The Anscombe Affair, Part III: How We Knew He Was Faking
Some reasons L'Affaire Anscombe seemed fishy from the start:
- Nava claimed to have received a threat that read: "ONE MORE ARTICLE AND YOU WON'T LIVE TO SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY." Has anyone ever gotten something like this? It's straight out of a D movie, and the sort of thing only an op/ed writer would dream up. Because really, nobody but you, your roommate, and your mom are reading those Prince columns.
- This quote: "For several days I lived in fear of saying, writing or even thinking anything controversial in class or informally among my friends." Here Nava implies that some violent gay mafia is in cahoots with the thought police. Hello, psychosis.
- The email threats came from a computer in Firestone library, where Nava was placed at the time. Furthermore, there were two threats: the second one followed after the first one was relegated to the recipients' spam folder. How would a mythical violent "sexual liberationist" know that the first email had been rejected unless he had sent it to himself?
- No self-respecting thug would use an Orangina bottle in a streetfight. Broken bottles are for barfights, and even then, it's gotta be 6% alcohol at least.
- Nava's totally defiant/bombastic tone throughout his supposed ordeal. If someone threatened us - and then proceeded to kick the crap out of us - we'd probably keep quiet for just a little bit. Instead, Nava's immediate post-hospital reaction was to speak to the Daily Princetonian. "I'm still committed to having the beliefs that I do, and I hope that Princeton will show these two characters that intimidation doesn't work," he told them. This was literally hours after he claimed to have endured a savage, concussion-inducing beating. Why not stay at the hospital for a bit and think things over? Maybe take a nap and lick your wounds before calling a press conference?
- Nava was attacked off campus, in a location he reached via a "borrowed car." If, as he speculated, the attackers were from the university, then they would have had to be following him in their own car. But on a closed, car-less campus like Princeton, this is near impossible. Since Nava's vehicle was not his own, a parking lot stake-out scenario would be unlikely, as any pursuers would not have known which car to wait by and follow.
- You don't "black out" in the middle of a beating only to wake up minutes later -in the middle of the same beating - but without any really serious injuries.
- The University's delayed reaction. Someone at Public Safety obviously knew what was up.
- The persistent rumor - now confirmed - that Nava self-vandalized his room at Groton and wrote "DIE FAGS." He was expelled for this, but somehow Princeton decided it still wanted him around.
Nava admits to beating himself up in a just-published Prince report here, where the Prince notes "It has not yet been confirmed that he also fabricated those earlier threats." So cute that they're still giving him the benefit of the doubt. University officials have not decided what to do with Nava (punishment or institutionalization?), and no charges have been filed. But there's a lesson here for the Admissions Office: Next time an insane kid from boarding school decides to write "DIE FAGS" on his own room (and gets kicked out of said boarding school for doing so), it might be best to rescind his acceptance.
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December 17th, 2007 at 10:31 pm
hindsight is sooo 20/20
December 17th, 2007 at 10:41 pm
needs to go. it would be sweet if princeton was able to commit him.
December 17th, 2007 at 10:59 pm
Conservative self-hatred is a bitch.
December 17th, 2007 at 11:09 pm
FIGHT CLUB!!!
December 17th, 2007 at 11:18 pm
first rule
December 17th, 2007 at 11:26 pm
is that you do not talk about fight club
December 17th, 2007 at 11:30 pm
let this be a lesson to the admissions committee:
batshit crazy once–batshit crazy forever.
December 18th, 2007 at 12:02 am
When I first heard of this story, as a conservative Ivy Leaguer, I felt offended that one of my fellow conservatives would act just like a liberal by making this shit up.
But now that I looked at this case further, it seems clear that the guy is a liberal trying to make conservatives look like idiots (and succeeding). Why else would he have done the Die Faggot hoax at Groton? You should look at his history to find out his true political motives.
December 18th, 2007 at 12:11 am
Yes, he sabotaged his career and princeton and potentially ruined his future just to make conservatives look bad in front of a few readers of an ivy league blog. And you are not displaying typical conservative, self-riteous paranoia. Everyone really is out to get you because you are so right about everything.
