So on one hand we have Nancy Grace, who assumes that everyone accused of a crime is automatically guilty. Then we have MSNBC's Tucker Carlson, who--and I am not making this up--said on the April 11 "Situation" that the accuser in the Duke rape investigation shouldn't be taken seriously because for "crypto-hookers" like she is, gang-rape is really just another day at the office:
Carlson stated that "the testimony of an ordinary person is different from the testimony of someone who hires herself out to dance naked in front of and, yes, sometimes sleep with ... strangers," adding: "It's OK to have a bias against strippers in this case, isn't it?" Carlson later called the alleged victim a "woman who is hiring her body out to other people" and added that although "that doesn't mean that she wasn't raped," the woman's "testimony about matters of sex is to be taken by ordinary commonsense people a little differently than the testimony of someone who isn't a crypto-hooker."
There are so many words to describe the kind of horrifying double-standard Carlson advocates...but "evil" springs to mind first. There's no other word to describe a public figure using his bully pulpit in national television to say, essentially, "Because she's a stripper, she's automatically a prostitute, and prostitutes can't be raped." Flawed logic, and slippery, too.
Again, we don't know what happened at Duke, and no charges have been brought. And false rape accusations are terrible, potentially-life-destroying things. But that's why we have an impartial justice system: to protect both the falsely accused and the victims of the world. It's wrong for a public figure in television news to argue for separate and unequal justice. In the end, it serves no one.
