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http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=18875

Stripper Lied ... White Boys Fried

by Ann Coulter
Posted Jan 10, 2007
About a month after members of the Duke lacrosse team were falsely accused of raping a stripper last year, 88 members of the Duke faculty fanned the flames of hysteria by signing a letter announcing that they were "listening" to students "who know themselves to be objects of racism and sexism."

Maybe they should have been listening to the accused, several of whom had iron-clad alibis. Now the professors are going to need a new example of "racism and sexism" at Duke since their case in chief has turned out to be a fraud.

In lieu of a gang rape perpetrated by high-stepping white male athletes against a poor black woman, the Duke lacrosse case has turned out to be another in a long string of hoax hate crimes in which whites are falsely accused.

The lacrosse players denied that any rape had occurred and immediately submitted their DNA to the state, confident that the DNA would prove them innocent.

It did: Not a trace of DNA from any of the lacrosse players was found on the accuser, though this girl had more DNA in her than a refrigerator at a fertility clinic.

She had DNA from five other men, which ought to have raised suspicions about her story that she had not had sex with anyone for the week before the alleged gang rape. Well, that was one of the several versions of events the accuser has offered police to date, although my personal favorite was the one in which Elvis came back from the dead and sexually assaulted her. (I think that was version No. 3—I'd have to check my notes.)

This is the second time this woman has accused a group of men of gang-raping her. One more time and it's officially considered a hobby.

And yet despite the vast privilege, untold wealth and bright shiny whiteness of the defendants, they are still under criminal indictment in this case. Three of the players face up to 30 years in prison for a crime every sane person knows they did not commit. Ah, the life of the privileged!

Duke English professor Cathy N. Davidson recently wrote an opinion piece defending her signing of the "listening" letter, noting that it was "not addressed to the police investigation," but rather "focused on racial and gender attitudes all too evident" after the alleged rape. She explained that the letter had merely "decried prejudice and inequality in the society at large."

This would be like defending a letter written during the Dreyfus affair on the grounds that the letter did explicitly accuse Alfred Dreyfus of treason against France, but simply took the occasion of his arrest to decry the treasonable attitudes of the Jews in society at large.

If poor black women are constantly being raped by rich white men, then how about they produce one case?

Professor Davidson's column—written when it was clear to everyone except Nancy Grace that three innocent men were facing 30 years in prison for a rape they did not commit—notes that she remains "dismayed by the glaring social disparities implicit in what we know happened on March 13" and says the incident "underscores the appalling power dynamics of the situation."

OK, this one they made up, but the case still illustrates a larger truth!

If anything, our awareness of the "power dynamics of the situation" is too high. What we need is a little of that skepticism liberals bring to every single criminal case that is not a white-on-black crime or a rape case involving Bill Clinton.

The truth, as opposed to the larger truth, is that the allegedly powerful white males are at risk of losing their freedom at the hands of a lunatic accuser and a power-mad prosecutor. Meanwhile the allegedly powerless poor black woman has destroyed people's lives with her false accusations, for which she will walk away scot-free.

Don't liberals ever have to pony up at least one example of a powerful privileged white male trampling on the rights of a powerless black woman in order to keep droning on about powerful privileged white males? Every real-life example invariably turns out to be a hoax, among the most spectacular the Tawana Brawley case and now the Duke lacrosse case.

According to the Los Angeles Times—in an article about another hoax "hate crime" on a college campus—false reports of racist hate crimes on college campuses have averaged about one a year for 20 years.

Liberal professors believe that crying wolf is valuable for calling attention to the societal problem of wolves, even though there's never a wolf in any particular case. Evidently, awareness of an alleged societal ill—of which we have no actual examples—is worth ruining the lives of three innocent people. After all, they're just powerful white men.

At the next White Males of Privilege meeting, someone ought to bring up how they can use their vast power to win the right not to be put on trial for crimes they didn't commit.

http://www.hendersonvillenews.com/apps/pbc...0/APN/701103439

Duke lacrosse players want more than just a return to the field

By AARON BEARD
AP Sports Writer

Forget all the talk about Duke's embattled lacrosse players being happy just to return to the field after their season was canceled amid rape allegations last spring.

With a goal that once seemed so distant now only weeks away, the Blue Devils are talking like any other team hungry to win a national championship. And the focus seems to be more on returning the program to its lofty perch than dwelling on the criminal case against three teammates.