December 18th, 2007 at 12:31 am
Ivy Leaguer:
I think Nava’s a genuine, bona fide conservative… check out the adoreable tale of his conversion to Mormonism (in which he mentions how his family was gushing over his personal improvement… they must be so proud now!) http://books.google.com/books?id=IVHwjFL7cbkC&pg=PA173&lpg=PA173&dq=francisco+nava&source=web&ots=r0Dgi0JRwd&sig=PlKLyrju-BGu9bBt7f5zOGnt7dI
Besides, liberals don’t need to beat themselves silly to make conservatives look like idiots… that’s why you have Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, and yourself.
December 18th, 2007 at 12:43 am
WOW
All you need to know:
he CONVERTED to Mormonism
This guy is just looking to make noise in everything that he does.
To him, any attention is good attention.
December 18th, 2007 at 1:09 am
Hey!
The Daily Princetonian has a VERY wide readership, I’m sure more than Ivy Gate. EVERYONE (students, alum, parents, non-Princeton students) reads the Prince, because simply put, we rock.
It’s unfair to mock the Prince for publishing the first story about Nava since your own bloggers published exactly the same thing and then tried to make it appear as if you knew everything all along.
December 18th, 2007 at 1:20 am
Man, now that I know he’s a Morman I see why he opted to include the detail of being beaten with Orangina bottles: that shit’s got caffeine and taurine in it!
Everything one needs to know about the stark contrast between practice and rhetoric of the religious and others belonging to forms of organized intolerance is contained in his little Morman make-believe conversion puff piece:
“Now I am a Morman young man…. My words are cleaner, my disposition is calmer, and my love for God is greater.”
Sucks to be whatever he was before.
Though it does kinda all make sense. If Joseph Smith can invent a batshit religion in the late 19th century (not to mention L. Ron Hubbard in the 20th), why can’t this guy invent his own martyrdom now?
December 18th, 2007 at 1:24 am
Welcome to the age of new media, sweetheart. The statement that “EVERYONE” (including non-Princeton students, really??) reads a campus paper is, um, probably just plain wrong (and unless you can pull up some readership stats I’ll take out the “probably”). IvyGate pulled a bitch move by publishing this post, and no one actually believes that they deliberately sat on their brilliant analysis until the story officially got busted (that’s not the IvyGate way). But it’s likely that they have a higher readership than any Ivy paper (and I include in that the Crimson, YDN and Spec, all of which are likely to have higher readership than the Prince).
December 18th, 2007 at 1:46 am
Depends on what you mean by readership. I have no idea what IvyGate’s average hit count is—probably on par with the student papers, since its format lends itself to fewer click-throughs—but it’s conceivable that IG’s regular readership consists of a moderate slice of all 8 undergraduate bodies, whereas each Ivy daily is probably read by a larger percentage of its respective undergrad body PLUS alums, faculty, admins, grad students, parents, etc. Could go either way—I really don’t know.
Regardless, IvyGate looks characteristically hypocritical and douchey when they pretend like they WERE SO COMPLETELY 100% SURE THE WHOLE TIME that this was a hoax. Yeah, it reeked of that from the start, but they gave it a deadpan reception on the first post and said shit like, “with a view to the Duke Lacrosse case, we should reserve judgment until the facts can be conclusively established.” I don’t disagree with that sentiment, but stop creaming yourselves over your supposed foresight and admit that you were in the wait-and-see camp with the rest of us. You look stupid trying to act like a legit journalistic source one day and, well, a blog the next.
December 18th, 2007 at 1:50 am
Sorry for the multiple posts, my server was having issues…
@ Proof: There was no need to bring up his religious affiliation- that was a very disrespectful post.
December 18th, 2007 at 1:51 am
Has someone from the IvyGate technical team (if there still is one) looked into why the comments take so long to register? Seems to have been that way for ages, and it produces a ridiculous number of duplicate posts.
December 18th, 2007 at 2:12 am
religious people are fucked in the head. doesn’t matter if they fake concussions or not. and i agree with “oh the dignity”. this guy actually converted to a religion conjured up by a known con man who was visited by angels in a forest and read some divine words with the aid of magic glasses.
December 18th, 2007 at 2:22 am
He has brought shame upon the University. The consequences should be great indeed. Ah well, now when an employer does a google search on him, they will find everything. Sigh..
