Sunday, February 18, 2007

Sunday Review

Financial cutbacks led to a consolidation on the Boston Globe’s op-ed pages, and the paper unfortunately decided to eliminate Cathy Young’s weekly column—by far the most interesting offering on the page. In her last column, Young noted, “The apparent collapse of the rape charges against the lacrosse players at Duke University clearly illustrates the dangers of the ‘women don’t lie about rape’ stance adopted by victim-advocacy groups, whose credibility is likely to sustain serious damage.”

As if to confirm Young’s observation, a post from Kathleen Bergin, a law professor at South Texas College of Law (not exactly a Tier 1 school) whose expertise comes in the one-sided areas of “critical race theory and feminist jurisprudence.” (In the academic arena, Bergin’s latest article is entitled, Sexualized Advocacy and the Ascendant Feminist Backlash Against Female Lawyers.”)

The post’s thesis: the players are “not innocent,” and, “If brought to trial, my bet is they will be found ‘not guilty.’ And yet, they are so far from ‘innocent.’” This view is an amplification of the Group of 88’s assertion that their crusade would continue regardless of what the police say or the court decides.Bergin termed it “undisputed” that racist and sexist epithets were used toward the dancers in the house, and also termed it “undisputed” that the broomstick comment was a threat of rape. Yet the only “witness” to have made the first claim is the accuser; the first figures to make the second claim were the police.

Case expert Bob in Pacifica pointed out these and other factual errors in a detailed reply. The blog’s response? “Based on the comments elicited by this post and some conversations with other bloggers, it appears that an orchestrated ‘opinion shaping’ astroturfing campaign is underway on behalf of the defendants in the Duke Lacrosse Players sexual assault case . . . The defendants’ defense lawyers are doing a very zealous and thorough job on behalf of the accused lacrosse players, and that is exactly what they are supposed to do. I need to make it very clear that I have no evidence that they are behind the blog astroturfing campaign that seems to be going on.”

No, but the implication was as clear as it was absurd. No further comments have appeared on the post. So--if even the blog’s commenters are out of step with the post, it’s not because the post is off-target; instead, it’s because Brad Bannon is busily posting anonymous comments when he’s not busy cracking conspiracies to hide DNA evidence. Not exactly the most convincing argument.

Amanda Marcotte, it’s worth recalling, simply deleted comments critical of her view on the case.

As Young observed, people who refuse to consider facts that contradict their worldviews are those whose “credibility is likely to sustain serious damage” from the case.

---------

Friday is the deadline for Mike Nifong’s attorneys to file his response to the State Bar. If nothing else, the response should be creative—especially since the words of one Nifong lawyer, David Freedman, powerfully indicted the defendant for the very offenses the bar cited.

Also on Friday, Stuart Taylor will be speaking on the case at the University of Memphis. It’s worth remembering that Taylor was months ahead of most national journalists in recognizing the gravity of Nifong’s procedural misconduct; he published his first critique in early May.

---------

WUNC (a public radio station well-known in the Triangle for its politically correct views) ran a segment on the case last week, featuring an interview with Sara Lipka, the author of the lengthy story on the Group of 88 in the Chronicle of Higher Education. The teaser? “One of the less-publicized impacts of the Duke Lacrosse case has been a widening division among the University’s faculty. It began with an open letter published in the Duke student newspaper back in the early days of the case. It was paid for and signed by a collection of faculty now referred to by some as the ‘Group of 88.’”

The interview was basically a fair one. When even NPR won’t put its credibility on the line to defend the Group, it seems the 88 have few reliable allies remaining.

---------

Today’s Liestoppers contains a summary of an important article, by Henry Korn, in the New York Law Journal. Korn’s conclusion:

This is a story that squarely teaches that 'rushing to judgment' without wisely stepping back and reviewing the evidence runs directly counter to the ethical obligations that govern how attorneys are required to conduct themselves. The harm of such ignorant conduct is that others are grievously wounded. Familiarity with, and adherence to, the code of professional responsibility provides the foundation for attorneys to avoid abuse of their license and harm others by so doing.

The significance of the piece: Nifong’s record is increasingly making it into national legal circles as an example of gross prosecutorial misconduct. This development heightens pressure on the Bar to deal with him severely.

---------

A peculiar column in today’s Des Moines Register, which to my knowledge has not previously commented on the case. Columnist Rekha Basu writes on what she terms the myths about sexual assault, with a thesis that attackers often come from family or friends.

It would seem the lacrosse case has nothing to do with this thesis. But that she quotes from Wendy Murphy gives some sense of Basu’s perspective. On the case, Basu writes,

Recent reporting on the Duke lacrosse case, including a "60 Minutes" segment, also gives the impression that the prosecutions case fell apart because the victim recanted the allegation (and therefore that it didnt happen) . . . As to why the rape charge was withdrawn, instead of blaming the victim, you could blame the limitations of North Carolina law, which limits its definition of rape to penile-vaginal penetration.
As if eager to prove Cathy Young’s thesis that this case will be devastating to the credibility of so-called victims’ rights groups, Basu turns to the head of an organization called North Carolina Coalition Against Sexual Assault to establish the validity of her portrayal of events.

It’s not clear from her article if Basu actually watched the 60 Minutes broadcast; if she had, she would have learned that the prosecutions case fell apart because Nifong’s massive prosecutorial misconduct was eventually exposed. As for the “victim” recanting her allegation, the significant issue came in the December 21 version of events contradicting in virtually every important way every other story the “victim” had previously told.

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In a post last week, I erroneously attributed the following quote to Christina Headrick: The real enemy was “white people who are incredulous and skeptical that racism exists at all and attribute claims that racism does indeed exist to some sort of enigmatic and massive hallucination on the part of people of color.” That quote actually came not from Headrick but from another potbanger. I apologize for the error.

---------

An event from a week ago that I should have mentioned last Sunday: Assistant Attorney General Brian Wilks has just become a Durham assistant district attorney, serving as supervisor of District Court operations.

John Stevenson—faithful to Nifong to the end—assured Herald-Sun readers that the move “has nothing to do with the controversial Duke lacrosse sex-offense case.”

Right. Every day, bright and talented people give up a post in the state attorney general’s office to go work for a prosecutor who faces an ethics trial a few months down the road.

Wilks' background is interesting: an African-American, he has a J.D. from NCCU, served as a public defender, and seems to have good ethical reputation. (“Seems” is necessary here because the figures that Stevenson quoted praising Wilks’ ethics also had defended Nifong’s ethics, and so have little or no credibility on the issue.)

A Machiavellian observer might suggest that Wilks is the frontrunner to get Easley’s nod if and when Nifong is forced to resign.

---------

I received two follow-up tips to the post from last week on the potentially “jaw-dropping” proposals under consideration from the Campus Culture Initiative. The first suggested that the Towerview article understated the degree to which Peter Wood, chair of the athletics subgroup, had misrepresented the views of his subgroup in his report to the full committee. The second suggested that the CCI's most dramatic recommendations involve changes to university housing and athletics policies, changes that overwhelming numbers of alumni would oppose. Neither piece of news came as a surprise, given the dominance within the CCI of the most extreme critics of the lacrosse team.

It is my sense that most Duke alumni look back fondly on their time at the institution; at some point, they might need to mobilize to counter a body whose leadership the Chronicle effectively critiqued last month: "Stacking the CCI with critics of 'white male privilege' suggests that the initiative was created to pacify countercultural professors, rather than to shape a new and improved campus culture."

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Bill Anderson has a must-read column up this week outlining the possible criminal charges to come, in a case that he calls a classic example of “a criminal fraud.” Ominous signs that he sees: the erasure of police recordings whose preservation the defense had requested. Police spokespersons covering up the fact that the captains “willingly gave DNA samples, and then offered to take lie detector tests,” and refusing to consider how this behavior suggested strongly for innocence.

The case should have ended, Anderson notes, no later than March 22: “Police should have told the district attorney that there was no evidence for rape other than the numerous conflicting stories told by a woman whose previous criminal behavior and dishonesty were well-known to the Durham police . . . Instead, the Durham police at this point chose to lie; why they chose to lie is a question that has not yet been answered.”

Anderson also reminds us of an incident mostly forgotten now: a lacrosse player supposedly emailing “his teammates to tell them that he was coming forward to testify.” The player, Anderson correctly notes, never sent that email. “Instead, it was manufactured by another party. Was it the police? That is where the evidence points, but the ‘blue wall of silence’ is not giving in at this point.”

Nifong, meanwhile, “conspired with Brian Meehan, who directed a private lab that tested the DNA samples, to withhold a large amount of exculpatory evidence.” This action, Anderson correctly observes, opens up the possibility of a federal conspiracy charge—in which Nifong, Sergeant Gottlieb, and Linwood Wilson would be prime targets.

Anderson also poses some other interesting questions. Why, on March 28, did Kammie Michaels, the DPD public affairs officer, still claim that the origin of Kim Roberts’ first 911 call was unknown? I e-mailed Michaels to ask her this question; she refused comment.

And how would investigators view Gottlieb’s “straight-from-memory” report? Anderson sees it as “a blatant attempt to manufacture inculpatory evidence, and manufacturing evidence is a felony.”

Finally, was the December 21 statement from the accuser simply an attempt to continue the frame against innocent suspects?

Based on this record, Anderson concludes, “We now officially have the Alice-in-Wonderland state in which the accused are innocent, but the accusers are the criminals. While state authorities would like for us to believe that only Nifong has committed ‘questionable’ acts, we can see that the criminal conspiracy runs much deeper than a rogue prosecutor. Much deeper.”

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March 24 is a critical day in the case, since it was on this day that Mike Nifong—in a violation of standard procedures—assumed personal control of the criminal investigation.

March 24 is also the day in which the national media first came to know Cpl. David Addison, who, it turns out, was filling in for Kammie Michaels as the department’s spokesperson.

John in Carolina recognized the procedural impropriety of Addison’s conduct before just about anyone else, and he’s in the midst of a three-part series re-examining the corporal’s role in the case.

Is it any coincidence that on the day Nifong assumed personal command of the case, the police department starting making factually inaccurate, inflammatory public statements?

214 comments:

1 – 200 of 214   Newer›   Newest»
Anonymous said...

Thanks for keeping the focus on this North Carolina legal travesty. The frame-up continues; Cooper and Coman stall. Thanks to Bill Anderson and to John in Carolina for interesting commentaries. Professor Anderson outlines a strong legal case. When will the Quarles-Ford editorial page at the N&O wake up and demonstrate leadership?

Anonymous said...

6:52 PM in the last forum was not Polanski. But imitation is an interesting art, and the post made some good points. It also made me research some more about Boston.

It is so easy to get disgusted with the many negative news reports that are continually aired on television and radio, and printed in newspapers and magazines. Most people will say, "Well, that's the world we live in today." Others will try to take a stand, make a difference, and get involved somewhere in order to change society for the better.

This story is about such a group - a group that is trying to make a difference in the lives of those living on the streets of Boston. In recent months, the city has endured a renewed outbreak of violence. The city of Boston has enlisted the help of the state police, DEA, ATF, and several other law enforcement agencies in what is known as "Operation Neighborhood Shield."

Black on black crime is getting so out of hand that Boston city officials are now committed to bringing it to a halt by any means necessary. However, in addition to the regular law enforcement agencies, they have now called to action the Black Panther Party. That is right, the Black Panther Party.

My eyes never opened so wide, as when I read an article in the Boston Herald about the newly legitimized Black Panther Party raising the African liberation flag at city hall plaza in an attempt to unify the black community. A press conference was held immediately after.

According to the Herald, Jamarhl Crawford, chair of the Boston chapter of the Black Panther Party offered several suggestions for solving the black on black crime epidemic. He spoke about black reparations for slavery, the effect of drugs on the black communities, and the police response to the surging crime in hot-spot neighborhoods. Crawford went on to say that he feels that the federal law enforcement officers have no place in taking part with "Operation Neighborhood Shield" because they have a common goal of just "locking up blacks."

The Herald cited the commemoration of the 117th birthday of Marcus Garvey, as the reason for the flag ceremony. Marcus Garvey was a black nationalist who worked to bring the blacks home to Africa. Of course, the Black Panther Party does not share the Back to Africa idea of Garvey.

Since the start of operation "Neighborhood Shield", police have arrested 164 people and confiscated 19 firearms from gangs in the black community - a mere dent.

I find it to be a double standard that the Black Panther Party should be honored with distinction by their involvement with the neighborhood program. The notion is ridiculous because anytime police do apprehend criminals in the black community, the cops are labeled as racist. Yet, if they do nothing it is said they do not care about the black community. It is a no win situation for police. The Black Panther Party is not concerned about liberating blacks from poverty or crime unless it includes taking something away from whites. Boston officials should be ashamed!

Polanski

Anonymous said...

"The defendants’ defense lawyers are doing a very zealous and thorough job on behalf of the accused lacrosse players, and that is exactly what they are supposed to do. I need to make it very clear that I have no evidence that they are behind the blog astroturfing campaign that seems to be going on.”

It is so unimaginable that people STILL refuse to see that those three boys are innocent; that the rest of us can disbelieve the liar/accuser, and NOT be on the defense payroll. There MUST be some sort of hallucinations going on, that they refuse to believe what is before their eyes, and still continue to spew their fantasy of "a rape." I have no other explanation for the insanity.

Anonymous said...

With regard to the topic of Marcotte's penchant for airbrushing, I'm particularly fond of this comment at Marcotte's Salon essay:

MARCOTTE'S WORLD -- "BUT IT'S FREEDOM OF SPEECH"


And this comment's not bad either:

MARCOTTE'S WORLD -- BIRTH OF A SHITSTORM

Anonymous said...

