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"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." - John 8:32
WEBCommentary Contributor
Author:  Michael J. Gaynor
Bio: Michael J. Gaynor
Date:  July 6, 2007
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Topic category:  Other/General

The Duke Case/Hurricane Katrina Lessons

Justice demands that rapists be prosecuted and false accusers be prosecuted too.

Hurricane Katrina was a natural disaster, while the Duke case was a manmade one. But there are important, albeit ugly, common lessons to be learned from them by those not too blinded by color to see the truth: (1) the so-called mainstream media quickly put out and promoted the politically correct story that bad white men were at fault and poor blacks were innocent victims in a racist/sexist society and (2) racial politics protects blacks really responsible (Mayor Ray Nagin, re-elected by the same voters who re-elected Congressman William "Cash in the freezer" Jefferson, and false accuser Crystal Gail Mangum, not put to the embarrassment of pleading lack of mental competency in a false rape report prosecution).

The reality of Hurricane Katrina is that it was an unprecedented natural disaster that (1) former FEMA Director Michael D. Brown (the prime scapegoat, ironically)had futilely warned of for years, (2) Louisiana in general and New Orleans in particular had not properly prepared for it and (3) feuding Democrat Governor Kathleen Blanco and Democrat New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin made it much worse by not cooperating with Mr. Brown, or even President Bush, after Mr. Brown arranged for him to contact them directly.

Did the desire to promote the extreme political correctness agenda as well as bash the Bush administration inform the media coverage? Of course! The media chose to blame the Bush administration, even though the Federal Emergency Management Administration’s mandate and resources are limited, and to scapegoat Mr. Brown instead of criticizing the black mayor, the female governor, the way a particular black-dominated city operated and the way Louisiana’s Congressional delegation had operated for scores of years.

The same agenda-driven media manipulation turned a foolish (but legal) stripper party into an imaginary kidnapping/rape/sexual offense scene that promised the latest trial of the century until the defense lawyers finally learned from reviewing documentation withheld from them by the prosecution until the fall of 2006 what I had reported twice in June 2006 and again in September 2006—that false accuser Crystal Gail Mangum was a multiple male DNA depository on the night of the party, but none of it came from even one member of the team--and publicly exposing the fact that Mr. Nifong had been concealing that exculpatory evidence.

For the biased liberal media, led by The New York Times, it was much better to believe (or pretend to believe) a black stripper, even if she is an ex-convict with mental problems, than the scholar-athletes of the nearly all-white (46 out of 47) Duke Men’s Lacrosse Team (some of whom sometimes engaged in underage drinking, making noise or other minor offenses).

Sure. Treat Ms. Mangum as victim and exotic dancer instead of accuser and stripper and treat the district attorney as a hero for pursuing the case, even though he made outrageous public statements in order to manipulate enough gullible black Durham County voters to keep his job and what he did in the prosecution that became a persecution was unfair to a woman (Freda Black, from whom he stole the election) and a black man (Moez Elmostafa, the cab driver who dared to confirm Reade Seligmann’s alibi, and got himself prosecuted, unsuccessfully but expensively, on a bogus misdemeanor charge for his honesty), as well as all those” white guys” who really didn’t either “do it” or cover up for those who “did it” (and their black teammate deserves all the grief and threats he got, for not helping the prosecution in the circumstances, because he must be a “Clarence Thomas” type who thinks for himself and stands for the truth instead of the agenda so thoughtfully prescribed for him).

North Carolina journalist and television commentator Cash Michaels, who covered the Duke case for America’s black press, wrote privately long before Election Day 2006:

“[A]s I look back over my stories from the beginning, the common theme has always been, ‘What evidence does the DA have,’ and ‘Can he prove this case?’

'Since then I've gotten answers to both — ‘Nothing’ and ‘No.’”

Every fair-minded person, especially Durham County’s black community, would have been better off if Mr. Michaels had publicly written that before Election Day 2006.

Instead, Mr. Michaels wrote of the one-sidedness of the “60 Minutes” expose and shared North Carolina Central University Law Professor Irving Joyner’s notions as to how Mr. Nifong might win convictions in the Duke case.

