I have a question. If the two Duke University students who are accused of raping a stripper at a party are both from the Northeast (one is from New York and the other from New Jersey), does it not say a lot about how anti-Southern popular culture is that the media has been trying so hard to turn this into an issue of racism. If a crime has been committed, is it worse because it happened in North Carolina and not California? And if so, can anyone tell me why? And if this attack was racially motivated, as some publicity-seeking black leaders have contended, should it not say more about the cultures of New York and New Jersey, where the alleged attackers are from, than that of North Carolina?

No. In typical knee-jerk fashion the national media started flagellating themselves and pontificating about the “racial overtones” of this story the minute they heard that a black woman was raped in the South. I suppose that the only reason this annoys me so much is that we all know that if it had been a white woman who had been raped the story would not be on the front page of USA Today, but rather it would be a single paragraph in the state news page.

Rape is one of the most horrific offenses one person can inflict upon another human being. And if those two students are guilty of that, in my opinion they should be castrated with a dull knife. I don't see why an entire region, the South, has to be put on trial because two Yankee students weren't raised right by their parents.

But in all this I'm most sadenned by the the grandstanding of those black leaders who have sought to raise their own profiles by making sure that the race card was played early. They've made certain that however this plays out, a lot of people are going to believe that this sort of thing only happens in the South.