HONOR AT DUKE & IN DURHAM: DRAMATIS PERSONAE

The Astute Bloggers have not devoted much bandwidth to Mike Nifong's attempted judicial lynching of three innocent collegians, but now that all but the endgame is played out, it may be apropos to offer a capsule view of some of the major players in this non-scandal of a scandal. More details of the whole sordid, sorry story will be found by reading the excellent blog "Durham in Wonderland."

Here at any rate is the cast of characters:

Crystal Gail Mangum, the accuser, was once protected with anonymity by the complicit press. She now has her own Wikipedia entry, which notes that she first told the story of being raped at the Lacrosse Team's party "After being involuntarily committed to the Durham Access Center (a mental health and substance abuse facility)." She has a long history of mental illness, made an initial claim of gang rape against a boyfriend 10 years ago, and according to the DNA evidence made public so far, had sex with 3 or 4 or 5 different men in the days immediately before the party -- none of whom was a Duke Lacrosse player.

The question of honor doesn't even come into play when we consider her imaginary accusations. She acted entirely without honor, probably in the heat of the moment, acting out her confused and chaotic inner emotional life in what she knew was a politically-correct way. In deference to her psychiatric history, she will probably not be charged.

The prosecutor, Mike Nifong, is a thoroughly dishonorable fellow. You can't blame him, really, for seizing his main chance and perverting every principle of prosecutorial ethics, because he only did it for personal gain. He was acquainted with Crystal Mangum and her family from a previous case, and seized upon her accusations just when the Durham Police were about to conclude, based on pending DNA evidence, that there was nothing to do. Nifong was motivated primarily by ambition and greed. He is honestly corrupt, and didn't see anything wrong in destroying 3 innocent lives so that he could portray himself as the champion of the poor, the downtrodden, and the African-American, thus positioning himself to garner the slim margin he needed in order to be elected District Attorney and magnify his pension. To achieve his goal, Nifong set up improper and irregular interviews with the accuser, pilloried his 3 innocent victims in biased and misleading press briefings, and concealed and misrepresented critical DNA evidence. The North Carolina State Bar Association's brief against him is entirely damning, and the State Attorney General's dismissal of all charges against the Lacrosse players, and his characterization of Nifong's zealous prosecution, used unprecedented language in lambasting Nifong for being just the sort of scoundrel he is. At a minimum, he will be disbarred for life. His conduct in this case was so outrageous that he is probably also liable for civil damages. I would not be surprised if he ends up behind bars, as well.

The Duke Faculty "Gang of 88" immediately seized upon the case to make communist propaganda. You can't really blame them, either. A bunch of incompetent hard-core leftist ideologues who purvey weary Marxist-Leninist cliches and neo-Fanonist race-baiting in lieu of teaching the disciplines they ostensibly represent, they would not know honor if it came up behind them and bit them on their collective arse. They would consider the very concept of personal honor to be a charade or a facade erected by dead white men in order to prevent the oppressed from using those "any means necessary" they need to assert their personal self-worth. So we shouldn't be surprised to see them attacking 3 innocent men with character assassination, slander, and libel, and using them as the objects of an academic auto-da-fe. Rather, we should be grateful that for once at least the Marxist-Leninists didn't simply execute those they disdain and those who dared to oppose them.

But the single figure whose actions were the most despicable and most dishonorable in this whole shabby spectacle must be Richard Brodhead, the President of Duke University. Crystal Mangum is a sick individual. Mike Nifong acts like an ambitious sociopath. The 88 leftists on the Duke Faculty were only producing the sort of leftist filth that won them tenure.

But Richard Brodhead was the man who should have taken charge. He should have seen to it that the members of the faculty honored the requirements of the University, and that they refrained from slandering and libeling 3 innocent students -- Duke students. He should have insisted that the accused be considered innocent until proven guilty, and provided them the protection that the sacred centrality of academic freedom is supposed to confer on a University community.

Instead, he joined the lynch mob. He dishonorably betrayed his office. He fired a coach who led his teams to victory season after season, and whose players had a 100% graduation rate -- from Duke, and whose team members' visits were the ones that the sick children at the Duke Ronald MacDonald House liked the best. Rather than championing their innocence, he allowed his faculty to slander them, and participated in a process that made it clear that he thought they were guilty. He showed that he was completely out of touch with the students who are under his protection in loco parentis.

If Brodhead had the merest flake of a shred of a scrap of the commonest, most tatterdemalion honor there could be, he would have resigned by now. The fact that the trustees of Duke University have not summarily fired him shows you that they have no concern for honor, or for honesty, or for the students of Duke University, either. What a sorry bunch of politically-correct nincompoops.

On the other hand, and it really is not fitting to mention them by name in the same post that describes the sins of their detractors, the 3 Duke Lacrosse team players conducted themselves magnificently. They showed that they have the right stuff, the grit, and courage, and dignity to remain true to themselves, their teammates, and their school despite their abandonment by Dick Brodhead and the Board of Trustees. When the history of this sorry episode is written, their names will blaze in the firmament of honor like three immovable pole stars to inspire and encourage those who are victimized by the crazy, the unethical, the ambitiously immoral, the ideologically corrupt, and the dishonorable. I will try to do them justice in another entry.