What scares THEM, Stefanie, are people like you, young liberals who care about the truth, don't want to be hypocritical and don't want to frame innocent people to serve a supposed "higher truth" or "greater good."
"It's really long, so I doubt it will be published anywhere, but I sent it to NYT, Daily News, NYP, Newsday, Long Island Press, and I will be sending it to some NC papers as well....I know it's long, but it has the ability to be cut down. I thought it was a good draft anyway."
So Maryland University senior Stefanie Williams prefaced her lament on the personal and societal tragedy and legal travesty known as the Duke case.
Stefanie, the North Carolina NAACP won't publish it, no matter how much your late dad did for poor blacks and how well your parents raised you to eschew racial bigotry. Neither will the political correctness extremists who wanted false accuser Crystal Gail Mangum's lurid and ludicrous gang rape tale to be true. But plenty of my readers respect a young liberal like you for following the evidence and not letting yourself be brainwashed or blinded to the truth.
So, one more time...Ms. (or Miss, in case Reade Seligmann or Brad Bannon is wondering) Stefanie Williams:
What My Dad Would Have Thought by Stefanie Williams
It’s been nearly seventeen months since my mother sent me an instant message at school asking “did you hear about the Duke team?” I remember reading the initial reports and thinking “I’ll absolutely die if it’s someone from Garden City”. It turned out it wasn’t anyone from Garden City. It wasn’t anyone on that team.
I spoke out early and often when this case began, mainly because it actually hit home. I am currently a rising senior at the University of Maryland, a fellow Atlantic Coast Conference school alongside Duke University, and as a freshman, was the manager for the men’s NCAA division I lacrosse team. Beyond that, I grew up on Long Island, in a town called Garden City. Known mainly for its intense lacrosse team, beautiful homes, sprawling golf courses, tight-knit community, and “Leave it to Beaver” families, Garden City was an ideal place to grow up. Incidentally, Collin Finnerty, one of the former Duke lacrosse players who was falsely accused, indicted, and charged with second degree [Note: actually, first-degree] rape, kidnapping, and sexual assault, grew up only blocks away from me. I also attended high school with several of the men on the 2005-2006 Duke men’s lacrosse team. So to say I had a lot invested in this case was an understatement.
I watched for almost a year as night after night, talk shows, news shows, and even comedy shows, focused on this team, including the parts of their lives that intersected with my own; I never knew that someone’s grade point average, family income, high school extra curricular activities, church, and property taxes had anything to do with being charged with a rape. I also never knew that underage drinking and strippers were “issues” that only affected white, upper-class, students at “elite” institutions. But apparently, I was wrong.
I sat by as newspapers, magazines, and news broadcasts labeled these men elitists, misogynists, racists, spoiled “frat boy” alcoholic brats who have had everything handed to them by their “rich daddies”. I watched my town come under fire as a breeding ground for racism. Nancy Grace and Wendy Murphy condemned anyone who had ever so much as picked up a lacrosse stick as a rapist, and black “activists” used this case to further the idea that every white male who comes from wealth is automatically a racist pig out to destroy black people. I watched members of my own team at Maryland face the scrutiny, and found myself defending them often, clarifying that not only were the stereotypes surrounding the “culture of lacrosse” not true, but that in fact these men were the closest things to brothers I ever had. They were men who made sure I got home safe at night, picked me up when I needed rides, studied with me and helped me pass my intro to computers class, guys who stood up for me when other guys at the bars got too rowdy. These weren’t men who assaulted me, raped me, or treated me badly, nor were the guys I had come to know on the Duke team.
