On the night of March 13-14, 2006, a black Durham, NC prostitute, stripper, car thief, drug addict, would-be cop-killer, etc. named Crystal Gail Mangum set into motion what would become the Duke Rape Hoax. I published 1,000-word (“N.Y. Times to Duke Rape Hoax Victims: Drop Dead”) and 10,400-word exposés on the hoax (my VDARE editor, the legendary Peter Brimelow, honored me by titling it, “Nicholas Stix’ Absolutely Definitive Account of the Incredible Disappearing Duke Rape Hoax”).
Mangum and her accomplices, led by since disgraced, disbarred, and jailed—if only for one night—white Durham District Attorney Michael Nifong, sought to railroad three innocent white lacrosse players, whose only crime was Breathing While White.
As I wrote for VDARE on January 13, 2007,
On April 6, a full-page advertisement appeared in Duke’s student newspaper, The Chronicle, signed by 88 people, almost all of them tenured, tenure-track, or visiting professors, and supported by three academic departments and 13 programs, strongly implying not only that then-unnamed and unindicted white lacrosse players had committed a brutal, racially motivated rape of a black woman, but that such was the character of the entire lacrosse team, and indeed, of most white men on Duke’s campus.
The 88 signatories were all lefties. Rather than being fired for defamation and professional misconduct, the Duke Three’s professorial persecutors have in many cases enjoyed … promotions! (One condition of the presumably multimillion-dollar, secret settlement that Duke came to with its three victims, was that the victims had to renounce any future attempts to sue the professors who terrorized them individually. That settlement did not preclude Duke from disciplining any or all of the tenured thugs, but Duke’s corrupt president, Richard Brodhead, himself a nihilistic and opportunistic leftist who had fanned the flames of hatred against the Duke Three, chose to shield the malefactors out of political solidarity.)
Since being completely discredited, the Gang of 88, as the signatories of the Chronicle ad have come to be known by those who respect truth and due process, have with perhaps one exception gone out of their way to emphasize their lack of any shame for their sins. These are the sort of people who would have no problem rationalizing Stalin’s show trials.
On Thursday, I came across a brief, superficial blog entry from May 26 at the Chronicle of Higher Education by a neoconservative academic named Mark Bauerlein (that would have been “Bäuerlein,” in the old country.), “The Group of 88 Is Doing Just Fine.”
May 26, 2010, 02:20 PM ET
The Group of 88 Is Doing Just Fine
By Mark Bauerlein
One of the biggest academic stories of recent years was the Duke lacrosse scandal, and one of its central exhibits was the rush to judgment by Duke faculty members who signed the notorious “Group of 88” statement two weeks after the allegations surfaced. As everyone knows, the case fell apart despite DA Mike Nifong’s efforts to railroad the accused. Long before Nifong was disbarred, K.C. Johnson raised serous criticism about the Group of 88’s response, citing particularly the signers’ disrespect toward due process and their overheated, bullying, and illiberal reading of identity politics into the affair from the start.
Bauerlein’s item failed to so much as note what the “‘Group of 88’” statement was even about, but that didn’t make it worth my while to respond. A set of claims by Sandy Thatcher, a recently retired PR flack from Penn State, however, was another matter entirely:
7. 11159995 - May 27, 2010 at 09:28 am
Mark conveniently ignores the fact that the Duke lacrosse team had a reputation for bad behavior before the incident occurred that gave rise to the “rush to judgment.” It is not as though all these Duke lacrosse players were paragons of virtue. I recall one particularly scurrilous e-mail that was uncovered during the investigation. The players who were named as defendants by the district attorney may have been innocent of the crimes alleged, but there is a history here that helps explain why so many people did assume the worst when this incident happened. The players were no moral saints.---Sandy Thatcher
I responded as follows:
@11159995 (Sandy Thatcher)- May 27, 2010 at 09:28 am
I spent hundreds of hours researching and writing on this case, and yet I’m unaware of the lacrosse team’s “reputation for bad behavior before the incident.” Actually, I learned that the team had a very good reputation, but that the people who were racially terrorizing all of the white members, and seeking to railroad three of them, had fabricated a “reputation for bad behavior” after the fact, in order to rationalize their own evil aims.
“It is not as though all these Duke lacrosse players were paragons of virtue.” That was one of the talking points of the players’ tormentors. Perhaps you would be so kind as to show me where it stands in the North Carolina Penal Code or the U.S. Code that not being a paragon of virtue (or a “moral saint”) is punishable by a prison term of over 30 years.
“I recall one particularly scurrilous e-mail that was uncovered during the investigation.”
Do be specific, but don’t forget to explain how the e-mail in question would support prosecuting three men, sans evidence, for kidnapping, sexual offense, and three different kinds of forcible rape.
“The players who were named as defendants by the district attorney may have been innocent of the crimes alleged, but...”
They weren’t “named as defendants,” they were indicted. Not “may have been innocent,” were innocent. And there’s no “but” about it.
You have conveniently ignored all of the facts of the case, and are repeating the talking points of the Gang of 88, years after they had been completely discredited. You clearly still wish that the Duke Three had been railroaded, and are setting the stage for other innocent, heterosexual, white men to be railroaded via the same methods of defamation and denial of due process. You are as representative as the Gang of 88 is of everything that is wrong with today’s antiversity. Have you no shame? (That was a rhetorical question.)
http://www.vdare.com/stix/070113_duke.htm
Nicholas Stix
The Chronicle has since posted a later note by someone else, but not posted mine.
It’s not for nothing that it is called “the New York Times of Higher Education”; the Times’ letter editors have whitelisted me since circa 1997! (I was finally able to get a letter published in the Times in 2007—using a pseudonym!)
Having had numerous similar experiences over the years with censorship on leftwing (and sometimes neoconservative, such as the Washington Examiner) blogs, I am less prone to waste precious hours writing, researching, and re-writing comments than I once was, but I sometimes forget, and give in to temptation.
By the way, after posting my response at the Chronicle, I read the much more thoughtful essay by K.C. Johnson, that was the basis for Bauerlein’s item, and which I recommend.
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