John Hood saves me some keystrokes with his column today about the Guilford College “hate crime”:
Although some are trying commendably to avoid it [“it” being the scandalous reaction to the Duke lacrosse hoax], the process appears to be repeating itself just down I-40 in Greensboro, where five Guilford College football players now face charges of having beaten up three Palestinian students, one visiting from N.C. State. Caution? Patience? A due regard for truth and the reputation of young men whom the legal system must treat as innocent until proven guilty?
Nah.
There have been demonstrations, meetings, candlelight vigils. Activists are demanding immediate action. The professional meta-meaning mavens are swooping in, ascribing all sorts of significance to events that may or may not have happened. …
For Pete’s sake, we can’t yet know what happened at Guilford College. The Greensboro police haven’t even interviewed the Palestinian students. Parents of the players are telling a different story to the media (sound familiar). Is it too much to ask that people sit down, shut up, and wait for real information to come out?
On local discussions, I’ve heard some rumors that the Palestinians started the fight. I don’t know if they did, and that isn’t the point (it is the sort of thing that would eventually come out, though). A bar fight involving a school’s football players would require some institutional action (starting from the coach), but why assume the worst? And why do so habitually?
It’s this same mentality in American academe that viewed the smoking hulls of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and said, America deserved this. At least till they could think of something even worse: Bush did this! (At which point, presumably, America no longer deserved it.)
