Comments and analysis about the Duke/Nifong case (2006-2014).
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80 comments:
KC You are spoiling us, Thanks
Stop it, you're killing me ...
That Evans character must have been lying to protect his lax buddies...just trying to throw Durham's finest off the trail. The pile of lies Nifong is spewing is incredible. I hope criminal prosecution is next for perjury.
Uncle, Uncle, Uncle !! I can't take it anymore KC, I give up. Watching the Fong is like being witness to a train derailing.... over and over and over. I'm embarrassed watching this guy get his head handed to him on every video you post. Why wasn't he embarrassed enough to just hand his law license over and flee to a country with no extradition treaty. Then again people with no shame teach "studies" courses at Duke. Maybe that's where he will end up.
One question. Did Nifong do ANYTHING right?
"Had I read the statements carefully [I would have known there were non Lax players from the get go]"
--Nifong knew he was toast before the BAR Hearing began - his only objective was to NOT give away any easy evidence that would help send him to jail -- he probably did as good a job as is possible given his wake of lies, but there is nothing he can do to get around the BALD FACED LIES he made to the Court -
-he's toast, in the end all the hearing did was deny him any sympathy that any human 'might' have been willing to extend to him -
- he went down gaming others' gullibility right to the bitter end
-what a schmuck !
So what are the chances for criminal charges against him?
And what about charges against the "victim" in this whole mess? We don't hear anything about her?
Next up... Perjury trial!
That would be fun to watch.
Nifong's brazen abuse of power was enabled by lazy and indifferent judges and those exist in ALL states.
California has its share of judges too busy to read papers and make decisions they fairly ought to make. They're "too busy" to do the work they were hired to do. Or just plain lazy.
This dilutes justice for criminal defendants and civil litigants. Everyone learns sooner or later which judges are too lazy to do a good job. Bad lawyers exploit that laziness. But few can complain: who wants to risk judicial hostility?
This arrogant laziness allows Nifongish abuses to proceed unchecked. The first two NC judges bear a huge share of the blame. They gave Nifong a pass. They let it continue. Hiding behind their immunity, they couldn't care less.
Nifong was detestable; Duke's failure to stand up was also. But responsibility for checking the abuses rested with the defaulting Judges. I hope the book dwells on this at length.
K.C.,
This is NOT fair. You are shooting fish in a barrel. This guy definitely should not be on any witness stand. Perjury, anyone?
KC, I'm glad you have not closed up shop. The media gave this so much ink in the begginning--now hardly anything.
I realize that Imus did was terrible, but good grief, no one was going to jail. I was on the press for about 2 weeks.
Here you have this man in a powerful position to send 3 innocents to jail for the next 30 years, and very little press on this.
This is such a service KC, no one should every forget the details.
This three act play script called for a lacrosse party...beginning-middle-end...and by golly there are going to be lacrosse players in trouble...until the bitter end.
Reminds me of the absolute futility of trying to change the routine at an Alzheimer's facility.
::
GP
KC, have you determined if the Fong is a Communist?
Good to see you back. KC has determined your burning question, but he's just not feeding trolls right this minute. Run along back to your cartoon show now...
6:33
What did Imus do that was so terrible? Call the players nappy headed when they obviously straighten their hair? Call them whores without any knowledge of their personal lives? Sounds like typical leftwing tactics to me.
I saw most of Nifong's testimony and these video clips really just reinforce my thoughts. What a bullsh*t artist. It really is something to behold. Both for the sheer quantity of BS he is spewing out and the absurdity of what he is saying.
Did he really expect anyone to buy this crap? He sits there and acts like King Sh*t and appears to be oblivious to how ridiculous he sounds and how much trouble he is in. As Lane Williamson said, he is really "out there".
This is the one thing that always got me. The police and Nifong knew non-lacrosse players were at the party. Early on how did they know they didn't do it? Do lacrosse players have something special done to their penis's that only a trained sex professional like Crystal Magnum would notice? If they really thought a rape occurred they should have gotten their DNA to see if they did it. They should have also been included in the non-lineups lineups. This tells me from day one they were not looking to get anyone but a lacrosse player.
6:50:00 PM
Nifong is a lawyer. They are all full of it. There is a reason there is so many lawyer jokes.