After the case began to unravel, and when it finally came to light that the prosecution of the three men was unethical and false, I saw an even grosser side to the public; a ravenous, unfair, vengeful side that didn’t care for justice, only sought to see the rich white kids get punished for who they were. Suddenly, people began mocking their families, their parents, the way they dressed, the way they walked, anything they said in their own defense. In a recent article published by the Wilmington Journal, a certain Mr. Bailey even referred to the members of the team as “pampered white frat boys”. While sometimes referred to as “lax”, it does not represent lambda alpha chi, but instead lacrosse. A sport, an athletic commitment much like the other programs at Duke; highly competitive, where the members of the team are chosen from thousands of qualified lacrosse players around the country and world based on athletic and academic performance. As for the team being entirely white, as Mr. Bailey would lead you to believe, Devon Sherwood, a freshman player at the time of the alleged rape, is African American. And in terms of pampered, many of the players parents are working class members of their communities, including police officers, teachers, and firefighters. Why Mr. Bailey, or anyone for that matter, would judge a group of men so harshly and cruelly without researching their backgrounds first, let alone even meeting them, is beyond me. I find it funny that those who adamantly fight against racism, sexism, and classism against minority working class women, had no problem judging these men on the fact that they were white males from wealthy families. I guess it only matters when it’s going a certain way.
I would like to also say that as a current student at a large and prestigious public research university, this “insane, wild, illegal” party the team threw, looks like a game of tidily winks compared to some of the parties I have attended in my four years at college. I stand proudly and say I, like 95% of the rest of students in college across America, have gotten drunk underage, seen a stripper, owned a fake ID, played a game of beer pong, attended multiple parties, watched other people do keg stands, and witnessed a whole lot of sexual exploration. Condemn me if you wish, but let he who has never “sinned” cast the first stone. This is college folks, like it or not, deny it or not. I speak on behalf of my generation. This is not a “white thing”, it’s a college thing. And to assume a black college student has never urinated in public, or said a dirty word, simply because Nancy Grace wasn’t highlighting it, is pathetic. Let’s get real people.
Furthermore, the favorite topic of degradation many of the anti-Duke lacrosse community members enjoy has been the players’ socio-economic standing. For some reason, people have been lead to believe that because the three falsely accused men came from comfortable backgrounds, they are not human. They are not capable of feeling pain, of suffering, or of being kept down. People say that because they will still have “good lives”, we should not feel sorry for the Duke members.
Let me tell you about pain and suffering. I grew up in the same town as Collin Finnerty, and the same lifestyle as many of the members of the team. I lived in a beautiful home, on an acre of property, had the best of everything given to me from birth. I went to one of the best public schools on Long Island, played lacrosse and field hockey, and enjoyed summers in the Hamptons. When I was sixteen, this all changed. My father, a prominent maritime lawyer, well respected on Wall Street and in our community, strong family man, had died during an open heart surgery. My life, and the lives of my mother and sister were changed forever.
We cried. We grieved. We felt as though our family had been ripped apart. A piece of me was gone, and we had to deal. But I will tell you what we did not do. My family did not roll around in wads of money. We did not remind ourselves how “wealthy” we were. We did not pride ourselves on monetary comforts. We gathered around our family, and grieved over the loss of our father. At age sixteen, I gave the eulogy at his funeral. I stood before more than 200 funeral attendees and spoke of the lessons my father taught me; acceptance, understanding, patience, selflessness, graciousness, kindness, and love. Success, money, wealth, country clubs, cars, and bank accounts were never mentioned, nor thought about. So for those who believe pain, suffering, and heart ache are all “privileges” of the working class black man, think again. Rich or poor, black or white, we all bleed the same. And in most cases, no amount of money can relieve our pain. There is not a day that goes by that I wouldn’t trade my home, my cars, my bank account, anything, to be able to speak to my father again.
Looking back over the case, I only wish my father had been here to see it all go down. My father, who often did pro-bono work for minority clients in his later years, right up until the night before his surgery in his hospital bed, would be heart broken to see the divisive nature of the NAACP and other “liberal” groups, who exploited the racial issues for their own agendas. He would have been heartbroken to hear people who had never stepped foot in Garden City, attacking a community he gave so much to. He would have been heartbroken to hear the testimony of Mr. Evans, father of falsely accused Dave Evans, who developed type I diabetes due to the stress the false allegations against his son had put on him, as he too suffered from diabetes. And above all, he would have been heartbroken to see so many people attacking these parents for being “wealthy”, and for giving their children a life most would die for. Because since when in this country, has it been considered wrong or improper to sacrifice everything for your family? Since when has it been deemed shameful to provide a life for your child where education, opportunities, and values are provided? Why was it wrong for these families to encourage success, education, and talent in their children? Why was it wrong that these families and parents worked hard to provide a life for their children that most would consider the American Dream?
