First, I want to thank Observer columnist Tommy Tomlinson for perfectly capturing the smug, condescending attitude of far too many in the mainstream media even in the wake of the stinging rebuke of the Duke lacrosse case. I feared that this attitude would only be temporarily masked given yesterday’s events, but not with Tommy.
No, Tommy marches on — declaring “no one is completely innocent.”
In other words, everyone is guilty. No, Tommy. Wrong.
Everyone did not lie, shift their stories, rush to make a political point, and otherwise completely ignore the possibility that the claims of what happened that night in Durham might be untrue.
Within weeks of the party it was clear that something was not quite right about this case, about the tale that was being told, about the reaction of the parties involved. Any objective observer could see that, could sense it. But that’s the rub, now isn’t, Tommy?
Objectivity was never part of the equation. The Observer didn’t send three reporters to Durham — three!! — to be objective. The paper sent three reporters to Durham because The New York Times had declared the case to be a window on race and class in the South of the 21st century. The Times had its own agenda and truth or innocence was not part of it. The Observer just tagged along.
This investment, this declaration that the case mattered for reasons beyond the mere guilt or innocence of the accused, effectively doomed mainstream coverage of the case to be distorted. Reporters and editors now had a vested interest in seeing Mike Nifong keep the case alive — otherwise all of the “larger” truths the case “embodied” would fade away. Rather than vigorously probe the government’s case for faults, reporters stood by for months and did nothing — and worse in the case of the Durham Herald-Sun which functioned as Nifong’s official press organ.
But back to Tommy.
The lacrosse players’ original sin — the act that in Tommy’s eyes makes them guilty — was hiring a stripper. Had they never picked up the phone to hire a stripper to dance for them, this all would have never happened.
The not small problem with this view is that it makes the players exactly as guilty as Tommy himself. For on page 7C of today’s paper there are, as you’ll find somewhere in the paper on most days, two ads. One is for The Men’s Club and another is for The Uptown Cabaret. These are strip clubs. There men pay young women to take off their clothes and dance.
The men pay the clubs for drinks, the clubs pay the Observer for the ads. The Observer pays Tommy to write. Ergo, Tommy is guilty.
The truly warped thing is that Tommy probably would agree with that — after all everyone is guilty. But this makes the concept of guilt or innocence — of personal responsibility — for one’s actions meaningless. Society is left with collective guilt, collective responsibility, collective solutions, collective recompense.
Now does the coverage of the case and the continued stance of Tommy and his less bold cohorts make sense?
American society is guilty. And for that we all must pay.
Update: Tommy is not alone — surprise.
Update II: In his column Tommy also takes a swipe at Charlotte attorney Jim Cooney for daring to blast the media and Nifong on national TV. The stellar Durham in Wonderland has posted a summary of Cooney’s remarks. Judge for yourself:
[Attorney Joe] Cheshire told him, “You will never have a more innocent client than this young man.”
“I cannot tell you the amount of pain that family is in. the only comparison I could make is a comparison to a family with a child who, God forbid, had a fatal disease.”
Talk about heroes and cowards
1) “magnificent Professor Jim Coleman”—one of the few professors to stand up and say that we have procedures for a reason
2) Moez Elmostafa—cab driver was the lynchpin for alibi—behaved exactly as we expect a citizen of this country to do—what did that get him? tried on old bogus charges
3) Phil and Kathy Seligmann—“imagine facing a district attorney who wants to put your child in jail for 30 years. I kept explaining that in North Carolina no one has a check on a district attorney . . . Lesser people would have fallen apart.”
4) Reade—“always regretted we didn’t have a son . . . If I had had a son, I would want him to be like Reade Seligmann.” Honor roll student—semester with Nifong trying to put him in jail and mobs putting him in the streets—had a 3.5 GPA. “one of the bravest people I have ever met.”
Cowards:
We’re delighted the justice system worked, but the system didn’t work—“people were afraid to speak truth to power,”—Herald-Sun—to this day, hasn’t written a single editorial critical of Nifong; instead published editorials claiming that the lacrosse players would have to prove their innocence …
“number of people in Durham, some of whom teach for a living, who should have spoken up”
“One wonders if the newspapers had stood up for proper processes and the teachers had stood up for proper processes, whether this would have slowed down the last coward” (Nifong)
Won’t criticize—but for Nifong, a message:
Prov. Chap 11, verse 29: “he that troubles his own house shall inherit the wind, and a fool shall be a servant to the bravehearted.”
Yeah, Tommy. Quite the blowhard.