Set-up.

Frame-up.

Cover-up.

M. Simon said...

Polanski,

The BPP failed to note that it was drug prohibition causing the problem.

Back when I was closer to the Panthers they used to know this.

Do they still teach alcohol prohibition in schools?

Any time the police want to raise the violenced level they take down a major drug gang. A spike in violence always follows.

The FBI did a major bust in our town 18 years ago and said there would be a spike in violence. They were right. Since then - no major busts.

You think drug dealing is no longer happening here? They just go after little guys. It helps keep the peace.

In fact I think that is the national strategy and the reason violence is declining in America. A truce has been called in the drug war. Just not announced openly.

Michael said...

re: Polanski

Boston has had racial problems for a long time but in the past, there was some level of self-segregation where some places whites didn't go and some places blacks didn't go.

In the 1980s, things weren't that bad but as the economy started heading south in the later part of the decade, things like drive-by shootings and overall crime increased substantially and I stopped travelling to some hotspot areas (I had friends in the various types of communities).

Things improved with the economy in the 1990s. This year, though, things like teenage killings have risen sharply highlighting the housing market peaking in the summer of 2005, along with the general reluctance of the business community to add jobs in MA due to the unfriendly business conditions.

Those unfriendly business conditions, btw, have political corruption as a major cause. But generally manifest themselves in sky-high tax rates, fees all over the place and the expectation that businesses can be soaked for the common good.

It is another case of one-party rule, political corruption and the Fells Acre Day Care case which was arguably a bigger case of injustice than the Duke Hoax Case.

MA just elected a Democrat
Governor after a string of Republican Governors. He promised a lot, was very vague about how he was going to accomplish his political promises and good-looking (so I'm told). He is now in office, has a billion dollar budget shortfall, can't pay for a lot of his promises and has asked for a state car in the form of a Cadiallac Deville instead of the usual Crown Vic. It's only a difference of $20 grand. I think that he asked for a helicopter too. In the context of the state budget, these are not expensive. But acting like a king instead of a Governor in times of economic difficulty isn't getting off to a good start.

BTW, perhaps he will take the lead in convincing the black community in Boston to clean up their act as he has a lot of political capital at his disposal with the black community. Then again he's already shown that he is more than willing to waste his political capital.

Anonymous said...

Perhaps the Winston-Salem or Greensboro newspapers could do what the Raleigh and Durham newspapers apparently won't do: investigate the crucial period last March when this frame-up was being hatched and find out who did what. This is a criminal case, and the crimes appear to have been committed by the DA's office and the Durham Police Department, among others. Will the North Carolina newspapers do what they should be doing?

Anonymous said...

JLS says....

1. I think we should not be concerned with an academic's place of employment as much as the content of their arguments. That is, it is not the law school that employs the law prof, but rather the relevant issue is the weak comments that law prof made.

2. I slightly disagree with Bill Anderson. I think it is pretty well established that the police can lie to a suspect to try to get them to confess. Thus the e-mail as a crime might not be the case. But Bill Anderson documented there are plenty of other crimes that have been committed by employees of NC in this case. And Bill Anderson is right, they will never be fully investigated by NC. They should be by the DOJ if it can take time off from its busy schedule of trying dangerous people who remember the past slightly differently than some reporter.

3. Wilks as part of a global solution makes lots of sense. The remaining charges are dropped, Nifong resigns, gives up his license in return for no NC prosecution, Wilks is appointed. Everyone wins except maybe the Durham Courthouse gang?

AMac said...

Reader Request:

It is inevitable that a writer will make mistakes, even one as focused as KC Johnson--and especially one so prolific. This post gives one example of such an error (the misattribution of a quote to potbanger Christina Headrick).

I wonder if the author would consider noting corrections to errors as they are made, perhaps at the end of an individual post, in a standard, date-stamped format. This blog seems destined to become a reference for many purposes, including the how-not-to series that a newly-reflective New York Times is producing on its own coverage of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Hoax (kidding!).

It would be helpful for newcomers as well as regulars to see mistakes flagged when reading the original posts.

Anonymous said...

After their gleefull rush to judgement that CGM was indeed raped most feminists have retreated to their discusssion boards to talk among themselves in a "safe place". While our attention has been focused on shrewish carney barkers like Marcotte other feminists are putting serious thought into their unbalanced worldview. A central tenent is that objective truth doesn't exist because it comes from a framework that is controlled by the patriarchy and most be interpreted by women.

Susan H. Williams just wrote about it in a longish article which is excerpted below.

56] This alternative view of truth is non-Cartesian because it rejects all of the central tenets of the Cartesian model of truth: objectivity, rationalism, universalism, and the propositional view of language. This new model sees truth as fundamentally contextual and normative. That is, knowers can engage in the activity of knowledge-making only from a particular position or perspective, one which is radically shaped by their cultural context, including their normative concerns. Such contexts should not be seen as impediments to knowledge, but rather as the preconditions for it. To ask what we could know if we could escape all such perspectives is like asking what we could see if we could escape having any particular sort of eyes.


It boils down to critical thinking and facts only apply to women when they want them to.

It is a very long read

http://feministtruths.blogspot.com/2007/02/truth-speech-and-ethics.html

Michael said...

Repeat of the Nancy Grace
SNL skit tonight.

M. Simon said...

Wayne,

I'll bet they could make a fortune in the non-patriarchal aircraft manufacturing business.

Or perhaps bridges.

Or if they want to get all abstract - non-patriarchal mathematics. There are no incorrect answers. Just incorrect points of view.

Michael said...

re: amac

Things that show up shortly after the post KC usually fixes right away with a note in the comments section of the change.

It appears that things that are changed some time after that are subsequently noted.

I assume that KC's teaching and that this system is efficient for him. I run a website and blog as well and going back and correcting things with a note is something that I don't do. Current content with a note on corrections afterwards is more efficient to me.

Jerri Lynn Ward, J.D. said...

South Texas College of Law may not be high on the "tiers of law', but I always thought that good trial lawyers came out of that school. (I come from a lower tier law school as well--Texas Tech) Most of the professors at South Texas are practicing attorneys.

I am extremely disturbed that such a silly woman lawyer is teaching at South Texas. I have to admit that I totally refuse to join the Travis County Women's Lawyer Association--or whatever they call themselves--because I refuse to listen to feminist crap like this South Texas School of Law professor spouts.

Anonymous said...

Amanda "quit." :)

Sure she did.

-Esquire-
-Maryland'

Anonymous said...

Jerri: Amen to that. I refuse to attend these badly designed, politically driven sub-group meetings within our local bar either.

-Esquire-
-Maryland-

kcjohnson9 said...

To Amac:

I flagged the Headrick item with an asterisk and correction in the original post, as well.

I only put the additional notice in today's post because the error didn't come to my attention until two days after the post, so I feared that a post-only correction might not be seen.

Anonymous said...

KC mentions that Bill Anderson asks: Why, on March 28, did Kammie Michaels, the DPD public affairs officer, still claim that the origin of Kim Roberts’ first 911 call was unknown? I [KC] e-mailed Michaels to ask her this question; she refused comment.

The answer of course is that Lead Investigator Nifong said, on Mar 31, in a Dan Abrams show interview that he was unaware of the identity of the individual that placed the 911 call on Mar 14. So how could Kammie Michaels “know” on Mar 28 the identity of the 911 caller if Lead Investigator Nifong did not “know” the identity of the 911 caller on Mar 31.

All of these “unknowns” despite the fact that DPD Sgt. J.C. Shelton knew on Mar 14 who made the 911 call. The identity of the caller, Kim Roberts/Pittman, was again confirmed by the DPD on Mar 22.

Video of Nifongs interview on Abrams here:

Nifong Chokes The Life Out Of Durham Justice

This interview is also the interview where Nifong demonstrated the Nifong Choke. This video should be exhibit 1 during Nifong disbarment proceedings and later civil litigation.

Anonymous said...

To the Polanski Epigone/JC Epigone

Imitate me if that is your wont, but please do not insult people using my name. John in Carolina, Jason Trumpbour, and Joan from Liestoppers all got pissed off at me because you insulted them using my name.

Ridicule me, not others on the board.

Polanski

Anonymous said...

JLS says....

re: me

Nice link back to that infamous tape of Nifong on MSNBC. As he discusses the uses of DNA evidence you can almost see the wheels turning as he almost seems to realize then he must hide the evidence of the other males. And now we clearly know from the SBI that he did already know there were no matches to lacrosse players.

AMac said...

KC 1:15am --

I see your note at the tail of the original "Airbrushing" post. Thanks to your chronicle of this case, you walk around Brooklyn wearing a bulls-eye. It's good to anticipate the 88's inevitable "chock full o' misteaks" charges. To err is human, to post clear corrections is helpful for readers. (I'd thought that aphorism had a pithier ending, but it's late.)

Anonymous said...

Jerri Lynn Ward sez ...


I have to admit that I totally refuse to join the Travis County Women's Lawyer Association--or whatever they call themselves--because I refuse to listen to feminist crap like this South Texas School of Law professor spouts.


Perhaps you should join, because only then can you fight the crap.

Anonymous said...

2:46 AM --

Yeah, and you could also suggest that on the days she's not listening to feminist BS, she could practice pissing into the wind.

Anonymous said...

So, there not much of chance that Amanda Marcotte will be spending any time in prison? Oh, well...I guess there are bigger travesties in the world.

Polanski...anytime you've got the Black Panther Party, and not the New Black Panther Party, present, you're doing pretty good. Most of the commentary I've heard from the original panthers is mostly positive and reasonable. Reparations are a pie-in-the-sky nonsense that serves only to get some attention. However, I didn't meet too many black people at Duke that needed one iota of help from the Black Panthers or New Black Panthers or anyone. The black people of Durham are another story. Some of them needed all the help they could get.

Anonymous said...

12:29 wrote:

"It is so unimaginable that people STILL refuse to see that those three boys are innocent; that the rest of us can disbelieve the liar/accuser, and NOT be on the defense payroll. There MUST be some sort of hallucinations going on, that they refuse to believe what is before their eyes, and still continue to spew their fantasy of "a rape." I have no other explanation for the insanity."

Those who follow the case closely (at DIW e.g.) are incredulous that others can't plainly see the innocence of the Duke 3. It is not as astonishing when one delves a little deeper into the source of the the casual observer's "information".

Through conversations with men and women that are both left and right, I have found the source of their information to be the MSM or a right- or left-leaning blog not devoted, as this blog is, entirely to the Duke hoax.

"Something must have happened" is heard from both men and women that frequent sites such as Huffington Post and "those boys are being railroaded" is heard from both men and women who visit sites like Drudge Report and watch Fox News or read the NY Post.

It's clear the MSM is still defining the debate, notwithstanding the non-partisan effort of KC and the commenters on this blog.

Depressing....

--Lumpy Gravy

Sarah D said...

I really think it would be a further travesty of justice if only Nifong is punished for what has happened.

Nifong could not have done what he did without the willing collusion of others, and those people all remain in positions where they could do the same again.

If and when the charges against the three defendants are dropped, there will be a huge temptation to feel that the matter has been resolved. However, it will not be resolved until those involved are brought to account.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

With the Wilks appointment, Nifong can kiss his partially-robed behind good-bye. Wilks will be the next Durham County DA.

Since Wilks is black, Easley and Cooper get a pass with the black vote for dumping the case and abandoning Nifong and his white boy witch-hunt.

Anonymous said...

You speak of Mar 24. What is the statute of limitations in NC for filing a defamation of character lawsuit?

Anonymous said...

The law professor from Texas says about Howard Kurtz's comments in the interview with Paula Zahn,

"Kurtz offered these remarks in defense of the real “victims” marred by the scandal:

The Duke story was impossible for the media to ignore, but there was clearly a rush to judgment, which turned one woman’s shaky allegations into a racially charged morality tale. By the time journalists woke up to the fact that there was little evidence against these three young men, their reputations had been blackened.

Kurtz’s pitiful attempt to demonize the victim in this case - and through her all Black women - obscures the significance of other facts conspicuously left out of CNN’s broadcast:..."

Having read the entire transcript, it is clear that "Kurtz's pitiful attempt to demonize the victim in this case - and through her all Black women" consists entirely of Mr. Kurtz pointing out that the victim's allegations were "shaky" and there was "little evidence against the the three young men." CAN THIS LAW PROF BE SERIOUS? Pointing out the indisputable problems with the accuser's stories and the fact of "little evidence against the three young men" is an attempt to "demonize the victim" and "all black women?"

As we all know, Mr. Kurtz's observations were 100% factual and hardly "demonized" the alleged "victim" let alone all black females. Then the Texas law professor continues, lamenting that CNN failed in this segment to remind its audience about the use of many racial epithets (which use is completely not confirmed), the broomstick comment, the ugly e-mail, and the "Thank your grandpa..." comment as if use of THOSE WORDS somehow proved the commission of a crime. It is a pretty big leap when we argue not that those words used in the context of committing an actual crime elevate that crime to a "hate crime" and when we argue that use of those words in the context of this situation somehow make finding evidence of the actual crime itself not so significant.

Perhaps our hate crime legislation has created some confusion about WHAT a crime actually IS.

Observer

Anonymous said...

"Make" should be "makes" in the fourth to the last line of my comment.

Ob

Anonymous said...

Defamation
While I do not know S L for filing defamation case in NC, I suspect it is 1 year (as in many other juridictions).

M. Simon said...

Lumpy Gravy,

There is a comment at Easy Low Cost No Radiation Fusion that you should see.

BTW send me an e-mail so I can contact you without using KC's space.

