News-Record.com

Something has happened to certain thought processes in this country over the past 6 years or so.

How many people think George Bush should be tried and convicted for high crimes and misdemeanors, when there is NO evidence of the same? These people have such a deep rooted hatred for Bush that he MUST be guilty. But, when presented with the FACT that there is no evidence, they say he's just that good that he scares people into hiding, or covering it up. Then ask; why hasn't the DNC and the multitude of attorneys they have introduced articles of impeachment, or as is now the case - why haven't they backed Dennis Kookinich?

Not to change the topic - but I see stark similarities in the thought processes.

I don't know if we should go off in this direction. The impeachment of Bill Clinton turned into such a farce that hardly anyone wants to tread that thorny path again. The Duke case is much easier to see clearly, at least for rational people.

"Something happened, but what?"

We'll find out the good ol' fashioned way-when somebody writes a book.

Obviously "something happened" or we wouldn't be talking about this. As to what happened, one can only surmise that it likely involved people contracting for dancing entertainment and most likely the contractee felt the "contractor" was not, possibly due to, as was related by testimony and DNA evidence, intoxication and/ or exhaustion from previous engagement that evening, performing up to expectation. Most likely the contractees became verbal in their complaints and the contractor responded in kind, ultimately using the only real weapon they felt they had, rape accusation. Our favorite kitchen sink-racial words and phrases were probably thrown in as is wont to happen and wa-la, a court is involved and it becomes a racial incident.

I agree Doug - but the mindset in this country; the thought process (or lack thereof) is just baffling to me.

People convict based on little more than hearsay - something someone they like said - it's just amazing to me that people REFUSE to look at fact; everything is a conspiracy.

Just yesterday, I heard a group talking about how guilty these men where. They argue that Cooper would have charged Nifong and Crystal Gale, if the men had been innocent.I agree they should have been charge, along with the Durham Police Dept.

BL 101: Thanks for joining in. All those details are in the report. There was some nasty name-calling. In other circumstances, the Duke boys would owe this woman an apology. Give her false accusations, I'd say she doesn't deserve one.

The second dancer, who provided information important to the dismissal of charges, probably should get an apology.

The Duke students were guilty of 2 things:

1) Being white in Durham
2) Hiring strippers/prostitutes to perform

I venture that if all the above were grounds for prosecution a heckuva lot of white professionals would be in jail for their college antics, and tens of thousands of strippers/prostitutes would be selling hamburgers instead of sex.
What the Duke students did was nothing out of the ordinary for a college town, even Durham.

If any Duke students are doing that sort of thing now, they're not smart enough to be in college.

And yet some people still clamor for convictions when there's no evidence against the defendants. Heaven help us.*Doug

Doug! You really need to stop listening to Brad and Brainless if it upsets you about them not being able to defend the Duke kids. First of all, Brad should have gone on the offense by saying the Duke Business school was a cess pool of corruption with yesterdays news that whole dang business grad school cheated on a exam. We are talking big numbers here with 40 Duke students skinning a honor system exam. Tied them into the exam main test question.

1.If you were the President of Duke when the Duke Le Crosse team was accused of rape and plunder by local law enforcement. What would you have done as a Business CEO in this matter?

A. Kick the Duke LeCrosse team and coach out of school and keep kids tutition money and save the salary of the coach toward the general fund of the University.

B. Go out on national tour to former Duke grads and convince them that everything was cool and they needed to kick in another 1 Billion bucks to the Golden Duke Strip fund to get the former CEO Chairman of the trustees out of the Republican porn business.

C. Fire Coach K and his whole staff and merge the men's basketball into women's basketball team in order to save future lawyer fees that the university will have to pay in the settement fiqure from the 88 liberal idiot Profs that smear the 3 Duke kids.

D. Resign and go to work at the local Durham poker club in Durham as doorman and live off tips from the appeals court judges who visited the club to see for themselves what poker is.

To be precise, one of the players, Collin Finnerty, was "guilty of something." You may recall that he was convicted of an assault during another drinking incident in DC.

Finnerty and the others should have never been charged in the rape case. But let's not make them out to be altar boys.

If the papers printed every time a teacher is assulted in NC, they would not have space for Dagwood. If they printed every time a drunk got in a fight.Doug Clark would be out of a job. The facts are simple Nifong used this for a election.
He lied about everything and even to a judge. The Durham Police broke evey rule in the books to help Nifong. I have not read one negative word in any NC newspaper, except the Raleigh paper. These boys have not did a thing, I did not to in school,army, and in the business world. If most would tell the truth they did the same thing. I think its high time the press started stating facts, the northern press was printing this 6 months ago. I played in a golf gala in Virginia yesterday, and a Raleigh business man, made the best statement I heard on this, if not for Fox News these guys would be on their way to jail. My wife watches Nancy Grace, she declared the boys quilty with out a trial. Name all the papers in NC that did not do the samething. Short list, right? Have you heard any call for justice against Nifong, Crystal Gale, the Durham Police Dept. Do not hold your breath until you do, like man said the good ole boy media, wants the deal buried. They won the election, like the press wanted, noy they want it to go away, time for a new sham.

Ms. Malveaux will fit right in here in Greensboro. Exactly what we need right now, another irrational person to fuel racial tensions.

I'd add Ronald Cotton to the list of prominent, innocent North Carolinians who suddenly found themselves convicted and serving sentences for crimes they had not committed.

As bad as the past year was for the three Duke lacrosse players, there are plenty of stories that show that the nightmare could have lasted longer.

I would not call them lucky, but I would say that they ended up being luckier than some.

Rape cases often invite prejudice, based on experiences and perceptions.

