Kathleen Parker correctly senses that feminism will suffer from l’affaire Nifong. Feminist academics were quick to convict the Duke Lacrosse team in the media; in the words of law professor Wendy Murphy, "I never, ever met a false rape claim, by the way. My own statistics speak to the truth." Duke University has apparently reached a settlement with the accused players, who certainly could have built a case for defamation of character against certain members of the faculty.

Meanwhile, Parker suggests, the case may lead prosecutors to be less willing to pursue legitimate rape cases. She cites an instance of apparent gang rape at a party of California, which the local district attorney has refused to pursue.

By the way, Parker cites a great blog that has followed the Duke case: Durham-in-Wonderland, by the heroic Brooklyn College professor K.C. Johnson. Johnson, as you may recall, fought his own personal battle against political correctness four years ago.

Update: Johnson calls our attention to a speech by Judge Gerald Tjoflat, a Duke Law alum on the Eleventh Circuit, who compares the Duke case to the infamous Scottsboro case of 1938, which was the inspiration for Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. Indeed, the parallels are striking; in both cases there was "a racially-motivated mob mentality, stirred up by a demagogue [i.e., Nifong] who played the race card, drawing on the tensions, anxieties, and grievances that demagogues like to exploit for their own purposes. His purpose, of course, was to get elected."