M. Simon said...

2:46 AM,

Fighting it one on many is a waste.

First raise an army. Then use overwhelming force.

Anonymous said...

I think we can view the actions of the G88 and Amanda Marcotte from the perspective of little children. If little kids are playing a game and start losing, they want to change the rules or cry that the proceedings are "not fair."

That pretty much describes what we have seen from the G88 and Marcotte over the past few weeks. That they try to put their viewpoints in the various "matrices" of race, sex, and the like does not obscure the fact that when everything else is scraped away, they simply are behaving like children.

However, most real children grow to be adults. Those whose moral and discerning characteristics do not develop as they do in most adults either become feminist bloggers or professors in "angry, ism studies."

Anonymous said...

To 12:20 who said: "I have no other explanation for the insanity."

And to that, I must ask you and others:

Why try to understand someone who thinks differently than you, has different values than you, will never share your values, nor will ever try to understand YOUR values?

Don't reach out to try to understand unbridgeable differences, merely because others have brainwashed you into thinking "it is the right thing to do".

It's just like oil and water. Stir it up all you want and it will appear to mix. Turn your back on it and leave it alone for a moment, and each go back to their respective part.

"Stirring" is a waste energy and money. There is stirring going on everywhere we look. Sadly, much of it is being funded by our hard earned tax dollars.

Nature reveals truth: Birds such as Robins and Cardinals might feed together, but will never nest together.

If someone is so damned stupid that they can't recognize truth (Duke case) when it hits them in their face, do you truly think that you will somehow magically change them with your attempts to inject reason?

Moral: Never try to reason with the unreasonable.

Gary Packwood said...

Anonymous 12:40 AM

said...
Perhaps the Winston-Salem or Greensboro newspapers could do what the Raleigh and Durham newspapers apparently won't do: investigate the crucial period last March when this frame-up was being hatched and find out who did what. This is a criminal case, and the crimes appear to have been committed by the DA's office and the Durham Police Department, among others. Will the North Carolina newspapers do what they should be doing?

Good Point! How would the investigative reporter locate the information necessary to bring the 'frame-up' into focus?

Anonymous said...

I want to thank K.C. for featuring my article today, and I appreciate the comments that have followed. As you know, I believe that K.C. is one of the "adults" in higher education. Thus, he might not qualify to teach in the same department as someone like Peter Wood! I doubt that K.C. would enjoy changing diapers, anyway.

Gary Packwood said...

Question Please.

I have the a copy of the WUNC (The State of Things) radio broadcast on my hard drive where Mark Anthony Neal and others from Duke and Durham are interviewed.

The interview is preceded by the 911 call from the weeping women who is saying 'Me and my black girlfriend' and the (I am) 'so completely offended' statements ...are highlighted.

Is this the 911 call everyone is talking about?

If so, the 'so completely offended' statement is the phrase that is taught in 'activist' classes here in Houston and Austin at the University of Texas.

Is anyone making the connection between that 911 call and Duke's classrooms?

Anonymous said...

2:13 AM
"Imitate me if that is your wont, but please do not insult people using my name"

Aye, aye sir!

Romanian Polecat

Anonymous said...

To the question of where would an investigative reporter focus: Read Professor Johnson's archives and the Liestoppers timelines. This would offer a good start. It would require much legwork and would include talking to as many people as possible. Use the freedom of information laws to request as many public records as possible. Good old-fashioned reporting. This information needs to get beyond the blogs into the major newspapers.

Anonymous said...

Does anyone know who has been providing Ms. Mangum legal and financial advice?

Anonymous said...

Does anyone have information on the extortion plot angle?

Anonymous said...

The Attorney Gerneral's office must investigate who sent that email from the players computer. Creating false evidence is a federal crime. That fact that is was done by the DPD makes it even more heinous. Remember this is the exact time frame the DPD were sneaking into the dorm rooms of the lacrosse players. It is the exact time Nifong was trying to use bullying scare tactics to try and get some of the players to admit to his created version of the events. Nifong knew nothing occurred. He was hoping though that he would be able to get one player to try and protect themsevlves by agreeing to his version of lies. The motive here is strong.

Also on Gottleib's false 30 page report: Remember Gottleib had just gotten caught beating up the black cook in Durham. Yet he didn't get a slap on the wrist. Nifong held this over his head. In essence Nifong said, I own you now and your in as deep as I am, you do what I tell you to.

A police office producing a false report is a Federal offense. These questions can not be left unanswered.

Also the time frame for when the office arrived at Krogers and the time Crystal arrived at the Access Center doesn't make sense. It is only a short drive. Yet she arrived much later. Did the officer take advantage of a passed out hooker (well known to the police department) Is it his DNA in her. Or are they covering up for a higher up Durham official who has used Crystal's services. There is more to this cover-up than is public knowledge. And it makes corruption look like childs play.

Anonymous said...

Hey, perhaps Quarles and Sill would let Joe Neff pursue the critical March period when the hoax was hatched. Oh, wait. The N&O coverage of March 24 and 25 may have been a factor.

Anonymous said...

Excellent points by the 10:00 a.m. poster. Much more attention needs to be paid to the false e-mail and police action in the dorms. And to Gottlieb's late report, which was used by Duff Wilson in his August "story" in The New York Times.

Anonymous said...

Regardless of the potential for punitive damages, or not, someone must file a lawsuit against operatives such as Cpl. David Addison to learn the source of his instructions.

Addison could not have been operating independently of higher authority.

It is my guess that Gottlieb will be shown to be Addison's "puppet-master", but only a thorough investigation through sworn testimony will uncover the conspiracy.

Anonymous said...

Vivien - do you truly think that having the black pathers around is a good thing? Based on what? Are you at all familiar with them and their actions? Have you ever met one? While I agree that a number of the police officers on the DPD and the local judges are awful human beings, the panther solution, traditionally, has been to murder them. Is that what you are suggesting happen?

And does the indigenous popluation of Durham really need to become more militant? Wouldn't becoming more intelligent and moral be a better goal?

You must live somewhere far away from such travails, but to wish the black panthers on any group of humans is inhumane, heartless and cruel.

Oh, that's right - you must be a democrat. Nevermind - that's what you do. Keep on keepin' on, sister.

Anonymous said...

The following is a letter I sent to Patsy McDonald this a.m. If you have not read her letter to Amanda Marcotte in yesterday's DIW blog, then you should - it is very well written.

"Dear Ms. McDonald,

Yesterday I read your fantastic letter to Ms. Marcotte. This morning the Dallas Morning News published the following "Talking Points" (Section "Points" P, Page 1P, top of the fold), excerpt:

"Regardless, it was creating a situation where I felt that every time I coughed, I was risking the Edwards campaign." - Amanda Marcotte, controversial blogger, in a statement announcing her resignation from the John Edwards campaign (Pandagon.net, Monday)"

Do to this dishonest nature of Ms. Marcotte's comments, and the Dallas Morning News bizarre slant that Marcotte leaving the campaign is some sort of witch hunt, I would encourage you to submit your article to the DMN editorial staff. Their policy is as follows:

We value reader submissions. We receive far more than we can print and publish a representative sample. Limit letter to 200 words, with not more than one published every 30 days. Viewpoints columns should not exceed 600 words and also are edited for length and clarity. Include your name, address with ZIP coed and daytime phone number. Submissions become property of The News.

letterstoeditor@dallasnews.com
viewpoints@dallasnews.com

Ms. Keven Ann Willey is the Vice President, Editorial Page Editor. I would encourage you to contact her directly if you are so inclined.

The DMN has either willfully positioned her comments as a witch hunt against women, or completely failed it's readers in not researching the nature of her comments as they relate to the Duke case, religion, language, and of course, feminism.

I read your letter on Durham-in-Wonderland. A good blog, such as DIW, really indicates the gap in how information is delivered which is another subject all together.

Thanks for taking time to write Ms. Marcotte and providing the letter for the world to see.

Anonymous said...

Inre: DPD accessing the students rooms...

Dr. Brohead needs to be pressed about this issue. This ia another glaring example of how Duke let it's students down. That event and the suggestion that the boys visit investigators without legal representation are even more egregious in my book than the Gang of 88, pot bangers, etc. A close 2nd to the DA's actions.

These actions/inactions by Duke are nothing more than a complete lack of leadership.

Anonymous said...

"When even NPR..." (won’t put its credibility on the line to defend the Group).

KC, those first three words say it all. National Propaganda Radio. Tass was also funded with tax dollars.

Anonymous said...

Carolyn asks:

Mr. Fontes - if Susan Williams' feminist gibberish is an example of communication, then so is a baby banging its rattle against the crib bars.

I'll take the baby.

Anonymous said...

11:07 said: "KC, those first three words say it all. National Propaganda Radio. Tass was also funded with tax dollars."

You have to admit, though, that NPR is one of the most balanced media outlets around. They present BOTH sides of every issue. They present the Marxist side and the Leninist side, too, allowing the listeners to decide.

Anonymous said...

"not exactly a Tier 1 school"

Has it come to this? If anything, the Group of 88 shows us that even at prestigious universities there are plenty of kooky profs. I'm not certain that snide remarks about the institution at which this law prof is affiliated advance your otherwise on-point criticism. South Texas College of Law, by the way, is a private school which, as you note, is not highly ranked. However, it is notable for not being affiliated with any undergraduate or larger institution and its night classes which allow those already in the workforce to attend law school when they could otherwise not do so.

Anonymous said...

I can easily imagine that the DPD, the DA's office, and various State of NC agencies are following this blog in horrified fascination. No one was supposed to investigate and draw conclusions as KC Johnson, Liestoppers, Bill Anderson and John in Carolina have done - all those 'servants of the public' must have begun this saga secure in confidence that the MSM would turn over very few rocks to expose the details of a politically correct lynching.

And said MSM largely hasn't. Particularly regarding the issues the Bill Anderson and John in Carolina are now discussing, pointing to some likely criminal malfeasance by police officers, the DA of course, and by logical inference their superiors in the chain of command.

In the movies, this would be the time at which the lower-ranking witnesses begin to exit the scene, bumped off to eliminate any possible testimony pointing upward.

But Durham is of course a political monoculture under the shining leadership of the Democratic Party. Therefore it's wholly unrealistic to anticipate any such unjust liquidations. The monoculture owns enough Senators and Congressmen to stave off a Federal investigation - and this Administration is remarkably blase about pursuing such witch-hunts (as the NYT and its camp-followers would surely describe such an investigation).

It seems that the forces are still in alignment to protect the guilty and punish the innocent, with one big UNLESS. And that's unless, as other posters above suggest, some 'investigative journalism' is given sufficient resources to follow and document the myriad leads that our intrepid bloggers have already exposed. Because the forces of the State of North Carolina somehow seem extremely reluctant to jump in and do so themselves.

However, we can wish said forces a cheery reading of the serial posts at DIW, Liestoppers, JinC, BA et al. Hell, it's better than going to the horror movies - sorta like a water torture. Will truth win out in the NC Democratic Party? Tune in next week, and next week, and next month, and next year, century, millennium, geological epoch etc, and see how we do.

Insufficiently Sensitive

Anonymous said...

I agree with the 11:37 post. No need to belittle other institutions, just focussing on what the Prof in question said is sufficient. Also, I would hope that her colleagues are serious scholars and that she's the exception, not the rule.

Anonymous said...

Insuf Sens - no, truth will not win out in the democrat party, not in NC, not in the US. There is no upside to telling the truth, so the lies continue.

Remember, KC is a democrat, and supports their agenda. He doesn't think that Crytal Gail Mangum should face charges for her false accusation. That says enough right there - dems don't want justice, just defeat of those they disagree with.

Anonymous said...

In simple terms: the LAX players are guilty because if they aren't, CGM is a lying prostitute. But CGM is not a lying prostitute, because

1. She is a woman.
2. Women do not lie about rape.
3. Anyway, there are no prostitutes in Durham.

- similarly, the Group of 88 did not rush to judgment, is not lying about it now, and Brodhead has not prostituted himself to their agenda, because

1. Professors and College Presidents do not lie about rushing to judgment.
2. There are no prostitutes at Duke.

This should all be perfectly clear and satisfactory.

So, can now move on to the social disaster of the "Shut up and Teach" party that happened almost a week ago, when there were apparently scissors used? Diane Nelson from Duke was apparently involved. No-one else was armed, and the 88 won't release the tapes. Oh, people there are all, like, "it was innocent", but something happened, and it involved scissors.

Jerri Lynn Ward, J.D. said...

11:37

I feel pretty offended by all this "Tier 1" stuff as well. I've always thought that South Texas School of Law was a good school and great training ground for trial lawyers. I considered going there as I was accepted, but my parents were afraid I'd get mugged in Houston and were in favor of Texas Tech out in Lubbock.

To me, it matters more what a lawyer does after graduation than what school he or she attended.

Anonymous said...

Re: the Kathleen Bergin article. One should read the Sept. 2006 article that she references: On Prejudging the Duke Lacrosse Team Scandal by Linda Martin Alcoff Alcoff lays out which narratives should form the backdrop for making sense of the facts in the Duke case, and which narratives should be discarded. "There are three main narratives being invoked in the Duke case, two false and one true, in my view."

Anonymous said...

12:27

I think about the last thing on KC Johnson's mind is cynical manipulation of facts to promote partisan Democratic Party goals. Please don't allow such a corrosive notion to infect this discussion.

Anonymous said...

KC,

A quick admin note. The reader comments do not appear when I look at your Saturday, February 17, 2007 "More Airbrushing" column. I tried reloading it several times with no luck.

Anonymous said...

The 12:47 post is mine. Please excuse my fatfingered keyboard 'skills'.

