Posted by nell May 1, 2007 in Asides, Assholes
For who-knows-what reason, there’s been a small influx of nasty comments from the Apologize to the Duke Lacrosse Team NOW brigade. Don’t know what set them off–I suppose it could just be a periodic hormonal fluctuation–but stalwart lacrosse team defenders, it’s time to move on. This is fixing to outstrip (!) the Clenis fixation with you people.
Which brings up a good question: If Clinton had hired strippers for a party, hurled racist slurs at them, and later emailed his cabinet to notify them of his Patrick Bateman-inspired murder fantasies, would Republicans have come out swinging against a rush to judgment? I believe the answer is spelled “HAHAHAHAHAHAyouhavegottobefuckingkiddingme.”
pandagon book club
discussion date: March 3rd
If Clinton would have done all those things, he wouldn’t have simply been impeached, he would have been executed.
OTOH, Bush could be seen on live TV broadcast all over the world balling Condi Rice on the front lawn of the White House while Cheney urged them on and there would be suggestions that it was a private matter and we shouldn’t drag it out into public and embarrass otherwise fine people …
That’s . . . that’s an interesting visual there, Mike. I feel distinctly odd, as if a sudden urge never to have sex again had descended upon me.
Voyeur Cheney [shudder]! Creepy.
Why would you have to apologize to the Duke LaCrosse players? You didn’t falsely accuse them or over zealously prosecute them, or fiddle with witnesses.
Now we really know what he was thinking when he was standing over there in the bushes watching Dubya at that press conference. He was thinking “Just last week that schmuck was boning Condi right where Helen Thomas is sitting. Bet she’s got her shoes in the stain. I wonder if Laura needs some comforting. Quack.”
Well, I was going to mention Barbara, but thought better of it…
***
Hell, I’m still fascinated by the Jim Guckert / Jeff Gannon thing. If there had been a known male prostitute shilling at press conferences for the Clinton administration, imagine how the world would stop spinning.
Since it was the Bushite’s show…nada…
***
Clinton’s Attorney General is roasted (pun intended) because a compound in Waco is torched during an FBI action and a few dozen people are killed.
Bush allows and virtually celebrates the drowning of a whole American city with over 1,500 deaths - crickets…
***
A few American soldiers are in Kosovo to keep people from killing each other and the entire Republican Party demands funding cuts, target dates for withdrawal, etc.
Bush kills 3300 American soldiers in some bizarre Oedipal fixation on Iraq, helped by 20-years of NeoCon obsession with oil and world domination by the US - Congress is STILL afraid to take the keys away…
“I wonder if Laura needs some comforting. Quack.”
…The Bush Years of My Life, starring Burgess Meredith as
The Penguin“Big” Dick Cheney…“Why would you have to apologize to the Duke LaCrosse players? You didn’t falsely accuse them or over zealously prosecute them, or fiddle with witnesses.”
All women, but especially FEMINISTS!!! (dun dun DUN!!!) must apologize for even THINKING that those Fine, Upstanding, American Boys(!) could ever have done such a dishonorable thing!
(No, no, I’m not talking about the rape - The Duke defenders could not care less about that. The bad thing in their minds was getting a negro stripper instead of a proper poor-white-trash girl…)
Here are the needed [snark][/snark] tags…
I think that the real cost to the lives of the Duke players has been the loss of sleep they’ve suffered from the deafening shouts of all the people screaming about how the players’ lives have been ruined.
Did you know that statistically in the US there is nearly a 0% probability of a white man raping a black woman.
The probability of affluent white men in good academic standing at an elite university raping a black woman has to be something like the inverse of infinity.
See: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/cvus0502.pdf for the Dept of Justice crime statistics. Look under Victims and Offenders, download the pdf for 2005.
Table 42 states that of 36,620 cases in which the victim was black, 100 percent of the offenders were black and 0.0 percent of the offenders were white. The table explains that 0.0 percent means that there were fewer than 10 incidents nationally.
The bottom line on interracial white/black and black/white rape is clear: In the United States during 2005, 37,460 white females were sexually assaulted or raped by a black man, while between zero and ten black women were sexually assaulted or raped by a white man.
Mighty Ponygirl, I would bet money that some of “the boys” will get hired by wingnuts just to give the anti-rape forces the finger. They will be able to get an extra career nudge from this for several more years…sad to say…
Voyeur Cheney [shudder]! Creepy
Would it extend the fetish fantasy beyond believability if Cheney were holding a shotgun?
For who-knows-what reason
It could be because one of your recent posts randomly trotted out the Lacrosse kids for no real reason other than to take another cheap shot at them. Just a thought.
Who has the fixation here exactly? When you post a story about a teacher being denied a degree then include a throwaway last line about the Duke Lacrosse players the fixation appears to be on the part of Pandagon.
Believe it or not some of the Lacrosse “defenders” are not Republicans and are not defending them at all other than to point out that it looks small minded and childish to bring them up for no good reason other than to grind your axe a bit more.
The next time you make a post about the lacrosse players don’t act surprised when people respond in kind, that’s really quite silly and disingenuous.
Ilyka, what is the standard Pandagon troll waiting period? Or can we start ripping “JimB” right away…?
BTW, JimB, is your ass sore from pulling those “statistics” out of it?…
So, JimB, what you are saying is either
1) white men don’t rape black women
OR
2) white men are never CONVICTED of raping black women
Go google Charles Stuart whydonchya?
I let JimB out of the spam queue a-purpose just so y’all could see what it’s been like in there lately. And for sport.
On your marks–get set–GO!
Pandagon just can’t let this one go.
I’ll respect anyone who is willing to acknowledge when they were wrong.
But to continue to drag the lacrosse players’ reputations in the mud in an attempt to save face–now THAT is low.
The lacrosse players are not rapists, but they aren’t innocent kids either. Those guys are still guilty of being assholes.
Of course, being an asshole is not a crime in the state of North Carolina.
Make no mistake, these boys were done wrong by the system, but let’s not forget that there were good reasons why so many people believed they were guilty.
But to continue to drag the lacrosse players’ reputations in the mud in an attempt to save face–now THAT is low
Not necessary for us to do it - they already did a number on their spoiled little entitled frat boy selves with their own lovely communications styles. Even if you stick to what is “known” and admitted to you get underage drinking, hiring of escorts, and e-mail proposing horrendous violence against women as a means of erotic stimulation.
Oh, and a passel of parents who sweep it aside with a “boys will be shitbags” attitude that belies THEIR extreme sense of entitlement. Uggh.
Lovely people, donchya think?
JimB, you know, I bet there have been almost no murders over the last 20-years in the US where two brothers used a shotgun to kill their own parents, inherit the money, and then go on a multi-year spending spree until they were finally caught and convicted after several trials, where they claimed it was really okay to shoot their parents because their father abused them…
But I do know one example…
Ms Kate, I am quoting the US Dept of Justice crime data. Also these were statistics of victimization events, not convictions.
If you have a beef with the accuracy of their data take it up with them. Facts can be upsetting, can’t they?
Ah, that’s one I didn’t let through: A stern lecture on, I shit you not, irony and satire. See, the players, they’d had this reading assignment just prior to the party, and in the email one of them was just goofing on that assignment like, ironically and satirically!
Curse you, Alanis Morissette: An entire generation can’t correctly identify irony anymore.
Okay, maybe this isn’t so necessarily with ilyka vigilantly guarding the spam queue, (I’m having visions of an archangel with a flaming sword)
However, I’m going to engage in a little bit of self-promotion and point out that if you are reading pandagon with firefox, and if you are willing to install a firefox extension called greasemonkey, then it is possible to then go install my little personal troll-zapper, which lets you point at comments and say: “There, that user? I never want to see their crap again”, at which point every comment by that user will be replaced by a little note saying that their comment was blocked.
Note that this only affects your view of pandagon, of course, and is no substitute for the flaming sword of ruthless moderation. However, I find it useful.
JimB–
You fucking idiot. The table says that the “zero” figure for black women raped by white men is based on “10 or fewer SAMPLE cases”. It’s a SURVEY, dipshit. That note was supposed to tell you that the figure is NOT meaningful.
MikeEss–
I don’t know. The accused lacrosse players seemed pretty eager to put the whole thing behind them, and they seemed reasonable enough. I’d be surprised to see one of them suddenly start writing articles for Frontpage.
Ilyka–
Ever notice how nobody in the “apologize NOW!” crowd ever wants to talk about people like Genarlow Wilson?
Indeed, JimB:
In your favor, of course, is the extreme statistical unlikeliness of a woman of color suffering unjust repercussions for reporting a sexual assault against her by a white male assailant. That means all women of color always report all their rapes, and none of those rapes are ever perpetrated by white males! It’s not only utterly probable statistically, it’s a fact! YOU WIN!
JimB
Actually, those are the statistics of *reported* rapes.
Could there be black women raped by white men who are (can it be?) reluctant to come forward? Who might actually (gasp!) distrust or fear their local law enforcement?
Noo. If the DoJ doesn’t have a statistic on it, it didn’t happen.
Pardon me while I click the heels of my ruby slippers together and go home.
sorry ilyka,
i guess great minds think alike–mine is just slower.
If you have a beef with the accuracy of their data take it up with them. Facts can be upsetting, can’t they?
Being highly trained in statistical analysis, I’m not upset in the least.
That’s because, for reasons cited above, what you quote is not facts. It is survey data from a small sample. Not representive, not statistically stable or geographically comprehensive.
Can I suggest that in the future, Pandagon trolls should be required to combine two obsessions in their comments? Extra bonus points for two obsessions that cancel each other out. Like so:
If only those strippers had been carrying concealed weapons, this whole travesty of justice would never have happened.
Maybe when they’re done they can track down everyone who thinks that OJ is still guilty.
Wow, truly sad. As a hardcore liberal and registered independent, it breaks my heart when fellow liberals demonstrate the utter lack of accountability we so often deride conservatives for demonstrating.
What will it take for Amanda to come out with a post recanting comments like “Can’t a few white boys sexually assault a black woman anymore without people getting all wound up about it? So unfair.”
What sexual assault, Amanda, are you referring to?
Not only was there no sexual assault in the Duke case, there was a mentally disturbed sociopath levleing false accusations against innocent people, creating an asterisk next to their names for eternity. As a (psuedo)journalist, Amanda should know that rape allegations are considered the most dangerous, to be dealt with with tremendous caution and prudence because they’re one of the few crimes where the mere accusation of the crime is as damaging as a guilty verdict.
Not only did she not demonstrate prudence, she actively impugned the innocent before any single fact in the case was known. I won’t for a second pretend to know her motives, but I will repeatedly call for an explanation or a recanting, anything that would show even a hint of the desire for accountability.
Is she woman enough to accept accountability, or does the accountability standard only apply to rich white men that she hates?
BizzaroSuperman:
the comment you mention from auguste’s post seemed to me more of a comment on the privileges accorded to athletes, as opposed to us ordinary mortals. Somebody else on that thread pulled in the other meaning.
Oh, see, there I go again!
What Hysterical Woman said: goes twice for me.
(Note to self: more ginko in diet.)
‘Mighty Ponygirl, I would bet money that some of “the boysâ€? will get hired by wingnuts just to give the anti-rape forces the finger. They will be able to get an extra career nudge from this for several more years…sad to say…’
I guarantee you David Horowitz is first in line.
He’s risen to glory over demonizing all professors over the actions of exceptions like the Gang of 88.
Why should, by association, my academic work be diminished because I am a liberal, even though I never even knew any of my professors’ political orientations nor vice versa?
Michael,
How about
“And if that stripper had become pregnant as a result of that rape, I hope she would not consider an abortion!”
JimB…. you are aware that only approximately 16% of rape victims ever bring charges? Correct? And that of those 16%, most end in acquittal or dismissal? There are simply not enough statistics available about the women who did not press charges. Now, reasonably and logically, I am willing to assume that where the status in society is further apart (say, between a wealthy white man and a poor black woman) there is a higher chance that the victim does not report the rape. This is especially true if the victim works in the sex trade, say as a dancer or a prostitute.
