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Sunday, May 28, 2006

Duke Lacrosse Gals Wear ‘Innocent’ Sweatbands

The improbable prosecution of three Duke men continues, and the Duke lacrosse girls, who fell to Northwestern last Friday as ours did today, are wearing sweatbands supportive of their beset counterparts on the men’s team, who have been thoroughly villified, condemned, and now subjected to every needling probe the sensitivity firmament has. This, despite the fact that only three of the team are charged and their guilt has not yet been adjudicated.

The sweatbands are really nothing surprising, even though the zealots among the professoriat at Duke, who have been very certainly behind the “racial strife” there—the specter of hatred justifies their jobs, after all—will condemn this as some kind of proof that whites feel privileged to rape, and they’ll rally ‘round one another when challenged. Really, the sweatbands are an exhortation to fairness, and an understandable reaction—one many Dukies are now having or have had—against the rush to judgement in which their hot-headed professors and administrators asked them to join when the accusation broke.

Mike Nifong, the prosecutor, is now dragging his feet on the case, since his prospects, given all the recent revelations as well as the amazingly weak discovery he turned over, have dwindled to naught. And he’s won his primary, so who cares? Perhaps the Duke gentlemen will see their day in court when election season comes around.

RELATED: The New York Times’ David Brooks, who, like many of his co-workers, was quick to crucify the Duke lacrosse team, today eats crow, saying, “simple decency requires that we return to that scandal, if only to correct the slurs that were uttered by millions of people, including me.”

Posted on May 28, 2006 06:30 PM. Permalink