They aren’t angels; they’re teenage boys. But they were also subjected for quite a while to a racist, anti-Catholic, homophobic tirade on a loudspeaker, which would be more than most of us urbanites could bear — and they’re adolescents literally off the bus from Kentucky. I heard no slurs back. They stayed there because they were waiting for a bus, not to intimidate anyone.

To put it bluntly: They were 16-year-olds subjected to verbal racist assault by grown men; and then the kids were accused of being bigots. It just beggars belief that the same liberals who fret about “micro-aggressions” for 20-somethings were able to see 16-year-olds absorbing the worst racist garbage from religious bigots … and then express the desire to punch the kids in the face.

How did this grotesque inversion of the truth become the central narrative for what seemed to be the entire class of elite journalists on Twitter? That’s the somewhat terrifying question.
…
She cited Trump’s use of the name “Pocahontas” for Elizabeth Warren as evidence. But using a bullhorn to call Native Americans “savages” and “drunkards at the casino” to their faces a few minutes earlier on the same tape was not worth a mention?

Graham was just one media voice among countless others, and I don’t mean to single her out. The reason I do is because her argument about the fuller context is now the norm in elite media, and it’s the underlying reason for the instant judgment. “Racism” now only means “prejudice plus power,” so what the adult Black Israelites yelled was nowhere near as bad as what a white teenager didn’t say.

“…you were the trash press.”

Or, as we longtime Donald Duck fans remember, you were owned by Rawcuss J. Yellowpress. :>))

. . .

Another comment from the Althouse piece:

alanc709 said…

I prefer the Principle of Clarity to Charity. I don’t seek to put the best possible light on someone’s comments or actions. I prefer to try and understand their intent or meaning. Truth over accommodation, you might say.

I agree — and it’s difficult for me to practice, because I was trained from babyhood to the ‘Principle of Charity’ as quoted. (No, we weren’t Catholic — we were Congregationalists, if anybody cares.) But that was the outlook we kids were encouraged to take. Not that my folks couldn’t be quite forthright (in private) in their opinions! LOL

. . .

Ann, thanks so much for Mr. Dreher’s column. Very interesting.

In particular, this:

as the power and presence of traditional Christians fades, expect the attacks on us to increase in frequency and viciousness. There must be as little social presence and cultural memory of us left as possible.

More echoes of 1984. (Yes, I know the title really uses words for ‘1984.’)

By the way … don’t you just love Andrew Sullivan? /sarc

. . .

Speaking of Ward Churchill, apparently a male version of Fauxcahontas and a plagiarist with questionable claims about military service, there’s a fairly detailed writeup at DTN. (Also from near Chicago!, sorry to say, and even sorrier to see he was involved with SDS and Weatherman back in the day.)

https://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individuals/ward-churchill/

Mike K: I understand why you say that. Perhaps it’s part of Althouse’s claim not to indulge “civility bullshit.”

Still there was Althouse’s weird, hysterical break several years ago that started with gay marriage, as I recall, but resulted in this big FU Everyone and comments were closed for a while.

I thought it was a sort of “self-blogicide” at the time, but she managed to stanch the bleeding and get her blog back on track, though probably not to her sense of desired remuneration.

She wasn’t shy about that either with her readers — if my blog is so great, why ain’t I rich, so get with it.

I didn’t join until the late 80s but I had friends who had joined during the seventies. Back in the 70s the services were kind of scraping the bottom of the barrel personnel-wise. Not that there weren’t good servicemen who joined but that wasn’t the norm. Apparently each command had a quota for awarding Good Conduct Medals. So they were handing out Good Conduct Medals based on who had spent the least time in the brig. I guess since Philipps went UA (Unauthorized Absence, the Navy and current Marine Corps equivalent of AWOL although it appears the USMC was transitioning from AWOL to UA when he was in) three times he spent too much time in the brig to qualify. Clearly so; to qualify for the USMCR equivalent of the Good Conduct Medal (Organized Marine Corps Reserve Medal) back in the 70s he would have had to spend four years in, satisfactorily complete his accession training, monthly drills, and annual training free from disciplinary action. Going UA three times would have disqualified him.

Per the releasable information the USMC made public it only provides Philipps’ duty status; discharged. It doesn’t characterize his service but I can’t imagine that a reservist can go UA three times in four years and get anything higher than a general discharge. I mean, that’s quite a feat for a reservist considering based on the documents I’ve seen he actually went UA three times in 1975 alone. So he could have gone UA a lot more times than that. He may have spent up to six months on accession training in 1972. How do you go UA six times in a year as an active reservist? He would have drilled one weekend a month and then spent two weeks on active duty per year from 1973 on.

All in all he is clearly a lying scumbag.

Culture war is, at bottom, religious war, because sociologically speaking, culture derives from cult, a system of religious veneration and devotion. This is why the facts emerging from the clash at the Lincoln Memorial — facts that negated the initial progressive reading of the event — did not change the minds of progressive devotees. This is not a matter of facts and reason. They wanted a martyr — a witness to the evil of their enemies — and they manufactured one. They’re still doing it.

Finally, here’s a clip of Phillips’s appearance on the Today show. Here is a man who explicitly lied about what happened, and about his own past. Yet here, this grifter presents himself as a gentle holy man. “To all those who were mean to me, I forgive ’em,” he says. The man is a natural political theologian.

He also quotes from a piece by Andrew Sullivan that includes this:

Across most of the national media, led by the New York Times and the Washington Post, the narrative had been set. “I’m willing to bet that fifty years from now, a defining image of this political era will be that smug white MAGA teen disrespecting a Native elder and veteran. It just captures so much,” Jessica Valenti tweeted. “And let’s please not forget that this group of teens … were there for the March for Life: There is an inextricable link between control over women’s bodies, white supremacy & young white male entitlement.” This is the orthodoxy of elite media, and it is increasingly the job of journalists to fit the facts to the narrative and to avoid any facts that undermine it.

Or Fauxcahontas, who was hired for “diversity.”

Phillips (or whatever he name is) shows date of service totaling about 4 years, 2 short of the basic enlistment. He mustered out as a private. I managed to leave as SSG (E-6) with little more effort that showing up as required and doing the jobs assigned. (Yes, being young and dumb, I did not fully realize that I had made it “overt the hump” rank-wise and should have stayed in… ).

All that BS aside — Phillips was not a good Marine and his exit rank and recorded AWOL issues (probably due to what was mentioned above as conflict caused when being incarcerated made drill attendance difficult) attest to that, and most likely contributed to his leaving early. I doubt he has a certificate of Honorable Discharge hanging on his Tee-pee wall.

Neo polices this blog and Althouse does not. I found that I would get into exchanges with the trolls and finally quit.

She does have a few blind spots; one is gay marriage as she has a gay son.