Three Part Essay on the Duke Lacrosse Case

[Sarah]

Sorry Mark, but with all due respect, I find it very hard to believe that so many people could be quite so naive.  These people are educators and, therefore, presumably educated, they could read what they were signing, they knew what it said, and must have known how it would be interpreted and what impact it would have.

It may only have been a minority who were sufficiently cold blooded to want to see innocent people prosecuted, but there was clearly a presumption of guilt and disregard for civil rights evident in the actions of the majority.  I am not saying they were all bad people but their ideological mind set prevented them viewing the situation fairly or rationally.

What they did was unprecedented, extraordinarily damaging and morally wrong, and the fact that they refuse to acknowledge that and apologize shows that they are not fit to hold the positions they do.

   

[MarkRougemont]

 Sarah,
As I have said, it is difficult if not impossible to defend this ad in hindsight.  I do wonder what version of the ad they thought they were endorsing and if any took the time to parse every word as KC and Tortmaster have done, looking (and putting in all CAPS) for words that could possibly be viewed as putting a presumption of guilt into the listening statement.

I am sure that many in this "Group" now feel hurt by motives assigned to them that they did not have at the time.  Again, many are silent simply because every defense of this ad is much maligned and reviled in the blogosphere.  Just my opinion.

[Sarah]

Mark, I guess it could be that any attempts to defend the advert are reviled because, as you say, it is impossible to defend.

You raise an interesting point when you suggest that some of the 88 may not have been aware of which version of the ad they were signing, were other, less prejudicial versions circulated?.  Are you suggesting that there may have been an attempt to get some to sign up to something other than they thought they were?.  If so, nobody has come out and said so as yet.

I appreciate that they may not have analysed the ad to quite the same lengths as KC and TM have, but it is not very long, and it is reasonably clear in what it is saying.  Surely they had a duty to make sure they understood what they were signing.
 

[MarkRougemont]

Mark, I guess it could be that any attempts to defend the advert are reviled because, as you say, it is impossible to defend.

You raise an interesting point when you suggest that some of the 88 may not have been aware of which version of the ad they were signing, were other, less prejudicial versions circulated?.  Are you suggesting that there may have been an attempt to get some to sign up to something other than they thought they were?.  If so, nobody has come out and said so as yet.

I appreciate that they may not have analysed the ad to quite the same lengths as KC and TM have, but it is not very long, and it is reasonably clear in what it is saying.  Surely they had a duty to make sure they understood what they were signing.
 

 Yes,
There have been reports and rumors for some time that the final ad was not the same version that many had endorsed.  Some have suggested that the original was even worse and some of the endorsers asked that it be 'toned down'.  I have also heard speculation that the original was not as inflamatory than the final version, perhaps the only ones that know for sure are some of the members that saved their e-mails.

[Sarah]

I have also heard speculation that the original was not as inflamatory than the final version, perhaps the only ones that know for sure are some of the members that saved their e-mails.

Of course, I suppose, none of them will say anything, as (to paraphrase) their voices would not count for much in their world, if they did.  It would also be social suicide in the faculty lounge.

 

[Sydney Carton]

   Thanks,Mark and  Sarah:
     This is exactly why I reprinted and emphasized the following portion of the KC article:
        . It has been widely rumored that at least some Group members signed off without even seeing a final draft of the ad; the AAAS Department has, to date, refused to release earlier drafts of the ad or a list of when each signatory committed to support the document; Wahneema Lubiano, in fact, has JUST[my emphasis-SC ]released a statement that she will not release this material.


It’s not hard to see why Lubiano and Payne were so eager to get the ad into print quickly. Two days after the negative test results came back, Lubiano and Group member Thavolia Glymph were part of a panel that held things were “moving backwards on campus” because of the lack of DNA matches.

