Truth, lies, and videotape: the CNN interview with Nathan Phillips
When you read the transcript of this interview CNN did with Nathan Phillips, it’s good to remember that it occurred last Saturday, when Phillips was enjoying his fifteen-minutes-plus of fame and the longer video hadn’t come to public attention yet. It illustrates the extreme deference paid by CNN to the man and showcases his feelings and his point of view.
It also showcases what an incredible, pathological liar Phillips is. Just about everything he says there isn’t just untrue, it’s an inversion of the truth, as can be demonstrated by evidence in the long video. But he’s displaying the mindset I wrote about yesterday in this post:
Phillips…got his interviews and he got to frame the story, and although almost every word he said was wrong, he never thought his narrative could be disproved.
The only reason it was disproved (for those with eyes to see and ears to hear) was that someone else was videotaping the whole thing, not just the part he wanted to air. Almost certainly unbeknownst to Phillips, someone else had started recording long before Phillips moved into the crowd of boys.
But at the time he gave the CNN interview, he was still in a state of unawareness that a longer video existed and would ever come to light. So he could lie to his heart’s content and think himself immune from being discredited.
That’s Phillips, but what of CNN? The media operation has had quite a few days to comment on its own interview. Any self-respecting news organization worthy of the name ought to have done a great deal more to correct the impression made by Phillips’ words than CNN has. CNN made an attempt so half-hearted it’s almost laughable, with efforts such as this:
Since the [CNN] interview, the diocese in charge of the school has denounced the students’ actions, a lawmaker has defended them and the boy in the video, Nick Sandmann, has denied characterizations of his and his classmates’ behavior and said he was simply standing in front of Phillips to let him know he wouldn’t be baited into an altercation.
Also, several new videos have surfaced, including one showing the students engaging in a “Tomahawk chop,” mocking the Native Americans, and another showing a group of Hebrew Israelites hurling slurs and epithets at the teenagers both before Phillips arrived on the scene and after he left.
That’s it. That’s all I could find from CNN in the article that presents the interview transcript, all that CNN has to say there about the new videos which disprove nearly everything Phillips said in the interview, and also don’t show much from the boys that could be characterized as “mockery” of the Native Americans. Also, CNN’s description doesn’t even come close to describing the intensity and offensiveness of what was happening to the boys for a solid hour at the hands of the Black Israelites (and note also that CNN refers to them as “Hebrew Israelites”—probably the least common of the many names they go by, and a very misleading one at that).
This is how Phillips describes the Black Israelites in the CNN interview (a group he never names, but it’s clear he’s talking about them), as well as the Covington boys’ reactions to the Black Israelites:
…[T]here were some folks there that were expressing their (First Amendment) rights there, freedom of speech. … Then there was this young group of young students that came there and were offended by their speech, and it escalated into an ugly situation that I found myself in the middle of…
Oh, what I was witnessing was just hate? Racism? Well, hate. What I’m saying is that when these folks came there, these other folks were saying their piece, and these others they got offended with it because they were both just expressing their own views. And if it’s racism, that’s what it was because the folks that were having their moment there, they were saying things that I don’t know if I agreed with them or not, but some of it was educational, and it was truth, and it was history about religious views and ideologies, but these other folks, the young students, they couldn’t see it. They had one point of view, it seemed, and that was that their point of view was the only point of view that was worthwhile. And that’s now what I was feeling…
I didn’t feel that I could just stand there anymore and not do something. It looked like these young men were going to attack these guys. They were going to hurt them. They were going to hurt them because they didn’t like the color of their skin. They didn’t like their religious views. They were just here in front of the Lincoln — Lincoln is not my hero, but at the same time, there was this understanding that he brought the (Emancipation Proclamation) or freed the slaves, and here are American youth who are ready to, look like, lynch these guys. To be honest, they looked like they were going to lynch them. They were in this mob mentality.
That’s what I mean by an inversion of the truth. The longer video—the one Phillips never thought would surface—shows the situation to be quite the opposite. The verbal aggression was totally on the side of the Black Israelites—verbal attacks and bullying of the most vile and abusive (as well as racist) kind. It is a euphemism to describe what they said to the boys as mere “slurs and epithets” (as CNN did, in its weak attempt at a corrective).
And it was misleading for Phillips to describe the Black Israelites’ behavior this way: “some of it was educational, and it was truth, and it was history,” as well as viciously mendacious of Phillips to say that the Covington boys “were going to hurt [the Black Israelites] because they didn’t like the color of their skin…[or] their religious views,” and “to be honest” (often the biggest “tell” of all that a whopper of a lie is coming) that the boys “looked like they were going to lynch” the Black Israelites. An incredible and truly vile thing to say to a national news organization. Nothing even remotely like that was happening; at no point did the boys seem about to attack anyone, and there was nothing bad said by the boys about the color of anyone’s skin.
But CNN doesn’t appear to feel the need to correct anything about this.
Want a sample of these “religious views” of the Black Israelites? Robby Soave has some of it at Reason:
Far from engaging in racially motivated harassment, the group of mostly white, MAGA-hat-wearing male teenagers remained relatively calm and restrained despite being subjected to incessant racist, homophobic, and bigoted verbal abuse by members of the bizarre religious sect Black Hebrew Israelites, who were lurking nearby. The BHI has existed since the late 19th century, and is best describes as a black nationalist cult movement; its members believe they are descendants of the ancient Israelites, and often express condemnation of white people, Christians, and gays. DC-area Black Hebrews are known to spout particularly vile bigotry.
They call them crackers, faggots, and pedophiles. At the 1:20 mark (which comes after the Phillips incident) they call one of the few black students the n-word and tell him that his friends are going to murder him and steal his organs. At the 1:25 mark, they complain that “you give faggots rights,” which prompted booing from the students. Throughout the video they threaten the kids with violence, and attempt to goad them into attacking first. The students resisted these taunts admirably: They laughed at the hecklers, and they perform a few of their school’s sports cheers.
If you’re interested in watching the video, you can find it here. I looked at some of the comments to the video posted at YouTube, and I’m going to reproduce a few that I found especially interesting:
As a black man, I’m embarrassed by these “Hebrew Israelites.” MLK is rolling in his grave.?
This story couldn’t have been more wrong. No wonder people believe trump when he says fake news?
Lmao at CNN – a “this video shows a different side to story” ……you mean the TRUTH??
WHY ARENT THESE GUYS THE CENTER OF THE CONTROVERSY???
Hard to imagine a more hate filled diatribe than what these teens were subjected to. They handled it better than most kids would. The reporting on this is 100% wrong in the mainstream media. NPR now makes a reference to this video, but no mention of the extreme racist and homophobic tirade against these white kids. And they are just kids. It’s the “adults” who started the fracas and acted like children. I feel sorry for the kids that have been wrongly blamed, even by their own school, for anything here.?
This one is simple, and it just might be my personal favorite:
Man I gotta rethink how quick I was to hate those kids?
This one’s much longer.It’s from a young woman who seems to have originally bought much of Phillips’ story as filtered through the MSM. But she’s a thinker:
I’ve watched this entire 2 hour clip about 3 times all the way through. I wanted to make sure I had no bias’s that saw what they wanted to see. After finishing my third watch I honestly can’t find anything disrespectful about these kids. If anything, things I thought were disrespectful (chanting along to the drum beat) have totally changed with context. The boys disapproved of the guy saying faggots shouldn’t have rights, they yelled back when the guys yelled at the one black kid, they asked questions like “why did you call us clan members” or “no one cares” (in reference to Jesus being black). They started chanting when they got tired of the religious racist nuts preaching. Then Nathan comes over with his drum for whatever reason and the kids think he’s on their side so they start chanting along to the drum beat (a natural human instinct to dance or chant to a drum beat. It’s seen in all cultures at all time periods, very much like the natives do). Then another video shows the maga kid gesturing to his friend to not respond to the native yelling “go back to Europe”. I mean wtf. This is reminding me of reading “1984” in high school. It’s straight out of the 2+2=4 scene. My god. I’m scared for the future of people don’t even WANT to find the truth.?