By now the supporters of Mr. Nifong should be only morally blind relatives, but there are more, as evidenced by this letter from Durham resident Carrie Smith, recently published in an appropriate place, Durham’s Herald-Sun:

“No one should be kicked over and over when they are already down. How dare the community keep kicking Mike Nifong. Nifong is a noble man in a profession that is not known for its nobleness. Where is your character? Who is your God? The entire episode reminds me of the crucifixion of Christ. What has Nifong done for you to cry, ‘crucify him, crucify him?’ I wonder how many of the defense lawyers are trying the case for free. If they feel so strongly about the reputation of Duke University and those students, why charge for your services? “The wrong person is being punished as a result of this debacle. The Duke students who disrespected their school to the extent that they would invite a stripper to put on a raunchy, half-naked performance for a party are the ones who deserve punishment. Get a bunch of alcohol-filled, rowdy young men together and one or two of them will probably taunt and invade, with an instrument, a sassy-talking black woman.

“Nifong knows the history of how black women have been violated and nothing was done about it. He planned to bring about justice without regard to race, status or school affiliation. The actions against Nifong are so harsh the universe is trembling.

“The divine master will not let you get away with your unforgiving hearts. All humans make mistakes. We got to forgive and choose mercy over justice every time.”

Brooklyn College History Professor and understatement master Robert K.C. Johnson described the letter as “among the strangest items [he’s] seen” (and, since Professor Johnson has assiduously followed the Duke case, that’s saying plenty).

Ms. Smith, your comparing Mr. Nifong to Jesus constitutes blasphemy if you are responsible for your actions. Jesus volunteered to die for humanity’s sins. Mr. Nifong is NOT noble: he volunteered three young white men, perhaps as an atonement of sorts for white racism, and tried to send them to prison for decades on bogus first-degree felony charges, in order to win a Democrat primary election. And no one in their right mind is calling for Mr. Nifong to be crucified. Disbarred, removed from office, tried for criminal contempt, investigated for criminal conduct and sued for damages, yes. But not crucified.

In the May 1, 2006 edition of Newsweek, in a story titled “What happened at Duke?,” North Carolina Central University student Chan Hall is quoted as telling a reporter, “It's the same old story. Duke up, Central down,” and wanting Duke students prosecuted “whether it happened or not” as “justice for things that happened in the past.”

Mr. Hall apparently is not alone in wanting white sacrifices.

Since there was a Scottsboro case, in which young blacks were wrongly prosecuted for rape, there needed to be Duke case?

No, not under what America's criminal justice system is suppoased to be.

Reverend Jesse Lee Peterson, founder and president of BOND (Brotherhood Organization of A New Destiny) and author of "Scam: How the Black Leadership Exploits Black America," wrote “ Why Some New Orleans Residents Went Under.”

Reverend Peterson:

“Say a hurricane is about to destroy the city you live in. Two questions: What would you do? What would you do if you were black? Sadly, the two questions don't have the same answer.

“To the first: Most of us would take our families out of that city quickly to protect them from danger. Then, able-bodied men would return to help others in need, as wives and others cared for children, elderly, infirm and the like.

“For better or worse, Hurricane Katrina has told us the answer to the second question. If you're black and a hurricane is about to destroy your city, you'll probably wait for the government to save you.

“This was not always the case. Prior to 40 years ago, such a pathetic performance by the black community in a time of crisis would have been inconceivable. The first response would have come from black men. They would take care of their families, bring them to safety, and then help the rest of the community. Then local government would come in.

“No longer. When 75 percent of New Orleans residents had left the city, it was primarily immoral, welfare-pampered blacks that stayed behind and waited for the government to bail them out. This, as we know, did not turn out good results.

" Enter Jesse Jackson and Louis Farrakhan. Jackson and Farrakhan laid blame on ‘racist’ President Bush. Farrakhan actually proposed the idea that the government blew up a levee so as to kill blacks and save whites. The two demanded massive governmental spending to rebuild New Orleans, above and beyond the federal government's proposed $60 billion. Not only that, these two were positioning themselves as the gatekeepers to supervise the dispersion of funds. Perfect: Two of the most dishonest elite blacks in America, ‘overseeing’ billions of dollars. I wonder where that money will end up.

“Of course, if these two were really serious about laying blame on government, they should blame the local one. Responsibility to perform legally and practically fell first on the mayor of New Orleans. We are now all familiar with Mayor Ray Nagin the black Democrat who likes to yell at President Bush for failing to do Nagin's job. The facts, unfortunately, do not support Nagin's wailing. As the Washington Times puts it, ‘recent reports show [Nagin] failed to follow through on his own city's emergency-response plan, which acknowledged that thousands of the city's poorest residents would have no way to evacuate the city.’

