Duke Lacrosse - All charges dropped

More sweeping statements…

The media didn’t convict anyone. Show me one article that said these men were flat-out guilty. Yes, some in the media viewed the decision by the other players not living in the house to decline interviews with the police as a sign they weren’t cooperating. That’s what Nifong accused them of at the start. That was part of the uproar on campus as frustrated students demanded the players come forward and tell what they knew. The media dutifully reported all of that. Columnists wrote opinions on that and in retrospect are probably feeling as if they were misled. That happens. A lot of reporters and columnists were misled about WMD in Iraq, too. You can only strive to be right 100 percent of the time. It doesn’t mean you will be.

Some in the media were right about this case from the beginning, from Mike Abrams to Jason Whitlock. The players (more accurately, those around them) also used the media to plead their case and pressure the legal community in North Carolina to scrutinize more closely the actions of the prosecutor. That pressure paid off. So the media worked to their benefit in the end.

Will they always be household names? I don’t know. But I personally think they will always be remembered as the players who were falsely accused of rape. They will be the example used again and again when there appears to be a rush to judgment by prosecutors, media and the public. After all that has happened, it's not such a bad legacy.

 

This is just as short-sighted as Jason Whitlock saying it's no big deal if Imus says something about black people because black people say worse things. If you can't address smaller problems until all the bigger problems are solved, you're never going to accomplish anything.

 

Do you honestly think those guys' lives aren't ruined? And plenty of people in this country are guilty of similarly bad taste — how bout the hundreds of womanizing politicians and coaches we cover — and most of them have never had to go through with this.

If that woman lied about what happened that night, and those guys didn't break any laws, someone should pay. Probably multiple people. I don't know how yet, but can you honestly sit there and type that we shouldn't feel sorry for those guys because their families have money and they go to Duke?

What happened to the Rutgers women was very bad, and Imus should be fired, but I don't think that it was worse than what appears to have happened to the Duke men. If one group of players can honestly say their lives have been ruined, it's the Duke men. That has nothing to do with race and everything to do with facts as we know them (or, I guess, as I understand them).

I personally believe it's a tasteless tradition anyway, but now, you bet your ass that if I ever have a bachelor party, and a dancer comes through the door, and I don't know her, I'm walking out the door.

 

For the rest of time, the vast majority of people, even some good people, will think that anyone who has ever played lacrosse for Duke is a racist gang rapist. Fewer people, and no good people, will think that anyone who has ever played women's basketball for Rutgers is a nappy-headed ho.

 

Crystal Gail Magnum. Plaster it all over hell. Every single story, now, should ID her in the lead graf.

 

She could be more of a mentally ill person than a bad person. Reading that Fox story, wouldn't you call it a possibility?

 

Oh yeah sure sure, I'm sure she's got an excuse. Everybody's got an excuse.

Who fucking cares. I've had enough of it.

 

Point taken.

 

Agree with having heard enough....


Except for one thing...

The bigoted Rev. Sharpton and Jackson's private meeting to apologize for the rip job of these kids they did on the public airwaves.

 

Ruined?
Their lives are ruined?
Every one of them will likely be successful in whatever field they enter. (I wonder if any of them will go for criminal defense law?) They will be celebrated as vindicated victims of a system run amok, and then we'll all go back to cheering on prosecutors for doing exactly the same thing Nifong did, every day, to people we don't care about.
More than the guys locked up in Dallas, or the guys walking off death row?
Perspective, people.

 

Perspective, people.

How the Rev. Jackson can get away with what Imus did on a regular basis, only using cleaner language.

 

I think a lot of people are going to think they are rich boys who got away with a disgusting crime because they were rich. I hope I'm wrong ... assuming they are innocent.