Phillips isn’t just a liar, he’s an Orwellian liar. And if it weren’t for this longer video, he would have been successful in his lies. Even now, he’s been fairly successful. If you polled Americans, how many have seen the longer video or even know much about it? How many have read the truth about what happened?
And why is CNN so reluctant to have them know the truth? In this case, the truth reflects poorly on the left, CNN, the MSM in general, Phillips, and the Black Israelites. It reflects well on the teenaged boys from Covington.
We can’t have that, can we?
[NOTE: By the way, National Review has been pretty good on this aspect of the story. David French wrote about Phillips’ lies here, and Charles C. W. Cooke opines on the same theme here.
But it’s not just CNN that refuses to deal with the truth. Maybe I’ve missed it, but I’ve yet to see a single news outlet in the MSM deal with the magnitude of its errors (or its lies). Whether you believe they are errors or lies (or some combination of the two) depends on how you answer the “knaves or fools?” question regarding the MSM.
And in case you’re wondering, here are some examples of the tons of people who—thanks to the propaganda—cling ferociously to the original narrative.]
Who is the bigger pathological liar? Phillips or Ford?
Remember when the left tried to convince everyone black can’t be racist, Those Black Israelites have completely debunked that false notion. Those five minutes of racist rant they thrown the kids’ way probably was the most outrageously racist thing witnessed by most people. The scary thing is many on left agree with what those racist thugs said.
Dave:
Good question. But do we really have to choose?
Dave…
“Those five minutes of racist rant they thrown the kids’ way probably was the most outrageously racist thing witnessed by most people.”
I’m sure our good blog-cohort here could in less than 5 minutes produce equal to worse examples…but yes…We should give thanks for those racist crazies for proving yet again that black people CAN BE/are at times racists.
Let’s never forget…SJWs always lie. Always.
AND…the most virulent racists are always on the left. Always.
And I’m happy as a hog in mud that the good Roman Catholic folks, who were so slandered, are lawyer-ly punching back twice as hard.
Many of the horrible things those black israelites shouted to the children were ideas constantly being promoted by mainstream media, they were only presented by those thugs this time in a more vulgar way. The left has been tirelessly painting the southerners as incestuous, all Priests being pedophiles and Catholics pedophiles apologizers, lands were stolen despite the fact that the lands were legitimately purchased. many of the leftists have no idea how our immigration system works, if i get 1 penny every time i see someone online trolling with “why doesn’t Trump deport his immigrant wife” I would be a very rich man by now.
John Guilfoyle:
I have never seen something as atrocious as an adult calling a child “a baby made out of in****” If i am a juror in a trial where a minor defendant shot another man in the heat of moment momentarily after the victim called the shooter a baby made out of incest I would acquit him regardless of what else happened. How dark a heart you have to possess to have the audacity to say something so vicious to children. Remember how people got condemned for using the N word many years ago like Paula Deen? her career was completely destroyed. Where is outrage when those thugs kept calling the black students the N word and uncle tom. people should be ashamed to be on the same side as the black israelites, funny if you take away the profanities the ideas they expressed were pretty main stream ideas of the left.
I pray for the country / culture.
Nope: exhausted from all the praying.
I tremble for the country / culture.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/01/23/nothing-justifies-what-covington-students-did/?utm_term=.74cdbfd65776
Lord please help their souls.
There are none so blind as will not see.
Nathan Phillips’s Orwellian qualities were world class! While he carefully obfuscated his non-status as a VN-vet (the war was over there for the USMC before he even enlisted), the bit about his serving as “recon-ranger” (whooo-hooo!) was truly superb, as when the FOIA release yesterday of Phillip’s DD-214 service record showed that his military occupation specialty actually was refrigeration mechanic. But I guess he musta have had a rough time involuntarily sniffing all that freon, and was evidently driven by his righteous resulting PTSD to go AWOL three times. Must have been while on the freon DTs that he got subjected to the “baby-killer” calumny. But as with Ms. Blazey-Ford, the blame sits not so much on these reality-challenged sad sacks, but rather on our obvious betters in the media and in the Democrat Party Apparat for putting them forward as heroes of our times. (Regarding the VN vet —deranged or otherwise— bit, been there done that!)
Has National Review apologized for its own lies? I mean a true apology: we were wrong, what we said was despicable, we ask forgiveness of the boys whom we insulted, and we promise never again to accuse other people of crucifying Christ when we are the guilty ones? I haven’t seen anything like that, just deletion of their own defamatory articles and criticism of others.
Microsoft already has the answer, it will let you know that buzzfeed is quality, and drudge report lies…
I am wondering how Phillips got the moniker of “Tribal Elder”. Just because he is 62? Anyone know, or is this just what he calls himself and the idjts throw about.
It appears to me that Nathan Phillips has gotten more publicity than he wanted. He wanted publicity for what he said, but didn’t want detailed examination of what he said.
“Be careful; you might get what you ask for.”
Neo posted this on another thread:
https://journalstar.com/news/local/omaha-tribe-member-at-center-of-viral-video/article_1bd27a94-818e-5d1e-9b9a-60699897128f.html
Dave…no argument…that’s well out beyond the pale & you & me on that jury you propose…there’d be “not guilty.” I’m kinda surprised we haven’t seen more shooting by now in response to the left’s violence…but that’s just me.
But I would simply maintain…in all the infamous cases…the white guy got hammered racially far more virulently than was reported by the complicit media & this is another of those examples…and that they were juveniles is a multiplier effect. Pax vobiscum.
You can watch Phillips being interviewed yesterday on Democracy Now! here. He doesn’t come across as either sympathetic or all that mentally balanced, so I don’t think the MSM is eager to give him more airtime.
Kate, if you were responding to my question, thanks. I tried the link but wanted to allow ads which I tried to do, but still would not let me video the site.
Marine Private Phillips, managed to stay a private, bottom rank serving in the Marines from 72 to 76 except when he was AWOL, without leaving the United States and managing to get out of the Marines with the same rank he went in and not receiving an honorable discharge, his DD-214 just shows discharge. But this sorry old Indian identifies himself as a Marine to sow more discord on the young men he accosted last Saturday, in a made for TV photo encounter of against the MAGA hats.
The media took the bait, hook, line and sinker swallowed whole and now they are still trying to backpedal their phony Never-Trump story and I think this will be a hard one to weasel out of with libel suits coming down on them. Hope Trump invites the young MAGA men to the State of the Union Message.
Lynn Hargrove, basically it says some Omaha tribe members turned out to protest in Nebraska against the “mistreatment” of their elder, repeating Phillips’ version of the story and the version supported (sort of) by the original 7-second video. So apparently he is a tribe member.
This has been even more frightening and saddening than the Kavanagh brouhaha. I worried then about the world my sons and grandsons will inherit, but I didn’t think it would become this bad, this soon. I don’t know whether the worst part is the intensity of the hatred directed by adults at children, or the flat refusal of so many to recognize facts instead of their fevered imaginings. I’ve thought for a while that our culture, at least on the left, is becoming addicted to outrage. But now it seems the addiction is also to hatred — and where are the rehab centers for that?
