Hateful Boys

My former pastor used to playfully accuse me of being a hateful boy because of some of the things I said. This week I was able to see what hateful boys can really look like. Just look at Mike NiFong and Don Imus.

I'm sure you heard the incredibly stupid remarks that Imus made on his show about the Rutger's University Women's Basketball team. I don't know if he deserved to be fired for them, but there was nothing redeeming about those remarks. They were racist, sexist and just despicable. But comments like that have been a part of Imus' show for some time. I find it odd that CBS and MSNBC suddenly found religion with him.

NiFong is a despicable human being for what he did to the young men on the Duke Lacrosse Team. He knew early on that the rape allegations against them were without merit, and he allowed them to be branded as racists and rapists for an entire year so that he could curry favor with African-American voters and win reelection. The abuse of power here is breath-taking.

Imus said something stupid on the radio. NiFong charged them with a crime he knew they didn't commit. Yet all our attention is on the words of Imus. To paraphrase Ray Donovan, former Secretary of Labor in the Reagan Administration "Which office do these young men go to to get their reputations back?"

Both of these men deserve to be sanctioned. I just think we are stringing up the lesser of two evils with Imus. NiFong abused the public trust as a prosecutor and branded these young men as criminals for crass political purposes. That is just hateful and wrong.