When Desiree Washington accused Mike Tyson of raping her, people automatically chose sides.

The same occurred when a woman accused Kobe Bryant of the same. (Bryant was at least guilty of adultery, just as the lacrosse players were guilty of hiring two strippers; in both cases though, if they weren't guilty of rape, they didn't deserve the rape accusations nor the accompanying assumptions of rape-guilt by others.)

In some people's minds, the fact that these women put themselves in potentially compromising positions suggested (or even meant) that they "were asking for it."

I suppose that's how some people are choosing to regard the Duke lacrosse players. (I suppose that's how some felt about adulterous Kobe Bryant.)

With Desiree Washington, I remember people saying that because she went to a motel room with him that she should have known better.

I was in college at the time, and I remember visiting a female in her dorm room while her roommate was somewhere else. We had arranged to study together. I believe we studied for a few hours together, maybe past midnight.

By her inviting and allowing me into her dorm room (particularly at that time of night and with only the two of us present), did that mean that I should have assumed that she was sexually interested?

Had I made such a move, does that mean that she was not entitled to indicate that she was not interested--(either suddenly not interested or perhaps even never, ever interested, at least not in that way)?

Should we automatically judge her as naive for trusting any man under these circumstance, unless she was interested in the situation advancing where some people assume all such situations must ultimately lead?

Had I found myself accused by this woman of rape or similar charges against her, should I have been regarded as naive for putting myself in this situation in the first place?

Do the answers to any of these questions (or others I've failed to put forth) change if I reveal that I am a white male and she was a black female?

During our high school years, my brother became involved with a female student who suddenly made the news by finding herself held at gunpoint by a former boyfriend who also sexually forced himself upon her.

Without revealing her name, the News & Record covered the story when she came home from college the following fall to testify. He was convicted.

When you have knowledge of such a story (from whatever distance) and take sides in such a case, does that influence how you view future cases?

Can our minds erase prior knowledge?

Or at least prevent such knowledge from clouding future judgement?

If we discover that one person is guilty of rape, can we avoid believing that the next person accused is guilty (beyond a doubt), at least before the "real" evidence is in?

Can we all promise to keep our opinions to ourselves until we're absolutely certain that the facts are actually true?

If "real" evidence never materializes, which way are we better off erring? In favor of the accuser? Or the defendent? In favor of the male? Or the female? In favor of the black person? Or the white person? In favor of the Republican? Or the Democrat? Is the best, most relevant rule to look out for our own? (Did I hear someone say, "Amen"?)

If we discover that someone has lied about being raped, can we avoid doubting that the next accuser is lying, before it's been proven, one way or the other?

With all this in mind, and knowing human nature and human potential, let's leap a little, and ask, how does anyone defend the death penalty?

Thanks, Hardy, for very interesting comments.

Sam, Ms. Malveaux's comments certainly give me an uneasy feeling. I can't imagine Johnnetta Cole ever making such thoughtless statements.

Dave, Collin Finnerty isn't a choir boy and hasn't been described as such. What particular bad behavior can you pin specifically on David Evans or Reade Seligmann other than being members of the Duke lacrosse team and attending the party (hosting it in Evans' case)? Anyone associated with the party was guilty of poor judgment, but it doesn't mean they deserved all the troubled they got into for it.

Mr. Floyd, if the standard is to keep our opinions to ourselves until we absolutely know that all the "facts" are actually true, there would be no blogging. POOF!!! You just inadvertantly negated us all out of existence.

Arrivaderci, baby!

If you're a blogger, assuming such a thing as absolute truth exists, you don't want the actual facts to ever be known, at least not the ones unspinable to your viewpoint.

Hey Skeet,
I respectfully disagree with your assessment of bloggers. Many bloggers search for truth.

Hey Hardy,
Glad to see you posting again.

Skeet, I enjoyed a good laugh when I read your comments in response to this suggestion: "Can we all promise to keep our opinions to ourselves until we're absolutely certain that the facts are actually true?"

You're right, of course.

Not only does what I suggest go against the nature of many bloggers; it generally goes against human nature itself, even when it's perhaps advisable for us to hold back a little on our harsher initial judgements.

As I think you suggest, even if the greatest, most irrefutable evidence were presented against our most cherished beliefs, many of us would be unwilling to accept that as proof that we were ever wrong.

(I'm a fan of Malcolm X's because he strikes me as someone who--much more sincerely than most-- pursued truth throughout his life, going through radical shifts in his perspective as new evidence suggested to him the need for personal world-view adjustments. Are there many others out there among us as sincere in their search for truth and their willingness to embrace newly discovered truths, even when they contradict our previously embraced versions of truth?)

Just as an example, if God communicated in the most crystal-clear way with us that the war in Iraq was either absolutely correct or absolutely wrong, people with the opposite view (even if God-fearing) would probably call God wrong.

Thank you for the word "unspinable"--I'm not sure if I've been exposed to it before or not, but I definitely like it, particularly as you've used it.

Hey, Diane, also. I definitely agree with you that a lot of bloggers are searching for the truth. There are others though who only seem concerned with their own versions of truth--searching for truth is sometimes not as much an aim as spreading our own versions of truth.

Doug, there was a valid point to Leonard Pitts's concept of "emotional truth."

For each of us individually, there are ideas and thoughts that strike us as emotionally true, even if not backed up by true reasoning and even when countered by facts themselves. But with such considerations in mind, your term ("emotional deception") is even more accurate. Isn't the term "rationalization" relevant here? Most of us are guilty, at least at some point or another, of rationalizing. Isn't that just a way of pursuing "emotional truth/deception"?