Friday, April 14, 2006

Uglier and Uglier

This morning, when I tried to go to the "Blackacademic" link I posted yesterday (to see if she had made the quotes the anonymous person was associating with me in the comment) and I got nowhere. First, I thought maybe she had pulled down her blog because of personal attacks, now I see that I just screwed up. To read her views go to blackademic.blogspot.com
Based on what I've seen on Technorati's links and bloggers, it getting uglier and uglier in the Triangle, and people are making this week's news about the lack of DNA evidence into a referendum on both the alleged victim and the people who have supported her, including the DA. Circumstantially, the story is a convincing one, and the attacks from Duke students and supporters just make her story more sympathetic to me.
Meanwhile, Tidewater Muse reminds us of history and a Southern fraternity rape case from the early 1980s.
Here's my view of everything I've read so far. First, if there is really no DNA evidence at all, I'd find the whole thing suspicious. No one can ignore the revolutionary impact of DNA evidence in proving "actual innocence" in many cases in recent years...which is why I'm really curious to see whether Scheck and Neufeld will get involved in this case, and if so, how. The police call evidence that came out this week doesn't strike me as so significant in undermining the case. The fact that someone was "passed out drunk" as the police allege, or that she did not appear "distressed" to the police is not evidence that she was not a crime victim. Furthermore, there was some mention of being assaulted with a "broom handle" which would obviously not leave DNA evidence. I guess we will find out more next week.I was late in catching up with this case because I didn't hear it in national news until Amy Goodman covered it on Democracy Now, so I may be missing many details. What the public outcry reveals about college sports culture and Southern politics is, as Tidewater Muse suggests, not surprising.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Those S.O.B.s should stick to drinking themselves to death

Anonymous said...

Gilliard:

Shorter Bob Bennett: "That lyin' negro wench is tarnishing our fine institution"

Uh, Bob, if this woman was gang raped by Duke students, any ruined reputation would be well deserved.

"A lot of innocent families are being hurt"

You mean like the alleged rape victim?

...She's gonna go through a rape kit and questions for the DA to avoid a misdemeanor? Is he kidding? We're talking rape, humiliating questions, her life on public display and it's all to avoid a ticket or a night in jail?

Yeah, right.

...Duke should lean on the people who hired Bennett to make him disappear. It just looks racist and awful to have him chiming in on protecting Duke. If this woman was assaulted, Duke deserves everything it gets

Anonymous said...

More Gilliard

I was wondering who called in Bob Bennett to "defend" Duke's reputation?

Interesting that the victim's criminal past is fodder for news, but not the fact that A) the police had been called to the house four times previously, and B) one of the teams members daddy is highly connected in Washington DC.

via Gilliard - via SSquirrel / Common Denominator

24 Capt. Bret Thompson MIDFIELDER 6-0 185 Sr. Chevy Chase, Md.

(father) Bruce E. Thompson Jr., First Vice President, Sr. Director of Government Relations, Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc., Washington, DC

Membership in the private and generally secretive group, called the Federal City Council

...“It’s a secret group that’s in the background pushing buttons and pulling strings, but nobody knows who they are.”

Librarian Matthew Gilmore noted with a chuckle that files about the Federal City Council “disappear” from the library’s collection almost as soon as they get created.

Bruce did find time to hit the 2004 Republican Convention…


“For us, it’s just a matter of building relationships,” said Bruce Thompson, vice president of government relations at Merrill Lynch. He is attending four parties a day.

Ssquirrel -
So if you too were wondering why those classy people of the Right Wing Media like Fox News, or maybe Tucker Carlson at MSNBC’s The Situation Room, would attack a women who reported being cruelly gang raped by three white guys, would imply she’s a liar and a tramp and probably deserved it, I really have no idea. I really don’t understand why anyone with a shred of morality or integrity would do such a thing.

Hey Tucker, what if it was your daughter?

Anonymous said...

HEatStrings via Berube

Penn State University hosts a “lecture” by David Horowitz

..At one point he started out to draw an analogy between the inappropriateness of professors inserting their ideological biases in classroom sessions and an imagined scenario involving a rabbi and his congregation. For some reason David Horowitz tends to get tangled up whenever he starts to imagine something, which is particularly tough for him since so many of his examples are drawn from the realm of the imaginary. About halfway into his scenario, he stopped and said, “Let’s leave the rabbi out, because it’s Saturday.” I spent the rest of Thursday evening wondering if I should tell his handlers what day it was so that there wouldn’t be a badly disappointed Horowitz audience waiting somewhere on Saturday for the good David to turn up.