The American Spectator

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Boys Will Be Boisterous

6.20.07 @ 12:01AM

DUKE OUT
Re: Jay D. Homnick's Classless of 2007:

Thanks you so much for publishing Jay D. Homnick's thoughtful essay about the Duke situation. It is a timely reminder that there are activities which, if not illegal per se, are still best avoided if we seek the protection of the law. The law is society's ultimate method of regulating human behavior, but we are poorer society if it is the only means of doing so. I greatly appreciated Mr. Homnick's Talmudic approach to the problem; it is remarkably similar to the approach advocated by the LDS church: It is best to avoid even the appearance of evil.
-- Michael Hofstetter

I'm not 100% sure of what Jay Homnick is trying to say here. Is his point that while he is happy the three former Duke students have been exonerated, their troubles were partially their fault because they were at that bar or party in the first place?
-- Mark Saleman

It would be very appropriate for these young men to accept some responsibility for getting themselves into this mess. I hope all those priests who stood by these families have counseled them on this. A little too much boys will be boys here.

The Nifong decision was the right one and a good one. Let's balance it with a slap to the other side.
-- Annette Cwik

Thank you, Jay Homnick for being the only person I have heard suggest that the "boys will be boisterous" line does not let the Duke lacrosse players off the hook for what precipitated this whole sordid affair. They planned a party, planned the entertainment and hired the entertainer.

They were fortunate to have parents bail them out of the mess they created for themselves. They were fortunate not to have been a son of mine, squandering the opportunity I had afforded them of an expensive education.

And oh, darn, now their reputations are besmirched! "Where do I go to get my reputation back?" can be answered with "What reputation?"
-- Diane Smith
South San Francisco, California

I'm not sure I get Mr. Homnick's "nuanced" point, as he appears to proclaim a pox on all parties concerned in the Duke case, except one. As the facts have finally established, all these young college men did was to throw an off campus party with alcohol and a stripper. Oh my!, quickly, the smelling salts!! Apparently, it was a question of money that precipitated the chain of events that was to follow. No, really?

So please, spare me your moralization about these young men. If you wish to ponder nuances that "elude conventional wisdom," may I suggest you concentrate on the faculty of Duke and that mensch of a president, Richard Brodhead, for their craven and politically motivated actions. Their reactions exhibited a classic example of insulated, leftist, elitist group-think, dangerously unchecked. Just where exactly were the "adults" at Duke? Nifong has at least been disbarred: A most proper disposition for his actions. Duke University has quietly paid out a settlement to the students and their families, while the MSM concentrates on Nifong. But what of Brodhead and the infamous "88"? Will they go unpunished? Apparently so.
-- A. DiPentima

There is the whiff of moral equivalence in Jay Homnick's "Classless of 2007." Yes, it was foolish for the Duke Lacrosse team to host a party with strippers. It has also been foolish for some of our courts to protect stripping as free speech (would they were so concerned about actual political free speech). Those justices were supposedly mature legal scholars, not callow boys unfortunately unexposed (forgive the pun) to any teaching of traditional morality at their supposedly first-class university.

There is no comparison of any kind between such foolishness and the persecution of these students by Nifong for political purposes, and by the Duke establishment for a PC rallying point. I note that Duke has already settled with the students. Terms have not been released, but a statement by one of the students gives me hope that part of the settlement might be that left-wing oldie of participation in a consciousness raising session, in this case dedicated to not jumping to conclusions based on PC script. Delicious, if so. One would hope the President of that august institution would resign from shame if he is capable of feeling any. I suppose that is too much to expect. However, how can anyone take seriously anything he says in the future? After all, he's the jerk who was bamboozled by a not very bright political hack prosecutor. And he's the benevolent father of those faculty children (all with Ph.D.'s, making them idiot savants) who couldn't wait to libel and slander members of their own community before they knew anything about what really happened at the party. Where are the alumni? Are they really okay with turning their alma mater into a laughingstock?

As for Nifong, disbarment is not enough. He belongs in an orange jump suit for obstruction of justice. It was clear within days of the "incident" (well, I have to call the nothing something) that there was no there there. Not only was there no positive evidence; there was clear exculpatory evidence going the other way -- evidence from which Nifong insulated himself. The disbarment hearing focused on the non-disclosure of the exculpatory DNA evidence, but there were plenty of earlier actions taken by Nifong and his minions that demonstrate this was always a political ploy, not a serious law enforcement matter. Let us not forget the photo ID array of only Duke players, so there could be no "wrong" identification. Or that Nifong never even met with the nutty complainant before rushing to judgment -- and to the microphone. Or that Nifong wouldn't even meet with Reade Seligman to review clearcut evidence that he was away from the house when the "incident" occurred. Hey, so what if these students would have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to protect themselves legally from an out-of-control prosecutor. That was no skin off Nifong's nose! I hope that the civil suit against Nifong results in every future dollar he makes going to the victims of his malfeasance. For once, maybe the tort system can actually do some good. I have heard that Nifong may qualify for a public pension of over $5K per month. If so, I hope there is some way for him to lose that as well.

Nifong could probably have saved himself if he dropped the matter after the primary, but he was too stupid and stubborn to do so. He didn't want to be embarrassed when it became obvious that the whole prosecution was for political purposes. Joke was on him! Everyone already knew that. There might have actually been some forbearance if this had gone away after 60 days, instead of dragging on through 2006 and into 2007. After all, the liberal press was not going to campaign against a kindred spirit. They would have praised him for stepping up to the situation and "following where the evidence led." (They would have ignored that the evidence led to dropping the matter within the first week or so after the "incident.") When talk radio and the cable news networks had exposed this fiasco for nearly a year, and the North Carolina Attorney General was forced to take over the case, even the MSM allies couldn't save Nifong. They merely buried the story.

Some college kids foolishly followed a crude tradition. A prosecutor obstructed justice to save his political career, and an institution turned on its students in a PC flight of fancy. There is no moral equivalence here!
-- Stephen Zierak
Kansas City, Missouri

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