One of the least noted but most ironic stories of this mess is that only DAYS before the Hoax erupted, David Horowitz was at Duke University for a speech. According to press reports, Horowitz said, "Pseudo-intellectual radicals are entrenched on the faculties of Duke and other university campuses and wield the real power on campus." http://www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org/archive/2006/March2006/HeraldSunDHatDuke030806.htm
While there, Horowitz asked Pres. Brodhead to endorse his "Academic Bill of Rights". Brodhead sent him off, saying, and this is a precious (no pun) quote, "saying his university had no need to adopt an Academic Bill of Rights to protect students from faculty misbehavior." http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=21594 According to the Herald-Sun, "Duke President Richard Brodhead, ... said a prescription such as the Academic Bill of Rights might open the door to governmental regulation of universities' intellectual life and 'freeze people in rigidly fixed attitudes.'
Students who feel discriminated against by a professor for their political sympathies should tell the professor or a department chairman, he said." http://www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org/archive/2006/March2006/HeraldSunDHatDuke030806.htm
I won't overload this comment with quotes, but I strongly recommend others read especially the frontpagemag.com url. Along with Horowitz eerily-timed prescience about the need to protect students from Duke faculty misbehavior, there is a description of a precious (no pun) moment described where some of the future-88ers perform a striptease to disrupt his speech in front of students. Yes! Professors stripped just to prevent students from hearing a speech! It's all just precious.
[/sarcasm = ON/]
No pun. Really.
[/sarcasm = OFF/]
Nifong will be in Florida with OJ as soon as he can move.
Odd that the Don Imus flap happened at the same time the Duke 3 were declared innocent. It seems to me that Jackson and Sharpton beat it out of town and found another white male to beat up on so they didn't have to take the heat for their Lacrosse actions.
rrhamilton 7:25 said...
...I won't overload this comment with quotes, but I strongly recommend others read especially the frontpagemag.com url. Along with Horowitz eerily-timed prescience about the need to protect students from Duke faculty misbehavior, there is a description of a precious (no pun) moment described where some of the future-88ers perform a striptease to disrupt his speech in front of students. Yes! Professors stripped just to prevent students from hearing a speech! It's all just precious.
::
Thank You. I will read this evening. Important.
It is truly remarkable what alumni donated funds will purchase for young people who are best and brightest.
::
GP
! This is the first time I've heard or read that there were people other than the team members and the dancing pair present.
KC, thank you for collecting all of this, and all of your postings. You've done the cause of Justice a great favor.
8:09:
Yes, there were a few non-laxers there. In FACT, Nifong made much of this when the DNA came back negative for the lax players -- he pointed out that non-lax party attendees could've raped Precious.
gary packwood:
I'm glad you're going to read the story, but note I made a mistake. There was no striptease. One was planned, but it didn't come off (so to speak). To quote from frontpagemag.com, which itself quotes from the Duke student newspaper:
According to the Duke student newspaper, the protest was the brainchild of Diane M. Nelson, Director of Undergraduate Studies and a tenured associate professor of “Cultural Anthropology.” Hours before Horowitz was scheduled to speak, Nelson sent out an e-mail on the Duke network urging students:
They claim he will ‘expose’ academia…Here are some ways we will ‘expose them.’ I say we all wear jog bras (for ladies) and nothing (for boys) under our T-shirts and at a given signal pull them off.
No male students joined the Feminist Collective, and the females proved reluctant revolutionaries. Reportedly, they felt uncomfortable flashing their intellectual foe, so they decided to giggle him down instead.
R.R. Hamilton
As far as I can tell from these video clips, the best Nifong could come up with was the "I is dumb" defense. I guess it wasn't very convincing.
I, for one, am convinced!
The clip ends with this exchange:
Brocker: So the statement you made this morning was not accurate. [There were non-lacrosse players at the party.]
Nifong: To the extent that I made that statement that would not be correct, according to this, yes sir.
Either you make a statement or you don't. There's no such thing as, 'to the extent that I made that statement', when you swear to tell the truth, the WHOLE truth, and nothing but the truth.
He didn't talk to the accuser. He didn't know who was at the party. He didn't read the discovery motions. The only thing he was sure of was that he was in a close election.
Hopefully conservative student group would invite Horowitz to speak again at Duke.
It would be entertaining to see Duke88 in action against him.
My son told me the next day that at least three non LAX guys were at the party. "To the extent that I heard that statement" I will say it was true.
"To the Extent" Mikey's ass will be a lot wider in a few months... Feds up next.
Mikey bend over!
Kemp
I had read about the Horowitz episode. What I had not read until today was a story about Professor Johnson's battles at CUNY. I had seen mention of it but never knew details.