And don’t forget that Phillips is a member of the Omaha Tribe. The Tribe’s reservation includes almost all of Thurston County, Nebraska. The Tribe waged a multi-year war against the Village of Pender to have it declared part of the Rez. Pender is the county seat. It was basically a deed interpretation case.
The Tribe probably spent close to a million, but they really didn’t win.
I was shocked to learn that the Tribe wanted to assert jurisdiction over Pender (including taxation) but its constitution prohibits Whites from voting.
And the deranged chair of the Nebraska DNC, Jane Kleeb, backs Phillips 100%. Phillips was at Standing Rock, ND protesting a pipeline.
I want to know who paid for Standing Rock and is paying Kleeb. Soros or the Russians?
Phillips is the next thing to homeless. 60% of homeless are psychotic. He is being paid for his activities in protests, like the standing rock thing and this. I would love to know by who.
We saw the video there Kavanaugh hearing protestors being paid outside the capitol. I still wonder who was fronting the cash he was handing out.
This creepy guy has contacts and it would be nice to learn who they are.
He may well be delusional. He has been an “actor” in several events. CTH is often good at finding these things out. I think they found the video of the paymaster for the Kavanaugh protestors.
I want to know who paid for Standing Rock and is paying Kleeb. Soros or the Russians? An excellent question, Cornhead.
Somebody asked what tribe and the answer was “OmahaSoros.”
Mrs Whatsit:
I agree. The Kavanaugh thing was very disturbing, but this is much more so. The one good thing I can figure out about it is that it really exposes the left for what they are, and has exposed some on the right as well.
Thanks for posting so much great stuff, Neo.
This might help more independents understand how terrible the Dem Media is.
Some minds might start asking questions.
Here he is at StandingRock. Got his handsome Marine veteran face in Vogue.
Mrs. Whatsit – you’ve expressed what is bothering me about this whole affair exactly! The hate!
That’s a good question – Just where are the rehab centers for those so “unhinged”?
I’ve sort of stopped watching TV news; but, still catch things on line. And, even there I am seeing (through YouTube) and reading some of what the MSM is doing. Instead of retracting their story or saying “new” facts have come to light; some of them are simply changing their story by changing the “angle” of the story.
Case in point, Chris Cuomo didn’t say the initial storyline was wrong (maybe he did in another report; but, not in the one I saw on YouTube), instead he took a different angle and asked where were the chaperones of these kids? Why weren’t the chaperones doing something? (my question is where were the police or “chaperones” of those adults verbally attacking those kids?)
I’m like “holy cow”! How could any sane person (even a journalist) change the story to find another fault with these kids (because the main fault turned out to not be true they have to find another one).
The answer to my question is that they aren’t sane. They are so driven by hate that they just aren’t rational any more.
Sorry to go all Godwin’s law here; but, isn’t that what Hitler did? Blame the Jews for being commies while also blaming the Jews for being Banking/Capitalist schemers stealing from everyone? Any sane person would realize the two blames are opposite; but, haters don’t see that. They are just trying to find a reason to justify their hate.
I do fear for our future when so many are just “raging all the time.”
BTW, I went to Trump inauguration and wanted to buy a souvenir hat and scarf; But, I knew that I would never dare to wear them in my deep blue city. And, so they would just be souvenirs sitting in the dresser drawer never to see the light of day. I didn’t buy them. sigh.
Thank you, Neo, for taking the time to digest all this and do this post. I dreamed of being a “correspondent” when I was a little kid, devouring newspapers and listening to radio news. I partially worked my way through college as a reporter on a daily newspaper, working all my summer vacations and holidays, learning the importance of accuracy in the unforgiving school of obituaries, sewer bond stories, accidents, fires and police blotters. I was blessed to spend the following 37 years as a reporter on three large newspapers and a writer and editor (for more than 30 years) on what was then the largest magazine in the world. I never thought the day would come when I would find myself a bit ashamed to tell anyone I was a “journalist.” But such is the state of much of the “profession” these days. Make no mistake, CNN has happily placed itself in league with a liar in their fawning treatment of Indian “Elder” Phillips. It rather galls me that, day in and day out, in airports and dentist offices, etc. people are force-fed this network and think of it, at least in the back of their minds, as a news organization. And one final note, I wonder how many decent, honest American Indians find themselves a little ashamed that this prevaricating fraud with his little leather drum has been held up by the media as a noble representative of “Native Americans.” That is truly sad.
“And in case you’re wondering, here are some examples of the tons of people who—thanks to the propaganda—cling ferociously to the original narrative.]” — Neo
The inability to accept corrections and move on is apparently endemic on the Left, and not unknown on the Right, but the examples we’ve seen lately are all in the Sinestrosphere.
Dan Rather still thinks his memos were “accurate” and multitudes still think “hands up don’t shoot” really happened.
They still think Sarah Palin instigated the shooting of Giffords, and Justice Kavanaugh assaulted Ms. Ford.
https://hotair.com/archives/2017/05/04/cnn-still-describes-michael-brown-shooting-hands-dont-shoot-might-true/
https://hotair.com/archives/2017/06/15/palin-sue-nyt-editorial-blaming-inciting-gabby-giffords-shooting/
They believe FDR’s New Deal ended the Depression, instead of prolonging it, and that Alger Hiss was not a Soviet spy.
You can’t cure stupid. You sure can’t cure willful blindness.
And I’m including the Dexstrosphere in that as well.
They know the Leftist media lies; they’ve known it since 2006 FOR SURE; and they still jump to the dog-whistles and beg for a treat.
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/182963.php
June 22, 2006
The Sinestrosphere As Alterate Political Party?
[in reference to the Journ-o-list revelations at the time, which heated up in 2008]
“It occurs to me that the dextrosphere (right-blogosphere) and sinestrosphere (left-blogosphere) may be following two different models.
The dextrosphere disagrees with each other, bickers, argues, etc., all in public. It’s pretty transparent — readers aren’t missing anything going on behind the scenes. Sure, emails are exchanged, but of a “Check this out” variety. They’re tips, not attempts to coordinate messaging.
The dextrosphere attempts, to the extent possible, to be an alternative media. We can never really replace the MSM, but to the extent possible, we try to displace those functions we can. Opinioniating, of course. And also editorial selection– the MSM may say that this story is an A1 above-the-fold headline, and this story (say, on 500 chemical warfare shells discovered in Iraq) is page C13 (grudgingly), but we attempt to displace that function by substituting our own notions of newsworthiness for the MSM’s lockstep liberal editorial boards.
But the sinestrosphere seems to be based on a different model. This secret message board for coordinating messages-of-the-day… it’s the same as the DNC’s or RNC’s blast-faxes. And debating stories and opinions behind the scenes, focus-group testing them, agreeing on a common narrative?
That’s not really something a media does.
That’s something a political party does.
So it seems to me the right and left of the blogosphere have departed as to our basic assumptions. The dextrosphere seems primarily concerned with displacing the media, whereas the sinestrosphere seems primarily concerned with displacing the Democratic Party itself.
Much of what left and right do is similar, of course. We all slam our respective Party-Members-In-Name-Only, argue over points of ideology, attack the media for being too biased, etc.
But there does seem to be a difference in the basic conception of what this goofy pastime is all about. For the right, the blogosphere is an alternate media source; for the left, the blogosphere is simply a novel infrastructure for party-building activities.
Can’t say, out of hand, that our model is better. Perhaps it would be more effective for the right to become more involved in the nitty-gritty of political activism and complete sell-out hackishness.