  SC
   Everything from the beginning does indeed go back to Lubiano and some ten or twenty  of her closest associates.She has figured very promioniently in the apologias published by both Zimmerman and Piot.
   The Piot incident was particularly  disconcerting as it was four times denied therein  that Lubiano made the statement that she unquestionably did make :Piot catagorically denied that Lubiano intended the statement of the group of 88 to be be a direct attack(never mind an incitement to violence) against  the Duke Lacrosse team.
  It later developed that his piece (though  printed  as a contribution to an  academic journal) was,despite the serious charges which it contains , published without any peer review or any attempt by the  editorial board to verify the veracity of the material they accepted. In fact,his  numerous footnotes contain no corroboration of blanket charges contained in the main text save  alleged summary (not quotation) of equally problematical conversations allegedly emanating from a very few  members of the "88",often not specifically identified.
   Piot(whose live-in is one of the 88) either was(1) deceived by Lubiano (2) published his fourfold denial without consulting her or otherwise attempting to ascertain the most salient facts or(3) attacked in collusion with her with willful intent to deceive an review of fellow academics and its readership.
   Whichever of these scenarios is accurate,the two professors involved have a lot of explaining to do to their peers.And I do not refer merely to the editors of the journal in question who may,like certain other Duke and Durham officials, have been only too willing to be deceived so long as they could not be held personally liable.
   The day that the Piot story broke,over at LS,I stated that I was writiing to Lubiano immediately asking for her clarification.I did so in the most courteous terms. I asked:(1)Did she authorize Piot to make the statements contained in his article?(2) If she was misquoted ,would she kindly rectify the misrepresentations immediately in the pages of the Duke Chronicle and thereafter in the academic journal involved.Otherwise further damage might be done to the numerous Duke students  and faculty concerned.
   I did not expect a replly and(of course)did not receive one;but the predicted unpleasantness did break out and Lubiano was again silent in the face of many further bitter words in the Chronicle and elsewhere.If she was not acting fraudulantly,she could have quickly corrected this.
   It was therefore most astonishing to find that Zimmerman (a)fixed Lubiano as one of the two or three names who were most set upon in this case by KC but(b) referred the entire Piot-Lubiano controversy back to KC's rebuttal  to which Piot has not and will not(I predict )release a sur-rebuttal.
   However,if Zimmerman failed to  defend  the exquisite Wahneemah on this key issue:did she or did she not provide false information to Ciob? It is further  apparent that he cannot (nor after five instalments did he attempt to) defand her on the many other salient poiints of KC's critique.
   Finally,as of yesterday,Lubiano blatantly  refused to provide the drafts of the original statement, or any surviving  contemporary communications from those most directly involved in this utterly scurrilous  document.
   I can agree with Mark that a great many people in the group(which was never actually a consensus of 88,I suspect) were misinformed,pressured,even deliberately deceived. It is time for them to speak up.
   Their statements coulld  quite possibly confirm the ever growing indications that certain members of the "88" are guilty of acts of academic misconduct which are in no way covered by Duke's settlement with the indicted players or the player maliciously flunked by ex-faculty member,Kim Curtis.
   
 
       
       

[Sarah]

Sorry Sydney, I missed that, but what a fascinating thought, it really would change things if it came out that some of the 88 were misled as to what they were endorsing.  However, if so, why has nobody spoken out?  Would it be viewed as ideological treachery and damage their careers?

 

[Sydney Carton]