This is truly a remarkable man.
Spoke to several people this week about the case, all of whom had some knowledge of the case, but no connection to Duke. A thirty three year old woman, recently married, no children, college educated, holds a professional level job in the insurance broking field. Asked pointedly if she thought the players did anything to the accuser, she replied “I’m 90% sure they didn’t assault her, but that doesn’t mean they did nothing wrong. Going to strip clubs is low enough, but inviting them to your house, a college guys’ house, that is particularly low. And what woman, or women, in their right minds would go into such a setting without an “escort”, protection in the form of a big bouncer type?” “Isn’t this something parents warn their kids not to do? Not that they deserved the treatment they got, but, the odds are not in your favor of having the night go well.”
A forty eight year old father of four boys (mid teens to 22) said that he did not believe a word of the allegations the moment the news came out. “No suburban (white) college guy would want to touch those skanks! She was either spaced or looking for a payoff.” How would he feel if his son (a fourth year at UVa) was part of such an evening’s activities? “ I never thought such things were prevalent at college, despite people’s comments to the contrary. When I asked him if it goes on at Virginia, he said that in his social circle, the girls he’s friendly with (the Greek scene) would find such activities and the guys who partake repulsive. Occasionally, when they take the pledges on “road trips”, some will go to a strip clubs, but, as a rule, this is not something widely practiced in Charlottesville, at least not among the non-revenue athletes.” He also believes his son can be non-prudish and still consider strippers degrading and not a desirable form of male entertainment.
My third test case is a 40 year old mother of three, stay at home mom, Masters degree in Nursing, former critical care nurse at NYU Medical Center; no feminist by any stretch. She couldn’t believe how these boys who, post event are portrayed as honor students, community service types, could behave so stupidly. The team captain, a young man in a position of leadership, did his teammates and the “school they supposedly love” a horrible disservice. “How insulated must they be to think there were not risks in having such low lifes come right into their home? And how many of their mothers have thought a thousand times “if only”? Many of these players may not have been at all comfortable with this, may not have wanted any part of it. But, peer pressure. This is the kind of circumstance when your lectures and lessons should echo in their ears and your child’s character is tested (I should GTF outta here).
I cite these examples because these people to me represent practical, worldly, decent individuals, knowledgeable about kids, college and life in 2007. On this board there seems to be such lock step uniformity, such an absolute black and white perspective, and it has been my experience that people in general may not see it in such stark, unambiguous terms. And it does not mean they are wrong. There had been nasty condemnation of a post last week that simply stated had the players, the captains in particular, not hired the strippers, none of this would have happened. Unlike most of the people on this board, many others, perhaps most can simultaneously find the hiring of strippers egregious, reprehensible, wrong, and the cause of the problem and still believe they did not deserve the terrible treatment received by law enforcement.
They were innocent, but...
Blah blah blah... tell it to Nifong...
Seems like Mike is looking to beat jail time ... "I don't remember. I neglected to read the case file. I forgot those facts. I forgot about the evidence I'm required by law to immediately provide the defense...."
The only way Mike is going to beat jail time is by spending 30 years in the North Carolina Home for the Criminally Stupid and Feloniously Unbelieveable.
Nifong is trying to cover his tracks by saying he 'doesn't recall, didn't know the facts, didn't read the reports, didn't interview the accuser, witnesses, didn't take notes".
No one believes him, but that is his defense to Railroading three young men by indicting them on trumped up charges for something that never occurred.
Actually, someone oughta sue
the "strippers'" employers, if only
for false representation.
Neve would have happened with real,
professional types (one exotic
dancer posting on an earlier
thread basically said the same
thing.)
If that had happened, then the
young men would have seen how boring
those kinds of acts appear to be -
(so I've heard.)
What they got, instead, was bored,
insulted, and finally punished -
for not checking out the
entertainment in advance.
People set traps: it couldn't have
occured to the students that they
were being set up, any more than
it occured to Grannie May that the
check she sent for $270 to the
caller (who told her she won
$10,000) dollars was a fraud.
No one wants to hear how Grannie
is responsible in some way for
getting ripped-off, do they?
I don't.
And I don't want to hear more stuff
about the unwise hiring of the entertainment.
Aw, c'mon, 6:50 -- you're jumpin' on the same kind of stereotype, metanarrative bandwagon that kept so much of this crap alive.
Thus, I rebuke thee.