Then again, that sounds like a lot of work. Too much message-coordinating with internet dorks. So I’ll stick with the alternate media model.
For all our differences, the left and right of the blogosphere seem to agree on two points: 1, the mainstream media is basically lazy, dunderheaded, and “intellectually incurious,” and 2, the Democratic Party needs to be replaced by something that isn’t pure crap.
It’s interesting to me that the left of the blogosphere has been alleging for years and years that the right was all part of the same “rightwing noise machine” or “rightwing Wurlitzer,” as Filet O’Fish calls it. We’re all told what to write about by the RNC, or by Instapundit, and we all carry out our marching orders smartly.
And for all this time– it’s been the left that has been getting together, out of the view of their readers, to massage their daily Two-Minute Hates. All along, it’s been the dextrosphere just writing about what we find interesting, with lots of different, and often disagreeing, points of views and idiosyncratic tics, while the left has been achieving its stultifyingly-similar GroupVoice by working out its bullet-points in committee.
This is an all-too-common failing of the left. They assume the rightwing bugaboos are doing something corrupt, or convince themselves that they are despite the evidence, and then use that as a pretext for doing the corrupt sorts of things they complain about. Rightwingers don’t really out gay politicians, but the left convinces itself that we do, thus giving Americablog the purported justification to out any homosexual it dislikes.
And having convinced themselves that the right is conspiring to put out a common narrative and spin on the day’s events, well, they seem to have decided to fight fire with fire.
Except, of course, there was no fire to begin with.
So, next time Oliver Willis mentions the “Right Wing Wurlitzer,” I’d like what few readers he has left to ask him about the Townhouse Wurlitzer.”
https://hotair.com/archives/2017/07/15/remembering-journolist-lefts-bag-tricks/
“The Journolist discussion took place nearly a decade ago, but in retrospect, I’m struck by how these three basic approaches—kill it, ignore it, call them haters—seem like media archetypes now.
…
To be clear, I’m not claiming that these three approaches are all the left-wing media does. The racism and sexism attacks have certainly become more common but these three approaches really go into high gear when something important is at stake, i.e. Obama’s election, abortion rights. In those cases, the left is not above using its numerical and influential dominance of the media for its own ends. This is why there’s really no alternative to seeking more ideological parity at major news outlets. Progressives in the media may be able to play it straight much of the time but if they’re going to cheat when it really counts, someone needs to be there in the room to call them on it.”
Except that the people “in the room” jumped on the dog-pile just as fast and as hard as the Progressives.
They claim they’ve repented, and apologized, and are now attacking the leftist narrative, but really, at this point, what difference does it make?
https://hotair.com/archives/2019/01/23/cnn-commentator-covington-im-triggered-maga-hat-kkk-hood/
“I think Ziegler’s underestimating how viral the clip would have gone even without the MAGA hats. The racial politics of a group of white teens disrespecting an older Native American would have guaranteed an audience. It’s hard to imagine any circumstance in which a confrontation between those participants wouldn’t produce outrage in defense of the latter among America’s chattering class. It’s also part of the reason why so many on the left have tripled down against the kids even after new video emerged. Several centuries of American history mean to them that it’s not just a safe assumption that a Native American is being victimized when he confronts whites, it’s a moral duty to believe that he is.
But Ziegler’s right that the MAGA hat was gasoline on the fire, if perhaps not the spark that lit it.
…
it’s one thing to vote for him and another to promote him; to the left, wearing the hat is a provocation. No “reluctant” Trump supporter wears one. You wear the hat if you’re enthusiastic about him and want everyone around you to know it. It’s an act of assertiveness, if not defiance.
For a kid to wear it is even more provocative. Who knows how politically savvy Nick Sandmann or his classmates are for their age? Maybe their affection for POTUS runs no deeper than “build the wall,” maybe it’s as simple as admiring his personal style. Maybe they wear it for the same reason some kids dye their hair green, because some find it shocking. Rye seems to sweep all of those possibilities aside: They wear it because they’re racists and want to communicate that fact as efficiently as possible. Such is the advanced level on which America’s televised political discourse operates.
At least she’s judging Sandmann based on his hat and not by the expression on his face, as so many dumber liberal critics did.”
* * *
Hatcrime or Facecrime, it makes not difference.
It’s still judging on the basis of the judger’s personal bias, not the objective facts.
They all want to have their Alternative Facts, they just don’t want to admit it.
As for those who are tripling down: the Sheriff gave them 48 hours to get out of Dodge; I wonder if any of them are taking that seriously, much less literally?
https://hotair.com/archives/2019/01/23/lot-racism-happening-lincoln-memorial-friday-media-just-didnt-identify-culprits/
“There was plenty of racist, ugly language being tossed around in front of the Lincoln Memorial last Friday but the media botched the story when it assumed it was coming from the high school students. In reality, it was coming from the cult members who were apparently there to agitate the Native Americans and only turned on the white kids when that wasn’t going well. In fact, the preacher’s question “Why not be angry at them?” pretty much sums up this entire affair. The boys in the MAGA hats were a soft target. The cult preacher saw it and so did the media and the left-wing celebrities who went all in on the teens because why not be angry at them?
It was a disgusting display but even now the Washington Post is still missing the point. Whenever the media doesn’t want the story of what happened to be the story (in this case the media went hog wild on a racialized attack without knowing the facts), conservatives seizing becomes the alternate story. So the Post’s take on what really happened here is, not surprisingly, that conservatives seized on an innocent mistake.
But Flanagan, at the Atlantic, gets it right in her closing admonition to the media: “Millions of Americans believe you hate them and that you will causally [sic] harm them. Two years ago, they fought back against you, and they won. If Trump wins again, you will once again have played a small but important role in that victory.” She’s absolutely right.”
The Atlantic post mentioned at Hot Air is pretty good, but especially the jibe excerpted first here.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/01/media-must-learn-covington-catholic-story/581035/
“You know the left has really changed in this country when you find its denizens glorifying America’s role in the Vietnam War and lionizing the social attitudes of the corporate monolith Procter & Gamble.”
[it hasn’t changed, of course, it just seizes whatever emotional hook it can]
“By Saturday, the story had become so hot, and the appetite for it so deep, that some news outlets felt compelled to do some actual reporting. This was when the weekend began to take a long, bad turn for respected news outlets and righteous celebrities. Journalists began to discover that the viral video was not, in fact, the Zapruder film of 2019, and that there were other videos—lots and lots of them—that showed the event from multiple perspectives and that explained more clearly what had happened. At first the journalists and their editors tried to patch the revelations onto the existing story, in hopes that the whole thing would somehow hold together. CNN, apparently by now aware that the event had taken place within a complicating larger picture, tried to use the new information to support its own biased interpretation, sorrowfully reporting that early in the afternoon the boys had clashed with “four African American young men preaching about the Bible and oppression.”
But the wild, uncontrollable internet kept pumping videos into the ether that allowed people to see for themselves what had happened.
[The MSM always seems surprised by this; it’s their blind-spot, just like the Right is always surprised that the Left lies to them]
…
The full video reveals that these kids had wandered into a Tom Wolfe novel and had no idea how to get out of it.
