The Duke Lacrosse Case As Rorschach Test.

Report is the North Carolina attorney general will be announcing sometime later this morning that all charges will be dropped against former Duke lacrosse players Reade Seligmann, David Evans, and Colin Finnerty with regard to a rape accusation at an off-campus house last year.

This seemed to be in sight when Durham County DA Mike Nifong recused himself from the case after the accuser changed her story. Nifong is now facing ethics violations in front of the North Carolina bar, and he could be disbarred as punishment (and some suggested the accused should go after him.)

It's worth noting for all the ways this case was initially examined -- the accuser was black, an exotic dancer, and a student at a nearby public university; the accused were three relatively well-off white men attending a private university at a game widely perceived as the purview of well-off white men. It pushed every button possible for media attention and pre-judgment on everyone involved, including the media, and a lot of outlets wound up eating crow.

Ultimately, your initial reaction regarding guilt or innocence when the accusations were handed down probably told a lot more about you than it did about the case itself, much like a lot of crimes that are he-said-she-said by nature, and still awaiting concrete DNA evidence at the beginning of the frenzy (which there was none that directly implicated the accused; Nifong thought he had enough circumstantial evidence to go on.)

Much like the rape allegations and civil settlement involving Kobe Bryant and a Vail hotel worker (which pushed all the same racial and social buttons, but in different combinations), the case became less about sport, and like everything in America when reduced to a national news package than runs no longer than one minute and 30 seconds, more about the divide, the distrust, the fear, and where you stood on that -- and let's not forget academia vs. athletic tensions prevalent on many Division I campuses. But then again, it may have been just like sport, because a lot of people probably picked sides, based on our own biases and experiences -- we are only human; we have a tendency to do this.

Somewhere it became less about the accuser and the accused and more about us. No matter where the truth really lay at that house party, that wasn't fair to anyone involved.

(Although Wikipedia is hit and miss, it has a good series of articles at the bottom for citations worth looking at on this topic.)

To Die For.

I know, not my usual speed, but after reading the Newspaper Hack's bit on femme teachers and their male students, this caught my eye while doing the morning MSNBC viewing: Matt Lauer interviewing Eric McLean, a man who's confessed to killing the 18-year old student his student-teacher wife was having an affair with.

The McLeans had married 11 years earlier, when she was 19 and he 20. In recent years, he had put his hopes of earning a bachelor’s degree and becoming a band director at a school on hold to put his wife through college and graduate school. He worked delivering pizzas and played in a local rock band.

Plus, they have two sons, aged 11 and 7 -- if you have that much invested in that relationship at that age, would you be surprised if it fucked with your head if your spouse was cheating?

I don't have a lot of sympathy for McLean -- he shot and killed somebody -- but this is the first time that we've had one of these "hot for teacher" affairs turn into something violent, and at least it means a suspension in the "look at the hottie" approach, for now.

The Armory's Getting Locked Up For a Few Months.

So sayeth a Chicago judge, who sentenced Bears DL Tank Johnson to four months in jail for violating his 2005 probation last year when police found six unregistered firearms in his home.

Johnson's lawyers said they had not yet decided whether to appeal the ruling, but suggested the football player's celebrity influenced the sentence.

"This sentence was unnecessarily harsh," defense attorney Lorna Propes said. "It's pretty unheard of for these circumstances."

The man has been found with handguns illegally twice -- to be fair, they are both misdemeanor charges, but anyone not able to afford the legal defense Johnson can and without his celebrity would be getting at least that for ANY probation violation. Like most, Johnson said he wasn't a man who belonged in jail, and maybe he doesn't, but the judge disagreed.

"Just because he's a professional football player and plays for the Chicago Bears, doesn't put him above the law," [prosecutor] Rick Cenar said.

Most athletes (or anyone else in the elite of society) would do well to remember that.

Update: Ajax provides a useful reminder of the proper cynicism in comments.

he was for All-Star weekend before he was against it.

The Head Chick, Paulsen and D-Wil all have better takes on Jason Whitlock's abrupt double-take in his columns for the KC Star and AOL, so after reading the columns and the other opinions, hear me out.

Ready? OK.

It's profoundly irresponsible, idiotic and stupid for Whitlock to play both sides of the table -- you cannot play to the stereotypes associated with black people in the newspaper column and then pull your infuriated Bill Cosby act on the internet a day later. Whitlock reversed himself 24 hours later and then still played to the same stupid, moronic stereotypes, which, if used by a white writer, would have gotten him drummed out of a newsroom within 24 hours.

Pick a side and stick to it. Either you are with the legion of black cultural commentators (Stanley Crouch, Debra Dickinson, Cosby, et al.) and most of the idiot commentariat (regardless of race) who find no virtue and every reason to slam black youth culture at every turn as if you are just as irrationally afraid of them as whites, or stand up and say that the violence at All-Star weekend is not representative, that it is a series of isolated incidents (Las Vegas media has reports of violence, but Whitlock provides mostly anecdotal information). If your online column is supposedly real, then what is this you are selling to the paper? Both columns reek of imagery better left to old stereotypes soon overcome -- the pro-All Star column is laden with idiocy about "a calling" to the game and other naturalistic, animalistic claptrap. Then, the AOL diatribe gives you regular use of the word "thug" and this nice bit:

David Stern seriously needs to consider moving the event out of the country for the next couple of years in hopes that young, hip-hop hoodlums would find another event to terrorize...All-Star Weekend Vegas screamed that the NBA is aligned too closely with thugs. Stern is going to have to take drastic measures to break that perception/reality. All-Star Weekend can no longer remain the Woodstock for parolees, wannabe rap artists and baby's mamas on tax-refund vacations.

So, 24 hours after you declared it okay, but a little "ghettofab," you did a complete 180 and decided to amplify your stereotypes. I grant Whitlock that ESPN should have been on the aspect more, but that's it. Before I read the columns in full, I thought Whitlock was OK; his main targets of "bojangling" were commentators or writers I didn't think were particularly good on any sort of journalistic merit. Problem is, he's just as guilty of bojangling as he thinks his targets are; he is the perfect enabler.

the sky high are human, too.

In the latest edition of people doing batshit crazy things, in comes NASA astronaut Lisa Marie Nowak, arrested and charged with attempted murder and kidnapping for planning to off a competitor for a male astronaut's affections. The best crack I've read on this so far: "At least she's used to wearing orange suits."

The worst part:

Nowak raced from Houston to Orlando wearing diapers in the car so she wouldn’t have to stop to go to the bathroom, authorities said. Astronauts wear diapers during launch and re-entry.

Very nice. If you're going to do that on a road trip, I advise you make that trip by yourself, and keep the windows rolled down.

the new publishing gold mine.

By now, everyone has heard of and been shocked by O.J. Simpson's book and impending T.V. interview where he hints and hints, ever so slightly, that he actually committed the murders of his ex-wife and her friend that he was acquitted of, and apparently is making a nice chunk of change off of it.

It just so happened that the old LJ friends page showed me the way, courtesy of a friend in L.A.: this is simply the new trend in publishing circles, and given the recent scandalous behavior of many public figures, this is money, people.

I make a point of not watching Fox programming if it isn't sports-related or Family Guy, so skipping O.J. isn't an issue. But, I can't wait for the specials and books for these two below:

1) Okay, So Maybe I Snorted an Eight-Ball and Had Relations with the Male Hooker, by Pastor Ted Haggard.
2) If I Wanted to Fondle Pages, Here's How it Would've Gone Down, by Rep. Mark Foley.