December 5, 2013

Tom Wolfe Alert: Heisman Trophy frontrunner won't be charged with rape (this time, at least)

A continuing theme at iSteve is how often the latest headlines resemble plots in old Tom Wolfe novels. From the NYT:
Jameis Winston, the Florida State quarterback who was a leading contender for the Heisman Trophy as the nation’s top player before accusations of sexual assault surfaced, will not face charges, the state attorney for Florida’s Second Judicial Circuit said Thursday. ...
Winston, 19, has been the most dominant player in college football this season, and his Florida State team is undefeated and a contender for the national championship. But ever since a sexual assault allegation by a former Florida State student became public last month, his on-field exploits have been weighed against how law enforcement in a rabid college football community handled the investigation as well as the role character plays in awarding one of sport’s most iconic awards: the Heisman Trophy. ...
The 19-year-old woman first reported an off-campus sexual assault to the police on Dec. 7, 2012. ... 
The woman told the police she was raped at an apartment after a night of drinking at a bar near campus, according to a search warrant released hours before Meggs’s announcement. She said she was with friends and had five to six shots at a local bar and that her “memory is very broken from that point forward.” She told the police that she had taken a cab with a “nondescript” black man to an apartment where she was raped. She did not identify that man as Winston until about a month after she reported the assault. 
She tried to fight the man off, and at some point, another man intervened and told him to stop, according to the warrant. But the two went into a bathroom “where he completed the act.” She had no idea where the assault took place, she said, but recalls riding on a scooter and being dropped off at a campus intersection. 
Evidence gathered the day of the incident matched Winston’s DNA, which was collected by the police last month. Winston’s lawyer, Tim Jansen, of Tallahassee, said Winston had consensual sex with the accuser, a contention that the woman’s family has vehemently denied. 
“In the lab work we did, there was DNA from two males: Winston’s DNA and the other was unknown,” Meggs said. “If we had proceeded to trial, not knowing whose that DNA is would have been a problem.”

This is of course the central plot device of Wolfe's novel A Man in Full that brings together the elite of Atlanta, black and white, as they try to make their problem go away: the daughter of Georgia Tech's chairman of the board of governors is accusing Georgia Tech's Heisman Trophy contender, Fareek Fanon, of raping her after a night of drinking.

You would assume that the Jameis Winston case would have been a huge story in the New York Times all fall with lots of long think pieces about the Meaning of It All. After all, the prestige press has been getting worked up recently over Rape Culture on Campus and in the Military and the like. But it has been slow to delve much into this particular story about the star of the #1 team beyond laconic news accounts like this one because it runs into other social concerns: promoting black quarterbacks, and the worry that the woman is white.

In contrast, the NYT was all over a story a year or two ago about an obscure white college quarterback accused of rape in some place like Montana or Wyoming. He wound up acquitted. (Reinstated as starting quarterback the day after his acquital, he's thrown for 28 touchdowns and only 4 interceptions this year for Montana, which will be in a small college playoff game on Saturday against Coastal Carolina.)

And of course the NYT ran a couple of dozen stories promoting the hoax that a black stripper (who, by the way, was just convicted of murder) had been gang raped by the white Duke lacrosse team.

There's a similar case at the Naval Academy where three black football players are accused of raping a female student, presumably white, but that has gotten some Serious Attention because that can be filed under the Sexual Assault Epidemic in the Military category (talk about bogus trend stories ...). And the alleged rapists are not shattering stereotypes by being passing quarterbacks.

In case you are wondering about whether the football star was guilty in A Man in Full, well, Wolfe had a quintuple bypass before finishing the book, and then problems with manic-depression (which is sometimes a side effect of open heart surgery). Eventually, Wolfe decided he couldn't get back to the high quality of his writing in his manuscript and slapped on a conclusion. So, Wolfe has Charlie Croker's wife explain at length what she figures really happened, but it's unsatisfying. (Then, Wolfe is the absolute opposite of a mystery writer, so his books never wrap up nicely.)

30 comments:

  1. Buck McNutter or Jimbo Fisher: which is the funnier name?

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  2. From what I can credibly glean, the alleged victim in the Winston case is black.

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  3. You would assume that the Jameis Winston case would have been a huge story in the New York Times all fall with lots of long think pieces about the Meaning of It All.

    In order to take the spotlight off of the Obamacare disaster, it's gonna be All Mandela All The Time, from now until at least MLK-Jr-Day.

    Then maybe they'll switch over to covering the Super Duper Bowl.

