Sounds kind of like a sitcom, though I don’t think it’s quite ready for prime time yet.

Is the final lesson we should take from this saga that the typical modern academician has the inner psyche of a serial killer? Or some kind of lizard?

Well, I believe that you’re sincerely mystified. On the other hand it seems that the rights and wrongs of it are largely self-evident to you. How and why should I argue with that kind of inflexible certainty?

So, yes, serial killer—that pretty much nails our vicious and nihilistic psyche.

I believe you have it all wrong. If I, as a prosecutor, pursue you on charges of an actual crime because of evidence, I’m disrupting your life. If I pursue charges of a crime that never happened and I do it to advance my career and not the justice system, I’m destroying your life. You would never be able to get out from under the suspicion. This is what Nifong did.

The argument you use at the beginning about the vigil and the strip club is also not quite up to speed. Why is it ok for her to be a dancer, but not ok for the boys to hire her. I don’t see the problem with KC’s quote. Why is it ok for somebody to make a living in a job like that, but not ok to hire her. Who would pay her salary otherwise?

I’m not sure what the first point has to do with this post. I guess you’re saying I should get with the program and start fulminating about Nifong and other really bad people instead of bothering poor KC Johnson. And I know that it’s a very subtle thing to be worrying about how people make their arguments instead of What Really Happened and Who’s At Fault and Still After All This Time Hasn’t Managed to Apologize and Crawl Back Under Their Rock.

If you want to bother yourself about what I think about paying strippers’ “salaries,” read this.

If the legal case had been dropped in April 06 and the guys and team re-instated and their names quickly forgotten, then playing the academic game of making up dueling meta-narratives in regard to all of the possible meanings of a black stripper performing for white guys would deserve no special opprobrium. It is just what some people do. Maybe they cannot help themselves. But the case was not dropped then. A whole year went by with the futures of these kids menaced by a totally corrupt, quite powerful Durham establishment. This wasn’t a piece of literature where the author picks an ending which others might fiercely debate the meaning of at their leisure and with no consequences for anybody. This was real life danger that could easily have turned out differently. The bulk of the exchanges between KC and these others occurred at a time when comments implying guilt to the Lax guys coming from Duke and other sources were either Totally mischeivious or Negligently mis-informed but always made in front of a local jury pool and a DA who was calculating his odds of success with that jury pool.

There was no crime committed and they all knew it. Look for symmetry of styles of argument if that is what you best but I see no reason to get excited about the subject. I am attracted to the figure of Tevye in “The Fidler on the Roof” who was devoted to looking at all sides of things but one day came upon an issue of stark clarity and said “On the other hand… there is no other hand.”

Yes, it’s obnoxious and self-indulgent of me to expect a professor to write with intelligence or integrity when Bad People have done Bad Things to Innocent Young Men. But at least you guys get lots of chances to say “metanarrative.”

Maybe the problem is that I can’t handle the truth.

I’m so glad you have chosen to revisit the horrific subject matter of one Timothy Tyson.

This will facilitate the much-needed quest for the public to be made aware of the true oleaginous nature of this man before he tries to hawk a little film in 2009.

I’m very happy with this post!