Certainly, nearly every homeless woman I know reports having been raped at least once (and I know several hundred homeless women). Of those women who were raped, no more than one or two reported the rape to law enforcement. No men were ever convicted of the rapes. I’m a counselor. People tell me their secrets. Admittedly homeless women are not a cross section of society, and their vulnerability to rape is significantly higher than that of most women (for reasons including class, mental illness, prostitution and drugs, and the homeless status itself). That doesn’t change the fact that they are raped, and generally not believed.
I counted last week. Of approximately thirty women who came in my day center over the course of the week, six or seven had fresh black eyes. This is a new trend. Some guy is out there beating the hell out of homeless women. None of them have been willing to tell me what’s up, yet. I’m hoping I find out soon so I can neutralize the perpetrator(s).
Oh, and what Ms. Kate said. In spades.
Sorry: “alleged” rape
Or if their estranged MRA partners had custody of the children, they wouldn’t have had to strip for the players to afford to support them.
Troll combinatorics.
This is awesome.
Also, if feminism hadn’t been so gung-ho on encouraging women to work outside the home . . . .
Again I am struck by significant metaphorical parallels between the behavior of the D*ke Ap*logy D*manding Squ*d on the one hand, and the behavior of which the lacrosse team was accused on the other.
Shorter me: Can’t a few white boys gang-harass a woman blogger anymore without people getting all wound up about it? So unfair.
Oh, and this never would have happened if the lacrosse team hadn’t been circumcised. Thank you and God bless.
bahahaha.
Having never accused anyone directly of anything, I have no idea what I’m supposed to apologize for.
Oh yeah—being a feminist and opposed to rape and sexual harassment.
Ah, more anti-Semitism from Teh Tolerant Left. You anti-Semites disgust me, anti-Semitically.
Amanda: When are you going to apologize to Israel?
Which brings up a good question: If Clinton had hired strippers for a party,….
Hiring strippers is no better or worse than being a stripper; so if you are going to condemn the men on the team for hiring women to take off their clothing for money, then you should also be willing to impugn the women too for being willing to take off their clothing in acceptance for payment–no double standards allowed.
…hurled racist slurs at them,…
Were any of the three men that ended up being booked the ones who actually hurled the slurs?
There is no doubt that slurs were used agasint the women but I haven’t seen any reports that definitely identified the team members who said them.
….and later emailed his cabinet to notify them of his Patrick Bateman-inspired murder fantasies,….
The guy who sent that email was suspended from the school and to my knowledge I don’t believe he was ever allowed back. That player also was not one of the three men accused of rape.
…would Republicans have come out swinging against a rush to judgment?
What difference does it make what Republicans would or wouldn’t do?
Honestly, I personally haven’t read enough of your writings about the Duke lacrosse case to know whether or not you should apologize for anything you said or not ( and I also haven’t sent anyone any emails demanding they apologize); but, if you did say something that you know to have been incorrect or a rush to judgement/slanderous then it seems like apologizing would be the right thing to do–regardless of what any republican would do if they were in your place.
Gordo, 0% of 36,620 victimizations is what? If you assume 0.0% can mean 0.0499%, that predicts 183 victimization events as a maximum.
Again, if you don’t like the numbers, complain to your elected representatives that the DOJ is wasting money again.
Odanu, I know a lot of rape is not reported. My sister was raped and she never reported it. Are black woman less likely to report rape especially if it is by a white man because of racism within her community? I don’t know. Are white woman less likely to report rape by a black man for the same reason? I don’t know that either.
What I do know is that hatred or envy of affluent, white males is no reason to convict the innocent.
This country wasted a lot of time following the lies of a deranged stripper when the statistics show that you could fill up a medium sized city with the yearly crop of rape victims. That has to end, but it won’t if we don’t know or can’t admit who the likely perpetrators are.
The sting of the “fake screen name” is lessened by the post-author highlighting.
Not only was there no sexual assault in the Duke case …
Whoa, there, Sparky.
The rape kit showed that there was a sexual assault. That’s how they were able to determine that the three accused weren’t the ones who did it: they had the DNA from the rape kit, and it didn’t belong to any of the three. Problem is, the victim is an unreliable witness who identified the wrong guys, and will probably never be able to properly identify her attacker, so the case is dead in the water. The best they can hope for now is that they put the DNA in the database and it shows up as a match when the perpetrator rapes again.
What you’re claiming is that someone like, say, Jennifer Thompson, who misidentified her rapist, was never raped at all. Yes?
You have a blind spot here - things were done and said about supposed rapists that were wrong. Make them right now and you will feel better. If you try to defend the indefensible, you lose good karma. Hair splitting is the wrong approach. Suppose it were your brother or father - what would you expect from Amanda M? She is too bright and sensitive not to reach out.
JimB: Have you taken the time to email all the black female victims of rape by white men that they weren’t raped after all, from a statistical point of view?
Pandagon has legal authority? Why didn’t anyone tell me before?
Amanda, how about apologizing for this:
“Can’t a few white boys sexually assault a black woman anymore without people getting all wound up about it? So unfair.�
Again, I ask, What sexual assault are you referring to? Again, I ask, What sexual assault do you continually refer to when bashing those three lacrosse players? Again, I ask, Why were they guilty until proven innocent, and even then continually guilty, according to you?
And Mnemosyne, there was no sexual assault, there was just a lot of sperm in the sociopath’s vagina. She slept around. Deal with it. You should be supporting it as a sign of her female empowerment.
Wayward, you get out of here with that Earth Logic!
Man, if the people who worried so much about the wrongfully accused gave two shits about the wrongfully convicted.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
That’ll never happen—the wrongfully convicted are mostly poor and black and thereby don’t concern the people who are strictly trolling out of their sense of “justice”.
Uh, Jimmy, if you looked at the footnote on your link there, it states that the statistic you cite was taken from 10 or fewer sample cases. in the case of rape/sexual assault of a black person, there were over 36,000 cases according to same link. 10/36000 doesn’t cut it. That just leaves room for error of, oh, about 99.97%. I’d say “nice try”, but it wasn’t.
You know, when one participates in a mob, helping beat the drums for summary judgment of the innocent, even the flawed innocent, feeling a tad chagrinned, or a bit of shame and fessin up is usually what serious adults do.
But then again… that’s what serious adults do, rather than send silly, bitter children to run interference.
Curse you gordo!
Michael,
How about
“And if that stripper had become pregnant as a result of that rape, I hope she would not consider an abortion!�
Well, let’s not be hasty, hbsweet — in this one case, there was no rape. But the point remains that all pregnant rape victims should at least look at the cute l’il squirmy thing in the ultrasound before they do anything rash.
Also, if feminism hadn’t been so gung-ho on encouraging women to work outside the home . . . .
. . . while inducing them to mock the hot white sticky Virgin Birth! Thanks, ilyka! Now we’re cookin’ with Crisco!*
*This colloquialism is not meant to suggest that Pandagon endorses the metaphorical use of trans fats in blog comments.
I tried to clarify my point—in that exact post, in fact. You refused to take my clarification.
Why not?
Because you’re arguing in bad faith. You’re not interested in the truth. I’m happy to discuss the case with anyone who is interested in the truth and willing to argue in good faith. That I’ve never seen a Duke lacrosse player defender argue in good faith here is simply not my fault.
“And Mnemosyne, there was no sexual assault, there was just a lot of sperm in the sociopath’s vagina. ”
Does no one else read something like that and hope un that evil, terrible, yet somehow verbose part of their brains, that someday that jerkwad is raped so that there can be sperm built up in his anus which we can claim is the result of consensual sex?
Does no one else read the argument that white men don’t rape black women and wonder what demographically unlikely crimes might unfortunately befall the commenter who, by his own admission, should then be ignored - because who would believe that three Mandarin-speaking Chicana women from different socioeconomic classes would beat him with curtain rods while dancing the tarantella?
I mean. God forbid either of those things should happen in reality. Seriously — an injection of empathy would be better. Maybe someone should figure out how to get that into liquid form. I’ll pay for the syringes.
And they call the rape victim a sociopath? Riiiight. No sociopathic tendencies on the part of the asshole making the comment. None at all.
I don’t know about anyone else, cfw, but I feel fine.
Aside from being pissed off about innocent young people whose lives have been ruined because some second-rate politico figured the appearance of vigorous prosecution would aid his political career, and incensed that some bloggers have not yet been properly shamed for their earlier statements supporting that politico’s actions, of course.
Other than that, though? Fine.
We welcome fats of all kinds.
And Mnemosyne, there was no sexual assault, there was just a lot of sperm in the sociopath’s vagina. She slept around. Deal with it.
Um, yes, if a woman was raped by several guys, as she has always claimed, there would be “a lot of sperm” in there. Did you forget that she accused three guys of raping her, which is why there would be “a lot of sperm”?
Nice to know that if I ever have sex with my husband in the morning and get raped that afternoon, having the sperm of two different men in my vagina is proof that I’m a SLUT who would have sex with two men in one day.
You should be supporting it as a sign of her female empowerment.
Yep, nothing more empowering for a woman than being gang-raped.
I’ve gotta ask you — why are you so invested in deciding that the woman is a liar and nothing happened at all despite all evidence to the contrary?
mandolin-
Does no one else read something like that and hope un that evil, terrible, yet somehow verbose part of their brains, that someday that jerkwad is raped so that there can be sperm built up in his anus which we can claim is the result of consensual sex?
well… yeah, that occurred to me.
Does no one else read the argument that white men don’t rape black women and wonder what demographically unlikely crimes might unfortunately befall the commenter who, by his own admission, should then be ignored - because who would believe that three Mandarin-speaking Chicana women from different socioeconomic classes would beat him with curtain rods while dancing the tarantella?
well… no, that didn’t occur to me… but i really wish that it had.
Gordo, 0% of 36,620 victimizations is what? If you assume 0.0% can mean 0.0499%, that predicts 183 victimization events as a maximum.
Again, if you don’t like the numbers, complain to your elected representatives that the DOJ is wasting money again.
Do you even understand what a sample size even IS? It means that they took that data from at MOST 10 cases.
*Sigh* why do I bother? I already know that conservatives have no understanding of statistics.
Let’s just say that there are some of us who would gladly pay for the gaucho outfits.
and to be clear, yeah, i recognized that was the evil part of my brain. as a matter of course i never wish rape on anybody — not being facetious here, i feel shitty about that thought so i’m making this comment to say so — just for some reason the obscene lack of empathy really got to me.
why are you so invested in deciding that the woman is a liar and nothing happened at all despite all evidence to the contrary?
The AG examined the evidence and delibertately used the word “innocent”.
That means there was no evidence, circumstantial or direct, to support the woman’s claims. “Innocent” has a very specific LEGAL meaning, far and beyond “not guilty” or “not enough evidence to proceed.”
What happned has done is real damage to real rape victims, just as the craven Nifong has tainted the reputations of honest prosecutors.
The fallout from the rape hoax is not limited to the forever damaged lives of the wrongly accused Duke players and the cavaliar or pernicious views of those that figure the “white boys” got what’s due them is just proves the point.
Some will never accept that the rape never happened, just like Rosie thinks fire doesn’t melt steel.
Jesus H. Christ on a llama. If she has a mental illness, it doesn’t mean there was no sexual assault. If she slept around, that also doesn’t mean there was no sexual assault. She appears to believe quite sincerely and absolutely that she was assaulted. We know that the Duke three did not rape her; we don’t know much bloody else about what happened, nor are we ever likely to. In the abscence of concrete evidence, I’m inclined to take that tack that they are innocent (of this at least), and she did not make false charges, merely mistaken identity.