…
Black Hebrew Israelites believe, among other things, that they are indigenous people. The preacher tells a woman that “you’re not an Indian. Indian means ‘savage.’ ”
Men begin to gather with concerned looks on their face. “Indian does not mean ‘savage,’ ” one of them says reasonably. “I don’t know where you got that from.” At this point, most of the Native Americans who have surrounded—“mobbed”?—the preacher have realized what the boys will prove too young and too unsophisticated to understand: that the “four young African American men preaching about the Bible and oppression” are the kind of people you sometimes encounter in big cities, and the best thing to do is steer a wide berth. Most of them leave, exchanging amused glances at one another. But one of the women stays put, and she begins making excellent points, some of which stump the Black Hebrew Israelites.
It was heating up to be an intersectional showdown for the ages, with the Black Hebrew Israelites going head to head with the Native Americans. But when the Native woman talks about the importance of peace, the preacher finally locates a unifying theme, one more powerful than anything to be found in Proverbs, Isaiah, or Ecclesiastes.
He tells her there won’t be any food stamps coming to reservations or the projects because of the shutdown, and then gesturing to his left, he says, “It’s because of these … bastards over there, wearing ‘Make America Great Again’ hats.”
The camera turns to capture five white teenage boys, one of whom is wearing a maga hat. They are standing at a respectful distance, with their hands in their pockets, listening to this exchange with expressions of curiosity. They are there to meet their bus home.
…
As of this writing, it seems that the smiling boy, Nick Sandmann, is the one person who tried to be respectful of Phillips and who encouraged the other boys to do the same. And for this, he has been by far the most harshly treated of any of the people involved in the afternoon’s mess at the Lincoln Memorial.
…
How could the elite media—The New York Times, let’s say—have protected themselves from this event, which has served to reinforce millions of Americans’ belief that traditional journalistic outlets are purveyors of “fake news”? They might have hewed to a concept that once went by the quaint term “journalistic ethics.” Among other things, journalistic ethics held that if you didn’t have the reporting to support a story, and if that story had the potential to hurt its subjects, and if those subjects were private citizens, and if they were moreover minors, you didn’t run the story. You kept reporting it; you let yourself get scooped; and you accepted that speed is not the highest value. Otherwise, you were the trash press.
At 8:30 yesterday morning, as I was typing this essay, The New York Times emailed me. The subject line was “Ethics Reminders for Freelance Journalists.” (I have occasionally published essays and reviews in the Times). It informed me, inter alia, that the Times expected all of its journalists, both freelance and staff, “to protect the integrity and credibility of Times journalism.” This meant, in part, safeguarding the Times’ “reputation for fairness and impartiality.”
I am prompted to issue my own ethics reminders for The New York Times. Here they are: You were partly responsible for the election of Trump because you are the most influential newspaper in the country, and you are not fair or impartial. Millions of Americans believe you hate them and that you will causally harm them. Two years ago, they fought back against you, and they won. If Trump wins again, you will once again have played a small but important role in that victory.”
I saw this story a couple of days ago; now Ace has linked it on his Wednesday Overnight thread. It harks back to the CohenCrisis before the CovCatharsis, but it’s interesting in light of the second link.
https://www.redstate.com/tladuke/2019/01/22/knew-nbc-400-million-dollar-investment-buzzfeed./
https://www.redstate.com/brandon_morse/2019/01/23/buzzfeed-laying-off-15-workforce/
(that’s 15% of workforce)
When it comes to CNN, “Lies and Videotape” is adequate.
The bigger picture.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1087723214724386823.html
John Hayward
@Doc_0
2 days ago, 21 tweets, 4 min read Read on Twitter
“Trump will be criticized for wading into the issue and “making it worse,” but this is one of the reasons he won. He gets involved in culture battles when bloodless GOP protocol is to step back and let the Left have another easy win, or even help them to win their favor.”
RTWT
Conor Friedersdorg urges the Left to go back to hyperventilating about important things. Probably no one will listen to him.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/01/covington-pile-on-symbolism/580918/
“Boys from a Catholic high school in Kentucky are hanging out near the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C., doing pep-rally cheers to drown out slurs and homophobic taunts from the Black Hebrew Israelites, when an American Indian man unexpectedly arrives on the scene, beating a drum as he interposes himself between the groups.
It’s the sort of conflict that … virtually never happens.
Yet after watching a viral video of that singular event, many observers felt that it was … a symbol of all that’s wrong with America.
…
How strange to treat a smirking teen’s face, something known to every parent and schoolteacher in the world, as an emblem of “tactics of genocide”—as though the root of ethnic cleansing were adolescent insolence.
…
If I were compressing “the history of relations between the powerful and the powerless in America” into a single image, I’d represent “the powerful” with someone old enough to vote, not a scrawny high-school kid. My horde would look like the Confederate army, not a pep rally.
Treating a smirking teenager as a stand-in for the wanton slaughter of indigenous people, the brutal abomination of chattel slavery, the persecution of anti-war activists, the racial terrorism of the Ku Klux Klan, the exclusion of Chinese immigrants, or the internment of Japanese Americans utterly trivializes bygone atrocities. Did these commentators swallow the trendy notion that microaggressions are “violence,” and apply it backwards in history?
…
Many who are sympathetic to the blue coalition’s concerns are baffled that a large faction within it spends so much energy on culture-war pile-ons, even opining that children are punchable or irredeemable or deserving of doxing. It’s the bizarre focus on these boys as what ails America, rather than on any of the many powerful people doing identifiable harm, or on any of the things that might end family separations, avert assaults, increase wages, reduce poverty, reform police, or increase access to medical care, that’s going to do in the left.”
Basically correct, at least on some points, but of course he thinks the “over-reaction” is much too helpful to the Right. Probably no one will listen to him.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/01/covington-overcorrection/580987/
The Trump-Era Overcorrection
The evolving coverage of a confrontation on the National Mall offers a case study in how media outlets zigzag wildly in their efforts to please their readers.
6:00 AM ET
Adam Serwer
“The whole saga is an example of the Donald Trump–era overcorrection. The president has no use for facts; he simply says whatever he wants, and his followers repeat it uncritically. That has made it even more important for journalists to get the facts right, and to acknowledge when they get them wrong, to prove that they abide by facts rather than sentiment. The president’s conscious attempts to delegitimize the media make this task even more difficult. Much of the mainstream media, meanwhile, is working tirelessly to win back the trust of Trump’s followers, whether by conceding the president’s framing, offering endless watercolored portraits of Trump supporters in Midwest diners, or making other displays of sympathy.”
[Anybody here seen those tireless concessions anywhere?]
“The incident became a national story in part because of the way the images seemed to confirm first one sweeping narrative, and then another, opposite one: the first, that the heart of Trumpism is prejudice; the second, that anti-prejudice, abetted by the liberal media, has become a malevolent force comparable to racial oppression. But only one of these bears any resemblance to empirical reality, and that would still be the case no matter what unfolded in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
As the Covington students ascend to right-wing martyrdom, some perspective is in order. The disproportionate reaction to their behavior does not, as some conservative commentators have suggested, represent a new kind of oppression comparable to that experienced by historically disfavored groups.”
[Segue to second example that is supposed to prove something or other.]
“Mueller’s office has built up a great deal of credibility because of the special counsel’s record of public service, and because it so rarely comments. Nevertheless, despite the fact that under both Republican and Democratic presidents many government statements denying significant stories have proved either to be wrong or to omit relevant details, much of the media simply concluded or suggested that the story was wholly false. BuzzFeed News, where I formerly worked for several years, maintains that its story is accurate.