Insufficiently Sensitive

Anonymous said...

This stratification of law school graduates looks a lot like a previous debate under a new name.

I was pretty sure I was top 10 material, but for some reason my neighborhood top 10 school didn't agree. So I put in a year at the local tier 4 (thanks, US News) school, finished at the top of the class, reapplied to the top 10 school as a second-year transfer, got in, and did very well.

Having seen the respective student bodies and faculties close up, I can say the lower half of the top 10 students were a lot stronger than the lower half of the tier 4 students. But the range between the two narrowed to the point of being indistinguishable as you moved up, and the difference in faculty -- in terms of actual communication with students and desire to help them learn -- was pretty much indistinguishable as well.

If anything, the tier 4 professors seemed to care more. There are a number of possible reasons for that, but I'd like to think it was just because they cared more.

Dave

Anonymous said...

Insuf sens - the democrat party wants collectivism - people viewed as members of groups, not as individuals. An individual, Crystal Gail Mangum, a local prostitute, NCCU "student", welfare recipient, unwed mother of 3, and congenital liar, has damaged many people's lives with her ongoing lies. She has been supported by the democrats of Durham and NC, and will likely never face any consequences. KC supports this - why - because "Precious" is a member of a group with black privilege? I have no idea - but the fact that he thinks she should not be prosecuted is directly in line with democrat group think. Democrats march in lock step. He does not have the personal courage to break free from those bonds. Wouldn't it be refreshing to have a democrat party that I couldn't lump together using that sort of language? I would like that. But won't hold my breath waiting for independent thought to spontaneously errupt on the left.

Anonymous said...

I think about the last thing on KC Johnson's mind is cynical manipulation of facts to promote partisan Democratic Party goals. Please don't allow such a corrosive notion to infect this discussion.

12:47 PM


I would agree. Just because K.C. is not calling for Crystal to be prosecuted (which I think he is speaking to practical, not ideological, matters) does not mean he is cynically trying to manipulate anyone.

Whenever K.C. has mentioned his status as a Democrat, it always has been as a disclaimer or as a piece of information that fits the subject. People accuse him of being a right-wing Republican, and he counters with, "No, I am a liberal Democrat." Now, I see nothing cynical at all in that, any more than in my response to people who call me a racist, I point out that my two sons are Ethiopians. That is a statement of fact, period.

The wonderful thing about this page and ones like it (like Liestoppers) is that they have brought together people of differing views, faiths, political connections, and the like to deal with a real-live issue of life and death. I think that is important, and I think that the real divide here is between those who believe in a thing called truth and ones who declare that truth is whatever they want it to be at that time. That is the important divide, not political party membership.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said...
Carolyn asks:

Mr. Fontes - if Susan Williams' feminist gibberish is an example of communication, then so is a baby banging its rattle against the crib bars.

I'll take the baby.

11:25 AM


Please tell me you did not read the entire post. If you did please accept my sincere apology as I have no way to compensate you for the wasted time.

Anonymous said...

"Kurtz's pitiful attempt to demonize the victim in this case - and through her all Black women"

I have just taken an informal (rump?) poll of the black women in my immediate family (there are three,and I'm not even going to bother going to extended family) and asked them if they felt demonized by Howard Kurtz's statements.

One laughed out loud, one shook her head and asked for more coffee and the third asked, "who?" before rushing off the get her uniform on for an afternoon basketball game.

So there you have it folks ... the numbers never lie ...

Anonymous said...

Bill,

You may be right - I may be wrong. I am upset that the lying prostitute has done such damage, but perhaps someday some democrat somewhere will become a decent politician and do the right thing. I shall remain hopeful.

And I will back off KC - he does good, despite my personal reasons for wanting Crystal behind bars. He probably has the correct view - from hundreds of miles away. Which, if I was smart, is where I would be.

Thanks for setting me straight - as I say, it's just difficult living in a monoculture of slime. D'oh - I just slid into victim-ology! I must be a democrat now! LOL.

I hear you on that racist thing - my stepson is half Kikuyu, so around here I get a lot of rude comments, and especially from the local blacks, a lot of hateful looks. Such is life in the stupid lane.

I was wrong, and unlike my superiors at Duke, I admit it.

Anonymous said...

Cedarwood sez ...


Part of the speculation why the City might have thought it smart to feed it to the appointed DA was from a long history of scandals in town. Particularly about crooked cops and city officials getting kickbacks from drug rings and prostitutes, and a natural reticence to distance themselves from a bipolar psychotic whore that not only kicked back some of her hard-earned stripping&whoring money, but knew who was getting the kickbacks. A pissed off psychotic whore who the morning after when she sobered up, thought she had somehow inadvertently stepped into what could be a sweet shakedown scam going against Duke and maybe some rich white boys who dissed her. And didn't want no cops ruining it, so decided to keep on lying and maybe tossed out some helpful reminders of the freebies she gave out to cops and the people she coughed protection money up to.
Tony Soprano at Liestoppers adds this neat little factoid that suggests that whores were given favored treatment to ply their trade free of a crackdown - and when nailed for something else - like Crystal or Kim - getting very lienient parole and little or no jail time. Soprano notes the arrest record on prostitutes:


Yes. Why is no one focussing on the corruption that seems endemic in Durham.

Duke should be concerned about this.

In many ways it reminds me of Uganda and a number of other African countries like that.

It is almost impossible not to introduce that two letter acronym, but when city officials do not have the intelligence or forethought to understand the long-term damage that corruption does to their economy, you have to wonder are there any fine upstanding citizens left in Durham?

Anonymous said...

"To me, it matters more what a lawyer does after graduation than what school he or she attended."

Jerri, that's what made me laugh an awful lot reading the comments here. It doesn't matter if you got your degree from a mud puddle if your excellent in your field post-college.

As you stated, it only matters what you've done once you've graduated, that goes for everyone,not just lawyers.

Anonymous said...

1:13

I can offer a sample of 2 black women in my immediate family who had the same reaction.

Now we have 5.

I suspect there are many more...

Anonymous said...


I have just taken an informal (rump?) poll of the black women in my immediate family (there are three,and I'm not even going to bother going to extended family) and asked them if they felt demonized by Howard Kurtz's statements.


No doubt the black women in your family felt so oppressed by the white patriarchy they didn't dare disagree with you.

Anonymous said...

1:20

I assume you're trying to be sarcastic and that you mean well. Please confirm. If not, do you have a point?

Anonymous said...

"No doubt the black women in your family felt so oppressed by the white patriarchy they didn't dare disagree with you."

Hmmm... I didn't even think of that. Maybe I need to re-examine the meta-narrative of opression as it relates to coffee, gummi bears and sweet tarts, in the postmodern normative of contextualized racial discourse ... or something like that ...

Anonymous said...

For me, the worst single paragraph in the narrative by Linda Martin Alcoff about On Prejudging the Duke Lacrosse Team Scandal
is this one:


However, there are clearly better and worse narratives, even true and false narratives.


And she is going to show us some.


For example, the narrative of black male sexual aggression against white women was a false narrative.


Ahhh, so black males get a pass today because of alleged past false narratives. Perhaps she has never read the DoJ's NCVS results.


That narrative played a role in the public's willingness to condemn the Scottsboro Boys in 1930's Alabama, a case that columnist Nicholas Kristof likens to the Duke scandal, but in the Scottboro case the narrative was actually historically inaccurate.


Oh, so educated white boys have a history of raping black women, he? Perhaps she has never bothered to study the DoJ's NCVS.


It was simply a method used to maintain Jim Crow segregation and to terrorize African Americans from asserting their legal rights.


There are good narratives and bad ones, true ones and false ones.

Anonymous said...

Why bother with Department of Justice statistics? They'll only get in the way of an appealing myth. Who would want to take official notice of the fact that white on black gang rape is reported with somewhat less frequency than alien abduction? Such rapes, though not metaphysically impossible, are extraordinarily rare. Black on white gang rapes, by contrast, happen hundreds of times each year. Not every allegation is necessarily true, but the overwhelming majority are, thus making white on black gang rape a legitimate social narrative worthy of analysis.

Anonymous said...

Cooper and Coman have no backbone. North Carolina legal system continues to be a complete joke!!! They will always be remembered as the state that NOBODY has the backbone and strong moral ethics to stop this national joke of a case.

Anonymous said...


The second narrative under contestation concerns the history of privileged white men at elite universities who are involved in collective high status activities like sports and fraternities. This narrative—much newer, much less widely accepted—is that such groups sometimes abuse their status and power to break laws, both small ones and more serious ones. Is this narrative relevant here? The Duke Lacrosse team was organized very much like a fraternity, with most of the team living together and apart from the rest of the campus. The facts that are not in dispute here are that the team members hired sex workers for group entertainment, that they asked for racially specific types of sex workers (not black, as it turns out), that some of them referred during the evening to the sex workers as niggers and bitches, that one shouted out to a sex worker (as heard by a neighbor) "Hey bitch, thank your grandpa for your nice cotton shirt," that one said to a sex worker that he was going to shove a broomstick up her, and that another one sent around a sick email professing his intention to rape, kill, and skin the sex workers. Those are the facts that are not in dispute. Also not in dispute is the fact that the Duke Lacrosse team has violated laws systematically over at least the past 5 years, becoming notorious among the administration for boorish behavior, such as public urination and hitting golf balls against buildings.


That Alcoff thug is breathtaking in the extent to which she engages in false moral equivalence.

Men who have urinated in public and who have engaged in boorish behavior are clearly equivalent, morally, to violent, racist, gang rapists.

Anonymous said...

Her "indisputable" facts are, in fact, hotly disputed.

M. Simon said...

ME 12:47 PM said...

KC,

A quick admin note. The reader comments do not appear when I look at your Saturday, February 17, 2007 "More Airbrushing" column. I tried reloading it several times with no luck.

I believe the comments got turned off because there was a discussion of race, IQ, and how the Angry Studies folk promote racism.

The Angry Studies are making political capital out of natural variation.

Such a topic is verbotten.

Because the truth might be construed as racist.

Don't expect this comment to last long.

As some one pointed out up thread - the Angry Studies folks and Cultural Marxists have developed a script and teach it.

Bringing this into the open is divisive.

Breaking the back of this crap is not going to happen here. It will have to be done by some one else.

Anonymous said...

Great story on Liestoppers

Nifong making legal journals. The Bar is going to have to set an example.

Nifong Makes New York Law Journal

Anonymous said...

KC,

In light of M. Simon comment, I think it appropriate to address the admin. issue raised by the poster @ 12:47. What sets this blog above others is its transparency. It would be a pity if readers start questioning it.

Anonymous said...

2:46 said: Perhaps you should join, because only then can you fight the crap.

Indeed. We need to start attending these local meetings where the sleepwalking angry studies/feminist types have force fed the media their one sided ideas and demanded bigoted programs from our ball-less politicians who have chivalrously caved in and given these terrorists anything they wanted. Meanwhile the rest of us slept through this entire 20 year bigot fest thinking our legislators were fair and would consider everyone. WRONG! They have sold us down the feminist river. Our media is now infested as are our laws. Don't believe it? Read here and here.

Our silence has fueled this. We must speak up publically or suffer the consequences.

Anonymous said...

So now, Serena Sebring on Durham Responds, brings us this:

Basu: The myths about sexual assault

Clearly, the accused lacrosse players are also guilty of the sexual assault of children. Is there nothing these big bad dudes will stop at?

Who knew?

james conrad said...

off topic but for anyone following the border patrol case where 2 BP agents recently were sentenced to 12 years in prison, the transcript is out and patterico is covering it

james conrad said...

oops.....http://patterico.com/

Anonymous said...

I have been following the two border agent case. Another miscarriage of justice. How did these guys ever get convicted?

M. Simon said...

James 3:15PM,

patterico.com/

Here is how you make permalinks:

<a href="url">text to display</a>

replace url with:
http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/2007/02/duke-fever.html
leave the quote marks

replace text to display
with
Duke Fever

Duke Fever

If you keep a cheat sheet (text file) up of your most commonly used forms (probably around 10 to 20) it is really easy.

Anonymous said...

"Breaking the back of this crap is not going to happen here. It will have to be done by some one else."

MSimon, I've read with great interest all of your posts, but this is KCs blog, he gets the final word.

For those who want a bigger picture about the current "culture on campus," check FIRE (Foundation for individual rights in education) and the work they are doing in combatting the supression of free speech on campuses throughout the country.

Anonymous said...

"Kikuyu"

If it's not impolite to ask, but what ethnicity are we talking about?

I am not familiar with that word.

Anonymous said...

The Basu piece is an outrage, a moral and legal outrage. We have yet another person quoting Wendy Murphy as though this woman is anything but a liar. (Ask the noted Boston attorney Harvey Silverglate and Dorothy Rabinowitz of the Wall Street Journal about the veracity Murphy's veracity.)

Of course, Basu misrepresents why the Duke criminal case has fallen apart, but that is par for the course with people like her. It is interesting to see just how low people like Murphy and Basu will stoop to see this dishonest case go on. Given her history on other wrongful convictions, Murphy must get pleasure out of seeing people thrown into prison for things that never happened.

She thinks of herself as an avenger. I think of her as a very sick and evil monster.

Anonymous said...

An example from FIRE ...

"In December, FIRE publicly challenged MSU to dismantle the SAC program, which forces students whose behaviors or attitudes are considered unacceptable to undergo mandatory ideological reeducation at their own expense."

Read that again ... "mandatory ideological reeducation"

Are we in 1970s China?

If that doesn't raise the hackles on the back of your neck, none of the stuff written andcommented on in this blog will.