Our State Bar did a pretty damn credible job of putting Nifong away. Give us some credit, will ya, dude?
TaterCon
Sorry, 6:50 -- if I had looked closer, I would have rebuked 7:22.
My bad.
Hey, I'm an NC lawyer who'll admit I'm wrong!!!
hey, mac
Who cares a whit what you do or do not want to hear? Is this forum restricted to those who tow a certain line of thinking? To those who march only to the drum you beat? People on this board tend to view contrary ideas as warmly as the Gang of 88. You undermine the confidence of your convictions by belittling those who disagree. Your comments, and thoughts, are not so exclusively perceptive, intuitive, or necessarily correct that there is no room for someone else's ideas or expression.
I find anecdotal stories of morally outraged people amusing. I'd wager that, truth be told, most of the women who whine about how immoral it is for a guy to enjoy a performance of an exotic dancer are married to a guy who has watched one dance.
Mom's who insist their sons are too well bred to check out the female for are equally amusing.
Hiring a stripper doesn't make you a bad person. These guys were being guys, got a raw deal when the agency sent over a drug-addicted black whore (aka, single mom working her way through school in pursuit of her higher education) saw a chance to cash in via blackmail.
I think a lot of us are getting old.
The younger group is so annoyed with all the moralizing that they are doing the exact opposite of what we teach team.
Girls Gone Wild is big news in the entertainment business for the under 30 guys.
They go to these shows just to piss off the Women's Studies types which is the exact same thing that was happening on the campus at Duke. Did you see the campus ad for the SEX & Exec's Party?
The SEX & EXEC's party set the hair on fire of at least 50 Women's Studies Profs and their students.
I thought it was a hoot!
::
GP
The SEX & Exec's was spelled to suggest ...Secretaries and Executive party.
::
GP
Anonymous at 10:39 pm
Your smug derision of those who have a different (dare I say “higher”?) standard of decency is not at all amusing...it is disappointing. Not for your ready acceptance of stripping as an acceptable, even desirable form of entertainment, but at your intolerance of those who do not.
Your absolutely subjective assertion that “Hiring a stripper doesn't make you a bad person” is not only a strictly personal opinion, but one that many open minded, men and women, not necessarily feminist types would strongly disagree with. The world of strippers is one in which drugs, prostitution and exploitation are plentiful. There can be violence, degradation, and it is not at all uplifting to the “customers” either. Are you so accepting of hiring strippers that your welcome your teenage children to do so? Would you be pleased if your daughter made such a career choice? How about living on the same block as a “gentlemen’s club”? No, it is not illegal, but to many people, that does not make it right.
And gary, if you think college kids engaging in bawdy behavior is calculated at getting in the face of the victims studies crowd, well...
jack--
Of course, technically speaking, you are right that a post saying that if the team captains had not hired strippers none of this would have happened is simply the truth. But the connotation of such a post, in the context of this board, is that ultimately the players are thus responsible for whatever happened as a result (or, put as it would be in the old days if a woman wearing a short skirt was raped, "they asked for it").
I agree that some of the posters here go a little overboard in painting every member of the lacrosse team as a saint--but I also don't think, looking at the group as a whole, that you would find a significantly lower level of character or integrity that in any randomly chosen group of 47 college athletes, or even 47 male college students.
Your friend may well be right that his son can find hiring strippers degrading and undesirable and still not be prudish (we would hope that is possible), but that's not to say that the Greek "social circles" at UVA are super wholesome. My daughter transferred to Duke (class of 2004) after a year at UVA--a year in which two or three students she knew fell drunk out of upper story dorm windows (I don't believe any were killed, but all were seriously injured), in which she frequently heard several frat boys make racist remarks (including liberal use of the "n" word by one or two), in which she cringed every time she heard the phrase "not gay" added by the crowd to a school song sung at athletic events, in which she struggled during sorority rush because--already disadvantaged by being from Northern Virginia--she didn't have enough designer handbags, nor did she "summer" away from home. At Duke, she went to a couple of parties where strippers were present, which she considered sort of campily humorous, rather than repulsive (it may have helped that it was usually the same stripper, used to working in front of a mixed-sex college crowd and probably pretty tame as these things go). I won't say my daughter found everyone at Duke a pillar of virtue--far from it; they were kids, after all, and prone to being stupid and thoughtless. But overall she was much more comfortable, and much less frequently appalled by the statements and actions of her fellow students, than she was at UVA.