"It's important to realize that we're not just out there sort of as a display of returning to the field," senior midfielder Ed Douglas said Wednesday, the first day of the spring semester at Duke. "We actually want to get out there and prove ourselves in terms of athletic competition as well.

"The fall was a great opportunity to sort of prepare ourselves, and our mentality was very much about rehabilitation. Now it's really about proving ourselves."

The team began fall workouts on Labor Day, its first practice since March 27, the day before the university suspended the team from play following the rape allegations. The Blue Devils begin spring practice Jan. 27, scrimmage a week later and open the season against Dartmouth here on Feb. 24.

And while some of his players sound eager to get going, coach John Danowski - who left Hofstra during the summer to take over here - is still watching closely to make sure the Blue Devils don't put too much pressure on themselves.

"You can't make somebody want to be great," he said. "You can't make somebody want to win. That's something that's got to come from them.

"I just want to take it one day at a time. I want to do the things that will help them and put them in position to be successful, but I don't want to make this an all-or-nothing, a 'Gee, we didn't win so we weren't successful.'"

Before last season, the Blue Devils were coming off an NCAA-record 17-win season and an appearance in the NCAA championship game in 2005. They were a favorite to return to the finals on the way to becoming one of the sport's perennially elite programs.

That ascension, however, ended abruptly. A woman told police she was raped at a March team party where she had been hired to perform as a stripper and within weeks a grand jury indicted lacrosse players Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty and David Evans on charges of rape, kidnapping and sexual offense.

Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong eventually cleared the rest of the players of wrongdoing. But by then, the school had canceled the rest of the season and coach Mike Pressler resigned. In addition, the university faced widespread criticism of the program and the players' behavior, which included alcohol-related criminal charges.

But in the months since, defense attorneys, bloggers and legal experts have criticized Nifong's handling of the case, which has numerous problems including a lack of DNA evidence, an apparent alibi for Seligmann and the accuser's shaky credibility. That intensified after she wavered in her story last month, prompting Nifong to drop the rape charges.

Nifong has also been charged with ethics violations from the North Carolina State Bar, which said his numerous early comments - including referring to the players as "hooligans" - were misleading and inflammatory.

Still, senior defenseman Tony McDevitt said the team doesn't feel vindicated since the remaining charges could carry more than 30 years in prison for his teammates.

"In the beginning, everybody just kind of wanted to find out anything possible that we do wrong and why we are like this terrible bunch of 'hooligans,'" McDevitt said. "We just sat back and we knew what we were about and we weren't talking at the time. Now you get back, you're playing lacrosse and the case is kind of moving along as we thought it would."

That's why Douglas, McDevitt and senior attacker Matt Danowski - the coach's son - sound so determined to get back on the field and win right away.

"I think (the spotlight is) completely on us," Danowski said. "I think it's going to intensify because the season's starting now and everybody wants to follow the story and 'How are the Duke guys going to do?' We know that and we're prepared for it. We're not worried about it. If we play like we can play, it will be a good thing for us."

Danowski, Douglas and McDevitt said they would follow the case as much as possible, but they also want to focus only on what they can control: the sport they were recruited here to play.

Regardless, they know the scrutiny will be inescapable.

"It would be lying not to say I pay attention," McDevitt said. "You open up our school newspaper and it's - boom - right across the front cover: 'Tide turns in lacrosse case.' And you see it on the news and on 'Saturday Night Live.' You see it everywhere."

http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/1132301/

Police Look at Possible Ties Between Student, Suspect

Posted: Today at 11:08 a.m.
Updated: 18 minutes ago
Greensboro — Police remained tight-lipped Wednesday about any relationship between a Guilford County 911 dispatcher, a North Carolina Central University student she is charged with killing and the slain woman's fiance, a Greensboro police officer.

Shannon Elizabeth Crawley, 27, was arrested Tuesday evening and charged with murder in the Jan. 4 shooting death of Denita Monique Smith, 25.

Smith, a graduate student from Charlotte, was found dead at the bottom of a stairwell in the Campus Crossings Apartments complex on East Cornwallis Street in Durham.

Crawley, a single mother with two elementary school-age children, lives blocks from Jermeir Stroud, an N.C. Central graduate who got engaged to Smith last month.

"We're still trying to determine the relationship of all three," Cpl. David Addison of the Durham Police Department said.

Crawley's neighbors said she and her children moved in a few months ago and kept to themselves.

"I never saw anybody coming in or out of the house or anything. I'm just in total shock," one woman said.

Stroud's neighbors said he also kept to himself. Some said they had no clue the suspect in a murder case lives so close.

(snip)