Rushing to Judgment

Sorry to keep harping on this theme of "being judgmental," but I just can't resist.

Remember the days and days of headline stories on the disgusting behavior of the Duke University Lacrosse team? Remember the condemnation of those players? Recall how they were portrayed as a bunch of privileged white racist kids run amuck? The program was suspended, the coach resigned, the kids were tarred and feathered and deemed dangerous sexual predators. Millions of us read these stories and passed judgment on the kids and shook our heads in dismay at how these indisciplined rich kids were a sign of the decay in our society. As usual, I was among those who agreed that these were terrible acts, but they seemed so extreme and the kids' denials were so vehement that "there's got to be more to the story."

How many of you know what happened to those accused kids? Well, after those wonderfully salacious headlines that were splashed across every newspaper, there continued to be very tiny blurbs buried inside the newspapers that suggested that the prosecution's case was falling apart and maybe the accused activities never took place. Today's paper had an even tinier article saying that the County District Attorney had just apologized to the players admitting that there was never any credible evidence of rape. When the players were accused, this man stood before the throng of media microphones and expressed self-righteous indignation at the outrage. He zealously pushed and brought these young men to trial. He proclaimed their guilt and the media lapped up the scandal with relish and enjoyed spreading the story far and wide.

How many lives have been destroyed because of people jostling before the media in order to demonstrate their righteous indignation at the behavior of these "rich white kids"? Jesse Jackson promised that his Rainbow/PUSH coalition would pay the college tuition for the black woman who accused the white lacrosse players of rape. Here's a great little blog note from John in North Caroline that expresses my thoughts better than I could.

I doubt any of you could know how it feels to be accused of rape, racism, lose your job, have a stain across your character all because of our love of sound-bite information and our rush to judge. Don't ever feel shocked at the stupidity of the people during the Salem witch trials. It's not just history.