Yet Another View

It has now been over one month since I last posted something here. I can blame my Moms who kept coming home late during Momma C’s “busy season,” thus keeping me off the computer (I STILL haven’t learned how to turn this thing on by myself – Momma C will not show me for fear I will order my own on-line treats.) I can blame the delay on the Easter holiday and all of the fun out-of-town guests I have had. But, really, what has kept this dog’s trap shut has been the fear of fulfilling my promise, back in March, that I would “soon” write something meaningful about the Duke Lacrosse incident.

This is very odd for me. I am a strong proponent of dialogue, and it will only be through discussion of this situation and its multitude of complexities that any real change can occur. But I have held my tongue to see what comes out of the woodwork, and in a way, I am glad I have done so. In the course of the month, I have seen every actor in this fiasco have his or her words turned upside-down and against them. I have seen women slandered for their choices, men shamed for their station, a DA of integrity caricatured as a Bonfire of the Vanities political climber, a city stereotyped as being just on the edge of a race war (no doubt started because of all the Yankee influx)… That is not dialogue…

AND, I have been told, in action more than words, that I cannot speak with authority because I am not black. Or I am not white. Or because I am priviledged. Or because I come from nothing…

BUT, as I have found, we are all entitled to our opinions and are allotted a few openings here and there to interject minor points of clarification that may, or may not (mostly not) be helpful to those of you bloggers who keep insisting you know what you are talking about because you are black,white, priviledged, working-class, male, female, gay, transgendered, republican, atheist, bald, three-toed, or whatever point-of-view you are writing from that makes you the authority on something. (Again, I am a dog. That is my point of view. I can only speak from this perspective.)

Point 1: Just a technicality – but in the news, when enhancing the imagery of Duke as the elite institution that it is, the reporters like to talk about the “Wall” separating the campus from Durham. Again, merely a technicality but this said three-foot wall simply surrounds Duke’s East Campus (the former artsy-fartsy one that my mom used to live on before they made it an all-freshman campus despite our fruitless protests (see, they apparently had nothing to protest back then being that it was in between Gulf Wars)). This low wall is visible from the now-infamous Buchanan House. I use to walk around that wall with my mom for exercise. A lot of puppy parents use to walk around the inside of that wall and use the puppy doo bags provided by the campus – many of us were just regular Durham folks and the path on the inside seemed safer than the one on the outside. There is no all-encompassing wall surrounding the entire campus cutting it off from the community, at least not yet. That wall appears to only exist in our collective minds.

Point 2: While on our daily walks through the neighborhood, my moms have had to explain the “Let’s Keep Mike” Nifong sign in their yard. I am a little tired of hearing them be so apologetic. You can flame me all you wish but when my Momma C first met Mike Nifong several months ago, he seemed to be the most genuine and real person you could ever want in that position. We’re admittedly biased because he was so wholeheartedly endorsed by the most respected of our legal friends before this whole debacle began. We are also friends with one of the ADA’s who repeatedly tells me he’s the best boss for whom she’s had the priviledge of working. He has a competent Family and Domestic Violence team, and prosecutors with a good mix of both law enforcement and social work backgrounds. Before the rape accusations, his opponents were running on the idea that Mike was not tough enough on gangs (agreeably the most important issue facing our law-enforcement community). But apparently the “solution” in their minds was, what, more incarcerations? Fill the jail, fill the jail, fill the jail… (Nifong was blasted in one non-local* blog as pandering to the minority community by “trying the case in the media,” while, on the flip-side, labeled a racist in another blog because the Durham conviction rate was disproprotionately people of color (the result of race/class inequity in our judicial system, for sure)). I was disappointed to see the DA do so many interviews at the beginning when the story broke, and I agree with what some have labeled his “amatuer mistakes.” But, it truly gets my goat that his campaign was completely framed in a way that made his election a referendum on the Duke Lacrosse case. Perhaps it’s just sour grapes – I’m all for democracy, but I really think people shouldn’t vote based solely from what they gleen from the 6 o’clock news (the time I like to call, post-Maury, pre-Idol...) For all you newcomers who, through this sensation, have finally decided to join the party – welcome to the cockamamie world that is Durham politics – I hope you stay awhile and make a difference.

I could go on, but I won’t for now. (I was going to remind people, for example, that in painting NC Central, the accuser’s university, as a poor, helpless victim of Duke and dreging up the diversity stats, the media negates that fact that our state’s very own (white) governor went to law school there.) But that goes a little beyond my doggie view, doesn't it?

I’m getting tired. Maybe I will continue this later…

*When I say specify “non-local,” it’s primarily to bring up my personal distaste of the national attention this case has brought. Our local papers are full of op-eds from out-of-towners who think they know what’s going on here. I would like to personally thank each of you for giving us your uninformed opinions, because we could have NEVER figured our heads from our asses without you. This is my town, not a Tom Wolfe novel.