M. Simon said...

HumboldtBlue,

I totally agree with:

MSimon, I've read with great interest all of your posts, but this is KCs blog, he gets the final word.

I'm a total believer in free will.

Still the core of this case is institutionalized bigotry.

KC seem to wish to focus on just the boys. Fine with me. I have three blogs I can post on with significant traffic. Instapundit picks my stuff up from time to time. So I am not hurting to get out whatever it is I have to say.

KC is a prof and has to live with those people. I'm retired and only have to live with myself.

I might do the same under the circumstances.

Still we do have a group of folks in this country making political causes out of natural variation and this case is the result.

Anonymous said...

Re: Kathleen Bergin's article:

Bergin links to a piece by (Director of Women's Studies) Linda Martín Alcoff, who discusses the 3 main "narratives" that surround the LAX charges.

Narratives, it turns out, are simply stereotypes, rebranded.

Alcoff declares that some narrative-stereotypes are wrong (lying sex workers, victim-cult activists), but one is good and true: privileged white abusers. This, apparently, is a stereotype we can all live with.

WTF is it with using narrative-stereotypes instead of facts? How stupid are these people? And why do the social "sciences" -- if that's what women's studies is -- think that if they rename stuff they can rescue it from the intellectual trash-heap? Stereotypes substitute for thinking about individuals, and narratives, no matter how you try to tart them up, are just friggin' stereotypes.

Anonymous said...

To Bill and Anon 3:05

Serina Sebring is Monika Hostler-Johnson's sock puppet. If you want to play the Wahneema Lubiano connector game it goes Wahneema to Serena to Hostler-Johnson to Wendy Murphy.

The G88 had ties to the potbangers that predated the Lax party.

M. Simon said...

4:07PM,

Cultural Marxism is all about stereotypes. Your comment is excellent on this.

Race, class, gender. Pick one that works if you cand get all cylinders to fire.

Anonymous said...

South Texas Law School
Whitlock College
Ne England School of Law
Where are they finding these folk? Notice they are all women. Whats that about? They are all looking for their fifteen seconds of fame,

Anonymous said...

humboldtblue -

For more hackle raising, go to the following site:

FrontPage Mag

Also click on Horowitz's name at the top of the home page to get to his archived articles on this subject, his efforts at many institutions to institute an Academic Bill of Rights that protects students - but does not infringe on the rights of professors in the academy - based on the AAUP's own principles!

This is a huge problem that FIRE and Horowitz are fighting tooth and nail.

--Lumpy Gravy

Anonymous said...

Re: the Kathleen Bergin article. I'm probably not the first to mention this, but did many notice the irony behind the blogowner's banner quote: "No person is your friend who demands your silence.” - Alice Walker" and her post: "In consequence, with apologies to Kathleen Bergin, no futher anonymous comments will be allowed with respect to this post. I realize that means that people who simply want to offer an opinion will be shut out, and for that I apologize, but I do not have the time or ability to effectively sort astroturf from legitimate “pro-defendant” commentary."

Anonymous said...

POLANSKI BE STILL ANGRY--HE DEMAND ALLPOLANSKIALLTHETIME STUDIES AT DUKE (plus free hookers each Tuesday)

Cedarford: Please tell me your sources with respect to Precious's so-called psychotic break. Bipolars rarely have psychotic breaks, and from what I can discern from police reports and nurse's examination, CGM was drunk and high on some prescription drug (flexeril?). She's a garden-variety sociopath, and this can be proven given the fact that she has maintained her vile accusations for almost a year. Which brings up my KC Johnson problem.

Here we go, folks:

Yesterday Johnson deleted an important post of mine that satirized Angry Studies and its curricula. Let's just say that the post concerned men and the social stigma of truncated manliness.

As a blog administrator, which in essence is an editor, he made an enormous error, IMO. My satirical studies department could be LEGITIMATELY argued to be just as important as other Angry Studies departments. I was so pissed off at Johnson that I accused him of certain creative and cognitive deficiencies, for which I apologize. Simon, those comments to which you refer were deleted, IMO, because Johnson was having a temper tantrum. He was also angry that I ridiculed his publisher, St Martin's Press--that I won't apologize for.

12:27 makes a damn good point, so we might as well address it: KC Johnson does not want to punish Crystal Gail Mangum for her vile crime--and, by extension, he's telling other women to crucify good men if it's "convenient" to do so. This is reprehensible, Professor. Sociopaths need to fear punishment from society; otherwise, they maim, kill, slander, and destroy. BTW, as an editor myself, I'd place the appropriate punishement of Precious to be the SECOND most important aspect of the case, only 1 step below the listening statement. Mark my words, that listening statement was not sui generis to Duke--any university is vulnerable to the institutionalized bigotry which is the nasty core of Angry Studies (Simon, your "institutionalized bigotry" term is perfect!).

Cedarford: re arrests for prostitution. Are you serious? The only time cops raid escort services is if there is a prude in public office. Prostitution is only a problem when it's in full view on the streets. Hookers attract johns, pimps, and drug dealers, which, of course, can spell vipolent confrontations. Otherwise prostitution, a victimless crime, should be taxed and legalized.

10:00 Do you really believe higher-ups were using Precious's services. Have you seen photos of her? She's ugly and fat. Higher-ups can do better--much better.

11:29 NPR balanced? Babe, what are you smoking? Let me tell you how "balanced" NPR and its clones really are. In 1993, working with Andy Warhol's collaborator, Gerard Malanga, we proposed to WETA (major PBS producer in Washington, D.C.) a show entitles, "Affirmative Criticism: Preferential Treatment in the Arts." On the panel I had lined up Bell Hooks, Bill Buckley, Linda Gottfredson, Hilton Kramer, Richard Goldstein (former top editor at Village Voice), and Roger Ebert, among others.

I was invited down to a production meeting by WETA's top staff. I enter the production meeting, and I knew immediately that I was going to be attacked--big time. Their head honcho whose name escapes me immediately challenged Gottfredson's relevancy on the panel. I pointed out that Gottfredson is an expert on the practice of race norming, and therefore her input is crucial in the analysis of preferential treatment. I almost got into a fist fight with this asshole. Sharon Rockefeller came in and tried to calm thigs down, but she's nothing more than a rich sinecure "executive." Needleess to say, nothing happened, but I did get my revenge on Rockefeller. She threatened to sue me for "harassment." Why? Because I accused her of censorship. I told her lawyer to fuck off--and she did.

Here's another little tidbit, and why I now can't stand Buckley. I told him what happened at WETA, so he turns me on to his "Firing Line" producer, Warren Steibel (now deceased). He takes me to an expensive dinner, and basically gives me the velvet knife. So conservative's won't touch this issue, either. Buckley is a coward.

If NPR were balanced, it would pick controversial topics. The topics should be diverse, not the panelists.

11:37 only losers are concerned with rank of schools--they remind me of the Mensa dopes (yeah, I've got this humongous IQ, but I'm a social studies teacher)--pllleeaasseee

Bill Anderson @ 1:03 opines that Johnson's decision not to address the Precious punishment issue is "practical, not ideological."

Professor, is it "practical" to give free rein to female sociopaths to terrorize men? Humiliate them? Destroy their families? Place them in prison for 40 years?

M. Simon said...

Polanski 4:59,

I took it that what KC objected to was the IQ stuff because he specifically posted in the thread to knock it off.

If it was just SDS he could have deleted your post and a few others.

IQ represented 1/3 or more of the text and was totally interwoven in the thread until a little after he posted his cease and desist.

OTOH I did get in a few comments in on Short Studies so maybe you are correct. Or was that on another thread?

Anonymous said...

To all concerned about the level of corruption amongst judges, prosecutors and law enforcement in Durham:

A certain level of police, prosecutorial and judicial corruption is considered an acceptable fact of life within law enforcement agencies (not all), prosecutorial offices (not all) and judges' chambers (not all). This, of course, will be refuted by many the above, but it is an accepted part of life and goes on routinely. To use this free pass on breaking the law, they just have to not get caught, which is easy to do when they are the ones we expect to do all of the catching. MSM is rewarded by performing PR for law enforcement and the courts, so depending on MSM for truth and accuracy is laughable.

When law enforcement and the CJS use this free pass on breaking the law, they expect protection from it's own brotherhood, other law enforcement agencies and judicial offices, many of whom engage in the same behavior. They do this not because they are evil, but because they can. Because they can, they will be used by people like the G88, pot-bangers and Nifong for evil.

Because this problem exists in general to some level (not all at once in the same place, but over time in many places,) the Government sponsered criminals (police, prosecutors, judges) in Durham really don't think of themselves as having committed anything extraordinary. After all, they will believe that they did not do things any differently than what happens every day across the country, and it will be true for the most part.

The quibble will be, how much more corrupt were they than what is routinely tolerated as the universal background noise of police/prosecutor/judge malfeasance?

Ask yourself this: if you had blatantly committed malfeasance similar to and on the same level as what we have seen in Durham (and elsewhere), how long would it take before you yourself were under investigation? Good luck investigating the investigators. They hold all of the cards and are a privileged class. They are held to a lower standard than us. Good luck.

Anonymous said...

Thus is the way of the world, and it seems to have always been so. I just read a feminist interpretation of colonial American rape. She says that there were no prosecutions of white men for the rape of slave women between 1700 and the civil war. She concludes that this was caused by racism. It never enters her mind that perhaps that is because white men did not rape slave women.

Polanski

Anonymous said...

HumboldtBlue: I think Kikuyu are an African tribe in Kenya.

Gary Packwood said...

Anonymous 5:14 PM

How concerned would I be if I was in Durham with the legal wheels of justice?

Well, if I owned a huge block of property in Durham and paid ZERO property tax on that property, ZERO Tax on my endowment and ZERO tax on the annual income from that endowment, I would be very concerned about minding my P's and Q's with respect to the law.

I would also be interested in helping the community in whatever way is feasible ... with lots of PR around April 15th each year when everyone else is paying ...their taxes.

Anonymous said...

Polanski,

You hammer KC for not following your line of reasoning, fair enough, but why are you so surprised he runs his blog and addresses the issues as he sees fit?

Your statements -- whatever one thinks of them -- are yours. The direction the blog administrator wishes to go, although it may not gibe with yours, isn't a reason to attack.

There are myriad issues to be discussed with this hoax, I'm just confused why you demand KC personally address the ones you find important.

Other than that, keep on keepin' on.

Anonymous said...

I second humboldtblue's opinion. Polanski should start his own blog.

Anonymous said...

Kikuyu are Kenya's most populous ethnic group, comprising about 22% of Kenya's total population. Ethnologists believe the Kikuyu originally came from West Africa (Cameroon?) along with other Bandu tribes. Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya's first president, was a Kikuyu.

If you've never heard of the Kikuyu, then you have probably not read "Out of Africa," in which Isak Dinesen writes about (among other things), her experiences with the tribe. It's an interesting read. The movie, starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford, was not as good, but had some memorable cinematography.

Anonymous said...


Thus is the way of the world, and it seems to have always been so. I just read a feminist interpretation of colonial American rape. She says that there were no prosecutions of white men for the rape of slave women between 1700 and the civil war. She concludes that this was caused by racism. It never enters her mind that perhaps that is because white men did not rape slave women.


Indeed, feminists seem to mostly think that black female slaves had no agency, and thus any half-white children were the result of white male sexual aggression (ie, rape) and not those black female slaves understanding the lay of the land and seeking to move their offspring up the chain. Of course, in some cases, I imagine that slave females were taken advantage of.

Anonymous said...

Anon 5:36

Thanks

Anonymous said...

Simon, 4:17,

Will you define Cultural Marxism? I can't figure it out.

M. Simon said...

5:44PM,

Women want smart strong men in positions of power.

So much so that some will preferentially mate with such a man even if they have a husband.

Anonymous said...

This same feminist talks about the "myth" of the black male rapist. There were plenty of prosecutions of black men. It's obvious what was going on. Black men were raping white women (though I have no doubt there were false accusations), but white men weren't raping black women. The slave women falsely accused their owners of raping them, but the courts rejected their pleas because they knew the truth--that the slaves made it all up.

Polanski

M. Simon said...

6:15PM,

I just did a post on that, so I'm glad you asked.

Cultural Marxism.

In Academia it is disguised as Post Modernism. In politics "Progressive".

It has its origins with Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci invented the "long march through the culture." Taking over the universities was one of the steps.

Herbert Marcuse was a proponent.

M. Simon said...

Polanski,

I'm not sure you are correct on that one.

It may be better explained by "you can't rape your own property".

However, if you have evidence to the contrary I'm open to changing my view. I'm not well versed in the subject.

In any case rape of the losing side was well known in African tribal wars, so the black women may have accepted it as their lot in life.

Anonymous said...

Oh my. The "short member" studies post was deleted? I thought it was brilliant and entertaining as hell. I can understand the reluctance to go into the very un-pc ideas about race and IQ but I have a hard time understanding how that satire would be deleted. I would be very curious to hear from KC his reasons for deleting that post.

NPR fair? Far from it. Just look at the sibling PBS where even their ombudsman complain of their producing programs that push a one-sided feminist agenda.


Just have a look at the
Ombudsman's opinion Scroll down the "Here's what I think" heading to see what he says. Here's an excerpt:

My assessment, as a viewer and as a journalist, is that this was a flawed presentation by PBS. I have no doubt that this subject merited serious exposure and that these problems exist and are hard to get at journalistically. But it seemed to me that PBS and CPTV were their own worst enemy and diminished the impact and usefulness of the examination of a real issue by what did, indeed, come across as a one-sided, advocacy program.

If it weren't for Glenn Sacks and his efforts to focus feedback to PBS this program would have slid by without comments from the PBS staff. And so it goes.

