The U.S. Is Duked

I always skip over crime news, and don’t watch local TV news about one crime after another, as I just insulate my mind from it, as I insulate my life and family by paying to live in a safe community. For this reason, or excuse, over the past year I’ve ignored the Duke University rape case.

This morning, two friends sent me pieces about it, and asked that I read them. I then read the New York Times’ article about the latest developments. I know I’m late to the story, but that only increases my shock at the extent of injustice and shoddy reporting, not only that this occurred but at myself for ignoring it to now.

Jeralyn Merritt’s op-ed at the Examiner sums up the injustice, and the hopes of its victims that some good will come of it:

The answer is that nothing will make them whole again. The injustice they have suffered will scar them forever. No amount of a money judgment can erase it completely.
To their credit, at their own news conference Wednesday the players told the public they are determined that something positive must come from their ordeal. They hope that somewhere else, one who is wrongfully accused and who does not have access to highly skilled counsel will have an avenue of relief.

This case displays a wider problem, which The Barrister at Maggie’s Farm zeroes in on in “PoMo Politics at Duke, and the Sin of "The Narrative":

Editor's addendum:
In a piece this week entitled PoMo Contradictions, David Thompson concludes:
If one’s ‘work’ is based on being oppositional – or being seen to be oppositional - against capitalism, racism, sexism, imperialism (real or imagined), white male patriarchy, etc, then liberties can, and probably will, be taken. Attempts to fathom truth, or to be consistent, meaningful and accurate, can, and probably will, be dispensed with in order to advance The Great Cause. (Or The Great Oppositional Posture, depending on one’s scepticism.) And it’s worth noting that in Criticism and Social Change, the left-wing theorist, Frank Lentricchia, announced that the postmodern movement “seeks not to find the foundation and conditions of truth, but to exercise power for the purpose of social change.”

The New York Times report says that the accuser will not be charged by the state of North Carolina:

Mr. Cooper said he had considered but ultimately rejected the possibility of bringing criminal charges against the accuser, who continues to insist she was attacked at a team party on March 13, 2006, and asked him to go forward with the case. Mr. Cooper said his investigators had told him that the woman “may actually believe the many different stories that she has been telling.” He said his decision not to charge her with making false accusations was also based on a review of sealed court files, which include records of the woman’s mental health history.

If the Duke students had come from poor families, they wouldn’t have had the resources to defend themselves from this “narrative” which appealed so to, as the NYT’s article put it, “its overtones of race, sex and privilege” that fit the PostMo narrative.

Isn’t that what the United States faces daily, within and abroad, in trying to present its case for self-defense and national security. The PostMo attackers of Western civilization, however, needn’t fear their calumnies being controlled by truth or law, and even the U.S.’s wealth can’t counter their lies when they're given space and credence by PostMo defenders in the major media.

UPDATE: Via Instapundit, The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz comments:

But in all the coverage you read and see about the clearing of these young men, very little of it will be devoted to the media's role in ruining their lives. I didn't hear a single television analyst mention it yesterday, even though two of the players' lawyers took shots at the press….

What made this a case of aggravated media assault is that news outlets weren't content to focus on the three defendants. Attorney General Roy Cooper said there was a "rush to condemn a community and a state." Remember all the "trend" stories about "pampered" and "privileged" student athletes being "out of control"? Remember how the lacrosse players' homes were shown on TV? How the coach lost his job? How this case was depicted as being about the contrast between a white elite institution and a poor black community? All of that was built on what turned out to be lies.