Just because she ran to TMZ with the story to make a few bucks doesn't mean it didn't happen. It means she wanted to make some money off her story. That doesn't mean it's right or wrong, it just is what it is. So to say someone's story is less credible because of that is completely naive. Yet you're basically calling people naive for believing the girl. Well the same can be said for you. You would have to naive to write off what these woman are claiming.
And yes, where there is this much smoke. There is usually fire. You can't dispute that with anything logical.
Just because Matt Walsh's claim that he taped the Rams' SB practice was an obvious attempt to latch onto the Spygate gravy train, that doesn't mean that that didn't happen either, right? I mean, there was plenty of smoke there, so by your reasoning there
must have been fire... right? Seriously, Pats fans, out of everyone, should understand how this works by now. I sincerely have to question the intelligence of any Pats fan who was around for Spygate and still hasn't figured out that you can never take the innuendo reported by agenda-driven rags from agenda-driven sources purely at face value.
Is this Amber Hanley woman lying? I have no idea. She very well might be telling the truth, I don't know. What I do know is that she had a monetary incentive to say something 'newsworthy' about Roethlisberger, she clearly doesn't like the guy, and nobody can fact-check what she said, so she can pretty much say whatever she wants and that's that. I'm not saying that it didn't happen, and I'm not writing anyone off. I'm just pointing out that it's pretty foolish to take TMZ-reported innuendo that has virtually nothing to do with the case at hand as compelling evidence one way or the other. Maybe it happened and maybe it didn't, but if that's enough to convict the guy in your head, then that really just says an awful lot about you. Personally, I'm going to wait until we actually hear something compelling one way or the other; considering that the alleged victim was hospitalized, there's a very good chance that there will be enough evidence there to make a case of he really did assault her. Until then, let's not jump to conclusions just because we don't like the guy.
What you have here is yet another piece of anecdotal evidence from someone whose credibility we have reasons to doubt. Sometimes people like that turn out to be right (Jose Canseco), and sometimes they turn out to be liars (Duke lacrosse accusers, Matt Walsh). But you can't just take it as true at face value, and even if you could this piece of information tells us nothing that we didn't already know: that Roethlisberger's an idiot, a jerk, and a drunk.
And yes, I'll agree that there's a lot of smoke here. The smoke is that Roethlisberger has already been accused of rape on a separate occasion. The fact that he called a woman a mean name because she didn't want to have sex with him is not smoke. It's him being a jerk. And once again, I'd point you to Matt Walsh for a great example of "where there's smoke, there's fire" in all of its ******ed glory.