KC> This is off topic, but I've noticed the link below.
You should see this article, I think there is some chance to correct the mis-information. The writer sounds like a reasonable person in many ways.
You can bridge gaps and get people communicating about the overriding issue of race which drove aspects of this case.
You've let the African American press off the hook with their coverage.
http://blackstarnews.com/?c=135&a=3441
Of course, you are developing Ghandi like status with this fabulous blog> I'm thinking you can really continue to effect change in many persons exposed to your balanced, fair coverage.
I am more aware and interested in seeing fair treatment from the legal system. I've been pretty naive. I also feel we are becoming a police state with the stupid charges written up for some students. It must be a factor in the budget of the Durham PD.
Wow, your daughter transferred from UVa to Duke? Don't try to paint her as anything other than a high maintenance, glossy retail babe! Like, rully.
Jack 11:06
...And gary, if you think college kids engaging in bawdy behavior is calculated at getting in the face of the victims studies crowd, well...
::
If you call me right after mid-terms and tell me a bunch of guys at Duke scheduled a party to celebrate victims...I would not bat a eye.
What the Victim Studies people teach is not at all consistent with TV, the movies and what they learn from their parents.
Can you imagine Dave and Colin and Reade sitting in those classes and hearing about their male relatives raping black women because it is part of the white privileged culture?
You can't even think about going home and telling your Dad ...Attorney David Evans about the crap that is being taught.
Party on.
::
GP
Folks, you are all forgetting that Colin and Reade both behaved in the manner that I would hope my sons would in like circumstances:
They left the party when the strippers arrived. They didn't hire the women, they didn't cave in to peer pressure - they left.
What more, exactly, do you all think that Colin and Reade could possibly have done in that situation?
I would be very interested to hear your suggestions because people keep saying the Duke 3 shouldn't have been hiring or watching strippers, so they should have expected trouble. How does this apply to Colin and Reade?
For the life of me, I don't know what else they could have done, and I assure you, if someone has a better way, I will make sure my sons are advised.
Charlotte Simmons, anyone?
On the one hand you have top grade students in a top grade university hiring a stripper to entertain their top grade group - and it wasn't Sound of Music they were interested in, either. And this is OK by everyone around them (including - especially including - the Gang of 88), because SEXUAL hypocrisy is Out and Charlotte Simmons "sexual freedom" is in and cool and OK. Bringing a stripper into your living room is, I guess, the REALLY sophisticated thing to do?
But then, you have a false accusation of gang rape by that stripper - a Black woman - POOR black single mother!!!! - and the very hot button of Campus Politically Correct Issues is rung, loudly. And a local politician/prosecutor jumps in and does what (it seems) is common practise in such situations, winning a tight election, by eating up on today's villains: white, rich, sexist, racist jocks.
These boys, the kids, the young men, by the way, are in a so-called 'protected environment' just out of high school, who are absolutely naive easter bunnies thrown into this perfect political storm. They had accepted all the nostrums of modern 'intellectual' life, to the extent that their parents were paying very large bucks to send them to politically correct Duke I guess they thought that the PC atmosphere was far outweighed by Duke's high status among universities. They had no idea that they are hated by large numbers of the 'intellectuals' in Duke, did they?
And then they hired a stripper, a SEX worker, for a UNIVERSITY/ ON CAMPUS function. Like it is the usual thing to do!! I note that no-one in the Duke Admin has had ANYTHING to say about this aspect of the case.
What happened to slinking down to the local slummy bars for that sort of thing??? No, hiring a stripper doesn't make a boy a bad person. But doing so ON CAMPUS, at a time when stalinists are running the morality show... well, that is (at least) very very stupid.
And why should we all assume that every boy/man is a habituee of a strip club? What is so sophisticated about THAT attitude? I notice that Mrs. Finnerty did not know how to discuss 'rape' with her ten year old daughter. Should she just get over it, and adopt a 'sophisticated' attitude to describing such pursuits?
The hell with sophisticated enlightenment. Give me hypocrisy and judgmentalism any day of the week. The Lacrosse team would have been much safer in my world, trips to the local slum or not.
Heather Said...
...And then they hired a stripper, a SEX worker, for a UNIVERSITY/ ON CAMPUS function. Like it is the usual thing to do!! I note that no-one in the Duke Admin has had ANYTHING to say about this aspect of the case.