   Yes,Sarah,I do believe some of the teachers as well as many of  the pupils are afraid as is indicated by the recent spate of  pro-"88" activity.
   Among several other terrible gaffes which Piot made in his article,I would specifically single out his statement that when he polled his class something like three pupils had ever heard of the 88 statement.
   Another professor(clearly pro-player) immediately countered in the Duke Chronicle that in his class nearly every pupil when polled was fully aware of the "88's" activity but both he and the pupils were remaining anonymous.
   If Piob only found three of his pupils  who willingly volunteered that they had  heard about the hysteria  was then engulfing  the Humanities  and African-American Studies,it is certainly because the rest did not  wish to endorse his and his live-in's extremely strident views on the subject,and dared not express  their  dissent.
   Another interesting  factor(among many)  are the two anti-Mangum professors in the English faculty who (on at least one occasion) have allowed their names to be  published but,so far as I can ascertain,have issued no  statement and certainly given no account of who has been doing what to whom these months.
   The leaders of the 88 do not stand alone.Huston  Baker  is former editor of PMLA
 and Karla Holloway went direct from her "triumph" in the Duke Rape Fraud to Harvard on the invitation of feminists who had just toppled a president.They no loonger have any credibility with the general thinking public but they are secure inside their own powerful ill-natured coteries and they are inevitably perceived  by "lesser" lights in the academic hierachy  as  able and predisposed to strike at  those who cross them.
   Remember Baker,with Holloway's(and other of the 88's) strident support,previously  beat quite serious charges of sexual molestation against a pupil.Like his former soul-mate  Crystal,he never had to face his alleged victim  and does not appear to ever have been tested by cross-examination.
  It appears the standards of proof  and integrity that  the "88" require of  their own "barnyard animals" is quite different than the standards which  they applied to their pupils and others  stillequally unable to strike back .

   

[Sarah]

I suppose it would be too much to expect the majority of the 88, especially the likes of Baker and Holloway to even appreciate the double standards implicit in their position.

The mindset is scary, but it helps one understand how organizations such as the Stasi or the KGB could operate in the way they did and how , and how so many people could follow the party line and do what they did to others, as if blind to reality or humanity.

I guess that if you have enough ideological zealots and a lot of weak or easily intimidated cowards you can create an alternative reality of a sort.   

[Sydney Carton]

   On the lighter side,Sarah,I find the following statement was given to the  Raleigh News Observer on April lst,20006:
   " Nifong said. 'Seriously, when you think about it, who would be motivated to do a hoax like that? What possible reason would somebody have to do that?' "
   May be the pack of them are all afflicted by a perverse sense of humor.
 

[J. Elliott]

I thought this longish treatment of the case was a nice find and a good read. The middle sections describing what Lubiano meant were wonderful, and I'm moved to find time to read the original text at some point to track down this idea of 'perfecting' some event. Still, the thrust of it was to eventually talk about how out-of-line the blogging crowd became. Sort of misses the larger issue, doesn't it?

I'm going to re-post my reply on that board. I don't think I covered new ground, but you might enjoy it anyway:

Dear Author,

I’ve come to this site via a link at TalkLeft. Your analysis on some points is dead-on, I believe, and I’m pleased to have found your work. Thanks to you for taking the time to put it all together, and to MarkR. for having mentioned it.

In reading your description of the urge to ’spectactularize’ the event and the actors in it, I clearly see parallels to many of my own writings on the subject. The general thrust of most of my postings, which typically took hours to assemble? They’re designed to ‘perfect’ the PC supporters of the Hoax (capitalized, please!) as cartoonish hypocrites who gladly abandoned their principles when the right temptress came a’ callin’. I plead guilty to the technique you’ve described and am genuinely thankful for having my awareness of it broadened. Not that I’m claiming pride at using the technique. I will, however, plead necessity. It’s my opinion the bloggers and angry community supporters just barely got the job done in helping to derail the false prosecution.

Johnson’s blog clearly had some bad days. His penchant for settling on favored phrases like, “from whole cloth”, annoyed me. And he was plainly strident. Still, KC was all there was during long stretches and the usefulness of his site was beyond question - if one thought the real crime hadn’t yet been exposed. Johnson kept the flame burning with daily updates in a way that prevented the Hoax from dying. Being somewhat removed from the event, you might not be aware of how unstoppable Nifong really was or aware of the dejected state of many D3 supporters during the summer after indictments. KC’s shrill style might be irritating and some of his readers might have been moved to rash actions (ugly emails), but wasn’t that exactly what was needed for exposing the false prosecution? Seriously? And didn’t the motives of those pushing a criminal trial in the absence of evidence deserve a critique?

