I looked and all the threads were over 90 days. Anyway, I found this mea culpa in this weeks Economist interesting enough to pass on.
http://tinyurl.com/255b8v

Quote :

"The architect of the disaster was Mike Nifong, the district attorney for Durham County, North Carolina. Mr Nifong faced a close election campaign, and he relentlessly went after the young men. He ignored a mass of contradictory evidence when he took up the case. He spent hours talking to the press and smearing his victims. . . The print media churned out headlines about “a night of racial slurs, growing fear and finally sexual violence”, and the TV talking heads revelled in the story line. This column, to its shame, echoed the prevailing wisdom."

Quote :

"A striking number of professors were willing to trample all over legal process in their rush to declare the lacrosse players guilty before charge, let along trial. And they did so solely on the basis of the players' race and gender. One professor, Houston Baker, denounced the lacrosse players as “young white, violent, drunken men veritably given licence to rape, maraud, deploy hate speech”. Duke's politically-correct faculty thus produced a mirror image of the worst racism of the South in the 1950s, when people were pronounced guilty—and denied their legal rights—solely because they were black."

Quote :

"Some people have at least learned from the disaster at Duke. Mr Nifong has been sacked and stripped of his law license. Last week he was sent to jail, though only for a day, for his numerous misdemeanors. The press has struggled to put the record straight—and several people have written their own mea culpas. The only people who, it seems, have learned nothing from all this are Mr Nifong's enablers in the Duke faculty. Even after it was clear that the athletes were innocent, 87 faculty members published a letter categorically rejecting calls to recant their condemnation. And one professor, proving that some academics are as far beyond parody as they are beneath contempt, offered a course called “Hooking up at Duke” that purported to illustrate what the lacrosse scandals tell us about “power, difference and raced, classed, gendered and sexed normativity in the US.”"

9/20/2007 11:32:36 PM

Quote :

"Duke's politically-correct faculty thus produced a mirror image of the worst racism of the South in the 1950s, when people were pronounced guilty—and denied their legal rights—solely because they were black."

Bullshit.

People jumped to conclusions about the LAX guys because of a lot more than just their race.

9/21/2007 12:00:51 AM

because they were mop-haired frat boys everyone loves to hate?

I mean, that is kind of simplistic, but the fuel for this fire was partly that you've got ostensibly rich white boys as the perpetrators. I thought the comparison to Jim Crow laws was a little much though.

[Edited on September 21, 2007 at 12:12 AM. Reason : .]

9/21/2007 12:03:17 AM

it was a huge number of factors. race was definitely one of them. but more than just that.

it was a "perfect storm" of sorts.

9/21/2007 12:08:16 AM

^^More than just some silly frat boy stuff, too.

9/21/2007 12:47:26 AM

Quote :

"I mean, that is kind of simplistic, but the fuel for this fire was partly that you've got ostensibly rich white boys as the perpetrators."

Well, duh.

Not to mention Durham being a f***ed up city with the city residents and the university, the Northern bastard aspect, the rich kid aspect, a D.A. with political aspirations that knows if he put these students away for life he'd get 99% of the black vote in any future election, a society that is obsessed with being politically correct and take any statement of keeping the black man down way out of context and as obvious truth, not even analyzing it for 5 seconds for accuracy (see Donovan McNabb), the media needing to fill a 24/7 news channel with continuous coverage and hence overamplify pretty much anything of substance, the natural urge of society to gawk and watch a train wreck with intense interest, and that Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are gloryhounds that have never turned away from a camera.

Seriously, the team players were dumb as s*** to hire two black strippers that went to Central. Why set yourself up?

[Edited on September 21, 2007 at 1:17 AM. Reason : .]

9/21/2007 1:15:51 AM

Quote :

"hire two black strippers that went to Central. Why set yourself up?"

oh... maybe because the university-sanctioned Duke Sorostitute Stripping Agency is always booked 6 months in advance?

9/21/2007 3:15:06 AM

To me, the bigger story is the faculty's stubborn resistance to facts in the name of ideology. These are people who are supposed to be on a quest for the bigger truths.

Its very hooksawesque.

9/21/2007 7:25:12 AM

Quote :

"To me, the bigger story is the faculty's stubborn resistance to facts in the name of ideology. These are people who are supposed to be on a quest for the bigger truths."

Follow politics much?

9/21/2007 8:35:00 AM

I'm not as naive as my comment might imply. I was pointing out the irony and hypocrisy, not my shock and indignation.

9/21/2007 1:56:00 PM

The asshole rich kid is a pretty widely held archetype in the US. Its a lot more PC to blame a rich kid than scoff at the claims of a black stripper.

I really don't have anything else to say aside from Mike Nifong is a self-serving dipshit who has no business practicing law in any form.

9/21/2007 5:01:04 PM

Quote :

"JCASHFAN: To me, the bigger story is the faculty's stubborn resistance to facts in the name of ideology. These are people who are supposed to be on a quest for the bigger truths."

But there's so much stuff building up for years and years that they have to get over first.

I mean, if you understand anything about the culture at that university, you'll understand why the faculty is the way it is.

9/21/2007 5:08:04 PM

Quote :

"I mean, if you understand anything about the culture at that university, you'll understand why the faculty is the way it is."

Don't make excuses for hate-mongering bigots.

9/21/2007 5:26:51 PM

^AHA. I don't think you understand what I'm saying.

Given my understanding of the issues, I believe the stripper could have been white, and the reaction would have been rabid, too. The race factor just made it that much juicier and more satisfying.

9/21/2007 5:58:24 PM

only if she were white and from the poor part of durham or outlying durham county.

but yeah, that's the point.

i think it was more about class than race. race was just the icing on the cake.

9/21/2007 6:42:26 PM

I think it showed the stupidity of a lot of people.

9/22/2007 3:38:55 PM

Quote :

"To me, the bigger story is the faculty's stubborn resistance to facts in the name of ideology. These are people who are supposed to be on a quest for the bigger truths."

Yes exactly.

Quote :

"87 faculty members published a letter categorically rejecting calls to recant their condemnation."

9/22/2007 7:33:55 PM

Quote :

"Seriously, the team players were dumb as s*** to hire two black strippers that went to Central. Why set yourself up?"

Not that it matters, but they actually asked for white dancers. This is a pretty good read on what went down.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18110003/site/newsweek/

9/22/2007 8:37:19 PM

Quote :

"it was a "perfect storm" of sorts."

I think that about sums it up.

9/23/2007 10:56:40 AM