Barnard student (a fan of gangsta rap) attacked while jogging alone in Riverside Park

From yesterday’s New York Post:

A bright-eyed Barnard College freshman was showing signs of improvement yesterday as cops hunted for the hulking thug who savagely mugged her in Riverside Park, leaving her bloodied and unconscious on a bench.

Marisa Cortright, 19, of Salem, Ore., suffered bleeding on the brain, a fractured cheekbone and facial cuts in the attack at 6 a.m. Monday near the West 120th Street tennis courts. She was in stable condition at St. Luke’s Hospital.

Here’s the Post’s headine:

Shock at Park attack

“Shock”? A 19 year old white girl goes running alone at 6 A.M. in an urban park adjoining Harlem, and she’s mugged by a black thug, and that’s a shock? That’s like saying that if someone went running across the Interstate and got hit by a car, it would be a shock.

The Post story also links a local TV news segment about the crime. It emphasizes how everyone is shocked by it, because nothing like this (they say) has happened in years.

By calling it a shock, unpredictable, out of the ordinary, the media assure that more young women will continue to put themselves in dangerous situations, as Marisa Cortright did.

I live a block away from Riverside Park. I would never go running or walking there alone at 6 a.m. Also, the Park is known as a place where derelicts sleep. Riverside Park is very nice, it’s just not a place to be late at night or when there’s nobody else around.

Then this:

“People do not deserve to be treated this way, especially those who have made so many people appreciate, laugh and think more than they had before,” Marin Fanjoy-Labrenz, 19, Cortright’s roommate at Barnard, told The Post.

Have you noticed how the weirdly inappropriate statement, “The victim did not deserve to be treated this way,” has become the standard response to violent crimes? As though anyone was suggesting that the victim did deserve to be treated that way, and therefore that view must be corrected. Also, notice how the badness of the crime is in proportion to the social graces of the victim, so that if someone less sparkling than Marisa Cortright had been mugged and injured, that would not be as “undeserved.” However, I haven’t yet been able to figure out the whole thought process behind that common slogan.

Another odd thing. Remember the “Take Back the Night” rallies at college campuses, all the concern about rape and sexual assault? Given the supposed fear for female safety, how is it that the repeated murders of women jogging alone in parks in recent years have not entered the academic/feminist consciousness? Evidently the young ladies are told to beware of their fellow (white) male students, not the actual criminals that surround urban campuses and haunt urban parks.

Just keep doin’ what you’re doin’, girl,
because you’re one of the elect, and
nothing bad is supposed to happen to you

Here’s the article:

Shock at Park attack
Co-ed jogger’s ordeal
July 8, 2010

A bright-eyed Barnard College freshman was showing signs of improvement yesterday as cops hunted for the hulking thug who savagely mugged her in Riverside Park, leaving her bloodied and unconscious on a bench.

Marisa Cortright, 19, of Salem, Ore., suffered bleeding on the brain, a fractured cheekbone and facial cuts in the attack at 6 a.m. Monday near the West 120th Street tennis courts. She was in stable condition at St. Luke’s Hospital.

“People do not deserve to be treated this way, especially those who have made so many people appreciate, laugh and think more than they had before,” Marin Fanjoy-Labrenz, 19, Cortright’s roommate at Barnard, told The Post.

“She was simply going about her daily workout routine … She’s a sweet, hilarious girl and a friend to all.”

While she jogged, Cortright was grabbed from behind, punched in the face and had her head slammed into a wall by the thug, police sources said. Her iPod was stolen.

Cortright was found by tennis players.

“She doesn’t remember anything,” a police source told The Post.

Cops released a sketch of a 6-foot-2, heavyset black man in his mid-40s seen leaving the park following the attack.

The man—described as a person of interest to investigators—was wearing a bright blue, long-sleeved T-shirt and black pants.

Yesterday afternoon, Cortright appeared groggy as she sat up in her hospital bed under the watchful eye of a nurse.

At Barnard, Cortright is a math whiz who plans to work next semester at the student computing division.

Cortright graduated salutatorian last year from Oregon’s West Salem HS.

Her Columbia University Web page shows a happy student smiling in several pictures with pals. Her posts state that she likes baking, partying with friends, listening to gangster rap, and watching “Arrested Development.”

[end of Post article]

- end of initial entry -

Steve W. writes:

This line in the newspaper article caught my eye:

Her posts state that she likes baking, partying with friends, listening to gangster rap, and watching “Arrested Development.”

She likes “listening to gangster rap”? The irony is almost too painful. Granted, we know very little about this poor girl, but it is hard not to conclude that she is the perfect product of contemporary liberalism. Will this terrible experience have any effect on her worldview? Hopefully, but I suppose unlikely. And how will her fellow students react? Surely not by marching against crime. More likely, they will blame the attack on white racism, urban poverty, or even Columbia University’s plans to expand into the surrounding neighborhoods. I wonder, what do her parents think of her listening to gangster rap?

LA replies:

Oh, my. Thanks for catching that, which I missed. Unbelievable. Yet it’s somehow a predictable part of the picture, isn’t it? She likes gangsta rap. She likes listening to black thugs calling for the rape and murder of “white bitches.” She somehow thinks this is a cool cultural expression of protest against inequality, and has nothing to do with the real world.

Dan R. writes:

By now you have written about countless numbers of these incidents. One reaction on the part of readers might be cynicism and weariness. I find myself doing a slow burn. As often as not, the girls in these incidents are highly bright. I think of the plentitude of such girls and compare it to the glaring paucity of comparable abilities among blacks. And I think: how can we allow this to be happening? These girls and their male counterparts are the cream of our civilization. Do we not have any pride left in our accomplishments? The rationalizations you note on the part of fellow students and journalists, along with the nonchalance with which black leaders tend to view such attacks, seems symbolic of a resignation to the destruction of our civilization, all reinforced by the grievance culture accepted by liberalism and even parts of conservatism. And as if this wasn’t enough, she herself is a fan of the barbarian “gangsta’ rap.” In the 1980s, radio talk-show host Bob Grant would quip, “It’s sick out there and getting sicker.” It continues today.

