The Duke lacrosse player scandal will not go away. And it shouldn’t until the academic Left and the radical scholars at the school are finally and permanently discredited and quarantined. To them, and the mainstream media, the issue had nothing to do with right or wrong, innocence or guilt. Rather, the class warfare “narrative” is the only truth—that rich white boys sexually attacked a black female. Problem is, they didn’t. But the narrative must live.
This explains why The Price of Silence, a new book questioning the innocence of the lacrosse players by New York City-based journalist William Cohan, is extended credibility—for example National Public Radio’s Diane Rehm, the broadcasting Fairy Queen of the Left.
The quivering-voiced hostess has never met a liberal she did not like, nor a utopian scheme that will not work. Thus she was unable to resist playing Joan of Arc and wielding her sword of politically correct righteousness on behalf of author Cohan and his laughable defense of Durham prosecutor Mike Nifong and the Group of 88 Duke community activists intent on throwing the lacrosse players in jail with no evidence.
Fortunately, Stuart Taylor, co-author of Until Proven Innocent and the Shameful Injustice of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case with KC Johnson—editor of Durham In Wonderland, the excellent web site that has chronicled the case from the beginning—was listening and called in to set the record straight. Here is the link to Taylor’s riposte. Taylor also cited a column of mine.
As the editor of the Raleigh Metro Magazine—which covers Durham, the home of Duke University—I was able to understand right off what was happening, and why the boys were the victims of the raging radicalism on campus. Here is my first column on the subject from 2006, outlining what every other media outlet missed—including Greta Van Susteren of Fox News when I met her in Durham covering the case.
And here is the disconnect. Greta, even as a conservative, personifies the obtuse inability of the mainstream media to perceive that the radical scholars have taken over higher education. From there the disease of victimology, multiculturalism, and politically correct hardball entered society. Yet Greta had no idea what I was talking about, a bad sign for America.