Lacrosse ugliness at U.Va.

Just to keep updating the story in the midst of our running cultural debate, police seem to have taken a blood-stained t-shirt (although it's referred to as "red stained") from Huguley's apartment, plus a love letter written to her.

http://www2.dailyprogress.com/cdp/news/local/crime/article/t-shirts_stained_with_red_seized_from_uva_george_huguelys_apartment/55794/

It will be interesting to see, if evidence continues to mount, if he's even offered a plea deal at all, or if the case is so high profile, they have to go all in with Murder One, confident they can get a conviction. I suppose if you take the death penalty off the table for a guilty plea, the public would be generally satisfied with that result. But I don't know if this gets bartered down at this point.

I'm sure others will be eager to offer their informed take.

 

How close is the DA to running for re-election?

 

Court TV is lobbying for a trial.

 

Double Down--As Moddy said perfectly, sports is driving the coverage. Sports didn't cause this murder.

It's way too easy to rant about the evils of privileged athletes, spoiled prep stars, etc, and somehow arrive at the conclusion that societal advantage led to this tragedy.

All that does is shift the focus from 'violence against women' to 'another privileged athlete.'

Go find any young college woman, and ask how many of her friends have been involved with abusive boyfriends, ex-boyfriends, stalkers. Guys who appear otherwise normal and 'nice,' who just lose it: a fist through the wall, a smashed laptop, an arm squeeze that leaves bruises, some threatening texts, a hacked Facebook. Very few girls know how to make it stop; they do nothing because they don't want to make it worse. They think they can handle it. They tell their friends, who nod and swap horror stories.

The 'beautiful college star athletes' aspect of this is convenient and trite. Sad that the coverage required any/all of those elements to create a 'story line' that was already unspeakably tragic.

 

Look, perhaps I'm confusing what you initially wrote about sports role in the "case" as opposed to the "coverage." I think we're certainly in agreement as to why it's received the coverage it has. As for the role sports had in the shaping of George Huguley into a psycho, it's all pretty pointless speculation on my part, or anyone else's. I can't say at all whether being a wealthy prep school star played any role. Maybe a psycho is a psycho.

Still, and maybe I'm naive, but I'm one of those people who tends to still believe college and high school sports are a pretty good vehicle for shaping boys into men, and using them to teach lessons about respecting other people, especially women. So maybe lacrosse failed George Huguley in that respect, because it was obviously something he enjoyed doing, and Virginia either decided he was better off trying to continue to learn those lessons in their program after the drunken arrest/taser incident, or it didn't give a shit, and thus didn't care about those lessons in the first place. When Lawrence Phillips beat up his girlfriend and dragged her down a flight of stairs by her hair, Tom Osborne claimed he was allowing Phillips to remain a part of the Cornhuskers because he felt he could better help reform him as a member of the football team than not. Urban Meyer has made similar arguments after numerous arrests. So ultimately these stories about athletes who commit violence against women or show a basic disrespect for women become sports stories based on what the athletic departments either do or don't do.

As I said before, either these non-revenue college programs are about something other than winning, or we should go ahead and admit the entire fucking thing is a sham.

 

Osborne's mission: not accomplished

 

That was the part of the post I meant to write, but left out by accident. That Osborne was a stone cold liar who cared about Lawrence Phillips not one bit, or the woman he dragged down a flight of stairs, but that was the argument he made and coaches continue to make. If it's bullshit, then it's up to us to point out how bullshit it is.

 

What are the odds that the family donated a large sum to UVA to keep his ass on the team?

 

Whatever. Maybe your dad the D.A. can come on here and teach us all.

 

I'm sure who they are is driving the coverage, and I think that he not only threatened a cop, but a 5-3 female cop, says a lot about him. He knew he had a physical advantage over the officer, and her fear of him led to the tasering. It says to me he doesn't have any particular regard for women. So even if he had been kicked of the team for that incident, even if he left school over it, he may not have done this to Yeardley Love, but at some point, some girl, somewhere would have set him off. I don't think the fact he was on the lacrosse team would have made a difference, except for maybe who the victim was.

 

Enjoying the cat fight, boys. Carry on.

 

I think this is the kind of context that raises it to Lugnuts' "Why was he still on the team?" level, FWIW. It would take a long suspension, a lot of remorse, an otherwise spotless track record and recommendations from people, and some enormous mitigating circumstances to balance that incident. Anybody can drink and drive one time. Not condoning it, and I know Lugnuts doesn't agree, but driving is something we all do when we're sober, and it's mostly a really bad decision regarding an otherwise normal action when your judgment is impaired. Anyone can get a P.I. Anyone can even smart off to a cop, maybe even get in a physical altercation with a male cop when the testosterone is flowing. But assaulting a 5-foot-3 female cop is pretty damned ... well, damning. And indicative of some dangerous tendencies against women.

But like you said, if it wasn't her, it would have been someone else. Not that it makes it right.