And there’s a hell of a big difference between a poor woman taking a dubious job to feed her child and try to make a better life for herself, and a bunch of guys with money to spend thinking they can buy a woman’s body for their fun evening just like they buy a keg of beer.
Hiring strippers is no better or worse than being a stripper…
Wrongo! Women strip for a lot of reasons, including things like being able to feed their children. If you can show me a single case of a man hiring a stripper because the alternative was watching his kids go hungry I’ll give you my liver.
I have no problem with women choosing to strip, but the reality is that a lot of those who do make that choice do so because the alternatives are especially bad. The alternative to a party with no stripper is hardly a disaster. I’ve been to plenty of parties, not one of which had a stripper, and yet I don’t feel that I’ve missed out on anything.
Mnemosyne- it’s unfortunate that you can’t accept the reality that no sexual assault occurred. That leaves you, Amanda, and the sociopath who trotted out 12 different stories of how she was allegedly raped, all of which were debunked by police. Great company you keep.
None of the sperm found in the accuser’s vagina matched DNA from the Duke lacrosee players. What does that tell you, Mnemosyne? Or are you too entangled in co-opting the victimhood of the accuser that you can’t separate your own issues from hers?
Finally: What evidence to the contrary? What have you read about this case aside from the original headlines? Have you been following? Because the charges were dropped after exhaustive investigation and DNA evidence cleaered the laxers. So what the hell are you talking about?
AMANDA- just admit you were a part of the mob, and you were wrong. Admit you rushed to judgment and get some credibility back. Please, for your own blogging credibility, just take some sliver of accountability and move on.
Mandolin, I repeat: there was no sexual assault, there was just a lot of sperm in the sociopath’s vagina. And it belonged to more than one man, none of whom were Duke lacrosse players. So guess what, the woman lied, and lied, and lied, and lied, and lied… And did so without any regard for the lives she was affecting. Should there be consequences? Should she be judged? Is it unfair to make negative comments about someone who has a sociopathic disregard for the harm they’re causing, all in the service of simply saving face, no less???
Heh, put “Duke” and “Lacrosse” in the same sentence and everyone’s IQ and EQ drop substantially, then they feel the apparent need to post about it (this is aimed at both the left and right nuts out there:)
What is it with these mid-level Lacrosse players from a second rate school? How does everyone know so much about them to espouse their virtues or bash them? What is so great/terrible about the alleged victim that she must be a villain or a hero? Aren’t these really just normal people, more or less? WTF? Really, get a life. Move on, accidents over. You folks know nothing about these people.
at.all
There were two real newsworthy tragedies (as far as Pandagon is concerned) that came out as far as I can see:
1.The justice system in that area is obviously broken. Any hope that crimes in general, let alone those involving complex investigations, will be handled correctly is certainly misplaced.
2.Amanda screwed the pooch on her post at a time when she may have been in a position to move onto a national stage. Sorta like self sabotage watched in retroactive slow motion, that one. (She should probably never apologize because the old hole just gets deeper, anyway, my 2 cents, worth that or less guaranteed)
Other than that, everything is conjecture (at this point) or otherwise has been reported.
Stop. Wasting. Your. Time.
Ok flaming can start… now
Innocent� has a very specific LEGAL meaning, far and beyond “not guilty� or “not enough evidence to proceed.�
Oh, please stop pretending that reading some Wikipedia entries makes you a lawyer.
If the accuser had been gang-raped by three other Duke lacrosse players, the three men charged in this case would still be innocent. “Innocence” does not mean “the accuser is a scheming, lying bitch”.
It’s pretty obvious that a lot of the rage generated about Nifong’s misconduct is because the accuser got above her station. How dare a woman, especially a slut who takes money from men for sexually pleasing them, do such a horrible thing! That’s why you don’t see half the anger at Nifong as you do at the accuser. He may have committed misconduct, deserve disbarrment, and tampered with evidence, but by God he’s got a penis.
Chris — thanks for speaking up in support of fats of all kinds.
The AG examined the evidence and delibertately used the word “innocent�.
Yes, as I mentioned above, the three who were accused did not do it. However, just because none of those three raped doesn’t automatically mean that she was never raped. If your car is stolen and they never find the thieves, does that automatically mean that your car was never stolen at all?
That means there was no evidence, circumstantial or direct, to support the woman’s claims.
No evidence that the three accused were the rapists. Because they were innocent. But, again, the fact that the three who were accused were not the rapists doesn’t automatically mean no one raped her.
Well, Tapetum, unless you believe the Los Angeles Times is part of the Right Wing Patriarchy and All Day Car Wash, then
Tapetum- think about the vicitm mentality you’re breeding when you immediately pity the girl and project a defense on her like “she had to feed her kids.” She doesn’t have kids. She was a college kid herself, who had a ton more opportunities than kids I work with every single day. She made decisions you look down on- choosing to be a stripper- but for some sad, pathetic reason you can’t bring yourself to give her ownership over her decision? She must be a victim of society? A victim of her own hopeless birth status? This is truly pathetic. She stripped to make extra cash, period. Get over it. Not everyone has a sob story, and not every f-ed up sociopath who claims to be raped was. This case, and this case alone is what we’re talking about. In this case, you’re just wrong. Write it off. Go find another charity case to project your victimhood onto.
Oh, honey. You’re the one not accepting reality:
Mnemosyne
While there is a possibility she was raped, she was not raped that night in that house. It is disengenuous to keep say “well, she wasn’t raped by those three” and leave a deliberate impression that maybe she was raped by others in the house.
Obviously she is a deeply troubled person. She needs help, serious help, on many levels. But even addled drug addicts are aware of when they are “lying”… its part of a pattern of how they con others and keep at bay dealing with their illness.
Making excuses for her does no good for anyone.
I don’t follow Lacrosse — not my sport — so I really can’t say much about this celebrated case. But I very much want to thank the hard-working staff of Pandagon for this post since it brought “Darleen” out of her bunker. That woman just cracks me up.
It’s horrible that these men had to defend themselves against charges for crimes they didn’t commit. It’s a terrible position to be in, and I hope I never find myself there.
Regardless, this isn’t the first time that the accused have had the charges against them dropped. It’s not the first time that a D.A. turned out to be wrong. But it is an unusual phenomenon we’re witnessing - everyone wants an apology on behalf of these boys. In fact, one can hardly find any information about the case in between all the miniature online pity-parties. There are countless cases of individuals being prosecuted and even hauled off to jail for crimes they didn’t commit. Why is this one different? Why is everyone rallying around these men?
Maybe it’s not because the accused were white, boy-next-door type athletes. Maybe it’s not because they were accused by a black stripper. But is it really so unreasonable to suggest that these factors played a substantial part in the unprecedented attention this case has received?
Aside from being pissed off about innocent young people whose lives have been ruined because some second-rate politico figured the appearance of vigorous prosecution would aid his political career, and incensed that some bloggers have not yet been properly shamed for their earlier statements supporting that politico’s actions, of course.
Hey, wait a minute! That link makes a entirely different point that has nothing to do with those fine young men and that evil district attorney, and furthermore, it threatens to derail the entire thread by bringing up some completely irrelevant trivial stuff!
RL
No need to put my name in “quotes”. I blog under my own legal name. I’m glad you’re amused, though you do have a tendency not to actually follow up on any serious challenges to your attempts at irony.
Funny, here I thought you had run off to eat a peach.
Darleen, I’m no legal expert by any means but my understanding of jurisprudence is that the AG doesn’t possess the authority to declare the Duke defendants innocent. He doesn’t know. He wasn’t there. He was arrogant and out of line, and revealed himself to be every bit the smarmy political hack you may think the prosecutor, Nifong, was. He should have said there wasn’t sufficient evidence to convict them and left it at that.
ilyka, I’m not your honey. Don’t patronize me, especially with some half-assed google search, which was probably the first research you did on the case since you read the first inflamatory headline a year ago. And by the way, you skipped the lede paragrpah. It’s the one that says what was in the original medical report:
—
DURHAM, N.C. — On March 21, a week after an African-American woman charged that she had been raped by three white Duke University lacrosse players, the police sergeant supervising the investigation met with the sexual-assault nurse who had examined the woman in the emergency room. The sergeant, Mark D. Gottlieb, reviewed the medical report, which did not say much: some swelling, no visible bruises.
—
Some swelling, and no bruises? Sounds like someone just had a little too much sex. Yes, that was the conclusion before the Sargeant met with the prosecutor. Then the Sargeant meets with Nifong (soon to be disbarred, by the way), and magically creates 33 pages of notes about what he has learned to date… FROM MEMORY.
This is why the case was thrown out. Top to bottom, it was bullshit. What makes you think you have a better grip on what happened then the Attorney General who ultimately dropped the entire case and declared the boys innocent?
hbsweet:
the comment you mention from auguste’s post seemed to me more of a comment on the privileges accorded to athletes, as opposed to us ordinary mortals. Somebody else on that thread pulled in the other meaning.
In the other thread the Auguste pointed to an explanation in the thread as to why he/she included the Duke Lacrosse commment. That explanation was without merit. I’m not cherry-picking a random comment I disagree with, I’m disagreeing with the rationale explicitly endorsed by the original poster. There was no reason to bring up Duke Lacrosse there - it was a very poor contrasting example that didn’t really fit at all. It was a thinly veiled cheap-shot.
It’s painful to continuously read about the Duke Lacrosse players. A lot of the commenters have very little knowledge of the case and none of them have the fortitude for even the tiniest “ok…we might have been just slightly wrong.” For example:
The rape kit showed that there was a sexual assault.
No, it didn’t. This is just not factually correct. Does it make me a “lacrosse player defender” to point out factually incorrect statements that none of the good guys here will challenge?
I expect this sort of stuff from severe right-wingers. Let’s review the behavior:
1. Complete unwillingness to admit even the smallest amount of error.
2. Continuing to cling to “facts” after they have been disproven; complete disregard for the actual facts.
3. A false dichotomization (if that is a word) between the good guys, who are right by definition, and the bad guys, who are evil terrorist sympathizers by definition.
A lot of posters here have constructed this elaborate and convenient fantasy where “defending” a Duke player means you must be a horrible racist and a rape apologist, if not a rapist yourself. In this fantasy land it is impossible to make simple objections without being the embodiment of evil.
I consistently see logic here that we reject in all other cases. Were the players lives ruined? No. Was Amanda’s life ruined by the Edwards fiasco? Was Kathy Sierra’s life ruined by what happened to her? Was the girl who was a denied an English degree ruined for life? No. That is a silly standard and one we reject - except in the Duke case. In the Duke it is somehow valid to point out that their lives were not ruined and therefore tough titties.
The Duke players weren’t all perfect gentlemen. No shit. Then again, they didn’t ALL send a nasty email, they didn’t all use racial epithets. And even if they did - so? Amanda isn’t a perfect little lady, I didn’t see anyone bringing that up during the Edwards fiasco. Isn’t pointing out imperfections in people who have been wronged generally considered blaming the victim?
The people who not only refuse to admit the slightest error in the Duke case but beyond that continue to trot them out as whipping boys are an embarrassment. They sound willfully ignorant and petty.
It doesn’t make me a horrible racist or rape apologist to say that.
What is most interesting here is thinking about what makes the Duke Lacrosse players any different from Syracuse lacrosse players, Stanford football players or BU rugby players. The only difference I can see is that the Duke players were accused a crime they didn’t commit.
And for that, they deserve constant to be constantly excoriated. Funny how that works. They were singled out because they did something really bad - and the fact that they didn’t actually do that thing hasn’t stopped anyone from continuing to single them out for the high crime of being accused without grounds.
Look, these guys aren’t my heroes or my best pals, but enough is enough. Again, this is wingnut behavior. The fact that some of you don’t consider yourselves wingnuts doesn’t change the fact that you are acting exactly the way wingnuts act. Total disregard for facts, absolute stubborness, inability to admit any error - even the *tiniest* amount. Dismissing all objections out of hand for being enemy sympathizers.
