Lynching a Lacrosse Team


It now looks as if DNA evidence has cleared the Duke University lacrosse team of any wrong doing in connected with the alleged rape of a stripper at a team party back in March.

At least wrong doing involving the crime of rape.

And there’s more.

According to David Perlmutt and Sharif Durhams of the Charlotte Observer, some of the players took pictures of the stripper in question, which are time-stamped and show no evidence that she was under any kind of stress or show any injuries during the period she was performing.  Pretty conclusive evidence that there was no assault against the stripper either.

Not that it matters from a legal point of view, but the lacrosse team is white and the stripper is black. All of which has led to a variety of charges concerning racism and sexism at Duke University. All of which are unfounded, but such allegations create a lot of controversy, and controversy is simply grist for the cable news mill.

In America , anyone charged with a crime is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, but in the Duke case, where sex and race are concerned, the alleged perpetrators are automatically  presumed guilty by the media.

Why?  Well, in this case, largely  because the lacrosse team is made up of  white and privileged young men, while the alleged victim in this case is  black and poor.

So, as might be expected,  various blowhards (mostly on the right) attempted their own version of a high-tech lynching.

The usual culprits did their thing.

On The O'Reilly Factor last week, Bill O'Reilly and Geraldo Rivera talked about poverty and racism, as if those issues had something to do with the guilt of innocence of young men charged with a major felony.  Not to be outdone, Rush Limbaugh showed his concern for unbiased justice by referring to the stripper has a “ho”; in other words, a tool meant to help  Al Sharpton to get involved in the controversy. And of course, there’s always Nancy (Hang-‘Em-High) Grace, who, true to form, basically tried and convicted the lacrosse team en masse on her March 31 program.

No one knows exactly what went at the team party on March 13, whatever it was probably wasn’t very nice, but however boorish their behavior, there’s no evidence of rape or  assault by any team member that evening.  

Privileged young men or no, they should not be condemned as criminals  in the absence of concrete evidence.

Something Nancy Grace and her fellow blowhardians should already know, but somehow or another don’t.

Punditwalla--