Sensationalists Quiet as former Duke Lacrosse Players are off the Hook

Well the opportunists lose again and for that matter, so do the young lady who accused these men of rape, the city of Durham, Duke University, and these young men that will be forever be branded with the proverbial Scarlet Letter on their lives. Where are the journalists who wasted their time following a story that had not been properly investigated? Where is the prosecutor who is up for re-election? Where is the Durham chapter of the NAACP? What about the church community that was up in arms about the matter when the story broke? Where are the politicians that were looking for all of that Public Relations time? Do we have another Tawana Brawley among us? Well folks this is another opportunity for us to look at the situation and see it for what it is, as opposed to what we’ve been told.

This is another disgrace that the masses bit like a fish does a worm on a fisherman’s hook. But again, this is an interracial injustice. The media loves this stuff. It gets the masses pumped up. It opens up the old wounds of Jim Crow, Civil Rights, and Slavery. Look, racism is alive and well. But it only has power over you if you give into it. Let ignorant people be. So let’s not get too far off of the topic. The local people were in a frenzy demanding justice and that sentiment, because of the media coverage, just spilled over to the rest of the country. So the news goes from the Duke students, to Don Imus and back to the Duke students. Are we playing the race card? Why did she accuse them of rape? I don’t know. Now these guys may have participated in some immoral acts with her, but the country was told that these guys raped her and all of these sensationalist media hogs and civil rights activists, and demagogue politicians jumped on the opportunity. Why didn’t or why don’t these same people protest the drug selling, drug usage, prostitution and other crimes that have been going on in Durham before this incident happened? These types of parties go on all of the time, especially where two major party schools like Duke and UNC exist, approximately nine 9 miles apart. The people of Durham need to ask themselves if they are doing all they can to rid their community of the elements that are bringing down their community. This incident didn’t bring down their community, this stuff happens all of the time, a party that goes overboard, lewd behavior, but there were some white gentlemen involved and she yelled rape. So naturally the law enforcement and the media are very sympathetic to rape and there’s nothing wrong with that, rape is horrible. Hey, but no one got excited when a large US contractor, Dyn-Corp, got busted for trafficking 200,000 women and child as sex slaves. This company gets our tax dollars to provide a service, they were caught raping women and children, and then they get rewarded with more contracts. The point is that rape is wrong, but the media didn’t report on it, so the citizenry did nothing about a substantive matter, again. But they had hearings of it on Capitol Hill. It’s all a game they’re playing. Anyway, I’m digressing, back to my point. This is a model for communities everywhere, to get involved, stand up and take responsibility for your community.

Did you see Tyler Perry’s film Daddy’s Little Girls? Monty (one of the main characters) got fed up with the nonsense of corruption lording over his community. He didn’t wait for the cops to do something, he took the drug dealers out himself, and I’m not advocating going out and beating people up, but my point is that you must be proactive. The community got behind the trailblazer (Monty) and the community was saved. Same thing happened here in America in the 15^th century, the settlers from the new world took the land from the indigenous people who were here. Later, there was the Revolutionary War to free the colonies from Imperialist Britain. Today’s Southwestern U.S. states were taken from Mexico. I’m not saying that how this was done was right, but if you want something, you have to go make it happen. Communities all across the country need to stand up and not tolerate nonsense from people who are up to no good, and stop letting the media influence them. This is all scientifically done what they are doing. It’s like Pavlov’s dog, you hear the sound and then you react. The media just gets richer whenever you react; they get more advertising dollars, and can jack the price up at peek times during that hot topic commercial slot when they have the most viewers. But we’re learning to be proactive and that’s a good thing. I apologize for digressing again, but this just burns me up.

The same amount of effort that was exerted to publicize this case should be exerted on answering the question, “Are we going to tolerate destructive behavior in our community?” Ask this question individually. Ask it in communities all over the country. Don’t wait for the news truck to come by and then ask it on television, and then go see yourself on television later that day. Time out for this “me, myself and I” stuff. I’m not bashing Durham; I’m just using Durham as the example since the media made a circus of this thing, and they had the good people of Durham rallying behind a lie. It’s a travesty and a sham, the media. Ha! Rally on the front end, do something before a young lady really does get raped. Go ahead, protest, vote out the city council, hold the news media and the prosecutor in Durham accountable, rally at the Durham Bulls Stadium. Do something that is proactive and not reactive!

The young lady and the Prosecutor, who brought these charges against these young men, really need to be grateful that they don’t live in the Old Testament. According to Deuteronomy 19:15-21 Message Translation: You cannot convict anyone of a crime or sin on the word of one witness. You need two or three witnesses to make a case. If a hostile witness stands to accuse someone of a wrong, then both parties involved in the quarrel must stand in the Presence of God before the priests and judges who are in office at that time. The judges must conduct a careful investigation; if the witness turns out to be a false witness and has lied against his fellow Israelite; give him the same medicine he intended for the other party. Clean the polluting evil from your company. People will hear of what you've done and be impressed; that will put a stop to this kind of evil among you. Don't feel sorry for the person: its life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.

I’m guessing that these young men come from well-to-do families and had high-powered lawyers. But what if they didn’t? What if they were average Joe’s? They would be under the jail without raping anyone. If they did rape that girl, no one can prove it. The point is that people, not just African-Americans, seem to hear “On your Mark, Get Set, Go!” and the media eggs it on and a self-perpetuating cycle of sensationalism continues. This is the epitome of reacting. I truly believe that if that young lady knows in her heart that she wasn’t raped, she, the prosecutor and the media should apologize to those guys for accusing them of that heinous act and staining their lives with this mess. Only they and whatever witnesses that saw what actually happened know the truth. But as of 4.14.07, no one can prove rape. Something happened, but what happened, we don’t know. But they will always be remembered as the guys that young lady accused of raping her.

In conclusion, what would I like for us to come away with in this piece? Reactive never works. We live in a very reactive society and so many people are in a Hive mentality. We all watch the TV and when the “boob tube” shows a story with a reaction, then the hive follows in lock step. See how the media plays things way up and get the masses all up in arms? They are masters of this type of this Madison Avenue hype, and then they let you down and wait for the next opportunity. Or they string it along until the next circus comes to town. Be active in your community and the lives of your children now, not later. The media doesn’t care about you; they just want viewers and advertising dollars. The media is controlled by five corporations: General Electric, Time Warner, Disney, Viacom, and the News Corporation. Five sources for media, that’s scary. Remember, follow the money? It’s up to individuals to speak out, and get involved because it’s the right thing to do, not because they are encouraged by the media on an allegation that wasn’t thoroughly investigated. Did the young people involved do whatever they did consensually? I don’t know. But we do have a pattern of reacting to stimuli and this is a dangerous precedent that we’re setting for the next generation. We, as parents, need to be proactive in training our children about these promiscuous behaviors and be better examples before them. I hope that the Duke students, the young lady, everyone involved with that party and this case learned a valuable lesson from this episode. In my next blog, I’ll talk about media manipulation over the masses.