I think the point of us enlightened people is not simply that we disagree with crazed wingnuts but that we reject the incredibly dull thought processes that lead to nuttiness.
Otherwise you are just a nut of another stripe.
That woman just cracks me up.
She never fails to lie and obfuscate, does she?
And wow, the moment rape is brought up, it never fails that the scum comes out of the woodwork to blame the woman for the rape. Yeah, because that’s a new and unheard-of position that never gets air-time in the press. I hear they also replaced the word ‘gullible’ in the dictionary with a hyperlink.
Worst.
Prufrock remix.
Ever.
Seriously! Just stick to your day job eating scabs, Mr. Clarke!
Hmphhh!
Darleen, my dear :
Are you accusing me of the heinous crime of ‘attempted irony?’
They had their chance to join the union. I can’t be held responsible once they cross the picket line.
Joy
Why is this one different? Why is everyone rallying around these men?
Maybe because the case became the cause celebre for Nifong to use to get elected. He’s the one that got the press involved.
The majority of the time there are procedures designed to help make sure cases are filed only when evidence supports conviction. “Wobblers” are usually turned down and kicked back to police agencies for further investigation (if merited). That’s why most agencies have reams of “cold cases.”
The vast majority of DA offices are overburdened, understaffed and overworked. We just don’t have the time to screw around with cases “just because.”
Just because all the cases of non-filings, or people who are arrested then released because of mistakes aren’t covered in the press doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.
We had something happen last week in our jurisdiction… a historic verdict under Jessica’s law passed in CA last fall … and a rather infamous sexually violent predator (a rather vicious serial rapist) will never get out of state mental hospital.
And there hasn’t been ONE word of it in the press. Not a one. But our MDO/SVP dda did an awesome job, 7 weeks of testimony, over 10,000 pages of discovery and the evil male with a rape history going back over 30 years will never get out again.
But since he was already incarcerated I suppose it didn’t have enough “bleed” for it to lead in the press.
Ilyka says (emphasis mine, for the point-making):
bakerablewaziwawa says:
Ilyka winz.
CC
Oh no, RL is an Allman acolyte, I assure you.
Didn’t I tell you? The woman is a laugh riot.
Jackoff
Please, dear, if you’re attempting a serious argument, you’ll have to substantiate your assertions.
Exactly in any of the posts I’ve made here have I lied?
I thought that JimB had a point.
…(wait for it)…
But I thought his point wasn’t, “white men don’t rape black women,” but rather, “look at how ridiculously fucked up and biased our justice system is! White men don’t rape black women? At all? Ever? Bull. Shit.”
But, you know, doing it Sara Silverman deadpan style—twisting the knife so hard we laugh.
Then I read the rest of his posts. That… well, that would have to be the deadest pan, like, ever.
But I loved this,
Because, of course, a conviction was never even possible. There wasn’t even a trial. The state attorney general just ended the investigation in a way that wasn’t a little sketchy, but was rather a sketchy entrée with the house sleaze sauce and your choice of bribery or corruption on the side.
And when I say “wins” I’m talking about “the battle to tell the truth.” So, you know, fairly important.
Why do I get the creepy feeling that the same people who are demanding an apology for the
Duke Three would be totally silent if the victim was white and the defendants were black?
Let me throw a different idea out on the table and see if the cat licks it up.
No one commenting on this thread is going to be persuaded to change their position.
Amanda is not going to apologize even if these fellows jointly win the Nobel Peace Prize and an Oscar for their deeply moving film exploring the horrors of the sex trade.
The various commenters are not going to condemn the Duke kids even if Sherlock Holmes comes riding in a lavender unicorn and explains how they brilliantly bamboozled everyone into thinking they’re innocent.
And in the end, none of our opinions matter to anyone actually involved. So can’t we all just resolve to hate eachother and be happy with that?
James, you realize that you’re talking about the end of political blogging forever and ever, right?
” … if the victim were white and the defendants were black … ” and the evidence in the case exactly as we have been told it is, there would be three convictions; 25 years to life, I’d guess.
There you go again, Auguste, with your librul bias.
In fairness to BobbleAndroidFactorORiley, though, he also doesn’t realize how much time I spend transcribing medical reports. “Consistent with” is what you want to hear on, say, your physician’s account of your Workers’ Comp claim: “The patient’s clinical evaluation appears consistent with the stated mechanism of injury,” means the provider believes she has evidence that what you say occurred, occurred. “Inconsistent with,” on the other hand, is the provider’s polite way of saying, “I think this one’s fulla shit.”
Further, “blunt force trauma” can be inflicted any number of ways that don’t necessarily cause ecchymosis, or the “visible bruises” BravoAlphaTrueLiberalISwear is so concerned about the absence of.
What really gives these dorks away as just another breed of Instant Expert is the way they aren’t content with the concession that the three accused players didn’t assault this woman. No, they have to insist that NO ONE assaulted her. What’s up with that?
Oh, right: The irresistible urge to knock a bitch down strikes again.
Oh my god, who really cares at this point? The brain power spent arguing over this case could have probably produced a cure for cancer, a peace plan for the Middle East AND a recipe for some tasty cheese covered salty snacks by now.
I can’t believe that discussions about racism and war and genocide on this blog go virtually ignored, while throwaway posts about the Duke lacrosse team rack up a hundred comments in less than three hours.
” … can’t we all just resolve to hate each other and be happy with that?”
Works for me. (And I suspect it will fit right in with Darleen’s ‘life-style’ as well.)
And they’d all be the same thing.
–yeah, me neither! And damn that Berube with his inconsequential Arbitrary but Fun series! Waste of my damn time, that is!
Look, my feeling is this: Let everyone Duke it out here (instead of in every other thread that has nothing to do with this tired-ass subject), and they can get it outta their systems at least until they get their next lacrosse menstrual, and I can happily return to spending a coupla hours on a post about the war that will be largely ignored in favor of discussing teh hot male celebs.
And they’d all be the same thing.
Melamine.
Misogynist pig.
One of the curious problems with the “blunt force trauma” is that is what Sgt. Gottlieb’s notes indicate a nurse told him. Yet Gottleib’s notes were not written up and turned over for discovery until mid-July…long after “discrepancies” had been noted and the Sgt.’s notes both backed up Nifong’s case while contradicting the notes of other investigators.
No where is this “oral conversation” reported in the AG’s summary report. Interestingly
Pigs are actually clean, fun-loving creatures! HOW DARE YOU DEFAME SUCH INNOCENT CREATURES WITH YOUR VILE SLURS! APOLOGIZE!
ilyka, I can’t speak for anyone else, but I LIKE the “racism and war and genocide” stuff and comment on just about every thread of those types that show up here…
…wait a minute, maybe THAT’s why they die…sorry…
:(
If a woman is stripping so that she can feed her children, why bash the men who pay her? Afterall, if the men don’t pay her, and the woman has no other options, then her kids go hungry, right?
And not all strippers are doing it to feed their childen.
True. And I don’t believe that most men’s parties even have strippers although I have no statistics to back this assertion up.
And let me just address something else, right now, since I’ll probably disappear for a bit to write finals. Here are the facts I know about the Duke rape case:
I know that a black woman was employed as a stripper by three affluent white male Duke students.
I know that she says she was raped, and that a medical report has shown physical injury and psychological trauma consistent with rape.
I know that at least one Duke student sent out a really fucked-up, misogynistic, and violent e-mail to the others prior to hiring the stripper.
And that’s it. Have I judged them guilty, based on this alone? No. Do I think, at the very least, this should go to trial? Yes. Do I think it’s a mockery of justice that it won’t? Yes.
But, Violet! Innocent until proven guilty! Innocent, innocent, INNOCENT!
They are affluent, white males attending a prestigious university, and she is a relatively poor black woman notably not attending Duke. The deck is radically and institutionally stacked against her, which makes me much more inclined to believe there is something to her charge. And the fact that a white, male D.A. thought so too does not diminish my conviction.
If you like, you can take this opportunity to rail against our intellectual dishonesty and our simple, callous disregard for life, liberty, freedom, and the constitution.
Or you can take this as an opportunity to reflect on all the ways that privilege hurts the privileged. Men are more valued than women in this society, but patriarchy objectifies everyone; whites are more valued than blacks, but racist institutions prevent everyone from living as they are; straights can get married but what the fuck does that even mean; the privileged can walk on the backs of everyone the fuck else, but anyone who can see the bodies beneath will be calling for justice, and the whole god-damned plastic-molded world will have to hold half a breath forever, waiting for that apocalyptic day when everyone else stands the fuck up.
If that’s the world you want to live in, fine.
More power to you.
The axe Darleen has honed to such a fine edge — the one she is so intent on leaving in your necks — is the “indentity politics” fixation of her fellow-traveler Mr. Goldstein. Boiled down to its fragrant essence, the ‘Duke Lacrosse case’ gives her (and so many of her ilk — I’ve always wanted to use ‘ilk’) … the case gives them an opportunity to vent their rage about all those pesky brown people mistreating the suffering white man whose only crime is working so tirelessly to help all those poor, useless brown people.
Please pretend you do not see that extra ‘n’ in the word meant to be ‘identity.’ Thank you.
Which would be a scarier prospect if her axe-wielding skills went beyond gnawing ineffectually on the handle.
This metaphor is getting out of control. What exactly are you suggesting by “handle” and “gnawing” ? Hmmm ?
No, it didn’t. This is just not factually correct. Does it make me a “lacrosse player defender� to point out factually incorrect statements that none of the good guys here will challenge?
As both Ilyka and auguste have pointed out, the nurse who examined her told the cops that her injuries were consistent with her having been raped. It has been reported several times, including in the Washington Post story that they linked to (and that someone else on this thread then stupidly tried to quote from without using the whole quote. I ask you.)
Why are you ignoring what the cops said to push your own agenda?
While there is a possibility she was raped, she was not raped that night in that house.
The police disagree with you, Darleen. Are you saying that you were there? If so, I hope you reported what you know to the proper authorities.
It is disengenuous to keep say “well, she wasn’t raped by those three� and leave a deliberate impression that maybe she was raped by others in the house.
Let’s see … if she was raped that night, and went from the house to the hospital, where else could she have been raped? Did space aliens come down and do it? Maybe somebody from outside the house stopped time, raped her, and then started it again! That makes much more sense than thinking that she was raped in the house where she said she was raped!
I do love how you went from defending the three guys who were wrongly accused to defending every other person in the house as being equally innocent. That’s one hell of a leap.
I will tell you! Not content with maligning pigs, the nefarious Mr. Clarke now targets the noble and industrious beaver! ON A FEMINIST BLOG, even!
And he calls himself an environmentalist. Well, I for one am skeptical.
But, like, the Sergeant only mentioned that later, and in the intervening time he met with Nifong, so clearly, Nifong brainwashed him into stating the nurse had said that, all to win Nifong reelection.
Liberals will stop at nothing in their quest for power! Oh, if only they didn’t hate America so.
This is too easy, really. I should write a macro to do it.
for comment in comments: if troll(comment.author): with(truth or humor): fuck(comment.author);fin.
Too easy indeed ilyka.
You appear to have convinced everyone on your circle jerk of a blog. Now you only need to go one better and convince a judge that those damn Duke boys were guilty.
Good luck.
violet crazy girl:
And that’s it. Have I judged them guilty, based on this alone? No. Do I think, at the very least, this should go to trial? Yes. Do I think it’s a mockery of justice that it won’t? Yes.
You want to take someone to trial who has video evidence that he was not at the party when the rape supposedly occured?
The deck is radically and institutionally stacked against her, which makes me much more inclined to believe there is something to her charge.
Why does that make any difference at all? I’m genuinely confused here. The deck being stacked against her makes her accusation more likely to be true - why?
If a rich white woman accuses someone of rape is that somehow less believable?
