The International Writers Magazine: US COMMENT

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The Nifong Chronicles • James Campion In our continuing series on "The Law Is Bullshit", fresh from our Paris Hilton harangue from a week ago, we cast our collective eye on the sad and sordid tale of Michael Nifong, former Durham County District Attorney of North Carolina. Nifong, as nicely put as possible, was over-zealous in his attempt at trying a dubious but celebrated rape case against three Duke University lacrosse players.

The more apt description would be that Nifong is a self-promoting sociopath, who used blatantly dangerous race-bating and sacrificed the good name of three relatively innocent children, clogging up the courts, breaking the law, pissing on his and the reputation of North Carolina law, and wasting a boatload of taxpayer cash for his mad pursuit of fame and fortune.

Nifong is the "former" district attorney because he resigned last week during his ethics trial with a weepy soliloquy that would green the envy of any self-defacing thespian. Not surprisingly, the same doom-struck instincts that had him withholding, creating, hiding evidence or lack thereof and publicly humiliating his suspects in front of any camera pointing his way led him to figure that by blubbering like Jimmy Swaggart and resigning his post would keep him out of prison.

This is similar to you deliberately burning down your place of employment, and then in a desperate attempt to avoid arson charges, you quit.

But unfortunately Nifong isn't going to prison for being stupid. This, like celebrities and the wealthy covered last week, is no crime. If it were, there wouldn't be a continent large enough to store them. No, Nifong should go away because he is an insidiously aggressive drain on society at large. People who use our courts as an American Idol audition, especially those who represent said courts, need to be punished, severely; disbarment for starters, then maybe a crash-course in actual rape in lock-up.

Turns out Nifong never had a case. Never. About a week after their arrest, DNA tests exonerated the three suspects of any rape charges, and about a week or less later it pretty much turned out the stripper "victim" was as trustworthy a source on her own abduction as the latest spokesman for the Pentagon on the results of military surges. Which is not very good, or to be honest, fucking horrible.

But on Nifong went, for months, evidence and credibility be damned, and on the Durham court system let him run. Why? Well, for starters it was a slam-dunk glitzy case: Three lily-white, rich, allegedly wild and wooly college boys with tarnished behavioral records ordered up a poor black woman forced to take off her clothes to make ends meet and had their way with her. Throw in the stressed racial tensions in the Durham area, ninety percent of which is comprised of poor minority communities surrounding one big, fat bucolic and smarmy Duke campus. And folks, you've got yourself juice.

Predictably, the 24-hour news stations, radio pundits, newspaper columnists, crazed activists, and you name it descended like vultures on the scene. Many of whom festooned the campus and surrounding areas with defaming and slanderous posters and manifestos calling the accused Nazis, sex fiends, Klansman, and monsters. All the while, Nifong and the courts kept the charade up, even when it was obvious to the most empty-headed TV talk show host that the thing was a hoax.

But, hey, as is our custom here, we don't pin any collateral damage on the media. Sure, the 24-hour news channels and radio bilge-pumpers, even media whores like Jesse Jackson, who saw fit to ignore the time honored Bill of Rights adage and decided guilty until proven innocent was the fashion of the day, can be forgiven. The media exists for one reason, to sell beer and cars and dumb shit you don't need, not to provide plausible information. For some reason people hold these outlets to higher standards, but even Jackson and his ilk have become such sad parodies by now, the lowest of standards is wasted on them.

Oh, and not shocking either, is the behavior of Duke University, so high and mighty and armed with condescending falderal, the powers that be folded like cheap boy scout tents and decided to cancel the remainder of the lacrosse team's season. Yes, and then maybe everyone would forget the unconscionable lunacy these idiots had displayed publicly for months prior to the bogus charges. That behavior was tolerable, but being falsely accused is not. In other words, kids, as long as you keep your stripper gangbangs on the down low, then lacrosse yourselves silly.

So after months of complete torture and ridicule and jailing and laughable travesties of justice, the kids are set free and now get to sue everything and everyone in sight. So don't cry for them. They will get there's, again and again and again. No human with the last name of Evans, Finnerty or Seligman will ever have to suck ass to get in or pay outrageous tuition for their nifty Duke educations. That is if they want to slum at Duke. When they're done suing the state of North Carolina, they can buy Harvard and Yale and turn them into competing strip joints.

And Lord knows I don't need to see some muscle-headed 230-pound goon lacrosse jock asshole whimpering like a schoolgirl because his mommy thought he raped someone. No, it's true. He did this. Until she heard the news mom was bursting with pride that her baby boy shattered the beer-funnel record while simultaneously snorting coke off the stripper's tits.
Viva La System!
© James Campion June 23rd 2007
realitycheck@jamescampion.com

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