A READER writes:

I just learned of the St Paul’s rape case through The Thinking Housewife’s entry, and decided to investigate a bit more.

Laura Wood summarizes, “This case reeks with so much hypocrisy, it’s sickening.”  She’s fundamentally right, of course–but I’m tempted to say she’s also ultimately wrong, due only to her gross understatement.

It isn’t just the hypocrisy here, but also the sense of bold lying (not mere rationalization) emanating from every corner.  As I read the details, I disliked or detested everyone, including the victim.  Furthermore, I felt as though I could not trust anyone, including even the victim.  The defendant’s clothing and demeanor in the courtroom even stands as a lie: his nerdy glasses and tweed-jacket-with-sweater combo, to create a “brainy” image; as opposed to the more athletic, virile portraits of him found elsewhere on the Internet.  I’m only shocked that Owen Labrie’s last name isn’t Kennedy.

Especially sickening, I found myself hating the school itself, as I read the double-talk disclaimer conveniently linked from their feel-good website home page: “As the Labrie trial begins . . .  allegations about our culture are not emblematic of our school or our values, our rules, or the people that represent our student body, alumni, faculty, and staff.”  Who are they kidding?  The very fact that this sordid “senior salute” tradition openly existed is an indictment of all the above, including the victim whose choices confirm all Camille Paglia’s tirades about girls acting stupidly (and then evading responsibility, by blaming the male for their own concomitant mistakes) in a Grave New World (my phrase, not CP) created by feminism.  The Episcopal Church itself should answer for this, as well.  Indeed, Laura, it is sickening.

Never did I think I would express support for Donald Trump as president; but Trump’s fierce resolution to confront the Republicans for their own laziness, cynical self-interest, and hypocrisy, is exactly what I yearned for when I read the St Paul’s PR nonsense quoted above.  My new (incredulous) standard: What Would Trump Do?

Laura writes:

Oh, I think there are some very powerful people whom The Donald won’t criticize. (And he certainly is not always friendly to those who criticize him, such as the analyst for Janney Montgomery Scott who said in 1990 that the Taj Mahal casino would tank  — he was right — and whose career Trump then tried to destroy. That’s just one example of the numerous people Trump has bullied and tried to crush in his rise to fame.) Trump has a Napoleonic sense of entitlement, but that is a subject for another time. I agree with your overall point.

St. Paul’s used to be a boys school, but I’m sure no adults are going to take responsibility for having changed the culture at the school so that this kind of incident could happen. The true hypocrisy, as the commenter Mary said, is that adults have fostered this environment, caring more about their children’s grades and athletics than their moral formation, and then they have the nerve to unleash the possibility of a prison sentence on this one student, who almost certainly did wrong but who was with a girl who took off her clothes and voluntarily embraced him. Since the state cannot enter into every bedroom in America, as much as it would like to, it will only enter into those that involve elite institutions that ironically want to get along and probably follow the sexual assault rulebook already.

I just don’t know enough about the background of this case to say how it got as far as it did, but I’m sure it is an interesting story.

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