In addition, the deck was originally stacked in her favor. Nifong persued the case to score political points with his minority constituents. Her case only got as far as it did because she was a black woman.
Ilyka:
What really gives these dorks away as just another breed of Instant Expert is the way they aren’t content with the concession that the three accused players didn’t assault this woman. No, they have to insist that NO ONE assaulted her. What’s up with that?
Ilyka, who do you think assaulted her? Did *somebody* assult her? Sure…whatever…maybe.
Don’t hide behind innuendo. If you believe that some other lacrosse players raped her then come out and say it.
Was she assaulted by someone else a day before? Maybe. Was she assaulted when she was 13? Maybe. What is your point?
Is anyone here arguing that this woman was never, ever assaulted, ever? No. Was she assaulted by any of the Duke lacrosse players? It certainly doesn’t appear so. If you would like to argue otherwise be honest about it.
I don’t understand why some of you are so cowardly. violet crazy girl is at least honest and straightforward with her convictions.
A lot of you are just hiding behind word-smithery. Whether or not she was assaulted by anyone ever is not and has never been the issue. The issue is was she raped by duke lacrosse players.
If you want to argue yes then argue that - don’t hide behind rhetorical tricks. Maybe she was assaulted by a former boyfriend earlier in the night - and? That somehow makes the continuous bashing of the duke players ok?
Why do you lack the courage of your convictions to simply say in a straighforward manner what you really believe? Or if you don’t believe it, stop implying it.
Let everyone Duke it out here (instead of in every other thread that has nothing to do with this tired-ass subject), and they can get it outta their systems at least until they get their next lacrosse menstrual…
Nice trolling. Let’s review:
1. Make a post that takes a random, unrelated shot at the Duke Lacrosse players.
2. Complain that people are talking about the Duke Lacrosse players.
3. Claim to be confused as to why people are talking about Duke Lacrosse players.
LOL. Nicely played. Again, the lacrosse player fixation is with Pandagon. Read your own front page before you protest further.
When you make a post that includes on offhand comment bashing the lacrosse players does it really utterly confuse you when people respond to that?
Humor me, young Flobber: I would want to do this because why again? I have never once said they were guilty, you know.
In fact, I’m not the one demanding people who disagree with me say, or be convinced of, anything. I’m the one reviewing comments in moderation, comments intended for a freaking YouTube video post, that call Amanda names and demand she apologize Right Now This Minute Young Lady for expressing a fucking opinion. Because people with blogs hardly ever do that, I guess.
You know, Amanda’s comment doesn’t explicitly state that the three accused were guilty, but it does pretty clearly imply it.
The energy wasted in demanding apologies, and in insisting that there is nothing to apologize for, seems far out of proportion.
At this point, there seem to be two possible responses for Pandagon to take:
1) Amanda can make a brief apology for implying that the reported accusation was true, and try to bear with dignity all the crowing over this glorious victory over liberalism.
2) Pandagon can declare that there will be no further discussion of the case here, period.
Either of these would be preferable to leaving this chicken bone stuck in the blog’s throat.
Au contraire, Pierre:
And:
So maybe ask bravoalphafuckface for an apology? That’s where I’d start.
Humour me back ilyka oh wise woman of the weirding way
What exactly are you saying ?
You appear to be saying that Amanda need not apologise …
even though she said (despite the weasel words) that these 3 were guilty…
and then you say…
“I never said they were guilty” (which despite your use of weasel words appears to be a statement that they weren’t guilty - can you go so far ilyka, ooh please dare)…
So if she said they were guilty ..
and you, me and the whole wide world knows they weren’t…
then isn’t an apology in order ?
I’m not holding my breath.
Ilyka:
Sure, unlike most of you (including yourself and Amanda) I am a big enough person to admit when I am wrong. I will now become the first person in the history of the internet to post an even minor mea culpa:
In fact, some of us (not me) *are* arguing that no assault ever occured. That is not a defensible statement. An assault may or may not have occured. It was wrong of bravo to claim that no assault occured, and wrong of me to claim that nobody was arguing that. I should have read some of the other statements more carefully.
—
Wow, that was tough. I almost passed out typing that last sentence but somehow, through pure strength of will and incredible manliness, I managed to make it through.
Who’s next?
Nobody of course. And there’s the rub. Out of all the things said in the history of this case, my characterization of comments in this thread is the only error!
The only one. Lollers.
I have to admit it feels good to ascend to a plane that some of you can only dream of - the plane of the vaguely, occasionally honest. I guess my ego alone is large enough to admit that I am capable of minor errors without breaking into tears. Go me.
I guess it’ll be a short deliberation then, won’t it?So… why dismiss the case without a trial? Why if you are the attorney general, get on national news and declare “those boys” innocent, even though such a declaration is not at all within your power to make?
Politically, you have to know that nobody wanted the state attorney general to swoop in like an angel with a fuckin’ holy sword, right? It’s pretty likely that the state attorney general’s office called the DA and said, “look, quit it, quit, or we’ll quit you.” And he didn’t. Which says something.
These inequalities make a difference simply by existing.
I am less concerned about the mistreatment of rich white men by the justice system than I am the mistreatment of the victim by the justice system. There is a reason for that, and it’s not because I hate rich, white men. (Some of my best friends are rich, white men.)
It’s because we are fucked up.
It’s because in our culture, it is really easy for people like the Duke students to not get arrested, not get charged, or to get the case against them dropped. It’s because when such cases do go to trial, it is basically guaranteed that the victim will have every facet of her life—no matter how personal, no matter how irrelevant—brought to bear as, shall we say “character evidence.” For the defense.
And this woman, in particular? She took jobs as a stripper. In a world of, “her skirt, your honor, it was just so short that my client couldn’t help himself, you see,” can you imagine what the defense could do with that?
The point is that these charges are not made in a vacuum. She knew what she was saying; the DA knew what he was doing. The legal environment in this country is so ridiculously hostile to anyone who says they have been raped that I am rather more likely to believe them than I am to believe the defendant.
And yes, this is a bias formed in response to massive institutionalized injustice against blacks, against women. It is possible that in this case my instincts are leading me astray, and it is possible, I suppose, that if this had been allowed to go to trial, then these—I’m sure—fine young men would have been unjustly locked away, ruining their lives.
Just like… hmm. Can’t seem to remember a case like that.
Tell you what: enlighten me. How many cases exist where a rich white man sits in jail, proclaiming his innocence and waiting for justice?
Bizarro, when fully 77% of your, um, “apology” is taken up by an essay about how big a person this makes you—how much, much better than everyone else you are made by a single concession—well, it somewhat diminishes the act.
Y’know, people … I really think you’re overreacting. Amanda did nothing wrong.
Look: When the case first got out, it seemed very likely that the accuser had been raped by one or more of the lacrosse team. Almost everyone in my freshman dorm (right across the street from the infamous lacrosse house) thought so, most of the other students I talked to thought so, most of the popular media thought so. At that time, given what was known, it was a reasonable assumption, and I don’t see why explicit disclaimers that we can’t know the whole story and they might be innocent, etc, should have been necessary — unless you think that because OJ was found not guilty, people should apologize for implying that he killed his ex-wife?
I didn’t see anyone from Pandagon say that the three accused were definitely guilty. The comment you’re all enraged by (”Can’t a few white boys…”) looked like a commentary on why so many people jumped to defend the lacrosse team before there was any evidence that they were innocent. Surely there would have been a similar jump to defend them even if they were in fact guilty, yes? So why is it unacceptable to point this out and attempt to discuss why it’s the case?
Amanda did it rather late in the game.
Violet, with regard to the first portion of your remark about taking the case to trial: waste of time, waste of money. The majority of legal cases in the US aren’t settled by a jury trial in any case, but by plea bargain.
violet:
First, I am happy that you are taking this conversation seriously instead of pulling out the “you must be a racist asshole” card.
Bizarro, when fully 77% of your, um, “apology� is taken up by an essay about how big a person this makes you—how much, much better than everyone else you are made by a single concession—well, it somewhat diminishes the act.
Of course it does. I was intentionally silly. The point here is that admitting you were wrong about something you were clearly wrong about is not some sort of amazingly incredible feat that should get you a purple heart. It is common decency.
What does it say when my self-serving, overblown admission of error is downright sparkling compared to what other people can muster?
—
To address your other points:
The case was dismissed because there was not enough evidence to warrant a trial. That happens all the time. In this case, not only was there no evidence there was contradictory evidence. It’s a judgement call - a trial takes up time and money. Weak and non-existent cases get dropped when accusations appear baseless. That isn’t out of the ordinary. What is out of the ordinary here is that it made it as far as it did.
Tell you what: enlighten me. How many cases exist where a rich white man sits in jail, proclaiming his innocence and waiting for justice?
I don’t know, but there are plenty of cases of poor black men sitting in jail and proclaiming their innocence (rightly) because a purported victim either was not a victim or accused the wrong person. (Note: do not confuse this with some sort of argument claiming that many rape allegations are false, I am not making that claim)
It is natural to have sympathy for someone who claims to have been victimized, and beyond that to believe them. When the charges were first filed I believed the players were probably guilty - because I believe that most people accused of a major crime are guilty.
What disturbs me is how nasty some of the attacks against them were. I assumed they were probably guilty but I recognized that they may well be innocent - some people failed to recognize that even as evidence mounted. And in fact fail to recognize that even today.
And look at the justifications we are given: they hired strippers, therefore they are immoral. They sent a nasty email. (Where “they” is apparently all of them) Their lives weren’t ruined, so we shouldn’t care.
Those are all variations on victim blaming and betray some pretty hefty racist, sexist and classist attitudes.
One of the players left the party because he didn’t approve of what was transpiring there, but rather than being applauded he is being castigated with all the rest.
I want to draw a distinction here: I don’t have any problem with people who thought the players were probably guilty, or people who believe the woman was assaulted, or people who generally support victims, alleged or otherwise.
My problem is with the vicious nature of the attacks that seemed to preclude any chance of innocence and that dismissed anyone who called attention to the possibility of innocence as some sort of racist sexist troll. My problem is with victim-blaming attacks that prattle on about what bad guys the Duke players are, or diminish what they went through. In this case, the Duke players are victims. No, their lives have not been ruined (a stupid, impossible standard) but they have suffered beyond what is reasonable.
I don’t have some sort of hard-on for this case. I don’t spam every subject with Duke Lacrosse gotchas. I *do* think that when you mercilessly attack someone for something that turns out to be false saying “yeah, we blew that one” is just being decent.
But even simpler than that, just stop talking about the Duke Lacrosse players. People admitting they were overzealous would be nice but at least, now that the charges have been dropped and there is no reason to believe they raped anyone, can we find some new whipping boys?
Especially when the attacks on the Duke players are offhand comments that have essentially nothing to do with the topic at hand and then the posters act dumbfounded when people question the point of such attacks.
That is just dishonest. There is no other word for it. Find a new axe to grind.
I think Amanda wins 1,000,000 points for finding a way to make the wingnuts here *so insanely crazy.* I mean, it’s entertaining, and they clearly need a good rage or five dozen.
I aspire to these incendiary heights. Here’s my attempt. (It lacks that… accurate social critique that Amanda managed to pin. Alas, vulgar and Freudian is all I can manage.)
Ahem.
Did you know that statistically in the US there is nearly a 0% probability of a white man raping a black woman.
Sally Hemmings WANTED IT !! She was BEGGING FOR TEH COCK!!!
WOW! Surely someone’s gotten a Bingo by now! Or haven’t folks been paying attention to your cards?
Kinda hard to get “Bingo” when you’d be marking the same boxes repeatedly.
Amanda M says:
“Having never accused anyone directly of anything, I have no idea what I’m supposed to apologize for.
Oh yeah—being a feminist and opposed to rape and sexual harassment.”
Amanda M does a disservice to feminism by acting like an 8th grader (or an Alberto G) about how she cannot tell what she did wrong.