December 18th, 2007 at 2:38 am
Tasnim, you’re just digging a bigger hole for your pub. No one takes the Prince seriously except for its writers and their parents. Distributing it all around campus does not constitute readership. The best report of the enigma that is Francisco Nava has come from http://www.firstthings.com/, not the Prince, and I’m a left-of-center Princeton alum who is loathe to promote blogs that spout Robbie George over the free press. And, by the way, comparing IvyGate (a blog) to the Prince (a… newspaper) is, well, a mistake on your part.
Also, “religious people are fucked in the head”? Really? That sounds tolerant of you. Just keep digging.
December 18th, 2007 at 5:04 am
Joamiq,
I think you’re wrong. A lot of people have respect for the Prince, possibly more off campus than on. Not sure when you graduated from Princeton, but as someone who’s been reading the Prince pretty regularly for the last few years but with only distant personal connections to it (friends of friends who work for the Prince), it’s become more respected and journalistically serious than it was back when I was a pre-frosh.
I think that now that the Prince has some new articles up, it does a much better job covering the issues than First Things, not to mention that the blog is being fed all its info from Robbie George and Girgis and the rest of Anscombe. Of course they’re gonna get stuff first when they’re conveying the same ideology.
And, yeah, I think the Prince, the Crimson and the other decent Ivy papers probably get way more hits than this blog.
That’s all.
December 18th, 2007 at 5:05 am
look at the filename of this page:
why_we_knew_he_was_faking_but_were_too_freaked_out_to_say_it.html
hah.
December 18th, 2007 at 9:13 am
hey haters -
@tasnim. remember when we wrote this?
“There is much in L’Affaire Anscombe to excite speculation. To be blunt, many already think it’s a hoax. This is because there are books to be written on the various puzzling details and suspicious turns-of-events which riddle the whole saga (I will lay out some of what’s troubling on this site tomorrow).”
that was ON SATURDAY, before the First Things post had come out, before the Fransisco had recanted ANYTHING on the interweb. And the Prince is not *respected*, no, not really anywhere, not that IvyGate is either.
December 18th, 2007 at 9:20 am
Tasnim: The point of bringing up his conversion from Catholic to Mormon isn’t to say that all Catholics and Mormons are crazy. But think about the thought process that goes into that conversion–Catholic doctrine not so reasonable, that stuff doesn’t really speak to me… but Mormonism… now that shit makes sense!
December 18th, 2007 at 9:35 am
Yeah, sorry to break it to you, but the Prince is pretty far from “respected,” at least in the non-Princeton community. It’s in the middle tier of Ivy papers, along with the Spec. Good effort, and credit for not being a tabloid, but needs improvement in terms of design and reporting quality.
The lower tier consists of the Brown Herald, the Dartmouth, and the Cornell sun (though you could possibly make an argument for putting the D in the middle set). The upper tier is the Yale Daily, the Crimson, and the Daily Penn (by no means perfect, but three of the better college dailies in the nation).
The Prince certainly has potential, but simply put, you don’t rock. Sorry.
December 18th, 2007 at 9:43 am
Dude, you are so full of IT. Simply put, the only “lower tier” thing here is your mother’s ass.
December 18th, 2007 at 9:52 am
Yeah, you guys are pretty sweet. Especially you, “Oh, the indignity.” Indignity indeed – not even worth the effort of orthographic or factual accuracy, eh?
December 18th, 2007 at 10:56 am
Batshit-crazy students, computer-hacking admissions officials, and a megalomaniacalstudent newspaper but… Hey! Whitman Hall sure is pretty!
Princeton’s like that nice quiet cousin who turns out to be a hardcore undercover freakazoid. No wonder the CIA loves the place.
December 18th, 2007 at 11:18 am
Yes, we remember when you wrote it.
We also remember the days when IvyGate would make more than one post a day *gasp!* if that’s what it needed to do to get the information out there.
You still haven’t explained why you guys sat on the juicy stuff–other than “being freaked out,” which is a little ridiculous for a blog that made its reputation by the sweat of Aleksey Vayner’s brow, with all the threats of litigation he made.
Of course, I know, those were different times. Times when being an IvyGate editor meant deliberately breaking stuff rather than working for a toothless, degenerate Gawker rehash to get a resume line for experience with “new media” without pissing off anyone to whom that resume might have to be submitted.
