Selena Roberts' "Snitch" Glitch: Snitching Vital in Duke Case, but "Betrayal" Against Vick?
It's difficult to track the ever-shifting standards of Times sports columnist Selena Roberts, who not along ago wasseemingly convinced that the Duke lacrosse players, with "white privilege" on their side, were guilty of the rape of a black stripper - a "rape" that turned out to be a complete hoax. But while fellow Duke lacrosse players had a moral duty to provide evidence against their three teammates who were brought up on "rape" charges, football star Michael Vick's friends have "betrayed" him by providing evidence to prosecutors in the case involving accusations of animal cruelty.
Mark Finkelstein first pointed out on NewsBusters the amazing double standard, fleshed out by history professor and expert on all things Duke lacrosse-related, KC Johnson.
Johnson had the bad manners to quote an old Roberts' column from the Duke lacrosse case, at a time when she and other liberal media figures had conveniently thrown out the presumption of innocence, instead seeing the "rape" case through a liberal prism of white racism and class privilege.
Johnson wrote of Roberts' March 31, 2006 column: "Her insinuation: the lacrosse players were behaving like gang members engaged in an anti-snitching campaign. 'To the dismay of investigators,' she wrote, 'none have come forward to reveal an eyewitness account [sic]. Maybe the team captains are right. Maybe the allegations are baseless. But why is it so hard to gather the facts? Why is any whisper of a detail akin to snitching?'"
Johnson then compared her attitude then to the new attitude toward snitching Roberts showed in her Sunday piece, involving the animal cruelty charges against Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick.
"How does Roberts describe their behavior?
"Vick's cousin was 'the first to fail ' him. Then a friend with whom he had a falling out, Tony Taylor, was 'the first to flip ' on him. And finally, another old friend, Quanis Phillips, who pled guilty to dog-fighting charges on Friday, was 'the latest to betray ' Vick. [emphasis added in each sentence]
"Fail him? Flip on him? Betray him? What happened to Selena Roberts, the arch-crusader for justice, who argued that friends and teammates needed to 'come forward to reveal an eyewitness account,' and smash the culture in which 'any whisper of a detail [is] akin to snitching?'"
