Lena Dunham and Barry the Rapist

What is it with famous Leftists that causes them to concoct fantasies in their autobiographies?

Obama made up a "composite" white New York girlfriend in his 1995 autobiography Dreams From My Father.

He wrote a detailed account of a fight the couple had after seeing a play. Obama's "girlfriend" began to cry.

One night I took her to see a new play by a black playwright. It was a very angry play, but very funny. Typical black American humor. The audience was mostly black, and everybody was laughing and clapping and hollering like they were in church. After the play was over, my friend started talking about why black people were so angry all the time. I said it was a matter of remembering—nobody asks why Jews remember the Holocaust, I think I said—and she said that’s different, and I said it wasn’t, and she said that anger was just a dead end. We had a big fight, right in front of the theater. When we got back to the car she started crying. She couldn’t be black, she said. She would if she could, but she couldn’t. She could only be herself, and wasn’t that enough.

This was a crock. Obama relayed this dramatic racial vignette in his autobiography. This wasn't a novel. This was part of his life story, except it wasn't.

This "why are black people so angry?" episode was Obama's fantasy, because it didn't happen.

It's telling that Obama would spin this weird racial tale. Why include this fictional account in his AUTOBIOGRAPHY?

Like Obama, Leftist Lena Dunham's truth-telling in her book, Not That Kind of Girl, has been scrutinized.

Dunham has been getting a lot of traction from revealing that she had been raped in college by a conservative named Barry. The rapist was not a liberal. No, he was a conservative, waging his personal War on Women. When pressed about the incident, Dunham stuck by her story.

John Nolte, Breitbart, documents the collapse of Dunham's "rape by a Republican" claim.

Now, Dunham's publisher is backing off the accusations she laid out in her autobiography.

From TheWrap, the statement from Random House, Dunham's publisher:

"As indicated on the copyright page of ‘Not That Kind of Girl’ by Lena Dunham, some names and identifying details in the book have been changed. The name ‘Barry’ referenced in the book is a pseudonym,” the publisher told TheWrap exclusively. “Random House, on our own behalf and on behalf of our author, regrets the confusion that has led attorney Aaron Minc to post on GoFundMe on behalf of his client, whose first name is Barry.”

Apparently, Dunham thought she would be free to make false accusations and not be held accountable.

Since her fake scene of rape by a Republican fit the Leftist narrative, Dunham likely assumed she could lie with impunity.

Eugene Volokh, the Washington Post, writes:

Appalling. The book wasn’t a novel; it was a memoir, offered to readers as such. The copyright page, which I suspect few people read, does say that “Some names and identifying details have been changed,” but it certainly doesn’t tell people which ones.

Indeed, early in the book, when she mentions a boyfriend of hers and labels him Jonah, she adds a footnote: “Name changed to protect the truly innocent.” Reasonable readers, it seems to me, reading the rest of the memoir, would assume that “Barry” — whose name wasn’t accompanied with any such footnote — was actually named Barry. Even if not all readers would so conclude, many would, and quite understandably so.

How could Dunham and Random House do this? How could an author and a publisher — again, of a self-described memoir, not a work of fiction — describe a supposed rape by a person, give a (relatively rare) first name and enough identifying details that readers could easily track the person down, and not even mention that “Barry” wasn’t this person’s real name?

It is appalling.

Volokh points out:

This is going to dog Identifiable Conservative Barry for years to come — for the simple reason that Dunham and Random House published a factual item (the statement that the alleged rapist was named Barry) that

1. they knew
2. was false
3. without stating, clearly and immediately (again, as they had done with regard to another man), that the name was made up.

If Dunham wanted to present a fictional work, she should have done that.

She chose, instead, to tell a lie about a real person.

Again, as with Obama's autobiographical "dream" scenes, Dunham's story reveals a lot about her.

What it reveals is not good at all.