See link, read blog profile to the end…

http://www.blogger.com/profile/22821285

.. the Post’s Andrew Cohen has it exactly right.

I had actually been considering writing something for the Huff Post making a similar point, but I frankly haven’t been following the case closely enough to write it up without doing some reading that I never got around to doing. I consider it to my credit, by the way, that I know so little about the case,

http://penguinsontheequator.blogspot.com/2006/06/on-coverage-of-duke-rape-case.html

——
Does this person really write for the Huffington Post or just another nut online? Is it so dumb it’s a spoof?

Mike… Outstanding!!! Clap, clap, clap!!!! Awesome submittal!!! Let’s hope it makes it to the Editor’s REBUTTAL post…

Andrew Cohen Proves Fools Don’t Always Rush In

After reading Andrew Cohen’s latest tripe suggesting a media “Rush to Duke’s Defense” (6.27), one cannot but conclude that he has just awoken, bearded like Rip Van Winkle, and sauntered on over to have a looksie at what all this fuss in Durham is about. His base premise, that journalists “are tripping all over themselves to quickly and repetitively report the biased view of the young men’s defense…” when, “[u]sually, reporters breathlessly take everything prosecutors and the police say at face value, often to devastating effect upon criminal defendants,” could not be more uninformed, vacuous, misleading and ironic.

Cohen obviously missed the first month and a half of mainstream media coverage of this hoax. He obviously missed the breathless rush to publish and air every slanderous utterance of D.A. Nifong during his more than 70 press briefings within the first five days of the story breaking into the mainstream press. He obviously missed the breathless rush to convey to a nation Nifong’s “absolute certainty” that these privileged “hooligans” had committed the alleged crime. He obviously missed the repeated airings of the “Wanted Poster,” which referenced both the Durham Police Department and local CrimeStoppers organization, bore the team “mug shots” of 43 white players, and urged them all to “Please Come Forward.” He obviously missed the television footage of lacrosse players entering the Durham Police lab to voluntarily submit their DNA samples. While their heads were covered under advice of counsel to avoid individual identification in media airings, they nonetheless appeared, in the skewed aired snippets, every bit guilty rapists. Cohen obviously missed Nifong’s blitzkrieg pandering to black community in advance of his primary election. He obviously missed the laughable, if innumerable, media pieces virtually equating the “criminal” team behavior of open-container possessions and public urinations with a predisposition to rape. The mainstream media did in this case exactly what Cohen says it “usually does….to devastating effect upon criminal defendants.” Too bad Cohen missed it.

Only now, as it becomes clearer by the day that the only “certainty” regarding Nifong’s Folly is its ultimate dismissal on motion for lack of prima facie proof, is the media “tripping all over themselves” to try and get it right.

Michael F. McCusker
Franklin Lakes, New Jersey

Greg, I think that the CBS legal analyst, Andrew Cohen, wrote this article to get noticed. He’s posing a different view, and perhaps he thinks he’ll get some exposure from it. Kind of like somebody we already know (Nifong)…

On the other hand, he could be like “Barney Fife Wilson,” who simply did not do his homework. He didn’t read the written or see the celluloid FACTS in this case; the nefarious espousal of the delusional accuser, the testimony of Nifong and the accused, the examining SAN nurse and Doctor, and the Durham police officers.

Or… this guy could have a personal reason for his post. He may have some affiliation with Nifong or the current presiding judge. Who knows???

I personally tend to think his reason for writing that article is for the first two reasons noted above. He’s expressing a polar opposite view, and therefore, he will get attention for it…

Just my 2 cents.

REPLY: Amen.

Each of us can do nothing to change what our ancestors did or had done to them. Our responsibility is to leave the world better than we found it. There remain obvious divisions still between us. We must look past that and look for the common ground so as not to pass those traits we possess to our children. I expect my children to do better with what I give them than what I did with what my parents gave me, and so on. All I’m saying is, be careful. Make sure we teach our children to recognize injustice, wherever it lies or whatever color it is. I feel comfortable that anyone reading this blog has that capability.

and I just heard a Black Muslim minister (forgot his official title) on Fox yesterday say that blacks could not be racist because blacks did not have economic power. After repeated questioning, he backed down slightly and said that for every ONE black racist act, he could find 100 white racist acts.

Andrew Cohen would be a CBS legal analyst. And I was talking about what Nifong would have “to say” not “to day”. Of course, spell check still thinks “day” is a word. Go figure.

He asserts that there has been a media “rush” to defend the Duke players. Did he just drop in on this case in the last week?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/26/AR2006062600980.html

The initial rush was all condemnation (as we well know around here) and Nifong was taking full advantage of the bully platform, flinging all kinds of accusations we now know were unsupported by evidence. He fired all the arrows in his quiver. That’s why he’s shut himself up now. If he still had anything to day, I’d bet dollars to donuts he’d still be saying it.

I think Nifong’s “ethics forbid me to talk now that indictments have been handed down” response to Newsweek is just nonsense as has been previously illustrated in this blog. Nifong’s not talking because he has nothing more to say and Andrew Cohen is waxing stupid because he evidently fell off a turnip truck in Durham just yesterday.

Tiffany, I don’t disagree with your speculation that maybe there was such a scuffle, I think it’s reasonable to guess that the guys were not happy about paying $800 for such a short show. Of course, a scuffle leaving no discernable injuries to the “victim” certainly does not make it okay to charge 3 guys with rape, sexual assault, or kidnapping.

To address the items you list that were reported…
– the “broken fingernails”…broken? Says who? They are fake nails, I think that’s all we know. My recollection is that the lax players story from the beginning was that they thought Precious was in the bathroom doing her nails, and that she was so messed up that she spilled her nail polish on the handrail of the steps as she left the house, prior to passing out in the yard. I recall no specific mention (other than irresponsible “journalists” mis-stating things early on) that the nails were “broken”. Reminds me of shrieking harpy Nancy Grace screaming that a player’s dna was “under one of the nails”, when not even Nifong had said “under”…just that dna was “on” a nail, which means it could have been on the top and just picked up off a kleenex in the trash can…not scratched off the player in a struggle. Journalists can really slant our opinions with such minor errors in reporting.

- broken heals, dissheveledness… I think the pictures of Precious arriving at the party and during the party show her to be disheveled and stumbling on one high-heeled shoe, and smiling. This, like pretty much every fact that comes to light (accurately), supports the lax players’ consistent story that Precious showed up intoxicated (and of course, was not raped).

Tiffany, I enjoy your perspective and please don’t think I’m picking on you. I just wanted to take the opportunity to point out how some things we take as “facts” can be painted by the press (and, of course, by attorneys too!) to mean one thing, when the reality is that such “facts” are not really as depicted and they actually mean something else entirely, or nothing at all. It just takes one or two incorrect adjectives applied by an agenda-driven or just plain sloppy “journalist” (or an attorney)!

Thanks for listening. Great comments everybody, let’s keep this discussion going. Fascinating case, great to have different reactions and viewpoints.