Quasimodo rings N&O’s bell; Duke silent

Say “Quasimodo” and most people think of the bell-ringer of Notre Dame de Paris in Victor Hugo’s novel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

But many of us who’ve followed the Duke Hoax case closely know another Quasimodo, the one who comments often and astutely at Liestoppers forum.

This morning Liestoppers’ Quasimodo rang the Raleigh News & Observer’s bell.

Here’s what happened.

The N&O ran a story this morning: “D.C. escort case ends first career.” Under NY Times’ reporter Eric Lipton’s byline the story began:

Deborah Jeane Palfrey has not been shy about it: For more than a decade she ran an escort service that catered to upscale clients in the nation's capital, sending women to men's homes or hotel rooms.

For about $300, she promised 90 minutes of what she has described as a discreet "legal high-end erotic fantasy service." But the discreet part is over, after federal authorities charged her with operating a prostitution ring.

"The tentacles of this matter reach far, wide and high into the echelons of power in the United States," Palfrey wrote in a court filing last month, as she prepared to release a list of her clients' telephone numbers and vowed to subpoena her customers -- some of whom she described as prominent Washington officials.

It is a defense strategy that had its first casualty Friday.

Randall L. Tobias, the top foreign aid adviser in the State Department, became the most prominent person on the list to be identified when he resigned after acknowledging to ABC News that he was among Palfrey's clients.

ABC News reported that Tobias told the network on Thursday that he had called Pamela Martin and Associates -- Palfrey's business -- for massage services, not for sex. …

The story reported nothing else about Tobias other than he’d declined through his attorney to comment further.

Liestoppers’ Quasimodo, however, tells us more about Tobias with an excerpt from Tobias’ Wikipedia biography:

Tobias also has served on a number of corporate boards, including AT&T, Eli Lilly and Company,... and for 13 years as a trustee of Duke University, including 3 years as chair of the board.(emphasis added)

”GONG! GONG! GONG!”

How did the Raleigh News & Observer, which gave us the assessed tax value of Reade Selimann’s home in New Jersey, miss “the local connection” in the Tobias story?

Will the N&O be seeking quotes from Duke’s President, Dick (“Whatever they did was bad enough”) Brodhead or any of the many faculty at Duke who’ve been expressing their “moral outrage” at 18 and 19 year olds who watched strippers and engaged in underage drinking?

Tobias did the right thing by resigning.

We need to implement at Duke and other schools effective means to punish and reduce underage drinking as well as encourage students to find more worthwhile activities than watching strippers.

And we shouldn't forget all those at Duke who've fallen victim to the hypocrisy epidemic that's been sweeping the campus for the last 13 months. Does anyone have a "recovery plan" for those people?