Naming Names: KC Johnson And Glenn Reynolds

Although KC Johnson has been a hero in all of this -- not just a hero in terms of intellect and virtue, but in pure indefatiguability -- and Glenn Reynolds has been an influential stalwart, neither man, as far as I can tell, has thusfar named the certified liar Crystal Gail Mangum as the original villain in this story.

Why? Previously one could stand on ceremony and give her the benefit of the usual rule protecting the name of rape victims, even though it's been clear for six months she was not a rape victim at all. Or a victim of any kind, except of her own delusions and corrupt nature.

I did that, to be sure. I almost named her when I felt it was reasonably clear that she was no "victim" at all. But I didn't. I observed the still-operating pretext that she was a "victim" and afforded her the anonymity I'd afford a real victim, even though I and pretty much every sane person in the country knew she was no such thing.

So what accounts for Glenn Reynolds' and KC Johnson's reluctance to name her now?

She is clearly not a victim; nor is she the pepetrator of some minor crime. She is guilty of a great crime, a crime that plunged three innocent men into a 13 month nightmare, and inflamed racial tensions, and made it harder for real victims of rape to press their cases in court.

What accounts, then, for the continuing treatment of her as a "victim"?

I ask quite rhetorically: Is her "victim" status based upon her class, gender, and race, and hence not forfeitable? And if it's not that, that upon what slim reed do these otherwise reasonable men continue extending to her special victim treatment?

I know the easy answer: It would seem like piling on. With all due respect, this answer is perfect bullshit. It also seems like piling on when we go after any other notorious malefactor, such as OJ Simpson or Scott Peterson, and yet we do not shy away from calliing a villain what he is simply because we are "piling on" the villain.

Another easy answer: She's a troubled young woman. But many who commit heinous crimes are "troubled;" one doesn't find a great many well-adjusted, perfectly-centered people in the nation's prisons.

Jeffrey Dahmer, I need hardly say, was deeply "troubled." Ted Kaczynsky was not unburdened by psychological baggage.

And, on a lesser scale: Mel Gibson is quite obviously not entirely right in the head.

The fact that someone who deliberately inflicts pain on the innocent is generally not considered a reason to not note their transgression -- and note their transgression by stating the name of the transgressor.

Either she is a liar -- as Instapundit and Durham In Wonderland clearly believe -- or she is not. If she is not, then I can't see why these men have urged the innocence of the Duke 3.

If she is a liar -- which an exhasutive re-examination of the case by a team of lawyers working under the NC AG have determined beyond any doubt -- then what, precisely, is the resistance to saying so, and naming her as a liar?

Is she a victim? Or is she not a victim? Are we pretending this is crime without any victimization? Or are we to pretend that Mike Nifong invented her charges himself? (It should be noted one knock on Nifong was that he didn't even meet with Mangum for months after he indicted the Duke 3 on her fantastical testimony.)

Piling on? She will not be prosecuted for her crime.

She will not be held civilly liable for her crime.

What penalty does she face apart from public shaming? And if we're unwilling to publicly shame this monster, then what is left of shame at all?

John Podhoertz, on the other hand, has little trouble applying the default rule to this criminal. A criminal gets named. She might not get charged or sued -- this one won't -- but she ought at least be named, so her name, along with Mike Nifong's, can echo in infamy.

HER name is Crystal Gail Mangum.

She is the woman who falsely accused three Duke University students of rape. Yesterday, the attorney general of North Carolina came forward and flatly declared the three young men "innocent of these charges."

That means their accuser is a liar.

Her name is Crystal Gail Mangum.

It is the policy of the news media not to publish the names of rape accusers on the grounds that they should not have to fear public shame for coming forward with word of a horrifying personal violation.

That is a noble policy. But it needs a codicil. The codicil is that if a rape accuser is revealed as a liar, her name should be spoken loudly and often - as loudly and often as the names of those whom she falsely accused have been over the past year.

Her name is Crystal Gail Mangum.

She must be denied anonymity because she makes a mockery of the very policy of granting anonymity to rape accusers. We do not publish their names so that they will not fear public exposure. But people who are tempted to do the monstrous thing Mangum did should fear public exposure.

They should be terrified of it.

They should have nightmares about it.

They should be given no encouragement whatsoever to believe they can launch a nuclear weapon at someone's reputation and escape unscathed.

Her name is Crystal Gail Mangum, and she should not escape the world's scorn because she is poor, or because she is black, or because her life circumstances led her to work as a "stripper."

Her name is Crystal Gail Mangum, and she does not deserve to lick the underside of the shoes of hardworking and honest people of color and modest means who somehow manage to get through life without attempting to destroy and defile the lives of others.