Lamely claiming Amanda G cannot be properly understood because no one is clever and smart and sensitive enough to debate what she wants to debate is way below the usual standards for this blog.
Chris Clarke is not Amanda M here, and not offering any proper defense in saying he feels fine. He sounds like Bush expressing complete confidence in Alberto G.
are we there yet?
JimB:
I would, but I’m too busy complaining that the DOJ under Gonzalez has been actively working to illegally suppress the vote of poor people.
Rape statistics are notoriously inaccurate. During the ’70s, as I recall, there was a big jump in rape accusations, and convictions that many pundits attribute to the empowerment of women by the nascent second (3rd?, I can never get this right) wave feminism. The MANY people of mixed race from our slave days were what?–because the mistress of the plantation was raping the field hands? I think it has been conclusively shown that Jefferson repeatedly raped a minor slave girl of his. Uncommon? I think not. So it all stopped? Or are African-American women so disempowered that they feel they can’t assert rape? This stat speaks more to the relative power balance between white men and African-American women than to the virtue of white men. Or do you think in the ’70s that men just decided to go on a raping spree? Rape reports are notoriously inaccurate. Complain about the DOJ? You bet.
This struck me as the most important thing said in this thread (and to be clear, we’re talking about an assault on the night in question. We know she went into the bathroom (possibly with the other woman), we know she was either drugged or drunk, and we know that a trained SANE nurse found her injuries and psychological state consistent with rape. With the sperm of at least three men found in her, the DNA is sure to have gotten garbled. The preservation of evidence at the scene was non-existent.
Bizzaro wants to know why the fact that there was such a great class difference between the accuser and the accused makes it so unlikely she was lying. That I can answer, both from personal and professional knowledge. Women aren’t stupid, and women who have been raped previously (as the accuser had been, at least once) are both not stupid, and experienced in the way that rape accusations are treated. She knew she would be disbelieved, she knew she would be run through the wringer, she knew that any pretense at a fair trial would be hollow at best (starting with the issue of preservation of evidence), and yet she went through with the charges. Why? Because someone in power (Nifong) gave her hope of justice.
Hope in the wrong hands is a dangerous thing. Nifong was using the accuser for his own political ends, and didn’t care one iota for justice. The Attorney General used the “vindication” of the accused for his political ends (which was to solidify his support among his base). Both men probably knew that yes, the accused had been raped at that house that night, and both men also knew that a conviction, in light of the failure of law enforcement to secure evidence in a timely manner, and the mismanaged lineup, was impossible. Yet they allowed this woman’s life to be brought through the wringer when any compassionate attorney would have tried to talk her out of trial, not because she lied, but to protect her from the predictable feeding frenzy that did, of course, happen.
You don’t see headlines that read “Navy veteran mom and college student was assaulted by three or more drunken men at a party”. Instead, the headlines read “Stripper accuses student athletes of sexual assault” Both headlines are true. One acknowledges that the woman in question has several roles in life and that while not all the facts of the case are known, her story is believeable. The other objectifies her as “a bad woman who deserves to be punished” who (dares to) accuse fine, upstanding young men of sexual assault.
And what is the upshot of this incident? The three young men she misidentified as her attackers have no long term negative affects from the accusations, and a heap of support among the “good ol’ boy” network, none of the other men at the party have any real negative results at all, even though several of them are probably guilty of sexual assault, and the accuser has had her name dragged through the mud and her reputation permanently besmirched. The Duke players will go on to Fortune 500 jobs and pleasant lives and memberships at a country club. Any bets that the accuser continues to struggle with poverty and addiction and PTSD?
142 comments in: The evidence is mounting that the white supremacist misogynists who don’t care about a single person sitting in jail on a wrongful conviction do not have a life.
If only strippers were required to undergo mental health screenings before receiving their platform heels and pole-dancing certificates, none of this would have happened…
But even simpler than that, just stop talking about the Duke Lacrosse players.
I did a little experiment while I waited for the caffeine to take effect this morning. I copied this thread to a Word document, cut out the post and all comments other than BizzarroSuperman’s comments, then just to be fair I cut out the stuff in his comments that was just quoting other commenters.
2,186 words. About how we should just stop talking about the Duke Lacrosse players.
Violet Crazy Girl says:”The legal environment in this country is so ridiculously hostile to anyone who says they have been raped that I am rather more likely to believe them than I am to believe the defendant.
That would seem to be an argument for a radical change in our justice system: that, unlike all other criminal offenses, rape cases should proceed from a presumption of guilt rather than a presumption of innocence.
Be that as it may…
Violet Crazy Girl also says:”They are affluent, white males attending a prestigious university, and she is a relatively poor black woman notably not attending Duke. The deck is radically and institutionally stacked against her, which makes me much more inclined to believe there is something to her charge.”
I take that as an excellent summary of the Official Pandagon Position: that Affluent White Males once again got over on a Poor Black Woman. And I will never again contradict this thesis.
JSmith, do you have enough straw for those strawmen? Believing a woman has been raped does not equal necessarily believing that an accused is guilty, any more than believing the owner of a car has been robbed is equal to believing that the person accused of stealing the car is guilty.
And thanks for playing the “those crazy wimmins over at Pandagon silenced me” game, but you lose. Women who believe a rape victim was raped are speaking from their own experience as well as the many narratives of other women who have been raped. They know how the system treats rape victims. Rape victims, unlike assault victims or theft victims or murder victims are assumed to either be lying, to have deserved the rape, or sometimes (in a lovely contradiction) both. Women know this. That’s why so few of us file charges when we’re raped.
What possible ulterior motive would a woman who has already been through the process and knows how difficult it is have to press charges? The answer? None. She’s a college student, a veteran, and a mother. She knew her credibility would be on the line, because she also strips for a living and has a mental health diagnosis. The only conceivable reason she pressed charges is that she was, in fact, raped, at that party on that night.
No one in this conversation, including myself, has said that the three men that the Duke accuser identified in the badly handled lineup are necessarily the guilty parties, and there is good reason to believe they are not. However, it is a huge leap from “she identified the wrong guys in a chaotic situation where over a dozen new faces were introduced to her in a short period of time” to “the bitch was lying”. Especially considering the corroborating evidence of a SANE rape examination, the absolutely atrocious handling of evidence by the police, and the deliberate media-ization of the case by the prosecution and defense attorneys.
Nice strawmen. Sorry I had to burn them.
All the Duke case proves is that you can grow up to be a prosecutor even if you are an idiot fucktard. After all the idiot games the “state” played there was no chance of obtaining a conviction.
Now I know what I think happened but that and a buck will get you a cup of coffee.
JSSmith lays on us his interpretation of the “Official Pandagon Position” regarding a post in this thread.
I’ve got news for you, JSmith. I’m a regular here, but VioletCrazyGirl doesn’t speak for me, neither does Amanda nor anybody else. That goes treble for you, you smug, generalizing prick. If theres’ one thing that I notice about American many right wingers is their eagerness to take the view of one person in a debate and use it to label (or smear, if that works or if they just feel like having a good time) everybody else in the debate who disagrees with them.
To listen to you, no feminist can be a civil libertarian. Because that’s true? No, it’s palpably false. But you love the lie because it doesn’t suit your smug little worldview.
That I’ve never seen a Duke lacrosse player defender argue in good faith here is simply not my fault.
Well, then, let me try. I will start by saying that I’m a liberal Democrat, a criminal defense attorney by trade, and a regular commentor here since Jesse Taylor was in college. I’m also a feminist, to the extent that a gay man can lay claim to that title. In other words, I’m not a troll.
Generally speaking, women who make rape accusations are not treated well by the criminal justice system. You can’t reason from that generalization, however, to a conclusion about a particular case. Sometimes, particular men are falsely accused of rape. Sometimes, particular women making rape accusations are lying.
The core value behind our criminal justice system is that it is more important to restrain the power of the state than it is to reach the correct results in particular cases. That is why people accused of crimes are presumed to be innocent; that is why the state is required to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt; that is why we have constructed an elaborate system of procedral safeguards designed, frankly, to make it more difficult for the state to convict people of crimes.
Despite those safeguards, the system has biases that overwhelmingly favor the prosecution. A prosecutor with a conviction rate of 90% will be in trouble with his bosses for losing so many. Judges campaign for office by promising to be tough in cirminal defendants. Jurors are inclined to believe prosecutors, simply because they are prosecutors. And even beyond these systemic biases, the core value of the system has beenunder attack by the authoritarian right since at least the 60’s.
For someone who is both a feminist and a believer in the core value of the criminal justice system, there is no easy answer to the problem posed by unfair treatment of rape vicms. We want police, prosecutors and judges to abandon their sexism and treat rape victims better, but we reject systemic changes that will make it more difficult for those accused of crimes to defend themselves. We would rather have rapists and murderers go unpunished on occasion than have more Tulias.
Deciding what really happened in a case on the basis of media accounts is always difficult. Most of the time that cases in which I’ve been involved have made the news media, they have been nearly unrecognizable. I’m not going to try to debate the details of the evidence here–that would be too tedious, and this comment is long enough already–but the North Carolina Attorney General has concluded that the accused Duke students were innocent victims of prosecutorial abuse, and the evidence cited in his report to support this conclusion seems overwhelming. The impeccably lefty blog Talk Left has also looked at published accounts of the evidence in considerable detail, and reached a similar conclusion. That the accuser was poor, black, and female, and that the accuseds wre rich, white, privileged males, is no basis for concluding that the accusations were true.
‘All the Duke case proves is that you can grow up to be a prosecutor even if you are an idiot fucktard. After all the idiot games the “stateâ€? played there was no chance of obtaining a conviction.
Now I know what I think happened but that and a buck will get you a cup of coffee.’
Magis–Nifong is a dumbass but the thing that really sucked is how the case became a referendum on “runaway Democrat [sic] prosecutors like Ronnie Earle and Patrick Fitzfong Fitzgerald” (what party is Attorney General Roy Cooper again?) and “liberal professors and the Gang of 88″ (what party, AND occupation, is KC Johnson again?)
Poor Clinton… I’ll never understand why his extramarital fling warranted impeachment more than Bush’s entwinement with the oil industry, crazy crusade into Iraq, faith-dominated governing, general assholeness, etc. I couldn’t care less who the president has sex with as long as he manages to do his fucking job at the same time.
Oh, the Duke Lacrosse team. I don’t see why people get so worked up about you having condemned them when it looked to me like they did harass and rape the exotic dancer they hired. I recently read a piece in People magazine (cut me a break, I was on the treadmill) about how sweet and nice “the boys” are, interviewing their damn PARENTS about their good qualities and how they NEVER could have raped THAT POOR, CONFUSED YOUNG WOMAN.
I certainly don’t feel like anyone can say for sure that they didn’t do it. Well, except maybe MOM AND FUCKIN’ DAD.
IncredibleKates:
A colleague of mine became a “Crown” (what we call our ADAs in Canada). As a junior prosecutor she often had to handle “smurf court” (ie: young offenders). One of the great consistent events there was mommy or daddy insisting up and down that their little darling “couldn’t have done anything like that!”, no matter what the evidence was to the contrary. Some even pooh-poohed videotape of the crimes in action.
Still, we have to distinguish between what a parent believes and what a parent professes to believe in public. Loyalty is very strong.
Interesting point, that. I’m sure all the people trumpeting their superior ethical integrity have gone on record condemning Johnson’s prominent, apparently premeditated prevarications about a different Pandagon blogger.
A prosecutor with a conviction rate of 90% will be in trouble with his bosses for losing so many.
Uh. Really?
The last I read, conviction rates in the United States for rape were somewhere around 50%. The conviction rate for people arrested for murder was only around 70%, I thought. The rape conviction rate is nowhere near 90%, though.
I’m sure all the people trumpeting their superior ethical integrity have gone on record condemning Johnson’s prominent, apparently premeditated prevarications about a different Pandagon blogger.
