Three Part Essay on the Duke Lacrosse Case

[MikeKell]

Cngrats, gotproof!  Are you fully in Club NED (No Evidence of Disease)?  I hope so! I lost my status in January and am back on the shortened visit schedule. Sigh.  I haven't gone back to the older posts; where was your cancer (mine is rcc and tcc)?

Hope all is well going forward.

Mike

[MikeKell]

Slowly but surely the cleansing will continue, and eventually the gloves will come off as the wheels have come off.  I just don't know why some folks are so obsessed, trying to destroy things, asking the same question 400 times, and being so unproductive. If only there was a way to communicate with them.
Until then, the case will continue, civil or otherwise, and will become uncivil as soon as the first depositions are scheduled for real. But that is in another thread.

Mike

I did. It was a defining moment when I realized, frankly, until civility, kindness, temperance and rationality descend in the Dark, I don't think there will be anyone answering that call.

Mike
ET phone home.

[gotproof]

It is uterine cancer.  The oncologist used the word survivor and "not cancer" rather than no evidence of disease.  This was the 3 month PET CT since chemo and radiation.  They will do another PET CT in 3 months and hopefully everthing is going in the right direction.   The lymph nodes that were involved looked good and there were no signs of any abnormality anywhere else. 

[MikeKell]

Sounds very good. My sister is 9 years post-op/treatment for uterine. My brother is 16 years post-op/treatment for testicular, and I am 14 years since my original surgery, but only 4 months since the last snip.  I hope all continues well for you!!

[MarkRougemont]

Mark, I don't understand the standards by which people are added back in at liestoppers myself.  I rarely posted but read regularly.  I did nothing illicit on there.  I wasn't added back in and questioned it on the blog a couple of times lately in the comments section.  There is no other way to communicate with anyone as the email address for at least baldo does not work on the blog.  After waiting 3 weeks I expressed a bit of frustration on the liestoppers blog comment about not being added back in and the next thing I know my registration was deleted completely from the forum.   Apparently, I cannot register as well.  So, I guess it is safest just to bide your time.  BTW, I post as lec on liestoppers.

Since, I am feeling much better I should proably do more active things anyway.  I got an all clear on my last PET CT scan and don't have to go back to the oncologist for 3 months.

   Just had my registration deleted as well.  That was after I found out that even though I could not post or pm, I could use the report a post feature and I used that to tell Baldo the trouble I was having.  I had also become frustrated and had posted my feelings about that on this board and others.  Not sure if my not being allowed to join has anything to do with that or my past posts not allways in agreement with the majority on that board.  Still, I enjoyed the debate and tried to be a civil as possible.

  Hope you (and Mike) have good health and good reults on your tests in the future.

[Sydney Carton]

  Let's get this thread  back on topic.KC has now  published  his long awaited reply to Lubiano and Co..And she certainly cannot complain that he gave  them  the summary judgment which they attempted to mete out to the Duke Boys.
   However,if our readers don't have time for the entire flaying alive,check out a legal (if not entirely judicial )summing-up  over at The Volokh Conspiracy,which places on its emphasis on the lighter aspects of this appalling all time low in the history of American academc-student relationships.
        http://www.volokh.com/archives/archive_2008_05_04-2008_05_10.shtml#1210225198
    It is followed(at present) by 69 comments from  inquiring legal minds.
      Most pertinently,perhaps, nearly all concerned wish  to know why Wahneeba  and her friends(like Crystal and her friends before them) keep making their case worse by telling new whoppers to explain the last bunch of whoppers in which they were previously exposed.

[MarkRougemont]

  No proble SC (I assume you got back in), Latest Zimmerman post here responding to KC's response.

http://reharmonized.an-earful.com/2008/05/adventures-in-wonderland/

Quote:  "My bottom-line issue at the moment is this: at heart, it seems to me, the criticism of professors and of academic culture in DIW is an extended, strident, self-righteous demand to do as I say, not as I do."

[Sydney Carton]

  Mark,
    You have no idea how many hundreds of people want to either get in or get back in.But as three thousand  or so of them have  all turned  out to be Chicky ,it is really,I am told,a long haul.
   Zimmerman's responses on how KC interprets Lubiano interpreting herself in  previous statements she has issued  through Ciob- and still others- are getting so involuted  that it reminds me of the old radio comedians,Bob and Ray.They ran this soap opera called "Mary Backstage,Noble Wife" which plot had become so complex over the years that every  new fifteen minute  instalment required at least thirteen minutes of explication  of what had previously happened.
   Zimmerman actually got some uncharacteristic and, by no means unfavorable,attention from the regulars when you launched him here last year.But,I sincerely regret to say he has gotten himself bogdowned in self-pity for the lack of appreciation which he is (by his own admission )now receiving from diverse sides.
   The fact is that he has chosen to centre his critique in the defense of Lubiano--- one of the least defensible characters(outside of Cousin Jacjie) in the entire case.
   His latest:"  the desire to punish or silence behind the attacks on female and minority faculty strikes me as an excellent example of the spirit of faux juridicalism. " If it does,it does.
   In fact ,as C.J. demonstrated when this debate first opened, Wahneema  via Ciob was published in an alleged  peer review publication without(as the journal eventually admitted) any
peer review.She was not satisfied with being exposed as wildly,er...,inaccurate the first tiime,but elected to publish yet a second (sometimes  contradictory)defense as an alleged  piece of academic scholarship.All and all,I cannot think of a better illustration of exactly what triggered KC's complaints about the state of academia at Duke.
 