M. Simon said...

Gramsci thought the new proletariat would be comprised of criminals, women, and racial minorities.

Class, gender, race.
Criminals, women, minorities.

One of the reasons that criminals are so beloved by the left.

Anonymous said...

Carolyn replies:

Mr. Fontes, no apology needed - you were just doing your job. And yup, I read ALL of Susan Williams' article. At the end of that stupefying gibberish, (and once my eyes uncrossed), I figured out she was asking 'what is truth'? What I also figured out is that she didn't want to tell me.

By the way, what the hell is "hermeneutics"?

M. Simon said...

Kilgore,

Cognitive ability is why some minorities in America are not doing well. Which is why Angry Studies finds that topic incendiary. They would prefer the answer be racism.

If the answer is not racism then the Angry Studies folks have lost one of their major supports.

If the answer is not sexism then the Angry Studies folks have lost one of their major supports. Thus Summers HAD to leave Harvard.

If the answer is not oppression of the criminal class then the Angry Studies folks have lost one of their major supports. (note criminals have significantly lower cognitive ability than the general population).

So yeah. SDS is funny, but cognitive ability is the root of this mess.

Expect this thread to disappear when KC gets around to reading my posts. Too incendiary to notice the Rhinocerous in the living room.

M. Simon said...

hermeneutics on the Web:

* The pursuit of meaning following specified principles of interpretation. Originally hermeneutics referred to the process of interpreting religious writings. However, much literary criticism amounts to a secular hermeneutics. Notably exceptions include most structuralist and post-structuralist criticism. These non-hermeneutic approaches focus not on discovering what a text means but rather on how meaning is deployed or subverted.

========

in Google use

define:hermeneutics

M. Simon said...

note that the Cultural Marxist principles of interpretation are our old friends:

race, gender, class

Anonymous said...

OK, so it's gender/race/class.

Here's how I call it:

Priveleged White Males: 1
Underprivleged Black Females: 0

--Lumpy Gravy

Anonymous said...

"...social stigma of truncated manliness..."

I humbly submit, that I am a subject matter expert.

First of all it is only a social stigma if one presents it in a social environment. Lance Rentzel, is the most notworthy to do this and it does not work out.

Second, truncated suggests that the unit is reduced voluntarily or otherwise. That fellows wife truncated his unit; sane people do not intentionally do so.

It is typically only a stigma to strippers, hookers, and other men who look over urnial walls. Each are may be controlled.

Anonymous said...

Hermeneutics was originally the disciplines needed to read texts, in particular texts written in ancient languages without modern conventions of punctuation or spelling. That is, it involved very careful attention to dating and placing a text and then interpreting the text in ways consistent with other texts known from the same date and place. It is the kind of thing that has been going on for 60 years with the Dead Sea scrolls. It can represent real scholarship.

When idiots took over the humanities departments at most universities, it was a fancy word that they adopted to disguise the fact that the texts they were interested in were generally pretty bad: I am studying Little Richard hermeneutically.

JeffM

Anonymous said...

What happened to the comments from yesterday's post? Were they all erased? I can't find them.

Anonymous said...

Again, does anyone know what happened to the posts from More Airbrushing? They're gone.

Anonymous said...

M.Simon I think we are probably in agreement. I don't think though that the main culprit is sexism and racism as much as it is victimhood. While racism and sexism may be the "vehicle" the fuel for the problem is the victimhood. The problem of victimhood is that it locks those who play the game of perpetual victims into a "role triangle." There are three basic roles involved, victim, perpetrator, and rescuer. They are always fluid and changing and the participant must be identified with one of the roles at all times. The dance is that most people/couples who get involved in this will bounce around the three roles repeatedly. It is hard to find an exit. Any policeman who has been called to a "domestic" knows all about this. The feminists types have gotten very adept at staying in the victim role and never allowing themselves to be pegged as the perp. In order to do this they need a perp that has no defense and is easily maligned. Enter the White Male. Duh. The danger of this three role merry go round is that anyone who has identified with this loses their ability to be in the present tense. They become locked into a way of viewing the world that disallows them the opportunity to enjoy their lives. In order to stay in role they need to maintain a rigidity and a brittle world view that supports their maya. And so it goes.

Anonymous said...

"More Airbrushing" airbrushed? Surely not...

Anonymous said...

The comments were probably airbrushed because too much truth was in them. Not good for KC to go the Amanda Marcotte route.

Anonymous said...

kilgore, you're all hat and no cattle. The Duke lacrosse case was able to intensify and remain in play for one reason--race.
Even KC is trying to avoid hitting that nail on the head.
Victimhood is a category under the race umbrella which is used for pretty much everything.
So many of you try to obfuscate this issue, but if you're going to win a battle you have to fight it with the rules the antagonists have laid out. And by god, race is the only key element that was used and the one they knew would work.
Gender? Bullshit. White guys accused of raping a white stripper? Sure, some bad press and a slap at the lacrosse team by Broadhead, but nothing like the injustice and the malice waged against these boys.

Anonymous said...

7:49 - Something tells me that this case would never get off the ground if the falsely accused were female. No way. Not a snowballs chance in hades. Race is a big part of this mess but don't discount the misandry.

Anonymous said...

Uh, um, yeah kilgore. It'd be harder to prove that a woman raped some men. Duh!

Anonymous said...

7:57 - And why would it be harder to prove that a woman raped a man? Women do in fact rape men and boys. Just look at all the female teachers who are raping young men. It goes on but most people give the women a pass. Just have a look at the sentencing differences for male and female teachers who have sex with their underage students. Women get a pass and men go to jail.

Big snake, no rattle.

Anonymous said...

Yesterday I posted the piccolo player joke and ended by asking who calls those #@$$ scholars, (a play on the punchline).

Someone politely challenged me to read the works. I defered, asking which would be the one article worth reading. Of course I got no response.

Upon reflection, however, I am not in a position to challege their scholarly (a fuzzy term) capabilities. Others that post here are who are in academia better understand the published paper game.

What I think is more appropriate is to question whether the race/gender/class warfare studies are worthy of scholarship at any University, much less at Duke.

At least this gives some of the Angries the benefit of the doubt they may redirect to scholarhsip that raises the tide and lifts all boats, instead of poking holes in the best boats.

Anonymous said...

This damned case is, was, and will continue to be about a sleazy black whore who used some white boys for anything she needed to get away with that night.
The fact that all this has to be treated so delicately is shameful and it's why some of us are adamant that the racists in Durham and at Duke who want to perpetuate this injustice are to be held up to society for what they are.
And god help their black asses when they come crying the blues about "discrimination" or some "injustice". I'm already upchucking when I listen to all the repetitive black history month sweetness and light.
Listen to them talk about equality and fairness and you might puke on the spot.

Anonymous said...

kilgore, the explanation is best found in the receptical manuals. AC/DC...etc....

M. Simon said...

C4,

How does one explain the atrocious writing of the Angry Studies folk when they are trying to communicate with mere mortals. Aren't these folks supposed to be able to write a clear and coherent sentence?

Aren't they supposed to be accomplished in their fields? Some Harvard grads?

Differential cognitive ability and affirmative quotas explains it better than any other theory I am aware of.

Of course if you have a better theory I'd be glad to hear it.

Kilgore,

I agree it is a victimhood problem. So how is victimhood framed:

There are not "enough" blacks in colleges, especially top tier colleges.

There are not "enough" women in science and math, especially in top tier colleges.

There was a lot of racism and sexism in America at one time so that is the template, despite the fact that America has moved on.

But the angry Studies explanation is: the "man" is holding us down.

Yeah, KC has gone all Marcotte on us. Despite criticizing her unmercifully for deleting comments she was uncomfortable with.

BTW I'm very careful to stick with facts verified by those in the field. So far no one has refuted the facts. In the "Angry..." thread I had an answer for every criticism.

Note that none of the critics took my cognitive ability test. LOL

Anonymous said...

Maybe it's because I wasn't following this case from the start, but it's really shocking. Essentially, "justice" was used as a code word for reverse oppression; the narrative was more important than the facts; and a PC lynchmob is regarded with exactly the same approbation as the old vigilante mobs that broke jails and hanged murderers in the 19th Century.

Humans evidently don't change; just our justifications. And there still aren't enough people willing to stand up for real justice.

What a very depressing observation.

This case, having been brought, should be dropped. Potbangers, the Gang of 88, Duke University and the NAACP owe profound and public apologies to the 3 accused, and then there should be a very public investigation and trial.

Oh, and the families need to be recompensed. Every penny needs to come back to them after this travesty.

Anonymous said...

M. Simon @ 8:24

Perhaps you should wait for KC's explanation?

Anonymous said...

8:25

You are exactly correct.

M. Simon said...

8:29PM,

Be glad to.

However, his discomfort with the differential cognitive abilities part of the thread was expressed in the thread.

Which I think, barring contrary explanations is evidence. Well it would be evidence if the thread wasn't gone. LOL

Anonymous said...

You want to know what's truly sad? KC's decision to delete all comments on the More Airbrushing post, aside from being so ironic, is a great example of the power of PC and is exactly what helped Mike Nifong get away with so much.
There was nothing but the truth and honest opinions over there. But it all had to be deleted. Just as facts in this case were deleted so that some black vengeful thugs could railroad some white boys and feel good about themselves.
Something tells me that KC's book will be a piece of PC crapola.

Anonymous said...

You want to know what's truly sad? KC's decision to delete all comments on the More Airbrushing post, aside from being so ironic, is a great example of the power of PC and is exactly what helped Mike Nifong get away with so much.
There was nothing but the truth and honest opinions over there. But it all had to be deleted. Just as facts in this case were deleted so that some black vengeful thugs could railroad some white boys and feel good about themselves.
Something tells me that KC's book will be a piece of PC crapola.

M. Simon said...

Also note that I suggested in that thread that it was incumbent on the top producers who are doung a very good job making manual labor uneconomical to figure a way to support those only capable of manual labor.

A fairly socialist position coming from a libertarian Republican.

Anonymous said...

I don't know or care about statistics or data or whatever studies have been done, but I do know one thing.
If black people in this country want others to discontinue having the thoughts or the opinions that they are somehow inferior and less intelligent, then they should someday stop acting inferior and less intelligent than other groups of people on this earth.

Anonymous said...

8:39

That's why they had to make positions available for the Gang88 at the John Hope Franklin Bldg.
Franklin's a nice elderly gentleman, but he can't write worth a shit. Of course everyone has to build him up though.

Anonymous said...

Carolyn says:

M. Simon and JeffM:

Gang says 'potato' and I say 'potahto', they say 'hermeneutics' and I say 'lying your butt off' - ether, either - neether, neither - Gang calls the whole thing off.

(They wish.)

Anonymous said...

KC must have deleted yesterday's commentary because he noted that the level of racism had exceeded any acceptable limit. As one who has studied the KKK, I find so many similarities between their views and the views expressed here that I think folks here primarily want to defend the white race. Indeed, one person yesterday admitted that he thought there was nothing wrong with racism. Another determined that IQ rates represented the inferiority of an entire continent full of people (without any comment as to the methodology for measuring a continent's IQ). Yet another said that, in her experience, blacks were simply not as smart as whites. And none of these compare with the vitriol of the poster who says that there is no such thing as a black genius. And yet more people made it clear that most black professors have no business being professors. KC obviously has finally said that his sycophants have gone too far--he needs you to condemn him (it will make him look better, less racist, when his book comes out). Good job; you're playing your proper role.

Anonymous said...

Simon,

You're a libertarian? Most libertarians do not engage in anti-gay diatribes like your post on cultural Marxism.

Anonymous said...

Carolyn asks:

Guys, when does the statute of limitations expire for Seligmann, Finnerty and Evans to sue Duke and the Gang of 88 for libel? I heard it was one year - but one year from what? From the moment the slander began - i.e., last April 2006. Or when the libel ends? In which case, the libel hasn't ended because the Gang of 88 is still doing it (with Broadhead's silence making him party to libel).

Anonymous said...

9:17,

Libel???? I think you need to consult a real lawyer, Carolyn. Not only don't they have a case, they don't even have an argument. Maybe Al Sharpton will take their cases.

Anonymous said...

More airbrushing? KC Johnson is the owner of this blog. It is perfectly acceptable that he might delete a post or an entire raft of them if they do not suit the purpose of his blog. He did not delete his own post. KC gives the direction in which his purpose lies every morning. On the other hand, Marcotte deleted what she said and what others posted, and said it was an accident.

The g88 are brainwashing your children, grandchildren, the nation. Everything they do and say runs through their "macro" of race, gender, class. A priori white males "bad" black females "good."
MTU'76

Anonymous said...

9:11

I was with you up to the last two sentences. Are you saying that KC agrees with the stupid things that those people posted? Yesterday someone was trying to indict the whole forum for those very things. Is that your game too?

Anonymous said...

8:10,

If you want to criticize their work, you must read their work. Your response is so lazy that your criticism will be worthless. You would be laughed out of any college classroom.

Anonymous said...

9:26,

I don't know what KC thinks, but my guess is that he disagrees. That's why he deleted the posts. But I also am concerned that he's playing a game to get famous.

Anonymous said...

9:29

OK, I can live with that. One more question. Do you mean that (a) he's just trying to make a few bucks and that none of the concerns that he raised about the case and the 88 have merit? Or that (b) some of the concerns do have merit, and should be raised, and that he's smart enough to figure out that possibly he'll sell a few books by doing so?

Anonymous said...