Speaking only for myself, and without copping a plea to “trumpeting [my] superior ethical integrity,” I didn’t comment on Johnson’s attack on Prof. Berube because, (1) there ain’t enough hours in the day on comment on everything, and (b) Michael is more than capable of taking care of himself in any verbal exchange . . .
“I certainly don’t feel like anyone can say for sure that they didn’t do it. Well, except maybe MOM AND FUCKIN’ DAD.”
Oh for the love of humanity–do you understand how DNA evidence works? The DNA found on the accuser’s clothing and in her body does *not match* the DNA of anyone on the Duke lacrosse team. Nifong’s misleading comment about how perhaps the players used a condom indicates he was well aware of this lack of DNA evidence from the outset.
I’m not suggesting the young woman in question was lying. I think she clearly perceived herself as the victim of a sexual assault that night, and may have in fact *been* the victim of a sexual assault that night. The problem is there is *no evidence* to suggest that such an assault took place at the party, or that it was committed bu anyone of the men who attended that party.
The legal system spoke: the three individuals in question *did not* rape, sexually assault, or forcibly confine the young woman/veteran/mother/stripper/student in question.
Contrary to what odanu believes, there are many conceivable reasons why the young woman went ahead with pressing charges: 1) she was drunk and not clear on what happened; 2) she was angry and intent on revenge for what she perceived as humiliating treatment and racist remarks; 3) she was suffering from PSTD and thus associated the traumatic frat party with a previous assault; 4) she’s a mean-spirited and willful liar who wanted to collect what she imagined to be a nice chunk of change for the “injustices” she’d suffered; 5) she really believed that a group of men had sexually violated her that evening, and perhaps there is a group of men who did. But they were not, based on the evidence, present at the party.
rea
Most of the time that cases in which I’ve been involved have made the news media, they have been nearly unrecognizable.
So true.
This phenomenon also appears in formally reported decisions, where the “facts” are frequently those that support the judge’s conclusions, while inconvenient facts get left behind.
Can we start a new thread calling for apologies to O.J. Simpson who was aquitted by an actual jury made up of both sexes and more white people than black people? The guy is “innocent” in the legal sense and yet somehow, he has to hide all his money while his victim’s families chase him endlessly. Poor guy! Let me get my hankie. Oops - used it up on the Duke 3.
Roy at 12:41–I’d like to see your source for those figures; I would be astonished if 50% of those charged with rape (or the equivalent) in the United States were acquitted. When I said that prosecutors with 90% conviction rates were disciplined by their bosses for losing so many, I had in mind several prosecutors of my acquaintance who were demoted or lost their jobs under those circumstances. I hope you don’t think it’s arrogant of me, but as a practicing criminal defense attorney, I claim the right to cite myself as an authority on these issues occasionally . . .
“I want to draw a distinction here: I don’t have any problem with people who thought the players were probably guilty, or people who believe the woman was assaulted, or people who generally support victims, alleged or otherwise.
“My problem is with the vicious nature of the attacks that seemed to preclude any chance of innocence and that dismissed anyone who called attention to the possibility of innocence as some sort of racist sexist troll. My problem is with victim-blaming attacks that prattle on about what bad guys the Duke players are, or diminish what they went through. In this case, the Duke players are victims.”
I call bullshit.
If people think the players were guilty OF GANG RAPE, then “vicious attacks” are completely justified. I’ll grant the possibility of these three didn’t do it AND I will continue to think that possibility to be slim.
Whatever the NC AG says isn’t going to change the fact that the email, for example, was written. On that basis alone, I’m perfectly willing to conclude that the author of it is an asshole of the highest order. Anyone who calls this asshole a friend is also an asshole. You can guess what I think of those who defend them. If anyone I knew wrote something like that, I’d never have anything to do with him and would tell everyone I knew to do likewise. And if that person were later accused of rape, I’d believe it regardless of what the court did or didn’t do.
Seriously, did you read that thing? I honestly don’t have any problem with the idea that somebody who writes and distributes something like that might just be mistaken for a rapist. Whoever wrote that email IS a bad guy and deserves every bit of hardship this case brings, no matter what the AG thinks.
Speaking of defending… Rea, you make excellent points. Just wondering, though: do you think that if an accused person gets charges dropped, that that really is the end of it? The court has refused to prosecute; so what? As a defense attorney, you know full well that dropped charges don’t mean the accused is factually innocent; it means nothing more than the charges were dropped. Are you seriously arguing that since the AG dropped it, that proves that nothing happened here?
Anyway, this isn’t a court, this is a blog. Yes, we can condemn anyone we care to condemn, and that condemnation means exactly squat in any legal sense.
By the way, I also am convinced that OJ killed Nicole. That a jury thought otherwise won’t convince me.
I hope you don’t think it’s arrogant of me, but as a practicing criminal defense attorney, I claim the right to cite myself as an authority on these issues occasionally.
Sorry, but I do think it’s arrogant. It’s also logically false- argument from authority, counselor. YOU brought up statistics, YOU back them up with a cite.
At least with the OJ trial the public got to see all the evidence and judge all the witnesses. In this case, we will never have that chance, nor will a jury. From what we have learned about everyone involved, and taking it in the light most favorable to each, I would never let my daughter near the Duke 3 or their buddies, nor would I leave the accuser alone with my alcohol or pill supply. And I will no more apologize for thinking the Duke 3 may have been guilty than I would for thinking OJ is guilty.
While I certainly can’t (and won’t) pinpoint any specific individual with this, it seemed to me that there were a lot of people who wanted the rape allegations to have been true. Don’t think that’s so weird; I’ll bet that there’s no one here who doesn’t think that there were a lot of people who wanted the allegations to be false!
My question, intended seriously, is: for those who really did want the allegations to be true, why did you want them to be true?
Are you seriously arguing that since the AG dropped it, that proves that nothing happened here?
Not exactly–what I’m arguing is that his stated reasons and analysis are overwhelmingly convincing. Read the report, if you don’t believe me:
http://www.ncdoj.com/DocumentStreamerClient?directory=PressReleases/&file=SummaryConclusions.pdf
It’s also logically false- argument from authority, counselor. YOU brought up statistics, YOU back them up with a cite.
I’m not arguing statistics–I’m speaking from personal knowledge. And argument from authority isn’t always logically false–absent strong evidence to the contrary, I’d accept Prof. Berube’s views over yours on a point of literary theory, or hockey, without any fallacy being involved. So would anyone else with a lick of sense.
You’re right… I’d never thought about that.
From the moment the Duke incident was announced, *everyone* said that the boys were probably guilty. Everyone viewed them with suspicion.
This is serious shit, folks…
*ALIENS HAVE INVADED THE JOURNALISM CENTERS OF AMERICA!*
The *ALIENS* are the ones who wrote all about the lacrosse players having their reputations ruined and how horrible false accusations are and calling the incident into question.
Thankfully, bravoalphafreedommonkey is wearing his tinfoil hat and isn’t subject to the alien mind control powers, so he is aware that, among earth-born humans, there was never any question of guilt.
You know, it’s interesting… witness accounts seem to agree that the woman who made the accusation was convinced to come back into the house. But the lacrosse players claim that she was acting drunk from the get go, and the dancers were really bad. Why was she brought back into the house?
External witnesses say that there was a player saying that they had to leave right away. Why? Because they’d finally gotten rid of a bad dancing pair?
I’m going to stand by my belief that something nasty happened, and the team is covering up what, exactly, happened to avoid tarnishing their image as fine young gentlemen who didn’t deserve what happened to them.
Chris Clarke–
True, KC may appear to be a DINO when you consider his body of work against his own kind, and his attacks on the “liberal media” and “political correctness.”
I think it speaks volumes about either his principles of freedom of speech, his outright kindness, his non-liberalism, or just a lack of self-respect that he’s shown a refusal to moderate against the overwhelmingly right-wing comments on his blog (which frequently stray off topic to discuss things like hanging Nancy Pelosi for treason) while blogs like lgf are built around enforcing ideological groupthink.
However, he has always been an Obama supporter (which is even more impressive in light of his views on “political correctness,” since Obama is considered by the right to be the “politically correct candidate who’s only being chosen because of his color and not his [lack of] experience.”)
Odanu said: “What possible ulterior motive would a woman who has already been through the process and knows how difficult it is have to press charges? The answer? None. She’s a college student, a veteran, and a mother. She knew her credibility would be on the line, because she also strips for a living and has a mental health diagnosis. The only conceivable reason she pressed charges is that she was, in fact, raped, at that party on that night.”
Another conceivable reason that occurs to me is that she has a mental health diagnosis.
six-oh-seven-nine says:”That goes treble for you, you smug, generalizing prick.”
You’re so cute when you get all angry!
“And I will no more apologize for thinking the Duke 3 may have been guilty than I would for thinking OJ is guilty.”
Thinking they were guilty is nothing to apologize for. I thought so at first, too. Everyone is entitled to their opinion.
The problem that some people got themselves into is when they stated with certainty that they were guilty. Crying wolf, as it were.
Even this doesn’t require an apology. Who would you apologize to, anyway? But as was mentioned earlier, most reasonable people will admit it when they make a mistake.
I’m sure that there are some people who would still be saying the accuser is a lying slut, even if the evidence led to convictions, just as there are people who still claim that the accused are guilty.
There are extremists on both sides who will never be swayed by evidence, as they make their assumption based on emotion, not fact. They are two sides of the same coin, and are not taken seriously by most.
Every white man in the house had his DNA taken by the police, pursuant to a court order obtained by Nifong. (There was one black player; he wasn’t tested.) The accuser had DNA of 5 different men in her, and none of those DNA samples matched any of the men in the house. So, yes, she very well might have been raped, but if so, it was earlier in the day, at a different location.
JSmith “You’re so cute when you get all angry!”
Leaving aside your inadequate attempt at teasing mockery which is generally a refuges of fools who can’t provide genuine condescending wit, I merely point out something which proves that you don’t know what you’re talking about: I’m cute all the time.
Did you actually read that “nasty email”? I did; it was absolutely sickening. Did you miss the part about one of the guys in the house yelling “Thank your grandfather for my nice cotton shirt” at one of the departing black strippers? Did you miss the part where the agency said that they specifically requested black strippers on more than one occasion, or the part where other Duke students said that the guys on the team had a reputation for being assholes?
I don’t know if they were guilty of rape or not. If they’re not, then I’m glad they’re not going to jail for something they didn’t do. However, I haven’t seen anything to convince me that they’re not guilty of being a bunch of entitled racist sexist fuckwits, and I’m sorry that with all of the people around them enabling that behavior, and telling them what good kids they are and how they’ve been so mistreated, they’re never going to learn any differently.
I’m incredibly amused by the fact that a group of people with no connection to the Duke 3 are demanding Amanda apologize. What they are really asking is that Amanda apologize for being an uppity woman who doesn’t know her place.
You folks might as well stop asking for an apology, you aren’t going to get one. Even if one was forthcoming it wouldn’t be to you.
Half the people in the known American universe probably voiced their opinions about the Duke rape case on the internets.
In the interests of fairness and because I am sick of hearing people whine about this case from both sides of the spectrum, I think that either *no one* has to apologize for their past opinions and writings, or *everyone* who ever chimed in has to apologize.
Foucault FTW.
Surprising things I’ve learned from this thread:
Black women are incapable of being rape victims.
The mentally ill are incapable of being rape victims.
The American Justice System is 100% foolproof, so the fact that the case was dropped due to lack of evidence means that no rape occurred, despite the fact that…
…The American Justice System can be tampered with by bloggers who have this crazy tendency to believe the victim.
Tampering with the American Justice System via blogging about how you believe the victim is very malicious when boys who were proven innocent due to lack of evidence walk free, because you tampered with it by believing them guilty and that’s somehow worse than them actually being convicted of a crime would have committed in order to be found guilty by a 100% foolproof American Justice System.
