John Podhoretz writes on National Review:
Terry Moran of ABC News has written a blog item entitled "Don’t Feel Too Sorry for the Dukies." As a compendium of fashionable attitudes toward the Duke case, it is incomparable. It’s instructive to go through it to examine those attitudes and why they are so noxious. He says that "as we rightly cover the vindication of these young men and focus on the genuine ordeal they have endured, let us also remember a few other things: "They were part of a team that collected $800 to purchase the time of two strippers. "Their team specifically requested at least one white stripper. "During the incident, racial epithets were hurled at the strippers. "Colin [one of the three] Finnerty was charged with assault in Washington, DC, in 2005." There were 46 members of the Duke lacrosse team. As far as I am aware, there is no evidence that David Evans, Reade Seligmann or Colin Finnerty collected the money for the strippers. Or that the three men had anything to do with the request for a white stripper, which I guess we are supposed to consider a racist act. Or that the three men were involved in hurling racial epithets at the strippers ‚Äî which is, by the way, a fact totally in dispute, as the only witnesses for it are the liar Crystal Mangum herself and her fellow stripper, who has recanted much of what she originally said. I agree that Colin Finnerty’s arrest on charges of having been involved in beating up a man and hurling anti-gay slurs at him suggests that he may not be a very good person. Then Moran should trash him. What does Finnerty’s arrest have to do with David Evans or Reade Seligmann? Moran’s main point is that we shouldn’t feel too sorry for the three because they had the financial resources to fight back against an unjust prosecution. They are, Moran writes, "well-heeled, well-connected, well-publicized young men whose conduct, while not illegal, was not entirely admirable, either." First, given the fact that we have no reason to believe Seligmann and Evans had anything to do with the slimy aspects of the evening in question, Moran has no right to describe their conduct as "not entirely admirable." To put it plainly: How the hell does he know? Second, that they are well-heeled and well-connected is of no moment when we are talking about what happened to them, which was a kind of reverse-racist hate crime. We all know why Durham D.A. pursued their prosecution based on no credible evidence. He did so because they were white and affluent, and he either believed he was doing something brave or that he needed their scalps to guarantee his reelection. The amount of money their parents may or may not have had does not mitigate the Kafka nightmare to which they were consigned. Indeed, America should be grateful their families had the resources to pursue their exoneration, as the process revealed that a the criminal-justice system in a city of 275,000 people was being run by a conscienceless sociopath. His certain prosecution and probable conviction on ethics and perjury charges will remove Mike Nifong from office and spare untold numbers of others who might be subject to his prosecutorial whim. Including poor people. Including African-Americans. Finally, Moran offers one of those cutesy, let’s-roll-the-news-events-of-the-moment-into-a-neat-package sentence when he says dismissively that the three men are "are very differently situated in life from, say, the young women of the Rutgers University women’s basketball team." Yes, they are. They spent a year in torment, as did their families. They and their families incurred huge legal fees (and it says something about Terry Moran, awash in a multi-million-dollar network contract, that he might think "well-heeled people" can afford $1 million plus in legal fees without suffering hundreds of sleepless nights over them and the possibility of having to, say, go into hock for the rest of their lives).
