Fox contributor: 'Rolling Stone' part of liberal plot to 'romanticize being a victim' of rape

Radio host and Fox News contributor Tammy Bruce argued on Monday that Rolling Stone magazine had bungled the University of Virginia rape report because liberals were more concerned about trying to "romanticize being a victim."

On Monday's edition of Happening Now, liberal radio host Alan Colmes noted that a suitemate of the woman at the center of Rolling Stone's controversial story had said over the weekend that the rape was "not a hoax," even if the magazine got some of the facts wrong in its reporting.

Colmes added that statistics showed that one out of five women had experienced attempted or completed sexual assault before graduating from college.

"We can't ignore that," he said. "And we shouldn't try to make the women the victims here because of one person and what they did or did not do."

But Fox News host Jon Scott dismissed the argument, saying that "even that statistic is coming under question."

"Why even make this a left-right issue?" Colmes wondered. "And by the way, the publication that broke it and said Rolling Stone is wrong, The Washington Post, is not exactly a conservative publication."

Bruce, however, insisted that it was partisan issue.

"It really is about what left-wing media, what mainstream media does," she declared. "You saw what was supposed to be an investigative story turn into a human interest story, and effectively call then into question the nature of what this woman was claiming. That's the problem."

"This is why investigative reporting is almost dead in this country, and the damage that's done, almost a romanticizing of victimhood," Bruce continued. "You know, authentic feminists, we know violence against women happens, we want it to stop, but there has not been a movement over the last decade or so like the 'war on women' meme to romanticize being a victim. And I think that's equally as dangerous."

"When you're on a campus like that, a woman, perhaps, or a victim is going to adjust themselves to what it is you want to hear."

Watch the video below from Fox News' Happening Now, broadcast Dec. 8, 2014.

(h/t: Media Matters)