“One wonders how there was ‘no way’ for these people to evacuate the city. We have photographic evidence telling us otherwise. You've probably seen it by now the photo showing 2,000 parked school buses, unused and underwater. How much planning does it require to put people on a bus and leave town, Mayor Nagin?

“Instead of doing the obvious, Mayor Nagin (with no positive contribution from Democratic Gov. Kathleen Blanco, the other major leader vested with responsibility to address the hurricane disaster) loaded remaining New Orleans residents into the Superdome and the city's convention center. We know how that plan turned out.

“About five years ago, in a debate before the National Association of Black Journalists, I stated that if whites were to just leave the United States and let blacks run the country, they would turn America into a ghetto within 10 years. The audience, shall we say, disagreed with me strongly. Now I have to disagree with me. I gave blacks too much credit. It took a mere three days for blacks to turn the Superdome and the convention center into ghettos, rampant with theft, rape and murder.

“President Bush is not to blame for the rampant immorality of blacks. Had New Orleans' black community taken action, most would have been out of harm's way. But most were too lazy, immoral and trifling to do anything productive for themselves.

“All Americans must tell blacks this truth. It was blacks' moral poverty not their material poverty that cost them dearly in New Orleans Farrakhan, Jackson, and other race hustlers are to be repudiated for they will only perpetuate this problem by stirring up hatred and applauding moral corruption. New Orleans, to the extent it is to be rebuilt, should be remade into a dependency-free, morally strong city where corruption is opposed and success is applauded. Blacks are obligated to help themselves and not depend on the government to care for them. We are all obligated to tell them so.”

Like New Orleans and Louisiana, Durham and North Carolina have big problems: “race hustling,” as Reverend Peterson put it, and racial pandering by politicians.

The truth about the Duke case finally became generally known and so the case was dismissed and Mr. Nifong became the pursuee instead of the pursuer, as he should have. But powerful Democrats did not want to further antagonize the black community in North Carolina by pursuing Ms. Mangum (and risking the advice she received since she cried gang rape becoming public), so she has not been prosecuted for a false report. Tawana Brawley was not prosecuted either.

Justice demands that rapists be prosecuted and false accusers be prosecuted too. In the Duke case, three innocent young men were prosecuted and their false accuser is getting away without being prosecuted. (In Ms. Mangum’s case, calling for her prosecution was not something a Democrat Attorney General dependent upon a black bloc vote was going to do.)

Michael J. Gaynor

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Biography - Michael J. Gaynor

Michael J. Gaynor has been practicing law in New York since 1973. A former partner at Fulton, Duncombe & Rowe and Gaynor & Bass, he is a solo practitioner admitted to practice in New York state and federal courts and an Association of the Bar of the City of New York member.

Gaynor graduated magna cum laude, with Honors in Social Science, from Hofstra University's New College, and received his J.D. degree from St. John's Law School, where he won the American Jurisprudence Award in Evidence and served as an editor of the Law Review and the St. Thomas More Institute for Legal Research. He wrote on the Pentagon Papers case for the Review and obscenity law for The Catholic Lawyer and edited the Law Review's commentary on significant developments in New York law.

The day after graduating, Gaynor joined the Fulton firm, where he focused on litigation and corporate law. In 1997 Gaynor and Emily Bass formed Gaynor & Bass and then conducted a general legal practice, emphasizing litigation, and represented corporations, individuals and a New York City labor union. Notably, Gaynor & Bass prevailed in the Second Circuit in a seminal copyright infringement case, Tasini v. New York Times, against newspaper and magazine publishers and Lexis-Nexis. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed, 7 to 2, holding that the copyrights of freelance writers had been infringed when their work was put online without permission or compensation.

Gaynor currently contributes regularly to www.MichNews.com, www.RenewAmerica.com, www.WebCommentary.com, www.PostChronicle.com and www.therealitycheck.org and has contributed to many other websites. He has written extensively on political and religious issues, notably the Terry Schiavo case, the Duke "no rape" case, ACORN and canon law, and appeared as a guest on television and radio. He was acknowledged in Until Proven Innocent, by Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson, and Culture of Corruption, by Michelle Malkin. He appeared on "Your World With Cavuto" to promote an eBay boycott that he initiated and "The World Over With Raymond Arroyo" (EWTN) to discuss the legal implications of the Schiavo case. On October 22, 2008, Gaynor was the first to report that The New York Times had killed an Obama/ACORN expose on which a Times reporter had been working with ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief.

Gaynor's email address is gaynormike@aol.com.


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