If you don’t know who Garry Trudeau is, that’s hardly important. What is important is that, whether because of the lead time required to put out a newspaper strip, Trudeau’s ignorance of current events, or a simple unwillingness to let go of a narrative that serves him politically, yesterday he published this strip on the UVA gang rape that wasn’t.

The names of the characters don’t matter, because Trudeau is incapable of writing a character who doesn’t sound like Trudeau:

The punch line is that it didn’t happen. The punch line is that Trudeau wanted it to have happened, so he’d have something to scold America about. The punch line is that once again, reality has passed him by.

The punch line is that Garry Trudeau is a dinosaur.

That’s a lot of punch lines. Anyway, to him, it doesn’t matter whether this event really happened. To him, none of the people whose lives have been turned upside-down are human beings. The point is to put the phrase “frat boy monster” in the same comic strip with the phrase “gang rape.” Any excuse will do, even one with no factual basis.

I do have to give the man some credit, though: He hangs a lampshade on his notorious ineptitude with punchlines, or with any sort of humor whatsoever.

Has Trudeau been following the aftermath to this thoroughly discredited Rolling Stone story? Does he realize it has completely fallen to pieces? Will he produce a follow-up strip apologizing for his libel? It’s possible, I suppose. Maybe Garry Trudeau’s ego isn’t quite as overweening as he’s led us all to expect.

Or maybe he’s a UVA Truther.