Alex H. writes:

Perhaps you recall the climactic scene in the movie “Unforgiven,” in which the Clint Eastwood character, William Munny, guns down the Gene Hackman character, Little Bill. When Little Bill, already shot, is staring into the muzzle of Munny’s rifle, he protests, saying “I don’t deserve this …” Munny’s icy reply: “Deserve’s got nothing to do with it.”

Gintas writes:

Anytime I see something like this it reminds me of college days. I went to school at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, which sat right next to a no-go zone. I learned what it means to be in pervasive danger, but those who ran the college were of little help, it was “figure it out for yourself.” For me that included a car stolen. I would never let a daughter go there. You’re right about how our society trains up people, especially women, to be merry and complacent in the face of danger; it’s like drunken partying near a heavy, grinding machine.

Mark P. writes:

Liberal white women are probably the one element most responsible for the collapse of this country. White women are the greatest carriers and enforcers of the liberal virus. They are rabidly in support of this disease, especially among the young college set. I can see this girl now … iPod stuck in her ear; listening to her “gangsta rap” while jogging or walking, usually in that “situationaly unaware” haze I notice most woman have of late. She probably considers most white men to be racist and if any male student dare warn her about her jogging, she would’ve reported him to the dean.

James P. writes:

You wrote:

“Have you noticed how the weirdly inappropriate statement, “The victim did not deserve to be treated this way,” has become the standard response to violent crimes?”

As liberals, we know that whites are inherently immoral and that blacks are inherently moral. Thus, if the journalist or the friend of the victime does not make a positive statement that the white girl did not provoke the black man in some way, then we must, as good liberals, assume by default that she did do something to deserve how she was treated. Perhaps she screamed a racial epithet at him, or something! The only alternative conclusion is that blacks often attack whites for no reason, or for immoral reasons (racism), and such incorrect thoughts are forbidden to us.

LA replies:

Yes, I think you’re getting closer to an explanation. The statement, “She didn’t deserve this,” implies that most white people attacked by blacks do deserve it, but that this particular person is a good liberal, and didn’t deserve it.

Jim C. writes:

Mark P. writes:

Liberal white women are probably the one element most responsible for the collapse of this country. White women are the greatest carriers and enforcers of the liberal virus.

Mark, do you know any Barnard students? Just because she listens to rap does not make her a liberal, and I believe this nonsense about rap was her roommate’s telegraphing the PC message that the victim did not hate Negroes. What evidence do you have that this poor victim was spreading a virus? Many of these college students have unbelievably complex and busy lives (I know a Barnard student who is going part-time, coproduced a documentary for public TV, and is a soloist in the City Ballet). Has it occurred to you that 6am might have been the only time she had to exercise?

As a society we should begin to address seriously the problem of Negro criminality. Forget long prison sentences. The Romans had a better idea: just send them packing after they are convicted of one violent felony. Strip them of their citizenship and send them to a warm island where they will be forced to fend for themselves. I’m fed up.

LA writes:

Jim C. wrote: “I believe this nonsense about rap was her roommate’s telegraphing the PC message that the victim did not hate Negroes.”

That would be a good point, if it was her roommate who had said it, after the crime. But it was Cortright herself who had posted the information about her tastes and hobbies.

Bill Carpenter writes:

As some readers have indicated, the report on this episode, and the conduct by the victim that led to it, typify the inability of the liberal mind to grasp that real reality is different from the utopian “second reality” that liberal civilization has constructed.

The contrast between the real reality and the second reality comes across very sharply in some Hollywood films, as we have discussed on VFR before. (E.g., Dead Man Walking, A Few Good Men, Koyanisqaatsi.) Occasionally, the artistic integrity of the writers, actors, and directors allows truth to shine through the filters of liberal prejudice. An example relevant to the Barnard student’s story is Client Eastwood’s Gran Torino, which I recently saw again.

The female lead is a perky, sympathetic, educated Hmong girl. She continuously spouts feminist and multiculturalist clichés, but she is sympathetic nonetheless. Walt Kowalski, Client Eastwood’s bitter old auto worker and Korean War veteran, rescues her from a walk in a black neighborhood where she is accosted and harassed by black street thugs. He tells her walking there is a good way to get herself killed. Later, she is savagely raped and beaten by Hmong street thugs. Her glib fluency in the axioms of the liberal utopia does nothing to protect her from the ambient brutality. That basic plot element sharply contradicts the evident liberal assumptions of the people involved in the production.

A great moment occurs when the young priest reproaches Walt with his gloomy obsession with the life and death struggle with enemies, which Walt is still carrying on in decaying, minority-occupied Detroit. “This isn’t Korea, Walt,” says the sententious young priest. The knowing viewer says to himself, “No, Father, it is. This is Korea. The life and death struggle for survival continues, here and now.” The Barnard girl and her contemporaries need to know: this is Korea, meaning a world at war.

(Conservative may take exception to Walt’s self-sacrifice for the Hmong youngsters he has taken under his wing. But there is validity to his contempt for his own children, who do not deserve to inherit from him.)

Permit me to recommend Tom Bertonneau’s comprehensive essays on Voegelin and Gnosticism recently posted at the Brussels Journal. Nothing could be more pertinent to our civilization’s refusal to see reality.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 09, 2010 10:39 AM | Send