'Fantastic Lies' 30 for 30

A-holes? They were accused of stealing a pizza, making too much noise at a party, and suspicion (note: only "suspicion") of throwing water in a water fight.
Meanwhile, groundskeepers said they were respectful and polite, ditto the airline personnel who handled their travel. They mentored kid's teams in Durham
and raised the most money of any team for Katrina relief. They had the most scholastic awards in their division, and 100% graduation rate.

An article in Duke magazine in fall 2005 ("After the Ball") noted that they were mostly unknown and unrecognized on campus (due to the lack of interest
in their sport) and that this was actually beneficial to their studies. (The narrative, however, would have you believe they were BMOC.)

Concurrent with their case, in early 2007. an actual rape of a Duke student took place at an off-campus party thrown by a Duke fraternity. Duke athletes were at that party.
A gun and drugs were found in the house. The actual rapist was released on $50,000 bail (the lacrosse players had to post $400,000 each), and while out
he then raped a second woman. The victim, Katy Rouse, alleged she was hustled off the Duke campus and later sued the Duke administration. The problem
with that story was that it was the reverse of the Duke story (the rapist was black, and Rouse was white), and it would have ruined the narrative. Hence, there were no statements from Duke President Brodhead; no open letters from the faculty; no marches or candlelight vigils; it
went almost entirely unreported. Odd, if the purpose of journalism is to report the news and not to create and sustain a narrative.

 

The "narrative" I don't buy is the players=good guys, the strippers/Nifong=bad guys. What we have is a group of imperfect human beings, with widely varying degrees of fuck ups and mitigating circumstances.

Duke Magazine is not necessarily where I'd go for an impartial account, but I'll give you that maybe that's unfair.

It's not the BMOC thing. When you listed the players transgressions, you forgot hired strippers. I don't want to give away too much. Watch the film.

Nothing they did made them deserve what happened. Period. End of story. I feel horribly for them.

As a mother of a boy, this could not be more of a cautionary tale.

 

Duke Magazine is not necessarily where I'd go for an impartial account, but I'll give you that maybe that's unfair.

Just to note that issue came out a few months before the scandal (ergo, it was not an attempt to defend them).

When you listed the players transgressions, you forgot hired strippers.

OK. Not to stretch this out too far; but remember, some 20 other groups at Duke hired strippers that year, including the Basketball team. (Had
that team been falsely-accused of rape, you can bet Duke would have been in their corner from the get-go, including Brodhead and Coach K.) Duke
later also sponsored the Sex Workers Art Show, which consisted of strippers doing weird acts, permissible only because they threw in some political
lines to make it seem "relevant". No one was admonished for attending that -- indeed, students were encouraged to attend.

As well, the party was compensation for the team having to remain on campus and miss Spring Break. (What were other students doing on Spring Break?)
Many of the attendees -- and that includes two of those later charged -- didn't even know there were going to be strippers until they arrived
and were asked to contribute $20 to their fees. And many were not that eager to attend -- again including two of those later charged. (Note that
they left almost immediately after the "show" broke up.) But detailing that would have hurt the desired narrative.

 

PW2, a Winter Olympics city in France.

 

Wait, what's wrong with hiring strippers?

 

Compensation for missing spring break?

 

Yeah WTF would that be? Maybe he could tell us.

 

Things that I hope they mention:

Pressler's anger management.

Team out of control for years off the field.

Nifong's guitar collection.

 

Amazing how there was no physical evidence of rape and many ran with this bs. Guess strippers and/or hookers never get upset when they don't get paid what they're supposed to or what they expect. Then when that happens guess they never try to rob or falsely accuse.

 

There was a 10 minute stretch where the SJWs screeched like crazy during the doc.

My ears hurt.

 

I'm sorry, but I find any attempt to apportion blame here on a "varying degrees of fuckups" rationale to be nauseating horseshit. Of course we're all imperfect, but the fuckuppery on the two sides in this story was not just "varying", instead it was inherently different and incomparable--on one side it was downright sinister if not evil, on the other it was simply the sort of routine dumb shit that testosterone-laden college boys commonly do in pursuit of (what they think is) harmless fun. Maybe you don't approve of hiring strippers and having drunken parties, but it ain't illegal, and it ain't remotely near the same realm of misconduct as what those like Nifong and Mangum did.

I'm a liberal-leaning guy with a distaste for entitled rich boy Dukies, but I have absolutely no problem with the concluding narrative from this story being "players=good guys, stripper/Nifong=bad guys."

 

Jesus what a clusterfuck.

Brad the lawyer was a stud.