It's hard to believe anyone could write the following line, but John McCann does it anyway in today's Durham Herald-Sun:
"The lacrosse boys brought it on themselves, though -- even if the accuser's lying."
This is despicable. Would McCann, who is black, even think of writing the same thing if the case involved a white accuser and 44 black members of the football team? Of course not.
McCann brushes off the injustice suffered by the Duke lacrosse players with the trite phrase, "that's what can happen when you don't keep your nose clean." This is a cowardly cop-out, not to mention McCann is invoking a standard that is unrealistic as well as unjust. Does he mean anyone who attends a party where there is beer and strippers can be falsely accused of anything under the logic that attending the party in the first place isn't "keeping your nose clean?"
Setting aside the fact that three young men stand accused of a crime that could cost them the better part of their lives behind bars, the forty-four Duke players who have not been charged with committing any crime didn't deserve to have their reputations trashed and their season cancelled, or to be stigmatized and abandoned by the Duke faculty and university administration. To suggest the players brought all this on themselves by the mere act of attending a party is more than grotesquely unfair, it's also a clever way to absolve those in the media and the community whose behavior toward the Duke players has been so shameful throughout this entire episode.
I understand it's difficult for some to focus on the facts in this case because the facts, at least at the moment, aren't very favorable toward the accuser. As a result, this case is upsetting a whole host of traditional liberal stereotypes and tactics, not the least of which is a seemingly innate liberal reflex to attack white males as symbols of privilege and racial oppression whenever possible.
McCann's suggestion that the Duke players deserve the way they've been treated "even if the accuser's lying" shows just how warped that mentality can be and represents a new low point in the whole tragic saga.
Thanks to Real Clear Politics
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