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| -Lurid Crime Tales- |
| Rush to Judgment in Durham |
| 2007-09-05 |
| On March 28, 2006, the four co-captains of the Duke lacrosse team accused of gang-raping an exotic dancer met with university president Richard Brodhead. One of the captains, David Evans, emotionally protested that the team was innocent and apologized for the misbegotten stripper party. "Brodhead's eyes filled with tears," write Stuart Taylor Jr. and KC Johnson in their new book on the case, "Until Proven Innocent" (420 pages. Thomas Dunne Books. $26.95). Brodhead "said that the captains should think of how difficult it had been for him." The misbehavior of the players, said Duke's president, "had put him in a terrible position." Listening to Brodhead, Robert Ekstrand, a lawyer representing the captains and many of their teammates, "felt his blood starting to boil," write Taylor and Johnson. "Here, he thought, is a comfortable university president wallowing in self-pity in front of four students who are in grave danger of being falsely indicted on charges of gang rape, punishable by decades in prison." Nifong, the Durham D.A. (who was held in criminal contempt of court last week for lying to a judge while pursuing the case and sentenced to a day in jail), is depicted as a bully and blowhard. By and large, the press did not let the facts get in the way of a good race-class-sex-violence morality play. But their most biting scorn is aimed at the "academic McCarthyism" that they say has infected top-rated American universities like Duke. The authors make the Duke faculty look at once ridiculous and craven. For months, not one of the university's nearly 500-member faculty of arts and sciences stood up to question the rush to judgment against the lacrosse team. The only group that shows any common sense in "Until Proven Innocent" is the student body. Aside from a few noisy activists who assumed the players were guilty, Duke undergrads mostly overlooked the political correctness of their professors. The boomers can't start dying off soon enough. |
| Posted by:Nimble Spemble |
| #7 'nother boomer here.... Way too many of this group are examples of everything bad ever written about us. The only thing that may help is that the loser brigade didn't do much in the way of breeding for all their crap about free love. To that point about eddication and pinko unions, my parents pulled out of NYC for NJ 50 years ago to get away from the NYC PS system. Luckily I got pretty much through school (pre-college) before NJ fell to the onslaught. |
| Posted by: AlanC 2007-09-05 17:09 |
| #6 A spoiled, highly vocal, plurality of that generation, now down to a core of idiots, as the rest responded to the various muggings of reality. Most of y'all are delightful, and have done your best to represent your generation under very trying circumstances. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2007-09-05 16:55 |
| #5 There are a lot of us boomers who were raised by good parents. I work with a lot of them. It seems the more rural (in general) the less left-leaning spoiled liberals we are. |
| Posted by: Deacon Blues 2007-09-05 16:21 |
| #4 The problem was the "greatest generation" was tired and only want the best for their kids. But they couldn't handle education the kids were getting and were stunned that the kids turned out the way they did from that education by a solidedly "pink" teacher's union that was growing more and more radical day by day. I remember my university was haunted by left-wing faculty and that was 1961-1965. My dad was career USAF officer and raised me in a military fashion and it probably saved me from having the usual liberal to conservative epiphany in my 40's. I was already there. |
| Posted by: Jack is Back! 2007-09-05 16:14 |
| #3 I'm a boomer, too. We own the 60's, and the jury is out on whether this nation will survive that. |
| Posted by: SR-71 2007-09-05 15:50 |
| #2 A few? I, too, am a boomer, and this is the most spoiled, egotistical, and self centered group of people since the French revolution ended the French nobility. This country could have avoided a lot of problems if the "Greatest Generation" did a better job of raising kids. |
| Posted by: DoDo 2007-09-05 15:24 |
| #1 As a proud member of the boomer generation, I resent that remark about the boomers dying off. It is uncalled for. There is no reason to wish death on an entire generation just because of the actions of a few. |
| Posted by: Rambler 2007-09-05 14:57 |