail—and trust me here—suddenly there's a God." I suppose I do believe, but in what George Carlin called "The God of the Car Keys." When you lose something, it's, "please God, help me find it!" Or, I suppose, when you find something you thought you had lost, He's the guy you thank, despite yourself.
   

Saturday fun activity: Where IS this?

     Now this is strange. It kinds looks like a bank vault, but it's not. Or a crypt of some kind, which is also way off. It's in the private zones of a semi-public building, far underground, and that's all I should say, because you guys have been nailing these so consistently.
     Better for me to talk about today's prize, a bag of whole bean, full-bodied, richly wonderful Bubbly Creek Coffee from the good folks at Bridgeport Coffee. I've been drinking this stuff hand-over-fist: it's knocked Cafe du Monde right out of the No. 1 spot, just by its consistent drinkability and robust wonderfulness.
     You know the drill. Place your guesses below. Good luck, though at this point you should be wishing that to me.

Rolling Stone has second thoughts

University of Virginia

    I've been meaning to point this out for a while, as this whole rape-on-campus dialogue grew, and today's announcement from Rolling Stone seems as good a time as any. 

      If the problem were professors’ children being kidnapped and held for ransom, nobody would talk about the ability of universities to investigate and solve these cases. Nobody would demand they develop systems for better analyzing ransom notes. We would look to the police. Such crimes are their responsibility.
     Yet when the crime is women being raped on campus, however, for some reason colleges themselves are expected to step in as surrogates for the cops, who are thought to be ... what? Too insensitive, too public, too something? I’ve never read an adequate explanation. Yes, police departments sometimes mishandle sexual assault, but given the ways schools routinely minimize, cover up and botch rape investigations, or fail to punish perpetrators when they do determine guilt, it’s hard to imagine how they could really do a worse job of it.
     The University of Virginia became embroiled in scandal last month after publication of a Rolling Stone story about “Jackie,” a freshman who was raped, supposedly, in 2012. It is an example of what happens when crimes are not reported when they occur. The details, as published by the magazine, are shocking. No boozy seduction that shifted into coercion, but a brutal three-hour gang rape, allegedly, by seven members of the Phi Psi fraternity, that left Jackie bleeding and dazed.
     She did not go to the hospital. She did not call police. Her friends talked her out of it.
     “We’ll never be allowed into any frat party again,” one says. Astounding.
     After the story, “A Rape on Campus” by Sabrina Rubin Erdely, was published in October, repercussions were swift — bad national publicity prods inert schools into action, another reason these crimes must be reported. The school suspended its Greek program while it investigated the charges.
     Since then, holes were punched in the story. The frat did not actually hold any events the weekend of the supposed party. People she had named as members were not, in fact, members of the frat.
     On Friday, Rolling Stone stepped back.
     “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,” editor Will Dana wrote in a statement. “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.”
     A little late to be taking this seriously. Rolling Stone (and I should say, for full disclosure, I wrote a number of articles for the magazine in the 1990s) had a duty to find out exactly what had happened before going with the story, not afterward. Apologizing now for causing a fuss is lame.
     “Discrepancies” do not mean a story is made up. You would expect a person undergoing such trauma to get a few things wrong. Another reason why it’s important for them to a) call the police and b) go to the hospital and collect forensic evidence.
     Without calling the police, the risk of crimes going unpunished, or ignored, rises. Because we live in a country where people are presumed innocent until proven guilty, and we would not want to live in a place where that wasn’t true. While most rape accusations are not fabricated, some are, enough that we insist that the accused get their day in court, or their say in an article tarring a fraternity and a university.
     This is not to let schools off the hook. They have a responsibility to see that students who are found to have committed these crimes suffer repercussions. One major reason women are reluctant to report rape is that, even when the case is solid, all too often no one is punished but themselves, for having spoken out. That has to change.
     Yet, this story did not appear in a vacuum, but in a political setting where the rights of victims, and supposed victims, are trumping the rights of people being accused, both truly and, at times, falsely. Politically correct dating rituals also creep into the issue, muddying it further.
     Now the threat is that the pendulum will go the other way. That frat louts and colleges under the gun to provide safer environments will heave a sigh of relief and say, “See, it wasn’t true.”
     That is a mistake. First, this case could still be true. Second, even if this particular crime did not occur, rapes regularly happen on campuses, and colleges must do a better job of teaching students how to react: by calling the police, by going a to hospital.