Before (or IF) you listen to this...
there are 2 things I want to tell you-
1. Mark, a relatively new friend at Myspace- but someone I went to high school with sent this video/audio clip to me...THANK YOU! :) I didn't get to hear this clip until he sent it to me- and I'm going to video tape it so I don't lose it!
2. The topic of conversation with Rush is about Mike Nifong and the 3 young men who were charged with raping an exotic dancer. The day the men were declared innocent I called Mr. Limbaugh and got through in the very last segment.
Rush had said 6 months earlier that the "truth would come out slowly" (he compared it to the Clinton/Lewisky affair) and all the charges would be dropped in the Spring. He was absolutely correct about this.
I believe Mr. Nifong was right and honorable to take the charges the woman made seriously. He was wrong and corrupted when he withheld information that showed there was NO evidence to convict the students with a crime.
I also believe Mr. Nifong continued to press on with the case because it won him favor with several black powerful Political Action Committees. Without their support he didn't think he could win the upcoming election for the position of District Attorney.
This is not meant to shine a bad light on the PAC's. Certainly- if a black woman is raped by 3 white men and the DA turns a blind eye to the situation...this is a reason for outrage. (It would be reason for outrage no matter what color a person was!) But, to use a case like this to earn points with one demographic in order to garner their support, at the brutal expense of 3 innocent men- well, it was just maddeningly wrong.
So...Here it is- my 15 seconds of fame (for this year anyway :) on Mr. Limbaugh's radio program.
http://myspacetv.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=8221863
9 comments:
thanks Mark for sending this to me...what a thrill to hear it after all of this time-
I deeply appreciate you sending this to me-
what a wonderful guy you are@
Hugs!
-Cora :)
mayden! you are on my space??? i didnt see how to listen to it when i got there. and do i have to be on myspace to comment to you there? i hope not. how do you manage all these damn formats grrrrrrrrl? well i will just work around it.
i can go to rush and find the last hour in the podcast.
the thing that was weird with the duke rape case...see thats one right there...who calls it the duke innocents accused case? what was terrible about it was the set up of pitting the races against each other as well as saying it was an issue of classism...like the rich white boys who did this to a poor black mother who has to do this stripping in the first place to earn money to feed her family. it implied that because of their wealth they were probably guilty because they knew they could get away with it. their parents would buy them out of trouble. that statement was made again and again.
if theres one thing that all college boys should learn is: dont hire strippers morons. theres no good outcome to that scenario. i mean, whats wrong with the girls at school? grrrerhaha
coe-ruh. i thought of you a million times over the fourth. we made low country boil and rode our bikes to the fireworks.
glad you are home safe. did you write at all while at the beach?
She- you should be able to click on the title of my blog post "Me, on RUSH...months ago"- and be able to hear it- but I made a copy and I'm going to put it up at my Youtube acct- I hope to do that this evening and I'll send you the link.
The only reason I have a Myspace acct is because of my brother and sister- I really don't use it except to communicate quickly with them, and I direct everyone back to Mayden's Voyage if they want to read my posts.
The race and class issues that came up in this case made everyone involved look bad- from the crooked DA who let his ambitions for re-election cloud his judgment, to the accuser who lied, to the Rev. Jessie Jacskon who paid the rest of the accusers tuition- regardless of the outcome of the case. Everyone has something to gain, except for the boys who were wrongly charged with rape.
At no point were any of the "powers that be" interested in the TRUTH.
I do see how Crystal Mangum (the accuser) was caught between a rock and hard place once the national media put her in the spotlight- as well as Nifong...but had that spotlight not been pointed in this direction- this case would have been swept under the rug, Nifong would still be the DA- the boys would have been cleared but not left untarnished- and Crystal would probably still be putting herself in exceedingly dangerous situations.
However, I did get to speak to Rush - and he paid me a nice compliment at the end of our conversation...
I was pretty happy- to say the least :)
I thought of you too on the 4th- my gracious- the ocean was BEAUTIFUL!
-Cora :)
oh, cora, that was AWESOME...and 'spunky'...that does seem to be a good word to describe you.... ;-D
I thought this was about the rock group. Rush Limbaugh sucks eggs.
Libby-
Thanks :) My nickname in high shool was "perky"...lol- now that I'm oldr and gravity has taken it's toll...people will start calling me "floppy"! LOL :)
Grunt-
LOL! It's ok if you don't like Rush (the man, a legend, a way of life!)- he is one of my favorite personalities. Like Hillary Rodham- you either hate him, or love him. You can guess which camp I'm in ;)
Nifong's disbarment stemmed from charges that he withheld exculpatory evidence. That's a criminal act, and the state exacted the proscribed penalty for it.
One of the things that Barry Scheck's Innocence Project has demonstrated is that withholding of evidence is more common among prosecutors than one might think. According to the Center for Public Integrity, there have been 2000 cases in which prosecutorial misconduct has been documented, but rarely have these cases. As the Justice Reform Network puts it, "Penalties for prosecutorial misconduct are almost zero."
I'm wondering, does Rush get really this upset over the issue of prosecutorial misconduct very often, or only under certain circumstances? Have you ever felt outraged enough to call a talk show about someone else victimized by prosecutorial misconduct?
What I'm questioning isn't the ruling, but rather the context of it, what it really means. What does Rush think it means, in your opinion? What do you think that it means?
As for your comment on his show and here that it had something to do with kowtowing to black PACs (which in the context almost sounds like 'carpetbaggers'), I would point out that Nifong won reelection in 2006 with only 49% of the vote. He probably lost a lot of the white vote, and there's no real reason to think he would have lost a substantial amount of the black vote had he dropped the charges and earnestly explained why.
And if he had no case, then it would seem to me that he could have explained why to these PACs, and unless they they were mindless ideologues would have understood it. For the actual damages suffered by the victim, another arrangement could have been made short of continuing with a malicious prosecution. And, as I said before, he could have bypassed them altogether, and appealed directly to the community. Blaming PACs, to me, doesn't explain what went on here, although I'm sure that's as convenient enough excuse for some.
X-
I'm not blaming the PAC's at all- they are simply a powerful group in this city and anything that causes them to find favor with a candidate is usually a good thing for the candidate- if he/she wants to win and election.
Nifong is 100% at fault here, and I agree that he if he had been honest with the evidence he found and presented it to the community everyone would have understood.
I don't know why he didn't come clean- except that by the time of his re-election- he was in the national spotlight. Maybe he thought he would look silly? Maybe all the mistakes that had been made (like a line up that consisted ONLY of Duke students) and the fact that NONE of the DNA on the dancer was from ANY of the students...but there was DNA from 4 other men? I can only guess.
What bothers me deeply is that if the national spotlight had not focused on this case- I think Nifong would still be in office today.
What does the ruling mean? I hope it means that DA's will be held accountable for their actions and will be scrutinized more closely when they seem to be working towards a personal agenda...like an upcoming election.
okay, i overcame my heebee jeebies long enough to listen to your rush utube....lol....
you sound great...
rush sounds, well, like rush..
and those heebie jeebies are returning..
foam
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