Raping the culture

By John McMullen
The Phanatic Magazine

PCU is a little known comedy gem starring a pre-Entourage Jeremy Piven along with David Spade and Jon Favreau. The movie follows the hi-jinks of a high school senior (Pennsylvania's own Chris Young) as he visits the most liberal college of all-time for the weekend.

The film, which was released in 1994, lambasted political correctness, a term used to describe language or behavior that offends various racial or cultural groups. And, although the producers probably had no intention of doing so, they provided a looking glass into modern day society.

There were the liberals shouting down people and refusing to accept anyone with opposing views. There was the evil right wing cabal trying to regain power. And there were the people in the middle, just trying to have fun and make life worth living.

Sadly, the people in the middle get smaller and smaller each day.

Those who pray at the altar of political correctness rarely express concern about the dilution of little things like freedom of speech or real substantive discussion of social problems involving groups they deem off limits.

A number of politically left commentators have even tried to intimate a rather obvious problem doesn't exist by claiming the term political correctness was invented by their adversaries to discredit what they consider progressive social change.

And if you believe that -- please explain Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong to me.

Nifong is the local prosecutor who charged three Duke lacrosse players with raping an African-American stripper despite the fact that her story had more holes in it than a George Lucas screenplay.

Her yarn was wrought with inconsistencies and if it was spun by a Caucasian"entertainer" it would have ended with nothing more than trip to the psych ward for the accuser. Despite that, Nifong pursued the case intently for two reasons -- publicity and to placate the PC vultures.

On Wednesday, after an entire year was wasted on this dog of a case and a University athletic program was shut down for a season, North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper finally summoned up the courage to stop the madness and offer up Nifong as a sacrifice.

Cooper not only dropped all remaining charges against the players -- Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty and David Evans -- he proclaimed them innocent victims of Nifong's "tragic rush to accuse." Cooper also labeled Nifong a"rogue" prosecutor who was guilty of "overreaching."

The Attorney General was right to proclaim the boys innocent of any criminal charges. What they weren't innocent of was being rich, obnoxious elitists who pissed off the wrong dancer by acting like imbeciles.

Last time I looked that might be reprehensible but it isn't a crime unless you are Nifong or thousands of others like him that force their views of morality down the throat of all of us, every chance they get.

Faced with losing his job, a certain law suit and possible jail time, Nifong finally acquiesced and apologized on Thursday.

"To the extent that I made judgments that ultimately proved to be incorrect, I apologize to the three students that were wrongly accused," Nifong said. "I have every confidence that the decision to dismiss all the charges was the correct decision based on that evidence."

Too little...Too late.

Evans' attorney, Joseph Cheshire, summed up Nifong's feeble attempt to request mercy in the court of public opinion.

"It's not an apology. It's an excuse. It's an attempt at an excuse," Cheshire said. "It's not an acceptance of responsibility. It's a self-serving attempt to excuse bad behavior."

Now Nifong will suffer some of the same sleepless nights he vanquished his victims to.

And all the while, he will be wondering what the penalty is for raping the culture.

-You can reach John McMullen at JMcmullen1@comcast.net.