Actually he understates the case when he says thatWhites victimized by blacks aren't just victims – they're quasi-villains.The reality is,as Thomas Sowell points out, thatIt is hard to believe that Nifong believed that these other charges would stand up in court. But they didn't have to.When he speaks of "mounting pressure," he includes the fact that the cabbie who was witness to the fact that one of the accused was somewhere else at the time was taken to the station house and interrogated for hours . . . and thereafter understandably fell publicly silent. So the bottom line is that the Duke 3 not only are not villains, they and their families are heroes for resisting Nifong's full-court press.After months of mounting pressure and growing legal bills, many people would have plea-bargained, "confessed" to something minor, just to get the nightmare over with.
Such a "confession" might have spared Nifong from being hauled up before the state bar association on ethics charges.
In that context the test of whether journalism is being fair to the Duke 3 or not is the behavior and status not only of Al Sharpton but of the Duke 88. They have not recanted their libel, and clearly are confident that they don't have to. Their calumny against heroes still stands. Why are they not being humiliated worse than Don Imus?
This is an illustration of the superficiality of journalism - compared to the stress to which the Duke 3 were viciously subjected, initially with journalism against them along with the Duke 88 and legions of others calling for their castration, the Don Imus flap is insignificant. But that is not the way journalism has played the two stories. In fact, the Duke 88 are not in the news at all. And neither, in any negative way, is Al Sharpton.