by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
Tribune Media Services<\/p>\n
I<\/span>n the past week, Don Imus was fired, all charges against the Duke University lacrosse players were dropped, and almost everyone has offered a sermon about the racial and class issues involved in both cases. But we need look only to the Ancient Greeks for the best insight.<\/p>\n The Greeks believed that insolence naturally leads to bullying, or\u00a0hubris<\/i>. This arrogance induces a mad behavior called\u00a0ate<\/i>. Finally, that recklessness earns well-earned destruction unleashed by the god\u00a0Nemesis<\/i>.<\/p>\n In other words, what goes around comes around \u2014 big time.<\/p>\n No one gets a pass, according to the Greeks. Just ask the arrogant Oedipus, who ultimately stabbed his own eyes out.<\/p>\n For years, talk-show host Imus trashed people, sometimes with racist and anti-Semitic banter. And not only did he get away with playing the foul mouth, but he was often courted by the powerful for his supposedly influential audience and the notion that it was hip to rap with him.<\/p>\n All the attention only swelled Imus’ head. And his excess led him to a kind of madness. How else to characterize the mind of someone who labels the Rutgers women’s basketball team “nappy-headed hos”?<\/p>\n Apparently, the unhinged Imus thought that adopting such racist, sexist slurs used by those in the “gangsta” culture \u2014 “hos” is a favorite term of some African-American rappers and comedians \u2014 was also cool for a white shock-jock.<\/p>\n Imus also foolishly assumed that the parade of liberal politicians and friends who clamored to get on his show might offer him politically correct cover.<\/p>\n Wrong again. Something called “race, class and gender” studies in our universities has long preached otherwise: Only those not white, heterosexual and male have an unspoken pass to use jocular slurs that their “oppressors” better not copy.<\/p>\n Lesbians on motorcycles carry placards blaring “Dykes on Bikes.” Homosexuals hype “queer studies.” Yet for outsiders to dub someone a “queer” or a “dyke” \u2014 or a “ho” \u2014 even as a bad joke is deemed automatically proof of their prejudice.<\/p>\n I<\/span>mus, for all his pseudo-sophistication about the contemporary scene, apparently did not grasp this hypocrisy of American popular culture. So he thought he could piggyback on such vile language \u2014 and as a hip white celeb get away with it.<\/p>\n Then he met\u00a0Nemesis<\/i>, long lying in wait. And the more America learned about the past rantings of this talk-show bully, the more it wondered why such a banal fool ever had an audience in the first place, much less was courted by politicians and celebrities.<\/p>\n The same ancient pattern of arrogance and retribution appears in the case of the Duke lacrosse team. Three Duke players were unjustly accused of rape and sexual offense by an African-American stripper. Local district attorney Mike Nifong, some of the Duke humanities faculty, the Duke University president, and the ubiquitous race hustlers Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton all swarmed on a perfect scandal for political advantage and self-promoting sermonizing.<\/p>\n After all, beer-drinking, rich, white lacrosse athletes were supposedly brutalizing a poor woman of color, forced by her poverty to submit to them sexually.<\/p>\n Despite no evidence, the accused students were charged with felonies. The coach is long gone, and the entire team was disbanded for the year.<\/p>\n The academic mob added its own rush-to-judgment easy condemnations. Then Nifong won re-election as a populist crusader against supposedly racist preppie sex-offenders. Seemingly ignoring evidence that the victim was making the charges up, this lynch mob went headlong into mad excess.<\/p>\n Then, wham,\u00a0Nemesis<\/i>\u00a0hit them, too.<\/p>\n N<\/span>ow these false accusers are getting their long-awaited due. The past anti-Semitism of Jackson (“hymietown”) and Sharpton (“diamond merchants”) is finally being broadcast nightly. Both preachers scramble\u00a0to get on TV \u2014 only to be cross-examined as never before as they try in vain to explain away their own past bigoted slurs.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Duke University, its president, and many of the liberal arts faculty \u2014 the latter in public statements and letters repeatedly tried and convicted those wrongly accused on rumor and false evidence \u2014 appear not just as opportunists, but mean-spirited ones at that.<\/p>\n Nifong now faces possible disbarment and civil suits. What saves the stripper who concocted all this from the fate of Scooter Libby is that her stories are so preposterous that so far she is thought to be a delusional victim rather than a perjurer deserving of a prison sentence.<\/p>\n At the heart of both the Imus and Duke scandals is arrogance. Overweening conceit inevitably led bigheads like Imus, Nifong, Sharpton, Jackson and many at Duke University to go one step too far \u2014 and thus at last earn their just deserts.<\/p>\n \u00a92007 Tribune Media Services<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services In the past week, Don Imus was fired, all charges against the Duke University lacrosse players were dropped, and almost everyone has offered a sermon about the racial and class issues involved in both cases. But we need look only to the Ancient Greeks for the best insight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[759],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-WK","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4242,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-first-clash-of-civilization\/","url_meta":{"origin":3642,"position":0},"title":"The First Clash of Civilization","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 12, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Times Literary Supplement Persian Fire: The first world empire and the battle for the West\u00a0by Tom Holland (Little, Brown: 418pp.) We speak of the \u201cPersian Wars\u201d in the plural, because this first clash of civilization remains an ill-defined East-West, existential struggle, extending over a decade in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Reviews"","block_context":{"text":"Reviews","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/reviews\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":683,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/greece-alone-and-broke-again\/","url_meta":{"origin":3642,"position":1},"title":"Greece Alone and Broke–Again","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 26, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services The recent indecisive Greek elections could be summed up by two general themes: Greeks want to stay in, and expect help from, the Eurozone. But they still do not want to take the necessary medicine to stop borrowing billions of euros from northern\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Economy"","block_context":{"text":"Economy","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/europe\/economy-europe\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":894,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-sick-man-of-europe\/","url_meta":{"origin":3642,"position":2},"title":"The Sick Man of Europe","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 18, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Defining Ideas Why are the Greeks such whiners? Look to their tragic history and geography.\u00a0 Not long ago, European Union bankers gave the Greeks a \u20ac110 billion bailout \u2014 along with stern recommendations to stop cooking their books, to go after tax cheaters, to trim fat\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Economy"","block_context":{"text":"Economy","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/europe\/economy-europe\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":954,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/greek-tragedies\/","url_meta":{"origin":3642,"position":3},"title":"Greek Tragedies","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 22, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"br Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner There are a lot of new twists to the old story of massive demonstrations in Greece. This is the first time in my life (I first went to Greece in 1973) that I can remember Greek rioting and demonstrations that were not anti-American. Oh,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Greece"","block_context":{"text":"Greece","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/europe\/greece\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5267,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/defending-the-greeks\/","url_meta":{"origin":3642,"position":4},"title":"Defending the Greeks","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 10, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton Private Papers This talk\u00a0was presented February 28, 2005 at California State University, Sacramento at a dinner hosted by the Tsakopolous Hellenic Foundation in honor of California State Senator Nicholas C. 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