Commenters, Ls v. Cs, & RFK

Readers Note: I'll post later tonight concerning yesterday's filing as it pertains to DPD Cpl. David Addison and his DPD supervisor, Maj. Lee Russ.

I'll also post concerning an email I received from Duke Professor Orin Starn following my posting of a letter to his department chair in which I demontrated how he had taken a very importent statement by Duke's Coach K and distorted it in ways that it is impossible to believe were anything other than deliberate.

Check back in after 8 pm Easten.

John
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Something remarkable has been going on at JinC for about the last three weeks: commenters have been disputing as to who has done more in the pursuit of truth and justice during the Duke Hoax.

Some say Conservatives have; others say Liberals have done as much; others don’t think either Cons or Libs have done enough.

Some have asked, “What’s a C or L anyway?”

And there’s been more.

Now, I know most of you are saying, “John, what’s remarkable about Cs & Ls and others fussing back and forth?”

Just this: The fussing has been, on the whole, civil and informed.

You all know there isn’t a lot of that these days.

Now I want to recount an anecdote I hope interests and amuses you. I also mean it to serve as my lead-in to where I come down on the roles of the Cs & Ls & et al. in the Duke Hoax.

As soon as you read the anecdote, you’ll know where I stand, but I hope you’ll read the post because I’ll say a few things I think are important for us all to remember.

In 1961, following the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion, President Kennedy formed a committee to determine what went wrong. His brother Robert, then Attorney General, headed the committee.

As happens in Washington, all of the organizations involved in the planning of the disastrous operation – the CIA, the Defense and State Departments, the FBI, a White House planning group and others – were represented on this “fact-finding” committee.

Well, as you would guess, there was a lot of finger pointing and arguing over who was really responsible for the failed operation.

At one point RFK, who’d grown up in a family of nine children and had an ironic sense of humor, said to the group: “Please, there’s no need to fight like this. So much went wrong there’s enough blame for all of us to have a share.”

There are Cs & Ls who deserve praise for their Hoax efforts; and Cs & Ls who don’t. And there are Independents and “whatevers” who belong in one or the other category.

And that still leaves open the matter of just what is a C and an L. Let’s do that one another day.

Does April 15, 2061 work for you? It’s the 100th Anniversary of the Bay of Pigs invasion.

Now I promised to say a few other things.

I think we can fairly say it was almost entirely Libs, Leftists and PCers who initially exploited Mangum’s lies and the framing efforts of certain DPD officers and their supervisors teaming with Nifong and others in his office.

Those exploiters, usually called enablers, helped launch the witch hunt and give a seeming credence to Nifong and the others “investigation.” The enablers not only sustained the attempted frame-up, many of them continued to support it long after it was obvious David Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann had been framed.

Among those who supported the obvious framing of the three young men were Duke’s President, Richard Brodhead, a PCer; the liberals and leftists who control the editorial page at the Raleigh N&O; and the “whatevers” at Bob Ashley’s Durham H-S who help Ashley edit his editorial page.

But it must be remembered that right from the beginning there were liberals who spoke out for due process and began challenging Nifong in late March. UNC-Chapel Hill Law School Professor Ken Broun comes to mind. So does Durham attorney and constitutional law specialist Alex Charns.

I’d mention KC Johnson and Stuart Taylor here but I’m not sure if either self-IDs as a liberal.

On the Conservative side, I’ll be very brief because this post is getting long.

One of the most important Nifong enablers has been Duke’s Board of Trustee Chair Robert Steel, who currently serves as Under Secretary of the Treasury in the Bush administration.

North Carolina’s senior Senator is Elizabeth Dole, a Duke alumna and former member of the University’s Board of Trustees. Our junior Senator is Robert Barr.

Both Dole and Barr self-ID as Cs, at least at election time.

Neither at present has called for a Department of Justice investigation into the Hoax’s injustices.

Yet it’s hard to see how, if our state’s two U. S. Senators called for such an investigation, the DOJ could refuse to begin one.

We shouldn’t fuss C v. L. Enough went wrong and is still going wrong in the Hoax that there’s plenty of blame to go around. And a lot of right was done so there's plenty of that to go around too.

On balance, I think the left hand side of the spectrum has an awful lot to explain following the Hoax, especially why so many organizations and "activists' from that side of the spectum abandoned what they say they’re about, and instead helped enable the Hoax.

I just don’t think we can distribute all the blame to one side of the political spectrum and all the praise to the other.