[MarkRougemont]

   Thanks for the update SC, it is really, I am told, a simple matter if they want you in.

BTW,
Please translate Zimmerman's new post for me.  Reading this one gives me a headache:

http://reharmonized.an-earful.com/2008/05/gossip-and-banter/

[MikeKell]

   It is really, I am told, a simple matter if they want you in.

Given the tone of your postings available elsewhere on-line, they wouldn't add anything to the discussion that hasn't been said already, and your headache would just be contagious. Time to move on. Time to move on.

[MarkRougemont]

   It is really, I am told, a simple matter if they want you in.

Given the tone of your postings available elsewhere on-line, they wouldn't add anything to the discussion that hasn't been said already, and your headache would just be contagious. Time to move on. Time to move on.

Yes, Mike.  It is a high standard set at LS when the tone of your postings elsewhere prohibit you from being a member of that exclusive group.  It is time for me to move on from LS.  I will try not to worry about the tone of my postings any longer.

[MikeKell]

So the question remains whether a board can have its
own standards for active participation or whether it
can decide some people have just failed to
keep even the minimum level of discourse. It's not dissent some
people may object to, it's not a well-reasoned point that
upsets folks, but the constant harping after all this time has
passed that 'something happened' or that influence from
parents or lawyers was anything other that what would be
expected *in the course of letting the case play out so
that the false charges would be dropped.  And the
scurrying back to some dark self-deceptive chorus of syncophants that
accuse others of being biased while they themselves are
never held to account.  They repeatedly post the same drivel,
dredging up obscure passages, taken out of context, or --
faced with the facts, resort to hijacking every thread
until people just decide to go off and have their own
conversation.  That someone or some group would choose to
keep predictable annoyers from repeating that same
tactic, well, that's why it is time to move on.  You can
always write direct if you want to discuss something, and I'll
reply, but then, maybe, just maybe,  I am just dumb as
dirt.   In which case, there really isn't that much to
say that hasn't been said.  Feel free to copy this, too.

Mike

[MarkRougemont]

  That someone or some group would choose to
keep predictable annoyers from repeating that same
tactic, well, that's why it is time to move on. 

I can't help but to equate this attitude with the way some Trinity Park residents reacted to their own predictable annoyers.

It is LieStoppers that has moved on, and moved to a private gated community.  In some part, I am glad that I wasn't chosen to be the token "annoyer".

[Sydney Carton]

    Back to topic!
    Liestoppers' Bill Anderson has published  an in depth analytical counterreview of the Nation's  review of  K.C.Johnson.As a rule I rigorously refrain from citing rightwing blogs on the Talkleft site,but as the original review has been the subject of several cross(and cross-cross-cross)referencings here,it seems only fair to signal out a reply that is far more comprehensive than KC's own briefcomment.
   Fo rexample ,the Nation's reviewer accused KC of concealing the fact that the Lacrosse team was responaible for twenty-five per cent  of the collegiate arrests documented  in an official Duke committee report.He neglected to state that the report documents a total of  four arrests in the time period under discussion and the single Lacrosse player arrested(twenty-five per cent!) was up for running a loud muffler or something.
    Of course,our readership will readily  discriminate between this discerning review and  any of the really noxious stuff that is printed on the same website.
      http://www.lewrockwell.com/anderson/anderson215.html )

[MarkRougemont]

  Sydney,
My opinion is that the main points that 2 angry men make are valid.  First UPI handles anybody on the defense side with kid gloves, misdeeds are sugar-coated and explained away, and the use of descriptives of the players and defense team are over-stated with superlatives.  In contrast, anyone who had doubts about the innocence of the players or supported the accuser in any way is painted with brush strokes of hatred and bigotry.  This is not completely accurate in my opinion, I believe that those on the defense side were not without blemish and those on the prosecution side not without some redeeming qualities.  There should be some shades of gray in this story.

The other main complaint in the 'angry men' review is that KC puts more emphasis on the evil nature of certain groups within the academic environment at Duke than he does with the primary evil doer in the person of Nifong.  This part is almost a vendetta or a cause that KC wants to promote by using the extremes of this case to classify all in  certain groups as being evil.

I am not sure that anybody reading this book that knows the history of the case should be surprised by any of this, it is certainly well known where the authors stand on the issues of the case, and their presentation of the case in this manner is not to be unexpected.  I don't consider this book to be in any way an attempt to look at both sides in a fair and impartial manner.