Today’s WSJ has a masterful review of Until Proven Innocent by Abigail Thernstrom.
Here is the killer line:
Messrs. Taylor and Johnson make it clear that the Duke affair — the rabid prosecution, the skewed commentary, the distorted media storyline — was not some odd, outlier incident but the product of an elite culture’s most treasured assumptions about American life, not least about America’s supposed racial divide.
Exactly. For all the hysterics about “issue of race, class and gender,” the truth was that it was all imaginary. The one black player on the lacrosse team got along perfectly well with his teammates. The strippers were glad to make some money. The lacrosse players didn’t prey on women. The radical left thought it had a savory instance that proved correct all their complaints about the evils of America, but what the case really proved is how gullible and indifferent to justice they are.