...What happened to slinking down to the local slummy bars for that sort of thing??? No, hiring a stripper doesn't make a boy a bad person. But doing so ON CAMPUS, at a time when stalinists are running the morality show... well, that is (at least) very very stupid.
::
The party was NOT held on campus.
The party was not held in a bar because some of the guys were not 21.
::
GP
One of the things that has bothered me is the assumption that Nifong did not read the discovery files. Many seem to think that is a fact. Why?
Watch the testimony and consider that he DID read the discovery files, then you'll get an idea of the type of people we are dealing with, Nifong, the Gang of 88, the pot bangers, and the abettors.
Hiring a stripper is a victimless and legal activity. It does no harm to anyone.
Traces of David Evans' semen were found on a towel in his bathroom, so presumably at some point he masturbated into it, or masturbated in the shower and dried himself off, or had consensual sex with someone and dried himself off. Likewise victimless and legal. Does that make him somehow deserving of being charged with rape and publicly vilified? Sneeringly described as "not a choirboy"?
People who find the hiring of strippers offensive can refrain from doing so, but condemning others for it is irrational puritanism. Hiring the strippers can certainly be criticized as stupid and foolhardy, but not immoral.
Anonymous @ 11:25 pm
An excellent point, that two of the falsely accused left the party in short order, possibly due to their great discomfort with the situation. That was the thing to do, although I doubt they were unaware of what the evening's entertainment was prior to their arrival. A case of peer pressure, and they saved face among the team, but cleared out for personal reasons.
It is interesting how so many posters, like "anonymous" @ 11:59 pm, find it necessary to insinuate that if one states that without hiring the strippers no "fiasco' would have occurred then you must believe the players deserved what happened. Nothing can be further than the truth.
And gary, don’t tell me that a student who is half way serious about the content of his curriculum, is the least bit diligent about his course load, it taking one of these so-called Angry Studies courses, as was Reade Seligman. As far as the “crap that is being taught”, he didn’t have to sign up for it. And he wasn’t a senior just filling in some final semester elective fluff. The party was in university owned housing, regardless of its location, hosted by individuals whose tuition was being subsidized by the school. They had a higher standard of behavior to which they should have been held, or at least to which they should have felt obligated.
anonymous @ 11:59 pm
Who has condemned the captains for hiring strippers? Nowhere have I seen anyone condemn the players, in terms of morality, for doing so. The point was made only that had they not been hired, this fiasco would not have happened. Maybe if different strippers were sent over, it would not have happened, but you can’t be sure. Like pregnancy, the only certain way to avoid it is abstinence. And where or by whom has it been universally decreed that hiring strippers is not immoral? Do you condemn those that feel it is immoral, should people be prohibited from holding such in their values, beliefs or religions? That you feel otherwise is fine, but do not impose or denigrate anyone who disagrees.
Had Mr. Duke not founded the university, the fiasco would not have happened. Doesn't mean he caused it.
Funny. The same people who condemn a little vulgar skanking by young hetero men are the same people who would fall all over themselves endorsing a Robert Mapplethorp exhibit at the student union.
You mean there were more suspects? There were more suspects and a ton of DNA that didn't belong to anyone on the lacrosse team? There were more suspects and a ton of DNA that didn't belong to anyone on the lacrosse team and no one saw a need to look elsewhere for the "hoax" rapist? You mean there were more suspect and a ton of DNA of DNA that didn't belong to anyone on the lacrosse team and no one saw a need to look elsewhere for the "hoax" rapist and you've got to be kidding me, right? What do you mean no one was kidding? Thirty years in prison doesn't sound funny to me, but what about . . . .
Hey, have they found out who murdered the four over at NCCU? What's up with that?
Jack 12:48
Get real. The young men left the
party because it was boring, not
because they were "uncomfortable."
)"Ooh, give me a hanky, I'm uncomfortable!")
No, it's more like:
"I'm outa here, this is boring crap
and these women can't dance,
one of them is drunk-falling over..."
That's what they've said.
Where do you get this crap?
Oh, that's right. Your wife.
And your son.
And Jack? You keep talking about
how others are intolerant of
opinions that aren't lock-step...
and you hammer away like the
hypocritical 88, questioning
others' right to agree.
