Michael Gaynor is worried to death about “the political correctness danger“.  His lengthy rant was inspired by Stuart Taylor’s recent book currently being marketed under the provocative subtitle: “”Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case.”

To make his point, Michael Gaynor provides a lengthly series of quotations from a recent PBS interview in which Jeffrey Brown interviewed the author of the Duke Lacrosse book.  According to Brown, the Duke Lacross team was almost railroaded by “Bias in favor of the idea that, well, the privileged white male athletes are accused of abusing the poor black woman, we love that. It’s in synch with all of our preconceptions and our ideology. Let’s pile on and make it a morality play. And an awful lot of people, including the New York Times, for example, were not a bit deterred by contrary evidence from making it a morality play of that kind.”

In the PBS interview, Jeffrey Brown, like any sane observer of the American scene, had no problem believing that the mainstream media was guilty of sensationalism; but he was surprised to hear Stuart Taylor applying an ideological explanation to this phenomenon. 

Michael Gaynor isn’t the least surprised.  “If you think the politically correct media reformed after the [Duke Lacrosse] Hoax was exposed and therefore the situation in Jena, Louisiana was accurately reported generally instead of politically correctly reported, read Craig Franklin’s “Media Myths About The Jena 6” in The Christian Science Monitor”.

Actually, Craig Franklin’s willingness to believe the worst about the Jena 6 (even if that requires a bizarre revision of the historical record) is reminiscent of the national media’s rush to judgment in North Carolina.  In both cases, biased and irresponsible prosecutors were determined to hold student athletes to account. 

That’s where the similarities end. 

One case deals with college athletes; the other is about high school kids. 

One case is exclusively about guilt, innocence and the reliability of a single witness; the other is about a prosecutor who produced and directed the tragic events he is now prosecuting. 

One case was a cause celebre from day one; the other would have passed unnoticed if Friends of Justice hadn’t intervened.

One set of defendants had the resources to hire top flight legal representation; the other set of defendants were initially dependent on court appointed attorneys like the unspeakably inept Blane Williams (the man who “defended” Mychal Bell in late June).

One case was about affluent white lacrosse players; the other was about poor black football players.

One case demonstrates that Americans love to see rich people laid low by the criminal justice system (primarily because it happens so rarely in real life).  If you don’t believe that Americans have it in for rich people, just watch re-runs legal dramas like CSI and Law and Order and see who gets busted 95% of the time–rich white guys with skeletons in the closet.  The Duke lacrosse case fit this pattern perfectly.

American television audiences have little interest in the plight of poor black defendants (primarily because, in real life, young black males are convicted so frequently, so silently, and so anonymously that their plight is just another unremarkable, and unremarked, fact of life).

The New York Times was all over the Duke Lacrosse case because it followed the familiar script of a Law and Order drama.  The Times ignored Jena, possibly because their coverage of the Duke case was almost as appalling as their coverage of the build up to the Iraq war. 

Besides, the Duke lacrosse story featured a crusading white prosecutor standing up for a black victim (another favorite media trope (think, “To Kill a Mockingbird”); Jena featured a white prosecutor nailing poor black guys accused of beating up a poor white guy.  The liberal media likes “sympathetic” black victims, and the Jena 6 didn’t qualify.

And yet “Jena” has become as prominent as the Duke Lacrosse case.  Why?

You can’t blame it on the mainstream media.  Howard Witt of the Chicago Tribune gave the story early attention, but his coverage was sober, carefully researched, and straight forward.  Besides, apart from CNN, few media outlets followed Witt’s lead until the story blew up in August.

Jena became a national story because black America made it a national story.  But why? Why would anyone want to stand up for black kids accused of jumping a white kid?

Black America came to the aid of the Jena 6 because the Jena story is a blatant example of America’s two tier system of criminal justice.  The message goes something like this: so long as public officials in Jena refuse to admit that they are every bit as responsible for what happened to Justin Barker as the Jena 6, Jena justice has no credibility in our eyes.

Here are the facts that matter to black America (and to a few white folks who care enough to reflect on the matter): 1. A hate crime was dismissed as a childish prank; 2. students protesting this dismissive remark were threatened with felony prosecution; 3. the same man who issued this threat is prosecuting the Jena 6.

Hence the cry, “Free the Jena 6!” 

It isn’t that people want the defendants freed from taking responsibility for their actions; they simply refuse to let high school kids reap the whirlwind after public officials like DA Reed “Stroke of my pen” Walters and school superintende Roy “Childish Prank” Breithaupt sewed the wind.  Black America has determined that, in this case at least, the sins of the fathers will not be visited upon the children.

“It is necessary that temptations to sin come,” Jesus told his disciples, “but woe to the man by whom the temptation comes!”  By refusing to call a hate crime by its proper name, and by refusing to validate the legitimate protest of black parents and their children, Roy and Reed created an adversarial relationship between the noose hangers and their white friends, on one side, and the black student athletes who reacted to the noose provocation, on the other.  In the process, a spark of crude and clumsy racism that could have been used as a teaching opportunity was transformed into a torch that eventually engulfed an entire community.

Jesus refuses to serve as “a judge and divider” in human affairs.  But Jesus leaves little doubt how he feels about adults who lure children into sin: “It would be be better for him to have a great millstone fastend found his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea!”

This morning, a journalist asked me why these cases have taken so long to go to court.  “We’re dealing with a standoff,” I told her.  “Jena officials can’t admit their personal culpability, and they can’t drop the charges against the Jena 6 without risking a backlash from angry whites.  On the other hand, black America rejects the validity of any verdict handed down by an all-white jury in Jena, Louisiana, and that creates a problem for the system.

So, how do we bring resolution to this mess?

The first step, clearly, is to find a new venue (perhaps Alexandria, La.) in which a multi-racial jury is at least a possibility.  Another all-white jury in these cases is not an option. 

The second step is to demand that the prosecutor and the judge recuse themselves.  

Once we have an objective prosecutor working in front of a multi-racial jury, black America will be able to live with the outcome.  

The cry, “Free the Jena 6” was originally a demand that incarcerated defendants to be released on bond awaiting trial.  But the cry is now best interpreted as a demand that these young men be freed from a complicit prosecutor and Jena juries awash in prejudicial propaganda.