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  4. Mandela just died. Mandela biopic opens this weekend.

    Which means that the two British Africans whose names I can't spell or pronounce will get Oscar noms but their votes will cancel & DiCaprio wins for WoWS.

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  5. No doubt, now that Nelson Mandela has died, we will be told that it is all whitey's fault.

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  6. Navy accuser is black steve. Winston accuser is white.

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  7. Since you mention it, the Jameis Winston saga did seem to get less media attention, proportional to its importance, than the Johnny Manziel saga did this year. I think a lot of that, though, is due to Manziel's antics taking place during the slow news offseason.

    And to the person who mentioned The Wolf of Wall Street, I found the part of the commercial where DiCaprio's assistant effectively says, "I love three things: my country, Jesus Christ, and making people rich" to be one of the most brazenly misleading lines I've ever seen in a movie ad. They want us to believe Wall Streeters of the fraudulent variety are Jesus worshipping right-wing extremists, not the politically agnostic to left-wing money worshipers they typically are.

    wiseguy

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  8. I don't think they cast Jonah Hill to deliver that sales pitch in order to mislead audiences.

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  9. The South has come a long way indeed. Whites high fiving each other over charges of a black man raping a white girl getting thrown out....

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  10. >>"Steve Sailer said...
    I don't think they cast Jonah Hill to deliver that sales pitch in order to mislead audiences."




    Certainly not, but it may reflect a certain mindset within hollywood and one that they can use in the service of the narrative. 'Good guys are the crusaders of a (soft) leftist variety, bad guys are the right wing conservatives and if need be, be sure to throw in a touch of religiosity for additional depth to the villian's character as in 'what makes this dude tick'?



    For an interesting comparison one ought to compare this NCAA football assault case with one that occurred on the west coast about 12 yrs ago. Then Washington Huskies TE star Jerramy Stephens was never formally charged with assaulting a co-ed and the woman who filed the charges was basically ostracized by the university for having filed charges vs their star player. Her life was never fully recovered.

    Stephens meanwhile, after numerous run-ins with the law, managed to land on his feet so to speak and late last yr married women's soccer goalie Hope Solo. (After avoiding being charged with 4th degree assault vs the fiance)

    But as the title of this post reads "this time, at least". So who knows in the case of Jameis Winston, who knows and who can say.

    What is it with all these NFL bad boys anyway?

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  11. Actually I'm not at all surprised that real life recapitulates 'A Man in Full'.

    As you will no doubt remember the novel starts with the Oakland police impounding a man's car. I explained this creepy coincidence to the Oakland police as they were impounding my car, but alas they were not fans of modern American literature.

    Albertosaurus

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  12. @Anon 4:11 "What is it with all these NFL bad boys anyway?"

    High testosterone.

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  13. @Anon, 12/5/13, 3:50 PM

    I have no idea what the context of that line is, so I can't comment. But in general, I feel your pain and I agree that there is a Hollywood mindset, which is very predictable. (If that's what you're implying.)

    "Out of the Furnace" is the latest tired example of Hollywood humble bragging, while really being a whiteface minstrel show. Woody Harrelson plays a stereotypical evil hillbilly, bashing and killing people right and left, eccentric actorly tics, thick Southern Appalachian twang.

    This is so inaccurate. In the film he's referred to as a "Ramapo inbred," a clear reference to the mixed race Jackson Whites of Stag Hill.

    They speak with a Jersey/Philly corridor accent:

    Ramapo Woman speaking:

    http://tinyurl.com/nj3twcu

    NYorker ran an article about them:

    http://tinyurl.com/q7fbr7n

    But when you need a character that is purely evil, nothing works better than a white guy with a hillbilly accent.

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  14. It is hard for me to feel sorry for a woman who was drinking heavily with blacks and had unprotected sex with someone else that same day. Not exactly a lot of virtue to protect there.

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  15. "In order to take the spotlight off of the Obamacare disaster, it's gonna be All Mandela All The Time, from now until at least MLK-Jr-Day."

    No, the big distraction has been Obama's inequality speech and his proposal to raise the minimum wage to a little over $10 per hour, which would put it at about 70% of Australia's minimum wage, adjusting for the exchange rate. And soi-disant conservatives reacted with predictable opposition, for which Obama must have been thrilled. Imagine if the GOP had said instead, "Let's make it $12 per hour instead, and impose a $10k fine per employee on any employer caught paying less. Now, back to the Obamacare fiasco..."

