I'm unclear on how you managed to lay the blame for this on "progressives." That's a untenable stretch. Young men have been having these kind of shameless bacchanalia for centuries -- hell, our president is famous for his party boy "youth" (all 3-4 decades of it.) Skull and Bones, cocaine, drinking, womanizing, etc. Yet this is a liberal problem?

Also, saying a prostitute is a sex worker has nothing to do with the morality of a party like this, nor is it an endorsement of paying for sex. It's simply a less loaded acknowledgment of a career, however miserable, that millions of women around the world do for money.

Hey, wait a minute; these women were "exotic dancers!" What was so exotic, you ask? Why, during the dance, they removed their clothing. Nothing could be more exotic than that. Now let's stop calling them strippers and prostitutes.

Seriously, I think that anyone who was at this party, and was under 21, should be expelled from Duke. And of course, let's get to the bottom of this alleged rape issue.

Ann Coulter had the best observation about this tawdry affair:

"However the Duke lacrosse rape case turns out, one lesson that absolutely will not be learned is this: You can severely reduce your chances of having a false accusation of rape leveled against you if you don't hire strange women to come to your house and take their clothes off for money.

Also, you can severely reduce your chances of being raped if you do not go to strange men's houses and take your clothes off for money. (Does anyone else detect a common thread here?)

And if you are a girl in Aruba or New York City, among the best ways to avoid being the victim of a horrible crime is to not get drunk in public or go off in a car with men you just met. While we're on the subject of things every 5-year-old should know, I also recommend against dousing yourself in gasoline and striking a match."

Nothing like a little common sense to put this all in perspective.

Agreed!! Ultimately, it is the culture that determines everything. What you condone and excuse will eventually define you. Do I think that the D.A. is a political hack? Yes. Do I think the moral standards on our college campuses are disgraceful? Yes.

Mark, I have to agree with you here. Getting dragged to a strip club might be excusable. Hiring a stripper to come to your place is a pretty advanced form of debauchery - pretty close to hiring prositutes. Nobody is talking about that.

I haven't stepped foot into a strip club since I left the Army. And that was to play a video game.

Seriously, the elite class should set a positive example for the rest of society. Should they fail to do so they should then be replaced by a new elite class.

No marxists need apply.

Suggest you read Ann Coulter's new column, :Lie Down With Strippers, Get Up With Pleas". She takes on the issues that no one is willing to tackle, which center around personal responsibility.

While rape is never excused, there is some personal responsibility involved in getting falling down drunk and then going to a private home full of men to take off your clothes and dance for them.

While false accusations are never excused, inviting a woman into your home to dance naked for you and your male buddies, seeing that she is alrady drunk and beaten up, does seem like an invitation to trouble. Sleazy and low-class at best, dangerous at worse.

But we have bought into the idea that it is somehow bad to be 'judgemental'. That word is a perjorative, an accusation of some moral failing. It's somehow become unacceptable to call it like it is, to disapprove of any behavior no matter how vile.

We have also become more lascivious--never had to spell that one before, hope I got close. But when a nation makes a public choice that it is better to take a vicarious thrill from its commander in chief's adulterous escapades instead of calling them tawdry and unacceptable, when a huge movement develops with the sole purpose of encouraging women to evade responsibility for irresponsible sex by merely killing the innocent results, when a major political party is holding fund-raising parties at the Playboy Mansion, when a group (NAMBLA) is vigorously defended by the ACLU in spite of its position that it is a good thing for grown men to sexually assault young boys, it is clear that we are in a time when we are supposed to accept young men hiring women to dance, naked and drunk, in their homes.

I wonder when we will get the backbone to start saying that some things are just plain wrong.

Mark,
I was a little unclear where your trophy wife comments, though good, tied into the Duke lacrosse team incident. But I'd like to comment on them.

Any wife who is thrown aside by a financially successful husband for a younger model should count her blessings that she is well rid of the guy. The one you should save your pity for is the younger model with the stars and the dollar signs in her eyes. I was set free from such a trophy-minded man ten years ago this month, and daily I thank God for the deliverance. Yes, it's a sad commentary on our post-moral society, but...out of bad can sometimes come good.

Alms: "She takes on the issues that no one is willing to tackle, which center around personal responsibility."

.....because no one takes her seriously. And I put Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage AND Michael Moore and Al Franken in that category. So she says outrageous things because she (and they) are entertainers, not serious news people or intellectuals.

Although I wouldn't mind seeing Ann Coulter dance. Maybe we could finally put that Adams Apple thing to rest.

I hope those players and Lacrosse (ex-)coach sue the hell out of Duke University, the escort service, and the stripper. She needs to be tried for perjury and sent to prison. Also, is there any recourse against the renegade DA? That guy needs to be disbarred.