Hiring strippers is a compassionate act. That is what these ladies do for a living. Crystal was supporting her family and going to college. Do you moralists want to prohibit a person from improving her lot in life?
mac,
If you review my posts, you will find that I have never criticized or questioned others’ right to agree, nor have I attacked them in a nasty, personal way. I have taken issue with the harsh denigration of my, and others opinions that do not conform to the general sentiment supported on this board. Like your pithy remarks about my wife and son…not exactly constructive dialogue. Why do you resort to such a style in replying? If you disagree with my position, fine; but the way you choose express yourself, with insults, is not reflective of a very tolerant or nice person
I am confused? Which one is Mike Nifong -- Mac or Jack?
A better question is how many different people are actually on this post, and often do the likes of "mac" post anonymously.
The killing of 4 drug dealers in one condo was one of the cases that Nifey used as an excuse not to pay attention to the LAX case. Of course, he never got anywhere on that case, either. Nine men in a condo in Durham - but nothing funny suspected. That's good policin' there boys...
Hey Jack,
Thank you for posting 8:00 anon.
Jack at 9:46 wrote:
Spoke to several people this week about the case, all of whom had some knowledge of the case, but no connection to Duke.
And, at 11:25 wrote:
It is interesting how so many posters . . . find it necessary to insinuate that if one states that without hiring the strippers no "fiasco' would have occurred then you must believe the players deserved what happened. Nothing can be further than the truth.
=====
We all know that if these age 20-something year old men had not hired strippers Nifong would have been spared his career, etc. and they (the LAX players) would not have most of America commenting on their morals. What concerns me is the the "average American" that you interviewed is behaving very much like the average German, Europeans and much of the rest of the world during Hitler's reign, explaining to themselves that the Jews somewhat deserved what was happening to them and with this argument (that the victim got themselves in their own pickle) they did not have to extend helping hands to them or other groups being oppressed during that period. In sum, your friends are average people: they rest of thoughts that bolster their hope that their own will never be victimized because their own will never do anything significantly wrong to warrant such degradation.
Look to history and you will see that this "couldn't happen to us, we're better" thinking absolves the average from "getting involved".
KC Johnson, Williamson, Cooper, some of the folks on this blog who wouldn't let go until there was justice, some news reporters who exposed the truth-----these are the better than average to great. They don't rest on a "wouldn't happen do us 'cause we're better" line of thought.
7:37
Yeah, CGM was a stripper,
poor and innocent, and the
dozen or so DNA samples came
from an overly appreciative
front row.
It should be quite well known to those of us who are parents (and who were kids ourselves)that many (not all) boys and girls during the "launch years" (i.e. between 18 and 21 or so)do dumb stuff. The problem is more acute nowadays (in my opinion) because the window of opportunity for trouble is much wider -- more money, more freedom, the internet, etc.
You can send your children off to college, or the military, or off to a new city to take a job with many warnings in their ears, only to have the warnings ignored during the heady experience of no real supervision (I don't know the ins and outs of Duke, but evidently Duke left all supervision up to the local police) and a peer group to which you want to belong.
Host loud parties when they knew they would get in trouble with their coach and the police? Dumb but not evil.
Hire a stripper not understanding that a legitimate stripper shows up with an escort and sober to boot? Dumb but not evil.
I am currently reading the Yaeger/Pressler book and am saddened at just how naive these guys were....scurrying around to clean up the house so the girls would not be offended; begging them to come out of the bathroom, ensuring that the money some of the guys wanted back was not taken.
So -- in the Duke 3 I see some pretty typical dumb kids. Not evil, not deserving of anything that happened to them. We must absolute separate the false accusations and Nifong's attempt to railroad them from typical dumb acts of kids. The two simply don't have a thing to do with each other.
Most kids grow out of dumb (some portions of their brains finally connect!)by the time they reach 25; this guys are forced to grown out of dumb by this terrible thing.
9:25 and 10:11
Those are appropriate responses
to Jackie-O. Nicely done.
Those remarks are despicable, and to use such an analogy is shameful. Must your disagreement equate those who find fault with Nazi sympathizers? Nothing high minded about your ability to debate and discuss the merits of a position to which you object, is there? The Grant Farrad school - slime your opponents as viciously as you can. It is difficult to comprehend how and why you choose such a preposterous, hurtful analogy, the Nazis! It’s as if you must silence critics with one percussive blow, so unfounded, so intellectually untenable, but shocking enough to derail any adherence to the issue. You should be ashamed.
there is a blog thread law: the longer the thread, the more likely there will be accusations of Hitlerism.
I guess it has something to do with an argument going downhill.
Jackie
You rarely address the argument itself, only bothering to critique
the method of argument.
Silly boy.