…
In both instances, the initial reaction would have benefited from additional context. But once that context was revealed, much of the media overcorrected by assuming the exact opposite of the original story was true, when that overcorrection was just as mistaken. The overcorrections are a symptom of the mainstream media’s ongoing preoccupation with winning the affection of the president’s most enthusiastic supporters—an impossible task, because those supporters believe what the president wants them to believe. If you write something they don’t like, you’re fake news. If you correct something you got wrong, you’re also fake news. The only way not to be fake news is to say what they want you to say, the way they want you to say it. News outlets should neither ignore legitimate criticism based on the source nor go out of their way to assuage critics in the hopes of improving their brand.”
[Anybody here seen those attempts to win our affection anywhere?]
“It is an understandable impulse to want to repair a relationship with an estranged audience—news is about informing the public, and you can’t inform the public if a large segment of it doesn’t trust you. But the only goal that really matters is getting it right. The overcorrection is not about getting it right; it is about convincing people who will never trust the media to trust the media. And it is certain to fail, since in the end, it can only prove that these same critics are right about the fake-news press and its habit of shading the truth. When journalism becomes about popularity, getting the facts right becomes secondary.”
* * *
So many good points, buried in so much cluelessness.
Now that I’ve written my comment, I want to preface it by saying that I think CNN (or somebody else) wrote Phillips’s speech and also coached him carefully. (I also think CNN carefully edited the video.) The whole thing was very smooth and professional.
So:
Two things struck me about the interview — and thanks very much for the link, Neo. I’d been avoiding watching it on the theory that I could do without more toxicity today, but now I’m glad I did. (Gives me my own observations to go on.)
First and foremost: The interviewer pretty clearly came at the thing with her mind made up, and was clearly rooting for Phillips (or perhaps actually rooting for the boys’ lynching) and uninterested in even appearing to be objective or unbiased, let alone in searching for the facts.
Then, Phillips seemed all cleaned up, in grooming, manner, and words. It was as if his words were written by a very good speechwriter. Rehearsed, perhaps. (Do I sound suspicious?) Quite well-spoken.
I don’t suppose CNN could have written the speech, coached him, perhaps edited the video so that he could seem smooth and confident? Nah…being paranoid again.
I notice he very clearly said “Vietnam-era veteran.” I think that question has to have come up before the video was broadcast. I can’t imagine anyone using that term spontaneously during an interview, nor any coach who would put the words in his mouth unless the nature of the veteran’s service were already an issue.
In sum: I’ve heard speeches and interviews by seasoned professionals who come off as less self-possessed on-stage.
I never realized before that The Atlantic is the National Review of the Left, although I should have. Conor makes an excellent point with this article.
Probably no one will listen to him.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/01/outrage/579553/
Social-Media Outrage Is Collapsing Our Worlds
The internet once made it easier to slip from one domain to another. Is there a way to preserve that vital freedom?
JAN 22, 2019
Conor Friedersdorf
“…The ability to slip into a domain and adopt whatever values and norms are appropriate while retaining identities in other domains is something most Americans value, both to live in peace amid difference and for personal reasons.
…
If humans lost something when most of us ceased to live our whole lives in small tribes, if American life is no longer organized around small towns with all that they offer their residents, at the very least we made these countervailing gains. And this freedom to be different things in different spaces was enhanced by the early internet. Every subculture had its chat rooms. Far-flung people with niche interests could find one another. And no one knew if you were a dog.
Today’s internet is different. One powerful illustration of the phenomenon is Facebook’s People You May Know feature, plumbed most thoughtfully by Kashmir Hill.”
[Read the list of frightening examples.]
“How is new technology affecting our ability to keep our various worlds from colliding when we don’t want them to, and what, if anything, should we do about that?”
[Here comes the part that makes this post relevant to the Covington Chronicles.]
“For example: I’m sitting in a coffee shop as I write this. Imagine that a man sitting at a nearby table spilled his coffee, got a phone call just afterward, and simply left, so that staff had to clean up his mess, a scene that culminated in a haggard-looking barista drooping her shoulders in frustration. Was the call a true emergency? We don’t know. But if not, almost everyone would agree that the man behaved badly.
Yet almost all of you would react with discomfort or opprobrium if I followed the man back to his office, learned his name, spent half an hour waiting to see his boss, adopted an outraged tone, explained his transgression, felt righteous, then commenced a week-long mission to alert his extended network of friends, family, and professional contacts to his behavior, all the while telling masses of strangers about it, too.
On the other hand, if that man spilled his coffee, leaving that same haggard barista to clean it up, and if I captured the whole thing on my phone camera and posted it to Twitter with a snarky comment about the need to better respect service workers, some nontrivial percentage of the public would help make the clip go viral, join in the shaming, and expend effort to “snitch-tag” various people in the man’s personal life. Some would quietly raise an eyebrow at my role in that public shaming, but I mostly wouldn’t be treated as a transgressor.
…
So a thought experiment: What would the implications be of adopting the norm that it is often wrong, or only rarely appropriate, to rob an individual of the ability to slip into a given domain and adopt whatever values and norms are appropriate while retaining their identities in other domains?”
* * *
Well, for one thing, the Left couldn’t virtue-signal it’s superiority over the Right nearly so effectively.
Sarah Hoyt has an interesting take on Phillips, as a captive of the stories in his head. It’s down at the end, but read through the prologue anyway (ignore typos and stream-of-consciousness style; it’s her personal water-cooler with friends).
https://accordingtohoyt.com/2019/01/23/the-despicable-savage-and-other-tales/
“The vast underclass in America are not noble savages (dear left)or the dispossessed (dear right.) They’re just people who are very human and have found they can live easy by exploiting the myths in other people’s heads. Only after a couple of generations, it’s impossible to break out of it.
Looking at the footage of the Covington thing what occurred to me is that Phillips was in fact hemmed in. Oh, not by the boys, who behaved admirably and who, my bet is, will grow up to be decent productive members of society.
He was hemmed in by his own stories. Noble Savage. And “Great bad things were done to me.” (Which they weren’t. They might or might not have been done to his direct ancestors, who probably gave as good as they got. Some were done to “people who look like him.” but the possibility that either one of the Covington boys’ ancestors, or Phillips ancestors or anyone was involved in the true horrors of colonization are… minor. It’s a story. A pernicious one.) and of course the Marxist idea that class must fight class, and the neo-Marxist idea that race must fight race and that anyone who wears a MAGA hat and therefore declares he/she doesn’t believe in socialism is an oppressor.
That man is a prisoner of poisonous stories. Everything I’ve read about him shows him to be bitter, mean and full of anger towards… well, everyone.
The stories have him and they won’t let go.
As a purveyor of stories I tell you: Enjoy them. Use them when they’re helpful. Learn to discard them before they eat you and make it impossible for you to lead a joyous, productive life, or really do anything good or build anything that lasts.
Tearing down is easy. But it destroys everything. And you too.
Most of our opponents are bitter, hopeless people, caught in the hell of their own vision of the world.
Don’t be like that.”
* * *
Thus the danger of subordinating truth, justice, and moral principles to The Narrative.
https://www.thenewneo.com/2019/01/23/facecrime/#comment-2420437
Esther on January 24, 2019 at 12:42 am at 12:42 am said:
My mother was born in Eastern Europe and was very suspicious of smiling. Unlike other American mothers, who would tell their daughters to smile all the time, mine would say, “stop smiling, it makes you look stupid.”
Trying to understand my mother’s curious advice, turns out, smiling is cultural. Americans smile a lot. But, not so much in the former Soviet Union, where my mother was a guest in their gulag accommodations. I, not withstanding, smile broadly and with dimples.
But, since leftism has gripped the US in the throat, we’re becoming as repressed as Russians looking over their shoulders in the former Soviet Union.
