Thus, we need little prompting to assume that where there's a guy, there's a potential rapist; where there's an athlete, there's seething brute force; where there's an SUV, there's a privileged, gluttonous, imperialistic brat who deserves to be found guilty, even if he isn't.

These biases have been on display the past couple of weeks, vividly so in an op-ed by North Carolina author Alan Gurganus, writing for Sunday's New York Times.

Joining the chorus of commentators who clearly found the rape charge believable if unproven, Gurganus set the stage for class resentment with key phrases like "glamorous boarding-school sports" and "wealthy young people," and highlighted other details to suggest that these are probably bad boys.

"Of the 40 or so players required to give DNA samples, nearly one-third showed previous arrests for underage drinking and public urination," he wrote.

That pounding you hear is the sound of nails being driven into the hangman's gallows. Everybody knows, after all, that there's just a wink and a six-pack's difference between drinking and tinkling outdoors and gang-raping a stripper.

While we wait to hear what the grand jury decides, we might turn our harsh judgment inward and recognize that the anti-male groupthink that permitted a presumption of guilt in Durham is little different than the lynch-mob mentality that once channeled rage against blacks.

Obviously, no woman deserves to be raped for any reason, under any circumstances. But nor do men deserve to be presumed guilty just because they're men.