After sliming the Duke lacrosse players falsely accused of raping a stripper, Times sports columnist Selena Roberts returned to school on Wednesday with "A First Class Response to a Second-Class Putdown," about the Don Imus-Rutgers University women's basketball team controversy, in which the talk radio host denigrated the team by referring to them as "nappy-headed ho's." Roberts gushed about the Rutgers' players speaking truth to power:
"Of grace and dignity, without a single boob joke for ratings or a raunchy sidekick for on-air laughs, the women wearing Rutgers scarlet managed to capsize society’s power differential yesterday….But possessing the power differential means bullying someone your own size. With the ear of a national audience, Imus denigrated women who have revealed the courage to play a sport in its pure, fundamental form even though it is often branded inferior to the dunk style of men. The gals absorb enough put-downs as it is."
This marks huge hypocrisy on the part of Roberts, given that in the Duke lacrosse case, she eagerly sided with two separate bases of "power "-- an out-of-control local prosecutor, Michael Nifong, who now faces an ethics complaint from the North Carolina state bar*, as well as a politically correct college faculty and administration eager to side with what they considered an oppressed minority victim.
Not to mention Roberts herself, a prominent sports columnist in the nation's most influential newspaper, with the eyes if not the ear of a national audience that's comparable to that of Imus (as the MRC's Brent Baker demonstrated, Imus's TV and radio ratings are quite low).
For more New York Times bias, visit Times Watch.
*Editor's Note (Ken Shepherd | April 12, 11:34 EDT): We originally noted that the complaint was leveled by the North Carolina Bar Association. However, NCBA's Russell Rawlings informs us that it is not his organization that is pursuing ethics charges against Nifong, but rather the "mandatory N.C. State Bar which regulates the practice of law in North Carolina."