You must be retired, and don't have
anyone else to push around.
Those remarks are despicable, and to use such an analogy is shameful. Must your disagreement equate those who find fault with Nazi sympathizers? Nothing high minded about your ability to debate and discuss the merits of a position to which you object, is there? The Grant Farrad school - slime your opponents as viciously as you can. It is difficult to comprehend how and why you choose such a preposterous, hurtful analogy, the Nazis! It’s as if you must silence critics with one percussive blow, so unfounded, so intellectually untenable, but shocking enough to derail any adherence to the issue. You should be ashamed.
+++
Ah, I hit a nerve. You are scarcely and opponent and this discussion is not about Nazi sympathizers. Let me explain this another way:
This discussion pertains to average citizens going along with the program, not sufficiently outraged, because in their mind, what was done to the "others" won't be done to them because they are better, i.e. more moral and upstanding. To save themselves, i.e. from the fear of being Nifonged, they resist empathizing with victims(we discover our own humanity and we identify with ever-increasing numbers of our fellow humans, to the extent that we can forgive in their such foibles in frailties as we dislike in ourselves). Instead, your friends erect a boundary that protects themselves, and here I'll clarify, they do not say the LAX players deserve what they got; rather, they recognize the injustice but say the victims brought it on themselves, i.e. in sum, "it won't happen to us. We are not like them. We don't have their defects."
This is a mechanism that supports discrimination, against Jews, blacks, women, and was seen in much fuller force to justify inaction when fascists were calling the shots in Europe.
You seemed to want the average citizen, willing to judge victims to assure themselves and others that their social standing is solid, to be held up higher than the morally outraged who pursue justice but resist adding to the oppression by judging the victims of oppression and injustice.
I have this quote wrong but it goes like this: "all it takes for evil to prevail is for good people to sit back and do nothing". The good, "average" people are complacent and they buy their detached complacency at the expense of victims, by judging them. Their response to you was, essentially, "we are immune from Nifonging because we are higher-caliber folks".
I understand the average Joe's response, its more human than otherwise, but its not something I'd emulate or admire.
Nifong's purpose in life is to personify and satirize the danger of willfully stupid power.
Is someone looking through other cases that he has prosecuted? -- seems like that could usefully occupy the innocence project for years.
So, those average citizens who are not posting regularly on behalf of the lacrosse players, who are not following the daily blogs of KC Johnson, not crying out in moral indignation with letters and phone calls (to whom? I might add) – are they the equivalent of Nazi sympathizers?
The people I spoke with in no way asserted that the players deserved what happened to them, I made that clear. Nor are their remarks based on a sense of insulation from reality or that their own children are infallible. That is a baseless insinuation by you, perhaps reading into my comments something that was neither explicit nor implicit.
Do you and the few regulars on this board hold the moral high ground over all others, simply because you flog Nifong and the Gang of 88, anonymously, in cyber space? Never mind it's limted impact, there is a hint of self righteousness in that kind of thinking. And there is no place in any civil, respectful discussion of this case for drawing comparison to the Nazis, none.
Jackie,
You're a bully; stop trying to
tell other people what points
they can and can't use.
He made a perfectly good analogy.
That's spelled A-N-A-L-O-G-Y.
There are free online dictionaries,
if you need help.
Leave it to mac. Snippy, sarcastic, anything but thoughtful or constructive.
Its unfortunate that I alluded to Hitler because all you (Jfack) hears is "Nazi" and his mind concludes "below the belt!". What I wrote about is a familiar phenomenon where average citizens add to the oppression of victims by pointing to their flaws and, in essence. referring to them as lesser people, "not like us".
The people who post here are individuals. I wouldn't presume to know what they think.
In conclusion, its tacky low-brow to point to the flaws and weaknesses of victims who are trying to work their way out from under.
Jacko,
Hey, you must be retired military
(congratulations!) but perhaps
one of those types who splits his
men into two groups and causes
friendly fire casualties?
Yup, I offered a "despicable"
analogy for your sorry attempts at
blogging. You seem to want to
direct traffic to your own liking,
like telling us that we shouldn't
worry about Duke University.
Anon 12:11 is right: you've taken
a snippet and run with it, much
like Nifong when he heard the
words "Duke," "Lacrosse," "rape"
and "election." He put 'em all
together, and here we all are.
I am always amazed that Nifong had ANY job in the DA office. Outside investigation must show all Nifong's enablers. The whole lot must be prosecuted.
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