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  16. "And to the person who mentioned The Wolf of Wall Street, I found the part of the commercial where DiCaprio's assistant effectively says, "I love three things: my country, Jesus Christ, and making people rich" to be one of the most brazenly misleading lines I've ever seen in a movie ad. They want us to believe Wall Streeters of the fraudulent variety are Jesus worshipping right-wing extremists, not the politically agnostic to left-wing money worshipers they typically are."

    I worked at a similar, though legit, firm in the 1990s with a broker who had previously worked at Stratton Oakmont (the firm featured in the Wolf of Wall Street, and, presumably, the inspiration for Boiler Room). The typical broker at those sort of small shops, in my experience, was not a left-winger. Definitely a money-worshiper though. These guys were, for the most part, Irish, Italian, and Jewish guys from working class backgrounds who voted Republican but weren't overly political.

    The firm I worked for had a WASP-sounding name that was made up by the two Italian guys who founded it (there was another firm back then called "A.S. Goldmen", which was founded by two Italian guys, one named Anthony and the other named Steve, if memory serves). One of the brokers at my firm was an Italian guy who used to manage a Sbarros. Another was a Jewish guy who used to be a nuclear engineer.

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  17. Dave Pinsen wrote:

    "No, the big distraction has been Obama's inequality speech and his proposal to raise the minimum wage to a little over $10 per hour, which would put it at about 70% of Australia's minimum wage, adjusting for the exchange rate. And soi-disant conservatives reacted with predictable opposition, for which Obama must have been thrilled. Imagine if the GOP had said instead, "Let's make it $12 per hour instead, and impose a $10k fine per employee on any employer caught paying less. Now, back to the Obamacare fiasco..."

    I have to wonder how this is going to shake out. My area, for one, is so economically marginal that I can't imagine small businesses adjusting to things, at least not easily.

    The problem is that my area, like a lot of others, really doesn't have much productive activity going on. If various transfer payments from the Feds didn't enter the local economy, there would be very little economy. I don't know much about the Midwest or the Northeast, but the rural South is predominantly like this. I'm pretty sure there are pockets in the Northeast, and I know areas in the Midwest have it as well. There are some pockets of affluence in the mountain West, and even less in the plains states.

    What San Francisco can make work without blinking is going to be a gutbuster for some areas.

    I don't really have any ideological view on this. But what Australia can make work, I'm not so sure the US can.

    Plus you can never forget the automation wave is picking up steam all the time. What's better than a part time worker making $10 an hour? Actually what's better than a part time worker making $1 an hour?

    No worker at all.

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  18. Grover Prosling12/5/13, 9:22 PM

    Let's see here:

    Where the black guy was involved:
    The woman went drinking and got soused. She willingly went in a cab to a strange apartment with strange men. She did not know who the man was that raped her. There was the DNA of two males found- creating doubt as to who did the act whether consensual or forcible. The state attorney, after reviewing the murky details decides not to press charges, unsure who the perp was.

    Where the white guy was involved:
    The white woman texted the white quarterback. They met. She picked him up at 11 pm at night, and brought the white guy to her house. All quite voluntary. She wasnt drunk. They went to her room sat on her bed and started making out. So far we have one sober white female, who initiated contact, brought the guy home of her own volition, and consensually started making out on her own bed. The white guy started getting more aggressive. WHite girl says the white guy flipped her over and rape her. He says its consensual. She fails to file a complaint for 4 weeks. Later she goes to court for a restraining order. Then she finally presses formal complaint. Other women come forward with other stories. White feminists are all over the story including publishing "shame ads" and called for a Justice Dept, NCAA, and US Dept of Education investigation.

    Assorted pundits try to insinuate some sort of "double standard" here, but there isn't. Both stories were covered extensvely in the local media. There was no "cover up" of "softsoap." The key variable has nothing to do with "race" and much to do with the good PR machine of the feminists on campus. NYT got involved because of the heavy white feminist protests which were not so strong in Florida, where it looked like just another maybe/maybe not party-date-rape case.

    Furthermore one of the white running backs on the team, Donaldson, had PREVIOUS sex assault suspicions against him, and OTHER women came forward to make allegations, and he was thus charged. It is clear that the white guys of Montana had a lot more to answer for, including PREVIOUS activity that led to ADDITIONAL allegations and charges on the table. So sure, they got more coverage. ANd that would have been over and above campus feminist PR.

