Thursday, July 1, 2010

Change The Details of This Case...

and ask if this would have received round the clock coverage.  Imagine if the three "roommates" were, say, Mormon missionaries, and a gay man had been stabbed to death.  Richard Fernandez mentions a case that I had not even heard of:
Like the recently concluded Robert Wone case — in which three gay men were acquitted of the murder of a man in their apartment — the New Black Panther incident pits a politically powerful minority against ordinary victims. The public is asked to understand the situation from the perspective of the underdog. What does it matter if men in New Black Party uniforms paced across a voting precinct? They’re just evening the score. Or so we are told. But in situations where the world’s largest midget fights the world’s smallest giant the “correct narrative” is no longer so obvious; just who is bigger is no longer clear and the system by rights should fall back on the law itself  and ask itself “who really violated the law.”


But the habits of political correctness are so ingrained that even this logical parachute fails to open. In the Wone case, even when the judge is inclined to find the stories of the three defendants preposterous, the word “guilty” can hardly be pronounced. The Washington Post reports that Judge “Leibovitz said she believed that the three defendants know who killed Wone, but that the prosecution failed to prove that they did. It came down to the reasonable doubt standard, she said.” The Wone case is singular for the questions that were not asked and the media coverage that never materialized.
 Professor Volokh raises a different angle on it--and again, there is so much here that is profoundly disturbing--and yet it is clear that because this gay "triple" (a long-term relationship of three men, at least one of who is into sadomasochism) is at the heart of it--it's getting no coverage.  There's a Wikipedia page about it--and the more I read, the more concerned that I am that because of the sexual orientation of the three men who either likely committed the murder, or at least covered up who did it--it is taboo for national news coverage.  There's kinky sex, apparently, probably rape, murder, half of Mr. Wone's blood is missing--and suspicious puncture marks, a covered up crime--all the aspects of what would ordinarily be a major news story, just for the prurient aspects alone.  But we can't actually look too carefully at this, because it might remind everyone that there are some aspects of some of the gay subcultures that are really, really evil.

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