The Bar committee which decided to investigate Nifong, mid-trial!, did so by a one-vote majority, IIRC. Without the Bar trial, no conflict of interest to cause Nifong to remove himself as prosecutor on the case. And without Johnson and Liestoppers raising holy hell, daily, then possibly no vote to censure Nifong at that time. That’s my guess. Had business as usual come about, the best the victims could have hoped for was some type of dismissal or action against Nifong AFTER the trial. Not good enough. You wouldn’t disagree with that point, would you? That the false prosecution needed to die ASAP? The bloggers helped to keep the pressure up for someone, anyone, to please step forward and do something!

I doubt the good will of many Hoax enablers was ever in play. There were many who sided against the LAXers/D3 immediately and didn’t quit until they had to. The blogs’ shrillness had little effect on driving these people to Mangum’s or Nifong’s side. These folks were already running to assist them anyway.

Your article is nicely written and well worth the read on many of its points. However, and I say this with respect, it covers a great deal of ground without giving the three victims of the political prosecution much consideration at all. In short, it is a lot of energy put into this, that, and other things but misses the main point - three families were targeted for a junked up, half-a** criminal case which served only one purpose. The DA needed publicity to save his pension, and he found ‘perfected’ scapegoats that he could use as whipping posts. The victims were selected due to their race, gender, and social status. The jury who might judge them was being driven into racial payback mode by both the DA and his PC helpers. It seems to me that these are the large issues, although I have enjoyed your analysis tonight.

That you’ve spoken to nada on the victims, or the reason the LAX players were singled out as a team, makes me scratch my head. If the point of this piece is to illuminate the ‘mistakes’ made in interpreting the listening statement and the larger way both sides became polarized, then one must consider the events driving these developments. Start with the party itself, billed as the most shameful party of the last 50 years. Why? Strippers have been shaking their butts at college parties, male and female, for decades. Attending a nekkid dancer show is a rite of passage in college America. A somewhat shady ritual, perhaps, but one that is practiced from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The LAX team did nothing out of the ordinary by calling up an escort service and requesting dancers for a college drinking party. Why were these particular college stripper-hirers raked over the coals while all the others get to ogle without a peep of criticism? I wrote once on TL that for the LAX haters, and they are legion (I used to be one, so I should know), this party was a singular event in time. No one has much cared about strippers at college parties in the past, and no one cares about them right now. But at one school, on one weekend, and at one particular party, hiring strippers was an abomination. So bad the president of the school was moved to scold them in front of the world, and suggest that they deserved whatever might come their way. Egad, naked women being allowed to practice their self-chosen line of work and exercising a woman’s right to her own body. For stellar pay, no less. Shoot the males who dialed the phone.

From the start, there were those who mangled the so-called ‘event’ for the purpose of making the LAXers look like bums. This was deliberate and had an aim attached to it. I couldn’t stand these guys at UNC, during my time. Cocky, rich, and tight with each other, they had things I didn’t and I resented it. So what for me then, and so what for others now! That’s my take on this part. Excessive drinking that kills and other extreme behaviors should be regulated by the schools, but the students have to be allowed to decide who is the most popular among them. Just gotta live with it. They always chose someone, that’s the nature of adolescence. The campus crusaders who want to supplant these rich, white, elitists with some other type to be Kings and Queens need to grow up and make peace with the part of themselves that wants to meddle. All they can possibly do is swap out the rich white boys for some other archetype who’ll proceed to drive everyone nuts with cockiness. It isn’t progress, but sideways movement. It’s not worth tearing up the school, and it isn’t a fit topic for adults to worry about. And besides if a white parent who is paying full tuition, and therefore partly footing the bill for the low-and-no tuition students, can’t get a fair shake for his kids at a place like Duke, then why bother? Why would a parent capable of paying that kind of money want to send her child to a school that tells everyone that their type of child is ‘bad’ and needs to be taken down for the greater good? Call it what one will, but the LAXers were crucified because many at Duke think it an outrage that rich white jocks are still at the top of the pecking order. The Hoax was a ‘perfected’ vehicle for doing something about it.

