So just as predicted, the daddies are high-powered executives, and Seligmann's mother is a stay-at-home-mom (are you paying attention, caitlin flanagan, re: benefits of staying at home with your children?). We don't know anything about Mary Ellen Finnerty, except that she and her husband were donors of some sort to Duke. I imagine if she had a job (the accused is one of 5 children, so unlikely), it would have been mentioned.

This is so Leave It to Beaver gone wrong.

Abbot said Philip Seligmann is a financial services executive. On Tuesday, he put up $400,000 to bail out his son. Kathleen Seligmann is a stay-at-home mom who does volunteer work.

http://www.newsobserver.com/1185/story/430109.html

While his parents, Mary and Kevin J. Finnerty, Tuesday raised the $400,000 bail that kept their son, 19, from incarceration in Durham, N.C., most of their neighbors on Carteret Place, adjacent to the Garden City Golf Club, declined to comment.

Finnerty's father is a high-powered Wall Street executive, according to business databases. A former managing director at J.P. Morgan Securities, he is on the board of Newcastle Investment Corp. and previously served on the Bond Market Association's board

http://www.newsday.com/sports/lacrosse/ny-lifinn0419,0,7990796.story?coll=ny-sports-headlines

Finnerty, 19, is one of five siblings, including an older brother who attends Duke. He attended Chaminade High School, a private Catholic academy in Mineola.

Kevin J. Finnerty, Collin's father, is on the board of directors for Newcastle Investment Corp., a real estate and finance company in Manhattan. He was the head of the mortgage department at Bear, Stearns and Co. before he helped found F.I. Capital Management.

http://www.newsobserver.com/1185/story/430107.html

Kevin J. Finnerty was appointed to Newcastle Investment Corp.’s board of directors and its Audit Committee, Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee and Compensation Committee in August 2005. Mr. Finnerty has been a director of the Newcastle Investment Holdings LLC (formerly Newcastle Investment Holdings Corp.) since its inception in 1998. Mr. Finnerty is a founder and the Managing Partner of F.I. Capital Management, an investment company focused on Mortgage related strategies. Previously, Mr. Finnerty was a Managing Director at J.P. Morgan Securities Inc., where he headed the Residential Mortgage Securities Department. Mr. Finnerty joined Chase Securities Inc. in December of 1999. Prior to joining Chase Securities Inc., Mr. Finnerty worked at Union Bank of Switzerland from November 1996 until February 1998, where he headed the Mortgage Backed Securities Department, and at Freddie Mac from January 1999 until June 1999, where he was a Senior Vice President. Between 1986 and 1996, Mr. Finnerty was with Bear Stearns & Co. Inc., where he was a Senior Managing Director and ultimately headed the MBS Department and served as a member of the board of directors from 1993 until 1996. Mr. Finnerty was Co-Chair of the North American People Committee at JPMorganChase and Chairman of the Mortgage and Asset-Backed Division of the Bond Market Association for the year 2003.

We had an arson at NC state recently. What socioeconomic group is he supposed to belong to? Moreover 2 former students were named as terrorist suspects. We had two UNC students run through a window and fall to their death recently - which socioeconomic class are you to pound them into? 10 years ago wasn't there an arson at UNV that killed a bunch of people? And need I mention that a student at Shaw university last year was thrown off a balcony? Shaw? I'm sure there's some point there you could make?

I guess the enemy is where you find them. A friend of mine recently noted that something like 13 of the 16 high school students who are validicatorians in the Wake county school system were given BMWs by their parents. By your reasoning there's something nefarious afoot somewhere, isn't there?

And since you didn't address my point that out of state Public unversity students pay basically what a Duke or a Princeton or Dartmouth cost - I'm guessing that's just an ugly fact you don't want to encounter. After all if you can afford it it must make you some kind of spoiled monster.

Stephen Rifkin,

My original point was that people are so fixated on the accuser's background and biography, and Fox essnetially tells her that working as a stripper was "unreasonable," yet no one even talks about the background of the accused or tries to stereotype them in any way. No one talks about whether it's reasonable or not to admit people to Duke based on their lacrosse skills, or whether it's reasonable to go to Duke at all, when you can go to your state school. Your University of Maryland point seems a bit strange, since Duke isn't in Maryland, and people don't have to go to maryland to go to a public university. In whatever state you live, there is a public university system which you can use at in-state rates. The accused could have gone to Rutgers or CUNY/SUNY. No one talks about whethere it's "reasonable" to be rich at all, when there are so many poor people that the proceeds from $2.4 million mansion could have helped. No no, the rich are rich and that's their perogative, we can't attack them. But poor black single moms who decide to strip to earn a living, well, now that's just horrible and we can call them "whores."

All of this is probably because the people who come on to Fox to chat about all this are rich and spoiled themselves. Especially these stay-at-home-moms-turned-journalists whose husbands work at investment banks. Just like the families of the accused. what i want to see is equality in ignorant stereotyping, not just one-sided stereotyping of black single mom exotic dancers with previous criminal records.

I guess the enemy is where you find them. A friend of mine recently noted that something like 13 of the 16 high school students who are validicatorians in the Wake county school system were given BMWs by their parents. By your reasoning there's something nefarious afoot somewhere, isn't there?

I'm not sure the point you're trying to make here. Yes, rich people have an advantage because their parents can hire them tutors, they don't have to work afterschool to support their families, whether it's a real job, or taking care of siblings informally, since rich people can hire nannies to do that, and these high school students can concentrate on their work in their vast quiet mansions rather than trying to do homewokr on the kitchen table of a 1-bedroom apartment near the highway.

And since you didn't address my point that out of state Public unversity students pay basically what a Duke or a Princeton or Dartmouth cost - I'm guessing that's just an ugly fact you don't want to encounter. After all if you can afford it it must make you some kind of spoiled monster.

Well, i don't think i'm a spoiled monster, even though my parents paid for my private university with no loans. I never said that all rich people are spoiled monsters, you're just trying to set up strawmen. See above about in-state tuition.