    But see, in standard right wing narratives, the white guys should get a slap on the wrists, cuz the black guy, with a WEAKER case against him, "must have" received "special favors." It is automatically assumed that the black guy gets these favors while more culpable whites with additional accusers are "victims."

    So called claims of media "bias" supposedly "favoring" blacks hold up "national coverage" by CNN or NYT as some sort of litmus test for "fairness." If CNN aint on the story and there is a black guy involved then it must be "media bias" per some quarters. But this is bogus. Local media covers these sorts of stories all the time and do not hesitate of show the race of the perps where warranted- such as in mug shots. No one black gets any "favors." "National" coverage is no litmus test for anything unless it is to pump up the standard narrative of white "victimhood" - call it the "white card."

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  19. Plus you can never forget the automation wave is picking up steam all the time. What's better than a part time worker making $10 an hour? Actually what's better than a part time worker making $1 an hour?

    No worker at all.


    I was in a Lowe's store yesterday. ( Big store chain, building supplies and appliances )

    The Lowes had an unmanned, automated, key duplicating machine. Just insert the key you want duplicated, and pay with credit or debit card. ... Thereby eliminating a human worker operating a key duping machine.

    My point? Peepul such as Mr. Pinsen fail to acknowledge that there's a large surplus of labor, particularly at the low skill end. This surplus is growing all the time. Most workers have no market place bargaining power. Most workers or would-be workers are, as the Chinese say, useless eaters.

    Maybe Jesus loved them, but Jesus never promised to pay the poor or the poor in spirit any Earthly wage at all, at least before He returns.

    Now if they could just automate the work of un-stopping-up and cleaning toilets ...

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    1. "My point? Peepul such as Mr. Pinsen fail to acknowledge that there's a large surplus of labor, particularly at the low skill end. This surplus is growing all the time. Most workers have no market place bargaining power."

      What makes you think I'm unaware that there's a surplus of labor? And how do you figure that the workers' lack of bargaining power is a good argument against raising the minimum wage?

      As far as automation replacing low skilled jobs, that's great: wouldn't you rather have machines picking strawberries instead of illegal immigrants? Machines don't have kids that burden local schools and then grow up to vote Democrat.

      Automation is going to eliminate jobs regardless. Why not let the workers who still have jobs get paid a little more? Plus, an enforced higher minimum wage is a de facto tax on employers of unskilled migrants. Raising the minimum wage is a rare Democratic policy proposal that works against Dems' electoral interests.

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    2. Incidentally, there's another way by which raising the minimum wage hurts democrats: it will increase grass roots opposition to mass immigration. It's one thing if immigrants are taking $7 per hour jobs, but $10+ jobs are a different story. Walmart's new location in the DC area got something like 40 applicants per opening for jobs that pay ~$9 per hour.

      Instead of recognizing Obama's gambit as the gift that it is, conservatives on twitter were parroting Cato Org talking points and making silly reductio arguments against it.

      Delete
  20. "In contrast, the NYT was all over a story a year or two ago about an obscure white college quarterback accused of rape in some place like Montana or Wyoming."

    LOL, the NYT was "all over it," Steve, but you can't remember what state it was in, and I don't recall hearing about it. Yeah that was an international conspiracy.

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  21. Most workers or would-be workers are, as the Chinese say, useless eaters.

    Well, until a Chinaman needs a sewage line cleared, then a good plumber is worth his weight in gold, otherwise the Chinaman is up to his a$$ in $h1t.

    BTW, if that robot key cutter hoses up your key good luck dealing with Lowe's to get a replacement. The whole exerience will cost you enough of your time to have hired a locksmith to do it for you.

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  22. Did anybody see/hear the Florida state attorney's press conference yesterday? What an idiot!

    Look, I don't know exactly what happened between Jameis Winston and that young lady. MAYBE he raped her. MAYBE she consented to sex while drunk, regretted it the next day, and convinced herself it was rape. I have no idea what happened.

    Regardless, if investigation either 1) turned up evidence that Winstonm was 100% innocent or 2) found that there just wasn't enough evidence for an indictment, then THAT is all the state attorney should have said. HEck, he could have just issued that in a press release. There was no need for a press conference.

    But the jerk DID hold one, and he turned it into a fiasco. He and his aides couldn't stop laughing, smirking and joking for the cameras.

    What an embarrassment.

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  23. astorian, did you expect the state that gave us Angela Corey to have a gentleman of probity and discretion as state attorney?