You’ve deconstructed the rendering of the listening statement but dodged the cause of the anger that drives people to make it into more than intended. The quick reaction to the stripper party was so over the top, so unbalanced, that those of us who pay attention knew the PC crowd would push for campus ‘reforms’. There was soooo much going on with the listening statement beyond the gang rape allegations. It was a rallying cry for what might come, as much as anything else. A call to assemble the troops. No DNA had come out, nor any other solid evidence, and the case was beginning to look iffy. The listening statement threw some more quarters into the righteous indignation meter.

There was a gigantic, race and gender-based sideshow coming into focus that ran parallel to whatever Nifong and Mangum were hatching. Those of us who felt targeted by the campus pogrom (white guys like me) and others who simply saw through it all, were bothered by it. Why wouldn’t we be? Then, Nifong actually went so far as to file charges. That was the flash point for the blogs.

Your analysis of some issues concerning the Hoax are nicely put. But you seem to have a tin ear for what motivates the bile shown the PC potbangers. This is fine, your blog (if this is what it is) doesn’t have to be promise objectivity. Yet the fact that you can take all the time to put this impressive piece together, while barely mentioning Nifong’s victims or the millions of dollars they spent trying to avoid 30 year trumped up charges, tells me where your concern lies. Nifong is disbarred and the Attorney General has found the charges baseless, so we all see this case was a mistake. But we don’t see the same mistakes.

Some see a team of college students doing nothing different from many hundreds of thousands of their peers, getting taken to the cleaners by a racist liar, a crowd of haters drunk on their own bias fantasies who couldn’t stand their high standing, and a petty DA who didn’t mind using them for his own ends. I’m speaking of the team, not the hapless defendants. What happened to them was something far worse than a simple mistake. Others think the big mistakes revolve around the way Brodhead and some Duke faculty took it in the shorts from those who were doing everything they could to stop the madness. They want to set the record straight on the way the bloggers stepped over the lines.

We all see mistakes in the Hoax. Some of us thought it was mainly about 3 guys getting hauled up on BS rape charges, with a heapin’ helpin’ of PC newthink thrown in for good measure. But we don’t all see it that way.

[MarkRougemont]

  3 new posts are up in a 3-part 3-peat:

http://reharmonized.an-earful.com/2008/03/extremist-factory/#more-45

http://reharmonized.an-earful.com/2008/03/anti-lacrosse-extremist/#more-46

http://reharmonized.an-earful.com/2008/03/rhetorical-thuggery/#more-47

[Sydney Carton]

   As a man who proudly wears the brand "blog holligan"  (a phrase which was first  perpetrated on line by the above said, ever gracious model of style,accuracy and veracity,Karla Holloway) I can confidently await DiW's again making the same mincemeat of her,Neale,Houston Baker,( and their entire motley crew) that he did last time Charles Piob and even less credible members of the academic underworld raised their ill-starred defense.
   Meanwhile I recommend the following Houston Baker reports from his new students at Vanderbilt University  and there were still earlier complaints from his students  at the University of Pennsylvania and elsewhere.
   Ms.Holloway was a stock and ready advocate for Baker when he faced sexual  complaints from a decent and honorable Duke student.And her later actions in the Lacrosse Fraud might well be read as part of a carefully pre-running strategy.
    http://www.insidevandy.com/drupal/node/7166

[MarkRougemont]

 Latest post here:

http://reharmonized.an-earful.com/2008/04/what-is-the-truth/

 "....KC Johnson in a nutshell–he’s done whatever it takes to turn the people at Duke he’s written about into pawns of a threadbare culture-war mythology."

Be sure to read the comments.

[Sydney Carton]

   This man is loosing his cool.Shriller and shriller.All proportion lost.Can't he see that he is  utterly negating  the good will he successfully won from certain earlier commentators  here who wanted to give him his change?
      A few deft and concise punctures of his Good Friend Lubiano today at Durham-in-Wonderland:
         http://durhamwonderland.blogspot.com/2008/...ublication.html