December 18th, 2007 at 11:32 am
true dat. ivy kids suck meaner dick then me if theres a sweet job prospeck in it. but shiiiit, i wrote 4 da prince, what do i no?
December 18th, 2007 at 11:35 am
Wow, that’s a low blow dude. IvyGate has no obligation to satisfy your schadenfreude cravings for ivy league gossip multiple times a day. Why not just take a page from the book of Nava and create your own news, then they will have to post multiple times a day?
December 18th, 2007 at 11:37 am
Yes, we remember when you wrote it.
We also remember the days when IvyGate would make more than one post a day *gasp!* if that’s what it needed to do to get the information out there.
You still haven’t explained why you guys sat on the juicy stuff–other than “being freaked out,” which is a little ridiculous for a blog that made its reputation by the sweat of Aleksey Vayner’s brow, with all the threats of litigation he made.
Of course, I know, those were different times. Times when being an IvyGate editor meant deliberately breaking stuff rather than working for a toothless, degenerate Gawker rehash to get a resume line for experience with “new media” without pissing off anyone to whom that resume might have to be submitted.
December 18th, 2007 at 11:42 am
obviously, tasnim is not the one who said “religious people are fucked in the head”, @tasnim did.
December 18th, 2007 at 12:27 pm
I’m not a particularly avid reader of either (does such a thing exist?), but I think I’d put the Spec above YDN in terms of general readability and quality. I might even put them on par, except that the YDN is so up its own ass (even among the college paper crowd) that the staff makes itself look especially ridiculous when they, you know, do student-papery things like run masturbatory staff editorials about the craft of journalism or publish borderline racist submissions.
December 18th, 2007 at 2:17 pm
Whoever said that this Nava guy was obviously a liberal working from the inside to destroy conservatism: you are awesome. That is EXACTLY what I thought when I read this, but I didn’t think anyone else would be able to figure it out.
The Ivy League has a habit of producing “conservatives” (liberal spies) which exist only for the purpose of making the right wing look awful (look at the poor, poor Harvard Salient), and I think the fact this guy was admitted to Princeton shows that- who knows?- this whole this was a conspiracy years in the making.
Also, I resent that a religion as completely insane as LDS/Mormonism/whatever is being lumped together with Catholicism. You guys should really do some research on both of them before claiming they’re both equally insane.
December 18th, 2007 at 3:52 pm
Vote Frannie for Class President! Wait, don’t. Because she’s clearly batshit.
December 18th, 2007 at 4:33 pm
“…this was a conspiracy years in the making”
Yeah… you probably shouldn’t be judging what’s insane and what isn’t.
December 18th, 2007 at 9:06 pm
That’s what conservatives usually do – pass it off as a liberal conspiracy. Witness to date the Foley scandal, the Abranoff affair, and numerous other cases over the last few years.
December 18th, 2007 at 11:26 pm
Frances:
Sure, Mormons win: They’re high holy prophet was a con-artist chid molester, and the church was racist until 1978! Yea, it’s a pretty tell-tale sign of mental instability for someone to convert to Mormonism.
But Catholics sure have their share of weird claims (as do all religions): Take for instance that God raped some virgin to beget a son (if he’s so omnipotent, why not make Jesus appear out of thin air instead of making poor Mary pregnant?). Take for instance that Catholics think they should follow dogma set by a man in the vatican selected by other holy men appointed to their positions by other popes.
Come on now, Frances… that stuff is pretty out there, too. Face facts: if you believe something on faith alone, you’re likely wrong.
December 19th, 2007 at 12:59 am
Wrong about Catholicism on so many counts; I’ll avoid the flamebait.
The Pope does not set dogma. People such as those in the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith try to interpret how scripture applies to the modern world. (It’s not unlike how the Talmud relates to the Torah.) And despite what you may have heard, official Church doctrine is that the Pope is human and, therefore, fallible.
You may not believe that faith is for you; but, at least get your facts correct before you promulgate them.
December 19th, 2007 at 9:02 am
comment about mary still stands.
also, explain to me why everyone was hoping the pope would reverse positions on condoms, then. weren’t catholic service organizations hoping the pope would change the policy so they could do what was right without being damned to hell?