Outing the Victim

This old article from Jay Nordlinger is interesting in light of the Kobe Bryant case.

In the spring of 1989, the Central Park “wilding” occurred. That was the monstrous rape and beating of a young white woman, known to most of the world as “the jogger.” The hatred heaped on her by Sharpton and his claque is almost impossible to fathom, and wrenching to review. Sharpton insisted-against all evidence-that the attackers were innocent. They were, he said, modern Scottsboro Boys, trapped in “a fit of racial hysteria.” Unspeakably, he and his people charged that the victim’s own boyfriend had raped and beaten her to the point of death. Outside the courthouse, they chanted, “The boyfriend did it! The boyfriend did it!” They denounced the victim as “Whore!” They screamed her name, over and over (because most publications refused to print it, though several black-owned ones did). Sharpton brought Tawana Brawley to the trial one day, to show her, he said, the difference between white justice and black justice. He arranged for her to meet the jogger’s attackers, whom she greeted with comradely warmth. In another of his publicity stunts, he appealed for a psychiatrist to examine the victim. “It doesn’t even have to be a black psychiatrist,” he said, generously. He added: “We’re not endorsing the damage to the girl — if there was this damage.”

See, once upon a time it was conservatives who thought attacking the victim in rape cases was reprehensible. We condemned Sharpton for it. We condemned the Carvilles and Blumenthals when they defended Clinton this way. But now Sean Hannity invites Leykis on the air to discuss "double standards" in the handling of rape cases.