So to all those who had were so confident they really knew that team, to those who based their entire opinion of the men on one party, to those who judged my hometown, my favorite sport, my life, my friends, my classmates, and my values without ever experiencing any of it, I simply say thank you. Thank you for constantly reminding myself, as well as the rest of the world, how truly blessed I was to grow up in a world where jealousy, envy, revenge, and stereotypes did not control my life. People say money is the root of all evil; however, is it those who have it and use it wisely, or those who don’t and hate those who do, that are truly the evil ones?
Stefanie, it's the love of money, not money, that is the root of all evil.
Scapegoating is common. The members of the 2005-2006 Duke University Men's Lacrosse Team were scapegoated, not because their accuser was credible and her original claim of being gang raped by white racist white lacrosse players (she gave Devon Sherwood a pass, but he didn't need one either) was much more plausible that the "I was gang raped while levitating" version that conveniently served as the fig leaf for the North Carolina Attorney General's decision not to prosecute her for a false rape charge because she has mental problems.
I sent former FEMA director Michael D. Brown my article entitled "The Duke case/Hurricane Katrina lessons", in which I quoted an emailer who thinks the New Orleans levees were deliberately destroyed for racial reasons.
Mr. Brown replied:
"OK, I confess....we blew up the levees at the instruction of POTUS. You should have seen me sticking dynamite in little holes in the middle of the night.
"That people think this is very scary...."
Mr. Brown's first sentence is attempted comic relief; his second, serious as a massive heart attack or stroke.
The people who "think like that" about Hurricane Katrina and the Duke men's lacrosse players ARE very scary, and the people who manipulate them (like former Durham County, North Carolina District Attorney Michael B. Nifong) are even more scary.
What scares THEM, Stefanie, are people like you, young liberals who care about the truth, don't want to be hypocritical and don't want to frame innocent people to serve a supposed "higher truth" or "greater good."
One can't justify or excuse bad behavior by explaining that it is typical, no matter how hard one might try, of course, but you did provide helpful context and you didn't leap to an erroneous conclusion about what really happened at that ill-considered party.
Michael J. Gaynor has been practicing law in New York since 1973. A former partner at Fulton, Duncombe & Rowe and Gaynor & Bass, he is a solo practitioner admitted to practice in New York state and federal courts and an Association of the Bar of the City of New York member.
Gaynor graduated magna cum laude, with Honors in Social Science, from Hofstra University's New College, and received his J.D. degree from St. John's Law School, where he won the American Jurisprudence Award in Evidence and served as an editor of the Law Review and the St. Thomas More Institute for Legal Research. He wrote on the Pentagon Papers case for the Review and obscenity law for The Catholic Lawyer and edited the Law Review's commentary on significant developments in New York law.
The day after graduating, Gaynor joined the Fulton firm, where he focused on litigation and corporate law. In 1997 Gaynor and Emily Bass formed Gaynor & Bass and then conducted a general legal practice, emphasizing litigation, and represented corporations, individuals and a New York City labor union. Notably, Gaynor & Bass prevailed in the Second Circuit in a seminal copyright infringement case, Tasini v. New York Times, against newspaper and magazine publishers and Lexis-Nexis. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed, 7 to 2, holding that the copyrights of freelance writers had been infringed when their work was put online without permission or compensation.
Gaynor currently contributes regularly to www.MichNews.com, www.RenewAmerica.com, www.WebCommentary.com, www.PostChronicle.com and www.therealitycheck.org and has contributed to many other websites. He has written extensively on political and religious issues, notably the Terry Schiavo case, the Duke "no rape" case, ACORN and canon law, and appeared as a guest on television and radio. He was acknowledged in Until Proven Innocent, by Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson, and Culture of Corruption, by Michelle Malkin. He appeared on "Your World With Cavuto" to promote an eBay boycott that he initiated and "The World Over With Raymond Arroyo" (EWTN) to discuss the legal implications of the Schiavo case. On October 22, 2008, Gaynor was the first to report that The New York Times had killed an Obama/ACORN expose on which a Times reporter had been working with ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief.
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