Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Selena on Selena

In her screed against the lacrosse team in Sunday’s New York Times, Selena Roberts presented the new “party line”—she (and the Times) have been criticizing the culture, not the crime. She writes:

To many, the alleged crime and culture are intertwined . . . but the alleged crime and the culture are mutually exclusive.

In the first section of the item quoted above, Roberts, perhaps, might have been speaking of this columnist, who wrote on March 31, 2006:

The season is over, but the paradox lives on in Duke’s lacrosse team, a group of privileged players of fine pedigree entangled in a night that threatens to belie their social standing as human beings.

And this:

But why is it so hard to gather the facts? Why is any whisper of a detail akin to snitching? “The idea of breaking ranks within a team is identified as weak,’’ said Katie Gentile, an assistant professor and the director of the Women’s Center at John Jay College, adding, ‘‘The bottom line is, your self-esteem is more valuable to you than someone else’s life.”

And this:

Does President Brodhead dare to confront the culture behind the lacrosse team’s code of silence or would he fear being ridiculed as a snitch?

It certainly seems that the above columnist is among those that Roberts now criticizes for contending that “the alleged crime and culture are intertwined.”

The name of that March 31, 2006 columnist?

Selena Roberts.

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12 comments:

  1. Anonymous3/27/07, 1:13 PM

    So, this is what passes for journalism at the Times these days? Granted, there really are good people at the NYT -- real adults -- but the screaming of the children continually drowns out the reasoned voices of the adults.

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  2. Anonymous3/27/07, 1:31 PM

    I think that there's one obvious point to make here. The lacrosse players, ALL THE LACROSSE PLAYERS, were snitching. They were breaking ranks, showing that they valued their character more than any repercussions for themselves or other due to their actions. I'm sure that there were players who would've rather not had others know that they were at a party with nasty looking strippers and lots of alcohol.

    Of course, all the lacrosse players did the right thing! They all gave statements to the police and fully cooperated with the investigation.

    Selena is continuing to build a foundation for her massive ignorance. Congratulations. Good luck avoiding a civil suit.

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  3. Anonymous3/27/07, 1:31 PM

    Have any of the signers from the Duke 88 yet acknowledged that the case should be dropped?

    Heck, they don't even have to admit the guys are "Not Guilty." All they have to say is that the case is so screwed up it needs to be dropped.

    Can they even take that small step?

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  4. Gary Packwood3/27/07, 2:09 PM

    Selena for NC Diesel Tech

    Selena wants so badly to be the spokesperson for one of the larger branches of the Loopy Left crisis creators.

    Apparently Harvard and Yale have told her to take a hike and now she is courting Duke.

    Selena, bless her heart, just does not understand that creating a crisis sells product but not a service.

    Perhaps Selena, North Carolina Diesel Tech needs a spokesperson.

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  5. Anonymous3/27/07, 2:18 PM

    They were intertwined until the alleged crime was obviously not a crime. Then they became mutually exclusive.

    And, of course, only the deep thinkers like her realize that the seperate cultural issues were all that really mattered anyway.

    KC, I know the field for March Madness has already been picked, but you have to give Selena a 4 round bye to the final four for this one.

    I honestly don't think you could write a worse editorial if you tried. You couldn't write a parody of Selena as bad as the real thing.

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  6. Anonymous3/27/07, 2:34 PM

    The New York Times appears to be far more interested in being the subject of the news than the vehicle for reporting the news.
    The ego-tripping prose of elitists such as Ms Roberts and her colleagues, Harvey Araton and Duff Wilson is so stilted that their pieces read like satire.
    Especially when they appear so cavalier about civil rights,due process and presumed innocence in their petit meta-narratives.
    Do any of these bozos employ fact checkers?

    Tall T

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  7. Unknown3/27/07, 2:38 PM

    Granted, there really are good people at the NYT -- real adults -- ...."

    Sorry, but save that John Burns(?) fellow reporting from Iraq, I've seen nothing--in years--to assert such an assumption.

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  8. Anonymous3/27/07, 2:45 PM

    Selena Roberts is not being honest about the reaction to the accusations against the lacrosse players. It is very clear what happened. A black woman claimed that she had been the victim of a brutal gang rape by a group of drunken members of the Duke lacrosse team.

    University communities as well as many major media outlets are very sensitive to claims of racial victimization. Professors and journalists have been made aware of the country's racial past and an atmosphere of "white guilt" reverberates through the media and academia to a point of obsession. Duke University, as a southern university, is particularly vulnerable to accusations of racial insensitivity.

    Reporters like Lester Munson and Selena Roberts, academics like Kathy Davidson and Willian Chafe and administrators like Brodhead all reflexively reacted in a way to, in Shelby Steele's terminology, recover their racial innocence. It was essential to villify the players to show Duke's moral worthiness.

    Brodhead said that it was impossible under the circumstances to have the lacrosse team practicing. This was apparently agreed to by all members of the administration including the Board of Trustees.

    In retrospect the circumstances were not at all how they were originally portrayed. It is now fairly clear that the accused lacrosse players, their coach and fellow team members were the victim of a cruel hoax, begun by the accuser and then seized upon by an unscrupulous prosecutor, community activists and opportunistic professors.

    The pot banging, drum beating mob with their "castrate" banner may seem particularly crazy in the light of the evidence that has been revealed over the last twelve months but at the time it was part of the process the Duke community went through to establish its racial innocence.

    Now we are told that the real concern of those who fanned the flame of condemnation of the lacrosse team was the culture of crudeness that was evidenced by its numerous citations for noise, underage drinking and public urination. It strains credulity to think that the gang of 88 and its allies were motivated out of concern for temperance and chastity.

    The sad fact is that the statements of condemnation of the lacrosse team were malicious in intent. They were designed to punish them. Humiliating the players was the very least that was required of them to convince the world that Duke was not a racist institution or minimally that the pot banging activists, letter signing faculty and season terminating administrators were not racists.

    To any reasonable person, the disregard for rights of the accused, the rush to judgment and the unscrupulous behavior of the prosecutor are the real story. Selena Roberts in no way fits this definition of reasonable.

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  9. Anonymous3/27/07, 3:20 PM

    "a group of privileged players of fine pedigree"

    Selena's in love with her clever alliterations and strained prose. The one above, first used on March 31, 2006, is repeated a year later in her most recent attempt at literary sophistication.

    Let's just call those laxers the 3 P's.

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  10. Unknown3/27/07, 5:57 PM

    Anonymous 2:45 pm., that was beautiful. So incredibly on point.

    This really sums it up and I appreciate your articulating what I have been feeling:

    "To any reasonable person, the disregard for rights of the accused, the rush to judgment and the unscrupulous behavior of the prosecutor are the real story. Selena Roberts in no way fits this definition of reasonable."

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  11. Unknown3/27/07, 5:58 PM

    Thanks to Anonymous 2:45. This sums it up perfectly:

    "To any reasonable person, the disregard for rights of the accused, the rush to judgment and the unscrupulous behavior of the prosecutor are the real story. Selena Roberts in no way fits this definition of reasonable."

    ReplyDelete
  12. Anonymous3/27/07, 6:13 PM

    Carolyn says:

    Anonymous at 2:45: I could not possibly say it better. Thank you.

    ReplyDelete