Covington Kids Exonerated from Wrong-doing

[_Kevin Graham]

I was able to discern plenty.

Can you make out the last part of the sentence I couldn't finish? It seems pertinent since it received laughter and applause and prompted the remark about enjoying rape. My point is that there was much said between the groups and among the groups that we don't know about. You can't possibly be claiming to have discerned enough from the available footage to draw conclusions about anyone's guilt or innocence.

The BHIs were the instigators and on the whole, the Covington kids did not respond in kind.

The BHIs were idiots and what they said neither justifies nor excuses how the kids interacted with the Native Americans. None of this was a big deal to me aside from blocking the old guy who was trying to get out of there. The crowd immediately surrounded the small group of Indians and when the old man tried to walk off some of the kids made way for him to pass except for that one kid. It was a reasonable conclusion to make that they were being mobbed. The kids started participating in the song in a mocking way, which was insulting. So were the tomahawk chops. But yeah, admirable bunch of national heroes there.

It does when students from Covington who weren't even at the rally have been getting death threats, yes.

I doubt they received any credible death threats. I'd read plenty of dumb Twitter remarks at the time but none of them seemed to be serious or credible. It doesn't even make sense why anyone would want to kill those kids and even less sense to announce those intentions on social media. Were they being accused of raping a little girl? No. They were accused of being little jerks to an old Native American.

But someone there thought it was important to point out that he wasn't a regular part of the group and his views don't reflect theirs, so it matters.

Kids from both schools were there to protest abortion and everyone knew they were being recorded. That could just as easily be the reason why that remark was made, to distance his school from potential liability.

I didn't hear anyone make such qualifications when it came to the ugly things said by the Native Americans or the BHIs (mostly the BHIs).

Well if you didn't hear it, I guess it couldn't have happened.

So? They're Catholics. Catholics are religiously pro-life. They have a right to peacefully protest their religious beliefs.

No one questioned their right to protest. I mention the fact that they were there together as a group in solidarity. You agree they were there in solidarity to protest abortion, but you don't agree they were there in solidarity when kids start making comments that are embarrassing for Christians to own up to. What about the boys that were cat calling the two girls that walked by, were they good admirable Catholic boys?

Now I think sending kids from an all-male religious school to protest something that primarily involves women is a little weird. It'd be like if an all-girls Jewish school sent its girls to a pro-circumcision rally.

But they were so very, very concerned about all those "babies" dying. Apparently, the gravity of such a serious issue prompts this kind of public behavior. It reminds me of the time I stumbled upon a protest against Genocide and everyone was dancing, laughing and high-fiving one another.

But, this is run-of-the-mill Roman Catholic stuff. Not nationally noteworthy.

I agree, but maybe all those kids shouldn't have been uploading footage to begin with. From what I gather, it was footage from the anti-abortion group that first hit the internet. I'm assuming this because at one point a lady accompanying the Native Americans looked right into the camera and said, "You're acting like a mob." And then appeared to ask the person holding the camera how old he was. He said 16.

No, the kid responded to the "go back to Europe" slur (clearly meant to be the white parallel of "Go back to Africa") by pointing out that Native Americans aren't really from North America either, so the Native American guy started it.

Even if he was just responding, he was still disrespectful. But we don't know who started it because the camera turns towards them as they were already conversing. We only begin to hear that part of it, but we don't know what the kid said prior to that. So for all we know the kid started it.

Secondly, Europeans came here illegally, raped, murdered, and stole this land from Native Americans. As a result that race is borderline extinct. So I think they get a pass on telling us to "Go back to Europe" which is a common phrase at Native American marches. It takes a serious lack of awareness to even be offended by that. Telling people to go back to Africa, when the only reason they're here is because their ancestors were torn from their continent while their families were forced into slavery, isn't really a parallel to "go back to Europe."

It is worth mentioning at this point that you're basically doing everything you accuse the media of doing when you assign blame because you think you have enough information to do so.

By the way, at this point in the exchange, the much-maligned Nick Sandmann reached over and tapped his friend's shoulder in an apparent effort to warn him that he was starting to be disrespectful.

I guess staring into the old man's soul for three minutes had an effect on him.

But the Covington kids themselves are not responsible for that. They did absolutely nothing worthy of national attention.

Well, that's for sure. It became national news because the initial clip hit social media and the conclusions drawn were reasonable. They weren't fabricated from whole cloth. They were the same conclusions drawn by reasonable people on both the left and right. It wasn't like Sandmann was an actor who was paid to stand face to face with the old man. Had that not happened, none of this would have made the news. It was easy to believe because MAGA hat wearing folks are typically racist assholes, and that was the only footage at the time. So the situation isn't a product of bad journalism or liberal bias or any of that. It is just a matter of bad circumstances that could not be predicted. But even still I was impressed how folks in the media qualified their reporting with what "appeared" to be the case.

