HBO's "Girls" star Lena Dunham has been doing a lot more apologizing than acting or writing these days, since her autobiography, "Not That Kind Of Girl" is reported to have falsely identified her alleged "rapist" from college and plunged her and her publisher into legal hot water.
Dunham claimed in her book that while attending Oberlin College she was raped while stoned on alcohol, cocaine and Xanax by a Republican named "Barry" who wore purple cowboy boots, had a lush mustache and hosted a campus radio show called "Real Talk With Jimbo."
However, when Brietbart began digging into Dunham's story, they discovered there was a campus conservative named Barry who attended Oberlin at the same time as Dunham and easily could be identified as, or mistaken for, the man Dunham was describing, but he insisted he had never met her and the radio show did not exist,
Mediaite reports.
Barry hired an attorney and went after Dunham and her publisher, Random House, funding his legal action with a request on a crowd-sourcing site to raise money.
Random House backed off, stating that the "Barry" name was a pseudonym and they "regret the confusion" that led to the lawsuit and offered to pay "Barry's" legal fees and include a disclaimer in future copies and online versions of the book.
In a
statement on Buzzfeed, liberal darling Dunham, who gained fame on "Girls" by appearing casually naked several times, admitted: "To be very clear, 'Barry' is a pseudonym, not the name of the man who assaulted me, and any resemblance to a person with this name is an unfortunate and surreal coincidence. I am sorry about all he has experienced," adding, "but I don't believe I am to blame."
Dunham even admitted in her book, "I am an unreliable narrator,"
Fox News reports.
Not good enough for "Barry" and his attorney, Aaron Minc, who wrote on their
fund appeal site: "We have been contacting Random House and Ms. Dunham since October 6, 2014, seeking an apology and exoneration. Our repeated pleas to handle this quietly and with dignity were met with indifference. It wasn’t until more than $20,000 was raised for Barry’s legal fund — and the attention of John Nolte of Breitbart News Network — that Random House responded yesterday."
They stated: "We will continue to keep the GoFundMe campaign active to raise money for survivors of sexual assaults and for Barry’s ongoing legal expenses until we receive an apology from Ms. Dunham and both Ms. Dunham and Random House have taken all appropriate steps to clear Barry’s name and restore the damage caused to his reputation."
Fox News noted that Dunham received a $3.7 million advance for her book.
In fact, whether the incident was rape at all seems in question, since Dunham states that when she discovered during sex that "Barry" had removed his condom, "I’m not sure whether I can’t stop it or I don’t want to,"
The Guardian reports.
"What exactly did “Barry’s” political affiliation have to do with anything," Mediaite asked. "If the focus is on the dangers of doing drugs (Xanax, coke) and the result of making it difficult to resist a sexual encounter — as Dunham cautions in the book — does it really matter if it's a Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Independent exploiting the situation in the form of rape?
"Then again, Dunham has likened Republicans to Nazis before."