Basically, employ a brief, tepid, close mouthed smile— if you must— infrequently. No grinning. Forget about laughing.
* * *
This leads to an interesting conjecture: did the Left read the young man’s smile as a smirk primarily because they themselves don’t smile unless they are smirking (that is, planning to do something nefarious and trying to disarm their victim with faux friendliness)?
We are definitely in the realm of Scott Adams’s “two movies” with this case.
(h/t Gerard)
https://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/the-evil-clowns/
“The roller-coaster reactions following a video purportedly showing Covington Catholic high school boys mocking a native American who claimed he was a Vietnam veteran elder began with a wave of outrage and ended with a whimper of embarrassment when unedited source video showed the shoe was on the other foot.
…
But by then it had involved the amour propre of literally hundreds of pundits and social media celebrities who simply couldn’t admit to being so cringingly wrong. The quantity of barbecued crow was so great it was difficult to ingest. Some flatly refused.
…
The urge to believe in something can be so great that people can sincerely see things that aren’t there. The social media obsession with racism and toxic masculinity eventually turned the Covington boy’s “smirking faces” into the new Evil Clown sighting of 2019.
…
And next time it could be worse for there is going to be a next time. Our wired echo chambers guarantee it.”
When I commented on the Phillips interview — noting Phillips’s smooth presentation and the obvious partisanship of the interviewer, and speculating about the manner of its making — I forgot that I also wanted to tell Mr. Bennett that I wish he’d post a link to his resumé, which is very interesting. If you can believe the think-tank’s profile, and I do, he really is the real deal.
It’s not my place to post the link, but it’s easy enough to find. Still, Mr. Bennett, I wish you’d post it yourself. ;>)
In any case, good for you! I very much like your comment (which interested me enough to go hunting). And I hope you are happy and thriving.
“…the Black Israelites?…”
Let’s try to be reasonable about all this: if a congressman can, then why can’t they?
https://www.ajc.com/news/state–regional-govt–politics/hank-johnson-defends-comments-comparing-trump-hitler/fz2elO7leVjOuviBRXUhuN/
Video in:
https://www.11alive.com/article/news/politics/rep-hank-johnson-compares-president-trump-to-hitler-in-new-years-day-speech/85-b09014e6-0da1-4fe4-8de5-afd2e8ba2c2c
Key graf:
‘In his address, Johnson said Trump voters were “older, less educated, less prosperous” and “many” of whom were “dying from alcoholism, drug overdoses, liver disease, or simply a broken heart caused by economic despair.”
‘Johnson said he was describing a “demographic fact” about Trump voters’
(From: https://www.ajc.com/news/state–regional-govt–politics/hank-johnson-defends-comments-comparing-trump-hitler/fz2elO7leVjOuviBRXUhuN/ )
Um, so maybe Hank Johnson is a Black Israelite? An Honorary Black Israelite?
Or, maybe not, since he delivered his words of wisdom—cutting edge at that—in a church. Consecrated ground. And, to his credit, he later CLARIFIED that he wasn’t criticizing anybody. That he loves everybody…. Proving beyond a doubt that he’s a GOOD man. A BENEVOLENT man. A LOVING man. (OK, sigh, another person with “issues”….)
But at least the MSM was all over him for this.
(Weren’t they?)
Given the current state of affairs…
https://twitchy.com/gregp-3534/2019/01/23/shame-on-you-rep-ilhan-omar-defends-the-black-hebrew-israelites-from-the-covington-catholic-students/
…and considering all those paragons wandering the halls of the House, I wonder if—when?—this particular gem will decide she has a more than decent chance of becoming a Congressperson:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-6624737/Azealia-Banks-brands-Irish-people-inbred-leprechauns-mocks-potato-famine.html
She seems to have extraordinary potential!
A couple of comments. One, the Omaha newspaper story about the demonstration supporting Phillips was written by an intern. I’m always interested in the author of these things.
Two, the Atlantic, which keeps sending me free copies, hoping I guess that I will subscribe, is now owned by the widow of Steve Jobs. It is a vanity project like the WaPo is for Jeff Bezos. Bezos may get stung badly in court for the libel his BezosBulletin keeps publishing.
The entire incident looks to me to be a setup from the start. A radio guy in Kentucky said that a chaperone told him the kids did not buy those MAGA hats. They were given to them. I’d like to know by who. Was that part of the setup ?
FWIW, Phillips’ daughter, Alethea, is a well-connected activist, and this may be why this particular incident became viral.
https://twitter.com/ThunderB/status/1087883425028157441
It reminds me an old Talmudic saying: “The truth is heavy, so only few can carry it”.
Now it turns out that Phillips has made a number of statements on video and taken an action that add up to him claiming to have been a “Vietnam Veteran.”
See https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/01/new-video-surfaces-of-liar-nathan-phillips-once-again-claiming-to-be-a-vietnam-vet-not-a-vietnam-times-vet/
Don’t hate Phillips, the truly disgusting villain here is the people who exploited a Mentally ill minority elder into doing their bidding of destroying lives of children and putting them and their families in fear and danger by telling lies about them.
Aesop Fan, if you are going to copy and paste from articles, please use blockquote and or italics- preferably blockquote at least- to distinguish the copied text from your comments.Learn HTML in 20 Minutes!
The five minute edit option will give you an opportunity to correct things .
Gringo, thanks for the link. I used to know how to create links and forgot.
Dave:
I don’t think it’s either/or. There are room for many villains here, and Phillips is absolutely one of them. He’s an activist who sought this out, relishes in it, and continues to lie over and over (wrapping himself in the cloak of sanctimony all the while) in order to grossly defame a bunch of teenagers who never did him any harm whatsoever.
Hi Gringo – thanks for the link. Always willing to learn something or refresh my memory.
If you look carefully, you will see that I (almost) always do the following to distinguish my comments from my quotes:
(1) if I am commenting before the excerpt, my words usually precede the link.
(2) the excerpts are delimited by quote marks fore and aft.
(3) anything I want to draw attention to is in boldface (I will indicate if any emphasis was in the original).
(4) in-line commentary by me is set off with italics and square brackets [like this], which is why I don’t put the excerpt itself in italics.
(5) at the end of the quoted excerpt, I might add some more commentary, so I put a line of three asterisks as a separator, like this
* * *
(6) I don’t indent the excerpts
(7) in case you haven’t noticed, the Edit function is flakey: sometimes you get it, sometimes you don’t; today I got lucky and did.
(8) as I explained a couple of times before, I use long excerpts with clear links so that people know what the article is about and why I referenced it, without having to click-through blind (although everyone is always welcome to RTWT).
(9) I admit to getting carried away when I stay up too late reading the webz.
Richard Fernandez rightly diagnosed the feeding frenzy of pundits and commentariat on Catholic school students as a feat of mass hysteria when people began to see and hear things that simply never happened. To me this seems more like mass hallucinations, a symptom of a society schizophrenia.
neo on January 24, 2019 at 12:29 pm at 12:29 pm said:
Dave:
I don’t think it’s either/or. There are room for many villains here, and Phillips is absolutely one of them. He’s an activist who sought this out, relishes in it, and continues to lie over and over (wrapping himself in the cloak of sanctimony all the while) in order to grossly defame a bunch of teenagers who never did him any harm whatsoever.
* * *
I think Lawyer Barnes will take note of that.
The students may not be able to get any money out of Phillips himself, but the Tribes supporting their Elder are possibly liable for his statements as Their Official Representative, especially if their Official Websites don’t retract and apologize for pushing his agenda.