[_honorentheos]

It became national news because the initial clip hit social media and the conclusions drawn were reasonable.

Not really.

[_Maksutov]

The incident and the aftermath have illustrated how openly, unabashedly irrational we've become. Rush to judgment, two minute hates on demand. Look how we're being conditioned, how we're conditioning ourselves.

[_honorentheos]

The incident and the aftermath have illustrated how openly, unabashedly irrational we've become. Rush to judgment, two minute hates on demand. Look how we're being conditioned, how we're conditioning ourselves.

Exactly. It's like our new national sport. Rah-rah-ree, kick 'em in the knee...

[_Kevin Graham]

Except the conclusions were basically the same among folks on both the right and left. I have Trump worshipping friends on Facebook who lashed out at these kids the same day the initial clip went viral. In fact that is how I first found out about it. So it wasn't a partisan thing until more footage came out and the Right tried to feed their favorite narrative and claim Liberal bias.

There was nothing spun though.

No one edited the video. No one could see the kid actually looks like he's 12 from any other angle:



Nor could they tell he was standing on a step that just made him look taller than the kid who is too small to ride most roller coasters. I think most people try to give other people the benefit of the doubt but most of us couldn't fathom why anyone would be right up in someone's face like that for three straight minutes unless they were trying to intimidate.

I watched the news segments as it happened and I watched them as more footage was released, and the "Liberal media" were the first to correct perceptions while FOX was focused on assigning blame by misrepresenting what the media initially reported. Compare CNN's immediate correction to that of FOX News coming across more information that refutes one of the hundreds of fake news claims they propagated the day before. You'll have to wait for Shep Smith around 5pm the next day if you're expecting an official retraction. No one on their Prime Time shows will admit having jumped to conclusions.

But no one in the media, from what I saw anyway, condemned these kids. They simply reported on what eye witnesses had told them and shared the available footage.

Now what happened in social media is another story entirely, but that isn't the liberal media.

[_EAllusion]

The Covington kids have not been "exonerated." This investigation, done by a firm hired by their school, narrowly looked into questions that aren't central to the main complaint against (some of) them. If people want to decide for themselves that is Ok to racially mock Native Americans, that's fine, but they don't get to say that because they are Ok with this, that means the Convington kids did nothing wrong. They're not heroes. They were riled up bros engaged in obnoxious behavior. That some people mistakenly assumed they initiated the confrontation or that no video evidence can be found that any of them shouted "Build the Wall" doesn't create some sort of argument voodoo where responding to a Native American signing with Tomahawk chops, passive-aggressive stare-downs, and mock chanting becomes cool.

It's really impressive how many people have managed to convince themselves that some rather over-the-top racial mocking is totally fine. They basically did the equivalent of a bojangles routine to a black person and people are all, "See, they did nothing wrong!"

I think I may have misjudged just how acceptable racism directed at Native Americans still is. Granted, we have a sports team called "The Redskins" just out there existing. I sense I'm being naïve.

[_Themis]

Nor could they tell he was standing on a step that just made him look taller than the kid who is too small to ride most roller coasters. I think most people try to give other people the benefit of the doubt but most of us couldn't fathom why anyone would be right up in someone's face like that for three straight minutes unless they were trying to intimidate.

Might be a good lesson in not jumping to a conclusion until more information is available, and it was the older guy with the drum who was getting into the boy's face. I might have reacted in a similar way, regardless of race, when I was 12.

[_Dr. Shades]

. . .passive-aggressive stare-downs, . . .

I respectfully disagree. The Native American guy went up to the kid and started singing and playing his drum to him. The kid politely smiled and listened.

That seems, to me, a much better response than shooting a disgusted look and then turning his back on the guy.

[_EAllusion]

. . .passive-aggressive stare-downs, . . .

I respectfully disagree. The Native American guy went up to the kid and started singing and playing his drum to him. The kid politely smiled and listened.

That's an absurd reading of what he was doing. If you want to accept his Eddie Haskell routine, that's your prerogative, but that is not a plausible reading of his behavior at all. The best you can say about him is that he puffed up like he would have to anyone and the Native American aspect was lost on him while his fellow classmates engaged in racial mocking in the background.

[_Maksutov]

Any public protest event risks silly behavior. We laugh or rage at the absurdity but it's all 1A. It's important to not overreact to random strangers pushing buttons.