The more people who loudly declare what a shame it is that these nice boys’ lives have been ruined and how sorry you feel for them and what a bitch that stripper is, the harder it is for those boys to be accepted back into society.
Amanda has the sole power to ruin people’s lives, despite the fact that she was unable to get any of the Real Victims (the Duke Lacrosse team) convicted, thrown out of school, or even successfully shun them, so we must hold her accountable for ruining people’s lives when she believes the victim who could not have been raped because the mentally ill and African-American population are immune from rape.
even if she were to apologize (and i highly doubt that she would or should for that matter), what then?
i don’t see these folks letting go this easily, it would move from “apologize for your remarks about the Duke case”, to “apologize for ever saying anything bad about the Catholic church,” to “just admit you’re a stupid man-hating whore.”
fucking ridiculous.
JSmith. If you think that having a mental health diagnosis makes someone more likely to falsely accuse someone of rape, you know very little about mental health diagnoses, specifically PTSD, which the accuser is alleged to have. With the exception of a certain subset of paranoid schizophrenics, for whom the legal system is their delusion, people with mental health diagnoses are far less likely to purposely draw the attention of the legal system than people without. Mentally ill is not the same as stupid, and mentally ill people are aware of the stigma of their illnesses and the false beliefs that members of law enforcement and the public share about them.
Women who are mentally ill are one of the most vulnerable populations to rape, and the least likely to be believed. Systemic rape occurs in institutional settings, and a great deal of mental illness in women is caused or exacerbated by sexual assault or abuse.
As for the DNA analysis, I would be interested in learning exactly what tests were conducted, because most initial DNA testing methods are unable to separate out mixed samples into their components, which would certainly explain the “unable to match” problem. And if the goal of the AD and the PD was to put on a “show trial” to appear to give justice without actually doing so, stopping the testing at this point and allowing the unknowledgeable public to draw their own conclusions works in their favor.
“Foucault FTW?”
In searching through the internet slang dictionary, I think that means “For the Win.” In which case, thank you Auguste.
But it could also mean this: “Forschungszentrum Telekommunikation Wien.”
Or “From the Wilderness.”
Or “Fuck the World.”
I hope it means “For the Win.”
FTW = For the Win.
It could also be Fudgie The Whale.
Darkrose says:”If they’re not, then I’m glad they’re not going to jail for something they didn’t do.”
OK, then!
“However, I haven’t seen anything to convince me that they’re not guilty of being a bunch of entitled racist sexist fuckwits…”
I find the defendants guilty as charged.
Odanu:”If you think that having a mental health diagnosis makes someone more likely to falsely accuse someone of rape…” etc.
Something that strikes me as possibly relevant here is that The Other Dancer is unable to corroborate the “victim’s” story. Did she say, “They were on her like dogs on fresh meat!” She did not. She said the accusations were a “crock”.
So why didn’t the sisterhood stick together on this? You’d think if you were raped you could count on your coworker to have your back.
Mighty Ponygirl:
Don’t forget these other things:
Liberals, like the “fat Gang of 88 jelly-donut professors,” hate sports because they involve winners and losers and they were never good at sports themselves.
As a 24-year-old white male who’s been through college, I should take solace in the fact that “similar” white males were not wrongly convicted, and be afraid of ending up in a similar situation.
Conservative prospective students who’d be competitive there with 2100+ SATs on the 2400 scale and high class rankings should avoid Duke at all costs because of the Gang of 88. (Even though they might cut off their faces to spite their noses by putting themselves into less conservative student bodies, and professors who are just as much if not more liberal. Frankly, as a graduate of a school which shares many applications with Duke, I actually don’t think this is too bad an idea.)
Focault–
It’s also used as a more extreme backwards version of WTF.
Fudgie the Whale urges Ace NOT of Spades NOT to take solace in the Duke verdict, and NOT to be afraid of ending up in a similar situation.
How about this prevention strategy: Avoid pressuring women to have sex against their will, and chances are high that you will never be falsely accused of rape.
That’s just my gut reaction based on my own sense of how things tend to work in the world. As many people have noted, it’s usually way too much grief and trouble for women to make this stuff up. That said, however, I think it is absolutely essential for women to believe in the law and the police, and to feel confident that their accusations will be taken seriously.
From what I’ve read, convictions for rape have increased substantially in the last decade, and as a result, reported rapes have decreased. Rape is still one of the least reported and prosecuted crimes; I think I saw a stat today saying that only 2% of rapists are convicted and imprisoned!? I find that shocking.
Still, I think we have to appreciate the positive changes and continue to live life under the assumption that if (god forbid) we’re assaulted or harmed, then people will take us seriously regardless of whether we’re strippers, students, sane, nuts, or somewhere in between those categories.
…except for the $4 million they still owe their defense lawyers.
‘Avoid pressuring women to have sex against their will, and chances are high that you will never be falsely accused of rape.’
Exactly. Where’s the party of personal responsibility when they’re needed the most?
I’ve barely even tried to have sex most of the times I’ve dated (and yet because I am liberal the Right considers me sexually irresponsible and promiscuous–yay, I get to have all the negatives of “moral relativism” without much of the fun of actually experiencing it) so I know I have nothing much to worry about.
“…except for the $4 million they still owe their defense lawyers.”
Maybe they can ask Richard Mellon Scaife for the cash. He just LOVES wingnut causes…
…or maybe they can have a bake sale…
“…or maybe they can have a bake sale…”
The Gang of 88 will make the jelly donuts.
And good luck to you, Ace NOT of Spades. You sound like a cool up-and-coming lad with lots going for you, despite your harlequin image in the eyes of the conservatives.
Gee, sorry, I didn’t realize that trying to enforce the Bill of Rights against a rogue prosecutor was a “wingnut cause.” I guess I’d better tear up my ACLU membership card.
I did a little experiment while I waited for the caffeine to take effect this morning. I copied this thread to a Word document, cut out the post and all comments other than BizzarroSuperman’s comments, then just to be fair I cut out the stuff in his comments that was just quoting other commenters.
How often have I brought up Duke Lacrosse apropos of nothing?
Zero times. Nice try.
Half the people in the known American universe probably voiced their opinions about the Duke rape case on the internets.
In the interests of fairness and because I am sick of hearing people whine about this case from both sides of the spectrum, I think that either *no one* has to apologize for their past opinions and writings, or *everyone* who ever chimed in has to apologize.
There is a large difference between merely chiming in with an opinion and being completely unreasonable. If you look at what Amanda wrote about this, not only is it fairly nasty to the Duke players, it is nasty to anyone who “defended” them by pointing out they might not be guilty.
That is the real sticking point for me. Pointing out that the Duke Lacrosse players may well be innocent is perfectly proper. It doesn’t make me racist or sexist or a rape apologist.
Why the false dichotomy? Either you agree with Amanda that these boys are all kinds of awful or you are awful yourself. Please.
Can I adopt that logic? Everyone who attacked the Duke players did so because they hate white men. That’s my moronic assertion. It isn’t based in reality or defensible but I won’t let that stop me.
Why do you all hate men so much? Why do pro-choice people enjoy killing babies? Why are people against the war in Iraq rooting for the terrorists? Why do you want to put men in concentration camps?
Assuming that everyone who disagrees with you is motivated by the worst intentions is just stupid, lazy thinking. Again, it is no better than what crazed wingnuts do.
But don’t let that stop you.
“Why are people against the war in Iraq rooting for the terrorists?”
Au contraire, BizarroSuperman: they are not terrorists; they are the Resistance. And I am rooting for them because they deserve to have their country back, same as Poland deserved to be liberated from the Nazis.
“Why do you all hate men so much? Why do pro-choice people enjoy killing babies? Why are people against the war in Iraq rooting for the terrorists? Why do you want to put men in concentration camps?”
Wingnut projection is a fascinating thing to see…
“Again, it is no better than what crazed wingnuts do.”
There are quite a few similarities between both ends of the political spectrum.
“Gee, sorry, I didn’t realize that trying to enforce the Bill of Rights against a rogue prosecutor was a “wingnut cause.â€?”
So if it really was a “rogue prosecutor”, then those nice godly boys can sue the prosecutor for bringing about improper indictment. After all, if all the facts are on their side it shouldn’t be difficult, right?…
“So if it really was a “rogue prosecutorâ€?, then those nice godly boys can sue the prosecutor for bringing about improper indictment. After all, if all the facts are on their side it shouldn’t be difficult, right?… ”
Can they sue Nifong or is he covered by some prosecutorial protection?
So if it really was a gender gap in pay, then those nice godly girls can sue the company for bringing about improper compensation. After all, if all the facts are on their side it shouldn’t be difficult, right?…
I am not a North Carolina lawyer, so I can’t answer how easy it will be; but in both of the states where I am admitted to practice law, prosecutors have immunity from suit for malicious prosecution.
From what I have read, the prosecutor stands a good chance of being disbarred, or at least suspended from the practice of law. Prosecutorial immunity only protects against suits from private parties, not discipline from the State bar. So that hearing will tell us quite a bit about what the facts are.
“…except for the $4 million they still owe their defense lawyers.”
What, no trust in the public defender’s office? How odd.
So Grill, you believe those Duke boys should fry too?…
And by the way, I never suggested they were “nice godly boys.” From what I have read, they are pretty far from that. But so what? Ernesto Miranda wasn’t a nice godly boy, and neither was Clarence Gideon. Nor were the defendants in the trial of the Central Park jogger. The civil liberties of every one of us would be in serious danger if only “nice godly boys” were protected by the Bill of Rights.
Bingo. With respect to this topic, this blog is almost a comical characterization of liberal thought. Pat Robertson could not dream up a more ideological group with which to polarize us.
Wishful thinking regarding rape is pretty scary. Do not expect their cognative dissonance to overcome this one.
“With respect to this topic, this blog is almost a comical characterization of liberal thought. Pat Robertson could not dream up a more ideological group with which to polarize us.”
Dammit! I should have realized the Left can’t have an ideology - the Right called “dibs” on it first.
When do we get a turn?…
“Wishful thinking regarding rape is pretty scary.”
Grill, just exactly what do you believe this to mean, on this thread?…
You know, I’m a might curious, so let’s give it a wack.
To the “Duke Defenders” set. I have a challenge for you.
name the accused in this case. without google, wikipedia, or any other source. Just off the top of your head. I bet dollars to donuts you can’t.
I can’t either.
and neither can anyone else.
they have fallen back into obscurity.
10 years from now, when they go to the doctors office, they aren’t going to hear “David Evans? You’re that Duke Rapist! GET THE FUCK OUT!”
They’ve had a rotten fucking year, but their lives aren’t ruined. They weren’t expelled. hell, they’ve got a whole mess of people flocking around them in support, so they aren’t even social outcasts.
And don’t call them “boys.” the youngest were 20. I don’t give a fuck if you think college is about getting to have drunken debauchery without responsibility. 20 means you’ve gotta pull your own fucking weight and deal with the real world. They might be young, stupid and inexperienced, but they’re men. The day you get drunk and hire a stripper is the day you’re old enough to not need coddling.
name the accused in this case. without google, wikipedia, or any other source. Just off the top of your head. I bet dollars to donuts you can’t.
Now name the accuser. I bet you can, and I bet you knew it long before the case was dropped.
As for whether we’re willing to admit we were wrong - I’ve seen a lot of people on this very comment thread saying that they were wrong about one thing or another. Just because someone doesn’t bow, scrape, and sign up for an MRA group doesn’t mean they’re not giving and taking on an issue.
Note “collective we”, as there were as many opinions on the Duke case at Pandagon (and in comments) as there were in the wider world…
Now name the accuser. I bet you can, and I bet you knew it long before the case was dropped.
who me? I’m assuming you’re also directing that at the “Defender” set, because I sure as hell can’t.