Her name is Crystal Gail Mangum, and she plunged the nation into yet another spasm of racial recriminations.

Her name is Crystal Gail Mangum, and she made it more difficult for any woman actually raped to find justice in court.

Her name is Crystal Gail Mangum. She plunged the Duke innocents you obviously emphatize so much with into a waking nightmare.

Her name is not Mike Nifong. Mike Nifong could not invent Crystal Gail Mangum's vicious lies for her. The most he could do -- which he did -- is adjust her lies to better conform to the provable facts.

Her name is Crystal Gail Mangum. Why is this so hard for some to say?

Her name is Crystal Gail Mangum. If she is not to be jailed, not to be sued, and not even to be named by the "respectable," why should anyone believe she actually did anything wrong?

Her name is Crystal Gail Mangum. A small number of zealous race and sex warriors continue to insist "something happened" at that house night. If respectable commentators continue treating her as if she's a true victim of rape, it only reinforces them in their delusions and legitimizes their continued fantasies. Certainly people aren't behaving as if she's guilty of anything, except being poor, black, and female.

Her name is Crystal Gail Mangum. Isn't it time to treat her differently than genuine victims of rape? Or shall we treat the true victims and venal criminals falsely charging rape as if they have the same status in the eyes of the law and the court of respectable public opinion?

Her name is Crystal Gail Mangum. Rape shield laws were not enacted to protect her, nor her repellent kind.

Her name is Crystal Gail Mangum. To play upon a favorite formulation of Reynolds' -- have we created a new law for her? The Not-A-Rape Shield law?

Why The Kid Gloves? It gives me heart-ache to see that Hot Air is also embargoing the name, at least in its posts, although Allah links to the News Observer (of Durham) forthrightly naming Crystal Gail Mangum as the culpable liar. And the FoxNews statement profiling her was linked, as were several of my posts linking her. But as for actually naming the name in a post? Nope.

As I say, continuing to treat her as if she might actually have been raped enables cryptomarxist idiots, such as Rose McGowan and the ugly sacks of fat on the View, to claim that the Duke 3 must have been guilty of something. That's right there in Allah's post -- that claim.

If the media continuing embargoing her name, they're doing something that NC AG Roy Cooper refused to do. Something NC AG Roy Cooper decided that was legally inappropriate to do -- withhold her name as if she were an actual victim of rape.

Which. She. Was. Not.

I expect this from the media -- but from the blogosphere? Especially the blogosphere which was been arguing the innocence of Crystal Gail Mangum's victims for so long?

Why? Why continue giving cover to those who will, of course, claim that the Duke 3 were guilty of something?

Either she's a victim or she's not. We can no longer pretend this is a matter of disputation. The "legal system has played itself out," as many have urged it to be allowed to do. Well, the system played itself out, and it concluced, unequivocally, she's either a deliberate liar or a demented fabulist.

Perhaps a little of both, though of course that latter possibility was chiefly invented as a pretext for not prosecuting this woman.

I would have guessed that perhaps this was Michelle Malkin's policy at the moment, but nope, she names the liar on her eponymous blog.

I certainly don't mean to beat up on my homeslice MCA, or Bryan, or Ian. Or Instapundit or KC Johnson, for that matter.

But this skittishness about openly and forthrightly naming the name of the criminal liar here is sending mixed signals.

If even these guys can't bring themselves to speak the name, then how can CNN be expected to? And if CNN is permitted to continue treating her as if she just might be a real victim of rape, why shouldn't the Duke 3 Truthers continue positing fantastical conspiracy theories about a rape having actually occurred?

Allah's Answer: Allah notes he's linked the name several times (which I noted myself, bonehead), but offers this reason for not previously stating it:

Ace is filled with heart-ache that I haven’t named the accuser, Crystal Mangum. Thus endeth the heart-ache. I didn’t name her before because we all know what’s going to happen if someone so much as looks crossly at her on the street or leaves a bag of dog shinola on her porch: like I said above, the media will use it as a pretext to restore her victimhood and scapegoat the hell out of its political enemies, which in this case means right-wing media and blogs.....

there comes a point where you do what you can to limit their opportunities to show their bad faith and breathtaking disingenuousness.

Ah. Good reason, actually.

However, it's wrong of the media to embargo the woman's name, and one can't take them to task for playing at pretending she's a victim if the blogosphere is playing right along -- albeit, for different reasons.

At any rate he names her.

Good. Now on to Reynolds and Johnson.

posted by Ace at 06:14 PM

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