Ash,

You comdemn Coulter due to your perception that she is an unserious bomb thrower who is in it for the entertainment value?

Then you make a snide reference about her gender?

You are kidding right? I mean you support a party/platform that runs for office under the banner that it "cares" more about women, civil rights and the "average" american than the other side of the aisle. Then you make a comment like that? The hypocrisy is rich indeed.

If I were to stoop to your level I would just merely call you a Fag. Pretty boring stuff eh?

Scratch a liberal, find a fascist underneath each and everytime.

Ash,

You comdemn Coulter due to your perception that she is an unserious bomb thrower who is in it for the entertainment value?

Then you make a snide reference about her gender?

You are kidding right? I mean you support a party/platform that runs for office under the banner that it "cares" more about women, civil rights and the "average" american than the other side of the aisle. Then you make a comment like that? The hypocrisy is rich indeed.

If I were to stoop to your level I would just merely call you a Fag. Pretty boring stuff eh?

Scratch a liberal, find a fascist underneath each and everytime.

As a self-confessed dirty liberal hippie atheist heathen, I feel disgusted at having to agree with your point here at least 75%. It's ridiculous that nobody thinks twice of "So, the Duke team was having a party with underage drinking and strippers."

Hmm... the original post really rubbed me wrong, but after reading the follow-ups it makes more sense.

I agree, if you do things that are questionable you're more likely to get into trouble. It's one reason why I avoid such situations whenever possible.

Wow, it's like I'm reading off a church bulletin board here....

since it sounds like none of you have been to a party with stripper/exotic dancers/ (girls undressing for money either way) there are two points that haven't been brought up.

No stripper goes to a job w/out an escort...if they do then situations like this happen

No stripper goes to a job and drinks enough for any of this to happen...

no I'm not a stripper

I'm not defending anyone if any rape occurred, I'm just pointing out where some responsiblity should be placed...

Mae,

I know other women in your situation - and, true enough, to be rid of a cad is a good thing; but the cad should pay a price for it...good for you that you've freed yourself, but bad for society that your ex isn't dragging out his life in impoverished social disgrace.

Opus,

From back in my depraved days, I recall that strippers normally do go out with a bully-boy to keep good order...there is something tremendously fishy about the whole case here.

I'm mostly just arguing for common decency - for mutual respect between all people...and mutual respect, in my view, requires that we not treat our fellow human beings - even if they volunteer for it - as mere objects for our transient, physical pleasure...

"If I were to stoop to your level I would just merely call you a Fag. Pretty boring stuff eh?"

And untrue, GOP. My claims about Ms. Coulter are true. And I am not the only one that wants to get to the bottom of that Adams apple thingie.

Gotta love the causal tossing out of slime. George Bush was never a womanizer. That is one thing that always impressed me about his youth. He was a good-looking guy, a fighter pilot, had money, had a fancy education, and could have been a real playboy. But he had a couple of serious relationahips, and no history of catting around to excess.

One anonymous person said he saw him doing coke. Hmmmm. Harping on that would indicate, to a logcial mind, that
1. You have never tried it yourself,
2. You strongly disapprove of it and of anyone who ever tried it, and
3. Therefore you have the same disdain for Bill Clinton, whose own brother, Roger, said on tape that he was looking for coke for his brother, who had a nose like a Hoover. Vac, not Herbert.

By all accounts, Bush quit drinking on his 40th birthday---or the day after, to avoid nitpicking. Assuming he did not begin his carousing till he was, say, 18, that would 2.2 decades of a wild life that everyone but the anonymous guy said was marked by drinking when he went out with his buddies. Yikes!!!

So guys who get rowdy when they go out drinking with their friends are to be condemned?

And this all relates to the Duke scandal how???

Oh, yeah, it doesn't have to. It's just a chance to slam Bush, with unfounded allegations of activity two decades ago.

Remember, GOP, this is the party that feels free to ridicule women they don't like, including making comments about their appearance. Funny how those comments tend to take on a sexist tone, usually referring to the woman being manly. Remember the John Goodman riff on Linda Tripp? And the claims that Paula Jones was too ugly to rape? And now the sneering about Ann Coulter's throat?

But they jump on every imagined instance of the dreaded "intolerance" on the other side. Or, gasp, lack of "sensitivity".

What they hate about Ann Coulter is that she is just as mean as James Carville, without looking like a snapping turtle, with style and class and a lot more intelligence. And she is funny.

My favorite Ann Coulter moment: She was talking abou the Senate kangaroo court for Supreme Court nominees, and suggested that if Justice Roberts was asked what he would do regarding some point, by Teddy Kennedy, he should respond "Well, Senator, I thought I'd just drive off that bridge when I come to it."

Nothing ticks a boy off like an uppity woman, and uppity she is. And a woman she is. And way too much woman for the likes of ash.