Remember Ray Donovan? He was Ronald Reagan's secretary of labor, hounded by politics-by-other-means prosecutors who accused him of corruption. He beat the bad rap and then famously asked, "Where do I go to get my reputation back?" The vindicated trio of Duke lacrosse players are probably asking themselves the same question right now. They needn't. Apart from a few crazies, that camera-chasing lunatic Wendy Murphy being one, no one really believed that these guys were guilty.
And I'm not sure that Murphy even believed their guilt--of the rape at least. For those suffering from prosecutorial blindness, the Duke Three (Or should they go down in history as the Durham Boys!) were guilty of being defendants. Too many in the legal system are more interested in winning a case than in reaching justice. Wendy Murphy and Mike Nifong strike me as two of the too many who have fallen into that trap. In fairness, nearly all defense attorneys, I suspect, fall into an inverse trap. They are advocates, after all, and should I ever find myself in a legal predicament, I'd like an advocate too. But a prosecutor acting as an advocate is a bit much. Like most Americans, Lenin's maxim that it's better to execute 100 innocent men than to let one guilty man go free, seems, well, a bit foreign. That's not the American way, which is perhaps why prosecutorial zeal, and not zeal from the lawyers on the other side of the aisle, is so distasteful to my palate.
The lacrosse players suffered greater handicaps than being mere defendants. The politically-correct villain categories the trio fell into unleashed a perfect storm that blew justice aside. It was men vs. a lone woman, rich vs. poor, gown vs. town, jocks vs. a stripper, and white vs. black. The trio found themselves, yes, on the wrong side of each category, particularly in the mind of a politician prosecutor in Durham, North Carolina. Even Tawana Brawley's hoax was not as seductive of the politically-correct prejudices as this case was.
Now, it's all over. Anyone wondering why the case ever became a case in the first place might skip over the pertinent facts of any rape case and examine the pertinent facts of this rape case: rich, white, males, Duke, lacrosse; poor, black, female, community college, stripper. Justice is blind, and so is Mike Nifong.
They do need to be worried about their reputation. I assume that NC has something in place similar to the Massachusetts CORI system. Even though the case was dismissed , they now have a criminal record in a database. Employers will get to see this before they decide to hire any of these guys.
That's one nappy headed ho right there.
When are we going to stop being held hostage by the P.C. police and the race baiters? Can there ever be true racial equality when reverse discrimination is alive and well and when, if ever, will it not be used as social leverage?
These kids got railroaded only because they were well-to-do and white.
There is no such thing as "reverse discrimination," the term is a misnomer. Using a term like "reverse discrimination" implies a stratified society where discrimination expectedly flows in one direction from the top to the bottom; there is only discrimination and it flows in every direction.
Its kind of like saying irregardless, just saying...
r.c.
r.c.,
I agree. Reverse discrimination has always bugged me. A different term qualifies it, makes it seem a little softer or less offensive. Sort of like discrimination with 30% less calories. Discrimination is discrimination. You have it right.
You gents are nitpickers, aren't you? Even though you may be bothered by it, you do understand what the terms refer to, I'm sure. It's been commonly used for years. If that's the only problem that you have with my comments, I'm ok with that.
I have been known to resort to the dictionary more often than necessary, but the nit being picked here is not your comment but rather the term "reverse discrimination."
"Can't we all just get along?"
Apparently not.
who ever said we have to get along?
