What is it about lacrosse? asked Ruth Marcus in The Washington Post. “The question has to be asked” after the murder of Yeardley Love, a member of the University of Virginia women’s lacrosse team. George Huguely V, who played for Virginia’s top-ranked men’s team, has been accused of killing Love, his former girlfriend, after she was found battered and lying in a pool of blood. Huguely, like many lacrosse players, is the product of a cloistered world of affluent families and elite prep schools, with a track record of arrogance, privilege, and explosive anger. He once assaulted a teammate in a jealous rage, and a female cop who arrested him for public drunkenness had to Taser Huguely to subdue him. She later called the 6-foot-2 athlete the “most hateful and most combative college kid I ever dealt with.” Inevitably, his arrest in his ex-girlfriend’s murder brings to mind the infamous 2006 Duke University lacrosse case, in which a group of drunken players hired a black stripper and were later accused—and acquitted—of raping her.
Oh, please, said Tom Robinson in the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot. If Love and Huguely had been geology majors instead of lacrosse players, would a hysterical media be calling this a “geology slaying”? Lacrosse does not teach young men to kick in a young woman’s door or slam her head against the wall, as Huguely is accused of doing. It’s absurd to indict an entire sport for the sin of one person; was football responsible for quarterback Michael Vick’s torture and abuse of fighting dogs? But to the “class warriors” in the media, the narrative of privilege run amok is irresistible, since lacrosse is played largely by young white men from upper-class backgrounds. Lacrosse had nothing to do with the death of Yeardley Love.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
Trump seeks to cut drug prices via executive orderspeed read The president's order tells pharmaceutical companies to lower prescription drug prices, but it will likely be thrown out by the courts
-
'Haiti's crisis is a complex problem that defies solution'Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
-
Hamas frees US hostage in deal sidelining Israelspeed read Edan Alexander, a 21-year-old soldier, was the final living US citizen held by the militant group