AesopFan,
I shouldn’t have to “read carefully” to be able to distinguish between quote and comment on that quote. It should be patently obvious. Using HTML makes it patently obvious.
Instead of having your own idiosyncratic method for distinguishing between quoted text and your comments, using HTML would do it a lot easier for your readers, as it is a standard readily identified. I don’t see the point of having to interpret your comments via an eight point explanation.HTML does it a lot easier, via blockquote/bold/italics, for a reader.
If you don’t want to make your comments easier to interpret, that is your choice. If I can’t readily distinguish between quoted text and comment on said text, I will tend to pass over the comment. Your eight point explanation of how to distinguish your comments from pointed text merely shows how difficult you make it for your readers.
If you want to make it difficult for your readers, that is your choice.
While the edit function doesn’t always work, it works most of the time- nearly all the time, in my judgement.
Snow on Pine on January 24, 2019 at 10:15 am at 10:15 am said:
Now it turns out that Phillips has made a number of statements on video and taken an action that add up to him claiming to have been a “Vietnam Veteran.”
* * *
Commenters at the Gateway story:
Pelatiah Adams NpcDoa • 5 hours ago
“My dad was shot down in November, 1968 and we found out about his death during the Macy’s parade when I was eight. I’m now a Marine wife (haha, wife of a Force Recon Marine, not whatever he called it, haha). I would prefer that we focus on the elected officials and news outlets who have libeled the kids. Let’s make sure THEY pay and just ignore this sad piece of crap former failed Marine. His life has been so pathetic and if people EVER gave him money without checking him out first (hard to imagine) then that’s their mistake. As I said, I’m more concerned about the people with power who’ve perpetuated all these lies. This man is just their fool.”
I’m Lost TO Debra traumaangel • 2 hours ago
“The thing to watch for is that Stolen Valor type laws have been tossed about before when they’re isolated simply to speech and claims. The mob leans on that sort of thing.
The thing to point out with Philips is that he’s made the claim in relation to fundraising (how many kickstarters and other fundraisers is he a part of? I saw references to several). That puts it out of “freedom of speech” and squarely into tangible, prosecutable fraud.“
Sergey on January 24, 2019 at 9:50 am at 9:50 am said:
It reminds me an old Talmudic saying: “The truth is heavy, so only few can carry it”.
* * *
And many people never even pick it up in the first place.
There’s a reason for most of those old proverbs, regardless of their source.
Lizzy on January 24, 2019 at 9:15 am at 9:15 am said:
FWIW, Phillips’ daughter, Alethea, is a well-connected activist, and this may be why this particular incident became viral.
* * *
It would be interesting to see if she was at the Mall, and possibly encouraging her dad to interject himself into the situation.
I had wondered if any of this was pre-planned, but finally decided it was one of those “perfect storms” of coincidence, although that conclusion might change if it is confirmed that the MAGA hats were given to the students, and not bought by themselves.
He does seem to be the perfect poster-victim-du-jour, especially for such trusty “news” sources such as CNN (and all those who basically agree with its message and its goal):
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/native-american-activist-nathan-phillips-has-violent-criminal-record-and-escaped-from-jail-as-teenager
So milk him for all he is worth, why not?…. (While earnestly calling it “the pursuit of Truth and Justice”!—And how can one allow anyone to “get in the way” of those sacred principles?!)
What, after all, is Truth?….
And so, if a few white Catholic kids (and their families and their school) get caught up in the Left’s crusade to eliminate thought-crime—for the good, of course, of everyone and everything—well, it’s all for a moral cause, all for a righteous cause.
Isn’t it?
The Left has to show the deplorables who’s in charge. This is, after all, a take-no-prisoners kulturkampf.
Isn’t it?
And so, eggs ‘n omelets, eggs ‘n omelets…say the righteous. Eggs ‘n omelets.
Those criminal charges and, apparent convictions, occurred during his alleged Marine Corps enlistment.
Phillips, who was 19 at the time, was “charged with escaping from the Nebraska Penal Complex where he was confined May 3,” according to a May 9, 1974, article in the Lincoln Star. The court approved a bond of $500 and set a preliminary hearing for May 14.
His alleged Marine Corps enlistment was 1972 to 1976. So, maybe that was when he was AWOL. No wonder he got a general discharge, not honorable as he claimed.
AesopFan:
My guess (subject to change if I come across further information) is that the teenagers were a target of opportunity for Phillips, but that he was looking around for such a target in order to play a videotaped “gotcha” game.
he was looking around for such a target in order to play a videotaped “gotcha” game.
He is being run by someone. I doubt he has enough brain left to make strategic decisions. The “Standing Rock” thing got him in Vogue. That was funded by Soros and the Tides Foundation.
Mike K:
I believe he is being funded by someone (probably a group, that is) on the left, as well as guided by them. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t a voluntary agent making decisions for himself. It is my opinion that he is fully aware of what he’s doing. He may not be an intellectual, but he’s got more than enough intelligence to be both tactical and strategic, and I detect both in his interviews, which are in many ways very clever propaganda. He knows exactly which buttons to push and he’s done it successfully and repeatedly.
You can trust the press because they are so good, so smart, so sharp.
An AP story liked to on Drudge concerning exploration of the Indian Ocean near the Seychelles, states:
540 million square miles of sea exclusively their own. Dat’s one mighty bigga ocean … and state.
An understandable error maybe? Well, the entire surface area of the earth is reportedly 197 million square miles approximately.
If he read it while paying any attention at all, a bloody middle school student would know better than that instantly. Regardless of the nominal sums, a square mile is simply bigger than a square kilometer, and therefore there would be fewer of them [square miles] within the same boundary: not almost 400 times more. Yet the AP editor didn’t catch it. Nor did the Seattle Times’ editor.
But you can trust the press. They are professionals and on top of it … be it 6th grade Math, 7th grade geography, or elementary logic … no problema …
Neo – I agree with your comments about Phillips.
His situation, in part, looks to me like that of the University of The Republic of Boulder former professor, Ward Churchill, who built a following at the school on the basis of plagiarized work, false credentials, and bogus Indigenous heritage (at least Phillips seems to be authentically Native American; Churchill doesn’t even hit the 1/1024th benchmark).
A quick review of his Wikipedia article shows more than a passing similarity between the two men, including fake claims about their military service; perhaps they share a common pathology (other than generic leftism, that is).
Churchill would still be employed if he hadn’t over-reached after 9/11 and drawn the attention of the World Wide Web of Fact Checkers, who very quickly shredded his bona fides to the point where the administrators of the Uni chose to kick him out, and the courts agreed they had cause.
His work and credentials had been disputed before that, but no one group could get enough momentum to get him fired until the school came under pressure for his “Little Eichmanns” slander.
Moral of the Story: nothing is hidden from the internet for long.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Churchill
PS – the Wiki article includes a long section on infighting among the AIM chapters, and disputes about Churchill’s status.
Apparently, Phillips, banging his drum, first got in the face of an even younger girl who was so frightened that she started crying.
That was not such a good photo op so he moved into the middle of the schoolboys waiting for their bus.
This was reported by her mother. I am not going to search her out and expose yet another child to this horror.
Re: AesopFan’s discussion of Ward Churchill . . .
I am in Colorado and have taught in a local community college. I have a Master’s degree, but it is common knowledge that one must have a PhD to teach at the University of Colorado.
Not Ward Churchill, however. He had no PhD but not only taught at CU, but was made the head of a department.
CU had a long and arduous road in getting rid of him.
As I pointed out in a previous comment, military wannabees seem drawn to claiming that they were part of a LRRP unit.