9:29

My concern is that he's turning out to be a bullshit artist like Mike Nifong. Constructing this whole scenario just so.
He wants to defend the boys and the injustice, but he wants to keep his feet in the shallow water of the leftist pond at the same time.
If he highlights the basis of what caused all this and the true character of the majority of the people who want these boys sent to prison, he'll have to tell the truth about them. He can't do that. He won't run the risk of underscoring the whole truth because he's afraid of being called a racist. By those who are the worst of that breed called racist.
I don't think I like what I'm seeing here. KC seems to be a northern Morris Dees without the guts of a Morris Dees.
If he's afraid of the truth he needs to find another topic for his book.

Anonymous said...

9:41,

Definitely not (a). Some of the issues he raises have merit. I agree with him on some of those issues, and disagree on others. Other issues I believe have no merit, and there he is grandstanding (for example, criticizing Mark Anthony Neal for the performative title of a talk he gave). I simply do not know him, so I do not know, though, if he may be doing this all just to make a name for himself. I don't know that it really matters. If he is raising legitimate issues, then more power to him.

M. Simon said...

9:11PM,

I made the comment about Africa.

I didn't propose writing the continent off. What I did say was that the possibility of a high tech civilization there where the number of people with a high level of cognitive ability was on the order of .01% of the population was remote.

I noted that in the USA the number was on the order of 5%. That is a factor of 500 different. Difficult to overcome. So it is either paternalism (the white man's burden) or let them sink. At this point in time neither solution is acceptable. Which means the sinking option is the only option in play.

Of course you will say the tests aren't fair. However, tests have been devised with very little cultural sensitivity and they pretty much get the same results.

One test consisted of just a series of push buttons and lights. What they found was superior motor skills in Africa and deficient cognitive skills.

Did I mention the Ibo do well on cognitive tests? So even in a place like Africa there are pockets of cognitive ability.

Really. Study the literature on the subject. Don't believe everything you hear from the PC crowd. Or me.

Also remember to treat individuals as individuals. Averages are just that. Aggregations.

Google

IQ race

It will open your eyes.

BTW the first thing to do is to get an elementary statistics book so you can understand the terms and concepts. A week or two of 2 hrs a day study should bring you up to speed if you are not already.

Another week or two with Google should then make you an "expert" in the field (compared to most people).

Anyway that is what I did.

Almost everything that people can think of has been done to refute the tests. The results (within the margin of error) always come back the same.

This has been going on intensively for at least 40 years re: race.

BTW it may be that verbal ability is a somewhat better predictor of success than math ability. This was confounded by the fact that those two abilities seem to go hand in hand.

Then folks in the field started studying the Chinese. Where on average verbal ability is significantly worse than math and science. And low and behold the success of Chinese in life is mirrored more by their lower verbal ability than their math and science ability.

Really it is a fascinating field. Well worth a month or two of study.

Plus the statistics will help you better understand sampling and election polls. LOL

Also note that there is a small but significant correlation between cognitive ability and brain cavity size. Africans (on average) have smaller brain cavities.

Try as we might we can not avoid the facts.

Personally I wish things were otherwise. OTOH white men can't jump. Every one and every group has their talents.

Also note that we are finding the DNA correlates to cognitive ability. They match the test results.

I'm sure in time as our ability to manipulate DNA gets better we can fix a lot of these problems. For now we are stuck with them.

The fact that the KKK makes use of these findings doesn't make the findings wrong. It just makes the KKK heartless SOBs. But we already knew that.

Anonymous said...

9:27
"8:10,

If you want to criticize their work, you must read their work. Your response is so lazy that your criticism will be worthless. You would be laughed out of any college classroom."

So which article should I read? Which stands out? Which do you think is the most important scholarly work?

And, why don't they post the links to their works? A little truth in advertising if you will?

By the way, do you think Peter Wood read any of Winslow Homer's writings about his painting before he placed words in his mouth with narratives?

Regardless, one need not step in feces to know what it is, wouldn't you agree?

Anonymous said...

The first one of you crybabies who whines "airbrush victim" will be sent to his room until he can come out and post like an adult. Or she.
Auntie MTU'76

Anonymous said...

I am interested in waiting to hear from KC about all of this. It's a tough job to be a moderator of internet discussions. So many times posts can be misinterpreted and copy and pasted as "proof" that a forum is "racist" or "sexist" or hateful in some way. This puts the moderator in a bind. On one side you want to allow free discussion and on the other hand you don't want your forum to be misrepresented or maligned. It's not an easy decision.

I for one deeply appreciate all that KC has done and will wait to hear his feedback.

Anonymous said...

Rather than saying KC is caving, or aiming for publicity, or is just too pc, or even if the thread and commentary became racist, how about we ask about needing to check links, studies and information?

Disclaimer: I was a history major. I only started learning serious math after I left school(statistical analysis at the level I learned as an undergrad doesn't count). I would be very, very uncomfortable in any discussion of IQ distribution without an awful lot of research.

Why are so many of the commenters so ready to jump on KC, who's been very astute in his commentary, for imaginary sins, ascribed to him because of his political affiliation and profession?

Steven Horwitz said...

KC is no Marcotte. Erasing *other people's* posts because they are racist is very different from erasing your own to cover your tracks.

I have to admit my own level of tolerance of the racist crap here has been exceeded. As Bill A said, what was so great about this blog and KC's work was that it brought together people left, right, and libertarian who cared about justice and recognized that what happened to those three young men was massive injustice, perpetrated by Nifong and company, egged on by ideologically fueled faculty.

Those of you who have chosen to make this solely or mostly about race and who have, in my view, demonstrated the worst sort of racism in the way you've made the arguments, have proceeded to both alienate many of us who want to be a part of seeing justice served but don't want to be associated with the likes of you AND you've managed to play into the hands of the G88 by falling right into the role they wanted to assign you/us - crazy right-wing racists. Every time you spout your racist crap, you undermine the legitimacy of the most important site on the web for seeing justice done. Your personal agendas are undermining the doing of justice. Take them elsewhere.

The beauty of KC's work is that he has avoided all of those traps and managed to maintain his bona fides a liberal while still recognizing the follies of the radicals to his left. Those of you who now dismiss him as PC or who cannot understand how he can still be a liberal given that he disagrees with the radicals are ignorant and lousy guests in his house. Academia is full of more leftists like KC than the G88. I'm an academic, and libertarian one at that, so I've had to deal with all types.

Finally, as a libertarian, let me disassociate myself with M. Simon's views on race, gender and pretty much everything else about the culture. Those views, whatever their rightness or wrongness, are orthogonal to libertarianism. There are, as we've seen in this case, plenty of racists on the left and right as well.

Bottom line - if you REALLY care about justice for those three guys, take the conversation about race elsewhere and keep this blog focused on what it does best: pursuing justice and uncovering those responsible for it being perverted.

Anonymous said...

9:49,

Say what you will about the statistics (of which I have little interest), but until you suggest a method for dealing with the wide variations present in an entire continent of people, your conclusions cannot be called anything but simple speculation, used to condemn a continent. It's not so much that the tests themselves are problematic (which they are), but rather that it is not possible to test an entire continent and deal with all of the many variables at play.

M. Simon said...

9:16PM,

Funny you found that anti-gay.

I post regularly on a well known gay blogger's site by invitation. In fact it is better than invitation. I have carte blanche. Anything I want to post about. He doesn't think I'm anti gay.

Classical Values

Read some of my stuff there. Read Eric's stuff.

Of course he is pretty much anti-PC, anti-Cultural Marxism too. Which may explain your confusion.

Evidently you are not very familiar with genus libertarian Republican.

Anonymous said...

9:47

OK, then I look forward to your posts. I don't post here often -- I mostly read KC's posts and the comments to get a sense of what people think about this case and the related events. I'm happy to see one more voice of reason -- there are many but the silly can outshout them. Yesterday was a bad day.

Anonymous said...

9:49,

You are obviously a joke. Citations to their articles are posted on their web pages (do you have the capacity to do the most basic research, or are you one of the people that Simon describes as having cognitive deficiencies?). And, yes, you must read the articles. I do not know which ones I would suggest. I have only read a few of their articles, but I'm not the one attempting to criticize scholarship that I have not read.

M. Simon said...

9:56PM,

A study of statistics would help you understand the validity of sampling.

Japanese industry quality is based on sampling. Why? Because it works.

How can you validly criticize something you don't understand?

Easy I suppose. Just start clacking away at the keyboard.

BTW did I mention that Eric at Classical Values refrenced one of my bits on cognitive abilty?

Did I mention his views on Cultural Marxism are not too different from mine?

M. Simon said...

atlantin,

The url you gave was not too much help.

Perhaps you could give me a couple of good search words.

BTW your rememberance conforms to my expectations as expressed above about the desireability of securing the best genes for one's ofspring.

Anonymous said...

Can we all agree that individuals should be judged as individuals, rather than as members of any given race? If so, all of the discussions of racial attributes are largely beside the point.

More important is the fact that racialist discourse risks discrediting this blog in the eyes of liberal, centrists, and even some conservatives. It is exactly what the 88 hope to see on this site, providing evidence for their larger arguments.

Only a broad-based movement – one that includes non-radical liberals as well as conservatives – has any chance of forcing real reforms in academic politics. KC is building that movement, and for that I thank him deeply.

Anti-Leftist Liberal

Anonymous said...

Who could have imagined? All this hoopla because of one sorry lying black whore.

Anonymous said...

kilgore whines:


7:57 - And why would it be harder to prove that a woman raped a man? Women do in fact rape men and boys. Just look at all the female teachers who are raping young men. It goes on but most people give the women a pass. Just have a look at the sentencing differences for male and female teachers who have sex with their underage students. Women get a pass and men go to jail.


You know, when I was a teenager in highschool, if a guy managed to have sex with a female teacher we would have thought that he was the luckiest guy in the world. There would be no whining about how the poor sensitive boy had been damaged or raped. No siree!

Males and females are different, in case you hadn't noticed.

Anonymous said...

To: Steven Horwitz 9:54
From: Duke Prof.

Thanks for a great post. I have posted here a few times. The first a few people questioned my affiliation with Duke and argued that I am a troll.

You just explained to the forum why I, and I bet many of my colleagues who read this blog, wish to remain rigorously anonymous. Being associated to the excesses of some of the posters on is just unacceptable to us.

A few weeks ago I suggested that toning down those excesses might have resulted in more Duke professors -- in particular from the 88/87 -- coming to the forum and maybe joining the discussion.

I regret to say that things moved in the wrong direction to the detriment of those who are genuinely interested in understanding the issues.

Unfortunately, this might also affect our willingness to talk to Prof. Johnson, whose book might gain from the perspective that we can offer.

Anonymous said...

ALL @ 10:14

Thank you. Very clear exposition of why some of these discussion may be problematic on this forum. Note: I'm not saying it's not an appropriate topic ever, just not here, perhaps?

I am new to this forum, and I have a huge problem with Google/Blogger, so I will sign my name from here on out.

Dianna

Anonymous said...

10:16 - If you read the data on boys who have experienced being raped by their female teachers you find that their symptoms are quite similar to what you see with females who experience the same abuse. You seem to have a large dose of the pedestrian attitude that the boys who are raped are actually lucky. We are now finding that what many think of as "luck" is actually quite yuck. Most folks have a hard time seeing this since emotional pain in men and boys is often dismissed and minimized while emotional pain in women and girls is seen as a call to action.

M. Simon said...

atlantin,

I found this:

The story of the disparate treatment of African American rape victims must begin with slavery. While the connection is not necessarily clear cut, slavery and its legacy of bigotry and sexual violence likely play key roles in the continuing discrimination against black rape victims. In the antebellum South, the rape of enslaved black women—by enslaved men or by white men—was commonplace, but it was not a crime. The law simply gave human property no protection from sexual assault; even free black women had little recourse, as the inability of black people to testify in court or to serve on juries would have made successful prosecutions of their assailants impossible. Some of the same stereotypes that justified slavery in the first place—that black people required the civilizing influence of subjugation to tame their sexual appetites—were pressed into the service of rationalizing these rapes: because the rape laws of that time denied protection to all unchaste women, black women, according to the stereotypes employed by their white masters, could simply never fall within the law’s ambit. The rape of enslaved women also had a powerful economic justification: a child inherited the legal status of its mother, not its father—rape thus became a tool for increasing the labor force. After the Civil War rape laws became race neutral, yet prosecutors, judges, and juries were slow to punish the assailants of black women. Outside the courtroom, the rape of African American women became a tool for inspiring terror and ensuring continued subordination in the Reconstruction South. Only slowly did prosecutions for the rape of African American women become common, yet inequality persisted: until the Supreme Court struck down the use of the death penalty as punishment for rape, defendants convicted of raping a white woman received the penalty far oftener than those convicted of raping an African American.

This history plays out in rape prosecutions today: a number of studies have shown that the experience of an African American rape victim varies in critical ways from that of her white counterpart. First, she is less likely to disclose the rape—to family, to rape crisis centers, to clergy—and significantly less likely to report it to the police. Here, centuries of neglect by the legal authorities appear to play a direct role in cutting off rape prosecutions before they can begin. The unwillingness to report may be compounded by the fact that African American women accept certain rape myths—such as the notion that victims deserve some blame for what happens to them, or that you cannot force sex upon a woman—at rates higher than white women.

Elizabeth Kennedy

Elizabeth Kennedy
========

I'm not certain of the quality of the scholarship. I'll have to do more reading.

BTW rape rates have declined by a factor of 4 or so in the last 30 years in the general population. According to a feminist site I visited in the last month or two.

Anonymous said...

Thank you 10:00, most do not offer links, and aren't readily found with a Google search. I'm not about to request these from my Librarian; one us may faint.