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  24. Mr. Pinsen, let me offer a small apology to you for my being too abrasive in an effort to seem witty. This apology also applies to the fellow I replied to on another thread about car manufacturers in southern states.

    Regarding raising the minimum wage, why won't liberals/Progressives/Democrats agree to the following to accompany an increase in government-mandated minimum wages?


    ...
    Robert Smith 50 minutes ago

    Might want to also close the border and deal with the excess entry level workers flooding the US.

    RAYMOND WITTMAN 46 minutes ago

    And no H1B-s. Pay the going wage rate in this country or train as needed instead of pocketing the difference!...

    http://www.marketwatch.com/story/low-wages-are-stalling-americas-economy-2013-12-06?link=MW_story_investinginsight

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  25. the best defense is a relentlessly aggressive offense

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  26. "High testosterone."

    I think testosterone has a magnifying effect on other traits as well so if a person doesn't have those traits then testosterone alone won't do it. Just a guess though.

    .

    "It is hard for me to feel sorry for a woman..."

    You don't need to feel sorry for her you need to want to live in a society with a rule of law because a rule of law protects your kith and kin and you can't have a rule of law when the media is so anti-white.

    .

    "there's a large surplus of labor, particularly at the low skill end. This surplus is growing all the time. Most workers have no market place bargaining power. Most workers or would-be workers are, as the Chinese say, useless eaters."

    Only because the incredibly malignant useless eaters of Wall St have been actively betraying their fellow citizens since the 1965 immigration act.

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  27. I don't approve of miscegenation. However, If I were on the jury for this upcoming trial, I would probably vote to acquit all four Vanderbilt football players involved:


    Vanderbilt victim at first denied she was raped
    That reaction is not unusual, experts say

    Dec. 2, 201

    The woman police said was raped while unconscious by four Vanderbilt University football players in June told police she didn’t think she had been assaulted and couldn’t conceive that Brandon Vandenburg could have been involved, according to a Metro police report.

    “(The victim) advised she trusted Vandenburg and he would not let anything happen to her,” Metro police Sgt. Mike Shreeve wrote in an investigative report, which was recently shown to The Tennessean by a source who asked not to be identified.

    The Metro police report, dated June 29 and confirmed as authentic by a second source familiar with the case on Monday, provides new details about what happened six days earlier in Gillette House on Vanderbilt’s campus.

    It paints a picture of a confused or reluctant victim who initially said she didn’t think she had been sexually assaulted and declined to undergo a rape kit test until counseled by a police victim’s advocate. And it shows she continued to date Vandenburg, one of the four former players accused of rape, for at least a few days after the June 23 attack — though it’s not clear she knew in those initial days what Vanderburg and the three others are now accused of doing to her.

    ...

    The report said that three black men and one white man — who are not identified — can be seen carrying the woman through the hallway, onto an elevator and toward Room 213 in Gillette House. Shreeve wrote that the woman was wearing a short, black skirt and that her “private area was sometimes exposed.”

    Once the woman was identified, she told police she and some friends had gone to the Tin Roof bar to meet with Vandenburg. She told them that she had been dating him for about two weeks.

    She also told police she didn’t think she had been raped.

    She said she had gotten drunk and that Vandenburg tried to take her back to her apartment. Once there, they were unable to get her electronic key pass to work, so they went to his dorm room in Gillette House. After that, her recollection fails her.

    “[The victim] advised she had been drinking heavily and has very little/no memory of events that took place,” the report said. “Advised she does not think she was sexually assaulted’ did not ‘feel’ like she had sex.”

    According to the report, she told police that she had been in contact with Vandenburg after June 23 and had had “consensual sex with him within a few days following this incident.”

    ...


    In the comments:

    Pat Woodford · Top Commenter · Monterey High School
    I BET HER DATE BOUGHT THE LIQUOR.
    Reply · 1 · Like · Edited · December 3 at 12:48pm

    Andrew Manservant · Top Commenter · Vanderbilt University
    The victim bought the liquor (21+) for all. The four alleged rapists were underage.
    Reply · Like · December 3 at 1:43pm


    Vanderbilt victim at first denied she was raped

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  28. >> incredibly malignant useless eaters of Wall St

    they created so much market liquidity that the unwashed masses COULD HAVE made some money too, if they weren't so unwashed.


    We have our commentariat's testimony that Wall Streeters are mostly assorted-ethnic non-political white guys who pick the money off the street when they see it.

    I admire them. Well.... I would if they weren't so dumb about over-paying for low-quality pussy.

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