As stated before, a bit of transparency and truth in adverstising would be nice. It makes no sense to hide ones work, does it? By the way,I don't blame you for not reading them either.

Of interest is the one listed below on virginity testing. One wonders how the Women's Studies Dept. classifies that in terms of rape?

Having said that, I did find a link to this great work:

"M. Weiss, Working at Play: BDSM Sexuality in the San Francisco Bay Area, Anthropologica, vol. 48 no. 2 (2006), pp. 229-245 [WorkingPlay]."

Sadly, this one does not:

M. Weiss, Rumsfeld!: Consensual BDSM and ‘Sadomasochistic Torture’ at Abu Ghraib, in Out in Public, edited by Ellen Lewin and William Leap (forthcoming), University of Illinois Press .

None of these are linked?

D.A. Thomas, Subaltern Politics in Jamaica: A Review Essay of Obika Gray’s Demeaned but Empowered: The Social Power of the Urban Poor in Jamaica, Social and Economic Studies (March, 2006) .

Globalization and Race: Transformations in the Cultural Production of Blackness, edited by D.A. Thomas and Kamari Clarke (Spring, 2006) .

D.A. Thomas, "Public Bodies: Virginity Testing, Redemption Songs, and Racial Respect in Jamaica", Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, vol. 11 no. 1 (Spring, 2006) .

D.A. Thomas, "Blackness Across Boarders: Jamaican Diasporas and New Politics of Citizenship", Identities (2006) .

D.A. Thomas, "Crossroading the Caribbean: Emergent and Re-Emergent Trends in Contemporary Research", edited by D.A. Thomas and Karla Slocum, Identities (2006) .

D.A. Thomas, Review of Callaloo Nation: Metaphors of Race and Religious Identity among South Asians in Trinidad, American Anthropologist, vol. 108 no. 1 (2006).

None of these are linked:

R.L. Stein, Shared Histories: A Palestinian-Israeli Dialogue, International Journal of Middle East Studies (2006) .

R.L. Stein, Ella Shohat, TABOO MEMORIES, DIASPORIC VOICES, International Journal of Middle East Studies (2006) .

R.L. Stein, Daniel Lefkowitz, WORDS AND STONES, American Anthropologist (2006) (Book Review.) .

R.L. Stein and Joel Beinin, Histories and Futures of a Failed Peace, in The Struggle for Sovereignty: Palestine and Israel, 1993-2005 (2006) .

R.L. Stein, The Oslo Process, Israeli Popular Culture, and the Remaking of National Space, in The Struggle for Sovereignty: Palestine and Israel, 1993-2005 (2006) .

R.L. Stein, Israeli Backpackers: From Tourism to Rite of Passage, International Journal of Middle East Studies (2006) .

R.L. Stein, Balad of the Sad Cafe: Israeli Leisure, Palestinian Terror, and the Post/colonial Question, in Postcolonial Studies and Beyond, edited by Ania Loomba, Suvir Kaul, Matti Bunzl, et al (2006), Duke University Press .

Anonymous said...

10:30,

These are in academic journals and books. The journals can be accessed through various search engines at your library. American Anthropologist, for example, can be accessed through JSTOR. Your librarian can help you find JSTOR and then, in the privacy of the library computer, you can download the article and e-mail it to yourself. The books you woud have to request. Are you so scared of your librarian? I know we are in the time of the Patriot Act, but this seems to be excessive caution.

M. Simon said...

ALL - 10:14PM,

Without the study of cognitive ability you will not find another reason for the under representation of blacks and women in certain disciplines and institutions of higher learning other than bigotry.

Which is why the topic is so important. If it is not bigotry but ability, then the Angry Studies folks are to put it kindly in the same business as CGM in a higher quality environment.

True scholarship tries to account for eveything that could confound the support for a given theory. The fact that Cultural Marxism will not allow for confounding factors shows the bankruptcy of their line of thought.

M. Simon said...

Duke Professor 10:19PM,

Why the fear of finding the facts?

Why is it racist to say that some groups have more ability in certain areas than other groups.

One need only look at the Nobel winners in the hard sciences to see that this is so.

Or you could look at the Ibo from Africa.

Why is it frightening?

I do know the answer. The academy lives in terror of the Cultural Marxists. To expect the courage of a Joshua Chamberlain (Little Round Top, Battle of Gettysburg) from today's professors is probably asking too much.

My condolences.

Anonymous said...

10:37 Thank you. Would it not be easier for the author to just post it on their web site?

By the way, check out this abstract:

L.D. Baker. "Profit, Power, and Privilege: The Racial Politics of Ancestry." Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society vol. 3 no. 4 ( 2001.): 66-72. [pdf]

Abstract:
2001 Profit, Power, and Privilege: The Racial Politics of Ancestry. Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, & Soceity 3(4):66-72.

What's the point?

Given the above, it would be interesting to understand how you define lazy?

Anonymous said...

Excuse me, here is the link to Lee Baker's abstract and citation.

Meaningless Abstract

Anonymous said...

10:40

Your posts have been remarkably intelligent and factual.
That they cannot be accepted as such further reveals the depth to which the politically correct culture has penetrated our existence.
No one wants to bash another group or another race. You have brought to this blog many important facts that not even those in academia have the courage to discuss.
For a very long time I have thought this about slavery--how could a group of people allow themselves to be enslaved and manipulated the way the Africans did when they were brought to this continent?
Countless groups and races have been enslaved by other groups down thru the ages, but the Africans were not equipped with mind over matter.
Many people from groups who were slaves rose to great heights afterward. And no greater example of mind over matter is the Jew, who has been persecuted in every country of the globe. Yet they have thrived.
You can't just want to be free. You have to work toward that goal.
No man is free, even in the 21st century, who rides on the back of another man.
African American--heal thyself.

Anonymous said...

re raping slaves, by Polanski

the phony Polanski at 5:19 and 6:19 is somewhat clever, probably a member of the AAAS faculty. At 5:19 my epigone says that white men did not rape slave women. I'm not an historian, but I believe that a lot of slaves were raped by white men. I wouldn't be surprised if white slave owners raped male slaves. The epigone Polanski is trying desperately hard to prove me a "racist." Funny how this same poster didn't reveal the epidemic of black-on-white rape.

this same Polanski epigone @ 6:19 opines that "the slaves made it all up "[white rape of slaves]. I doubt that many slaves made false accusations given the fact that they had no access to the courts.

To the Polanski Epigone: To be Polanski you need to show a little creativity. Perhaps you can imitate Spike Lee--an easier target. Mr Epigone, has it occurred to you that I agree with your bizarre logic? Know this, I'm incredibly busy right now, but if I decide to attack Angry Studies at Duke (and it looks like I will, along with my partner), I'm gonna destroy you. You'll never know what hit you. But I'm really going to enjoy destroying Brodhead--a cognitive lightweight and coward. Has Brodhead ever had an original idea? Yet Duke doofuses anoint him as being this great scholar. I'll rip him a new one.

thanks, Kilgore re my satire--I plan to formally propose it to Duke--trust me, it'll be HILARIOUS

Humboldtblue: when a blog administrator passes on the Precious punishment issue, you have a problem of major import.

I'm going to marshal my cognitive and creative superiority over Johnson to make my point. We are now enemies--from an intellectual standpoint. He's not in my league, and I challenge anyone on this blog to name ONE original thought Johnson has contributed.

The best part of the case is fast approaching, and I don't want any feclkess Obama supporters screwing it up.

M. Simon said...

I was under the impression that tenure was supposed to at least let the tenured to tell the truth as they saw it.

Which in a way is showing just how corrupted our institutions of higher learning have become.

Sufficient corruption always brings down institutions. Marxists know that. They are always into multiplying the contradictions. So the Marxists do understand a few things.

Anonymous said...

To: M. Simon @ 10:49
From: Duke Prof.

Is that supposed to encourage me to have a discussion with you?

Anonymous said...

Simon,

Why are you so filled with anger? The Duke Professor was simply trying to find common ground. He was not saying that there are topics not open for discussion. He simply was asking some on this forum to tone down their excesses. Perhaps this is not the place to talk about IQ differentiation. That has little to do with the issues facing academia today. And it has nothing at all to do with the arguments of cultural Marxists (that is, the Gramscians who relate cultural politics to the establishment of hegemony). If you think, as both you and the Duke professor do, that something is wrong with the academic response to the lacrosse case, then you need to focus your argument there, looking closely at the ideologies of the various faculty involved. I've said to another poster that you need to read their work. Indeed, if you want to criticize their underlying ideas, you also need to read their work. If you would rather focus on the details of the lacrosse case, as some have, then you can stick to that topic, talk about the legal issues and the response of academics to those legal issues. If you want to discuss IQ, I'm sure there are other forums that could use such a discussion. Here, the facilitator has asked you to cut it out.

Anonymous said...

10:19

You're so full of it, it's unreal. What a phony piece of work you are.
Are a few of you screeching leftist hyenas getting out your toys now that you think KC might be caving to your indoctrination once again?
People like you are sickening and serve no useful purpose.

Anonymous said...

Tom Clark's take:


And just to pull out what is to me the most pertinent part:



The way I read it, this article says that under North Carolina law,
anything other than penile penetration of the vagina is by
definition, not rape.� So if the accuser and the prosecutor decide,
after due deliberation, that the provable-in-court evidence is weak
that a penis did the penetrating, they would logically drop that
charge to strengthen the case that *some*thing penetrated her (sexual
assault) and that someone held her while that penetration went on
(the kidnapping charge.)

Before anyone pounces, let me stipulate that the revelation about NC
law-- assuming I've read the article right, comments from this crowd
welcome on that score-- doesn't speak directly at all to the guilt or
innocence of the three Duke players.� What it does do is provide a
material rebuttal to the idea that since the rape charges were
dropped, it's just a matter of time, enough soul searching by NIfong
and/or the accuser, and demonstrating by the defense and their
supporting conservatives till *all* the charges will be dropped, so
why not just get it over with sooner rather than later?

It also throws into relief, for me anyway, another very tricky aspect
of this case-how do we, the community, respond to the situation if
something really bad happened that night, but neither Seligmann,
Evans, or Finnerty were the perpetrators? IOW, from the defense
attorneys' point of view, while they don't have to prove that nothing
bad happened that night, doing that would be the best way to get
their individual clients off the hook, since they know that no one,
jury or onlooking community, will be satisfied with a verdict that
says `Well looks like someone penetrated this woman with a broomstick
or something, but we just don't think it was either of these 3 guys."


So, we are back to asserting that the AV was violated with a broomstick now, eh?

Anonymous said...

To: 10:59
From: Duke Prof.

Thanks. That attitude would encourage me to stay and engage.

M. Simon, if you already know the answer, why ask me? Or any other professor for that matter?

Apologies for not staying, I need to get up early tomorrow. Good night to all.

Anonymous said...

Polanski,

You ask, "has it occurred to you that I agree with your bizarre logic?"

I count on it.

Polanski

Anonymous said...

9:17: Actually they have a decent case for libel, based on the wanted posters around campus.

False light, made an object of scorn within the community at large.

-Esquire-
-Maryland-

M. Simon said...

10:54PM,

I do have a couple of advantages. I'm retired and because of family medical problems poorer than a church mouse.

I have nothing to loose.

My training as an aerospace engineer has given me a commitment to the truth unlike that of most people. I'm doged about it. It was my way of life for 40 years. My success was dependent on never lying to myself or others. Ever. I always treat the truth as if lives depended on it. Which, when I was working in aereospace they did. You may have flown in some of the aircraft I had a hand in. A-320, 747-400 on the commercial side. So far no aircraft accident has ever been attributed to any of my work. I'm proud of that.

Which means I can be dogged about holding a position and yet give way instantly when I'm convinced the facts go against me.

Gary Packwood said...

Duke Professor 10:19

Concerning your statement about 'the perspective that we can offer'.

I have a suggestion.

Why not consider a 'white paper' about your perspective?

Something brief if you wish and certainly not as extensive as a 'blue book'.

A statement that could help serious readers understand more about the thoughts of the 88/87.

Thank You

GP

M. Simon said...

10:59PM,

Differential cognitive ability has everything to do with what is wrong with our institutions of higher learning.

Ever hear of race norming?

Ever wonder why some races fail at institutions of higher learning than other races?

Ever wonder why some racial groups are represented out of proportion to their populations in Nobel Prizes in the sciences?

When race becomes a criteria instead of ability it means we are wasting resources. Resources that could benefit all of us. We are rich because smart people have done great things for all of us.

If race instead of smarts becomes the criteria for advancement then we are short changing all of us.

=============

Would you want the captain of the aircraft you are flying on chosen on the basis of abilty or race?

I believe in American meritocracy. The Angry studies people subvert that. They are using natural differences for political gain. That is wrong.

So why am I angry? Because of my absolute commitment to the truth. Once truth loses its value our civilization is kaput.

And Cultural Marxist will tell you that truth is relative. It is not. At least not in things that can be measured. And all measurements must be brought to bear on a problem. Not just those favorable to a certain point of view.

“The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity, and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because philosophy is an exalted activity, will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.” — John W. Gardner, Saturday Evening Post, December 1, 1962

M. Simon said...

Duke Professor,

If you want to engage and show your measure that is up to you.

If I frighten you with words on a screen, that only shows my estimation of your likely courage was correct.

As I have stated. Show me the facts. if they are in your favor I will give way.

If you can refute my position I'm more than willing to be humbled. It won't be the first time in my life that I have been humbled by facts.

Show your courage.

Engage.

Gary Packwood said...

11:26 PM

Why note ask these folks over to your Blog on Race Norming et al., for discussion and comment?

You will eventually run the rest of us out of here from sheer boredom.

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