XPost: alt.news-media, sac.politics, alt.journalism.newspapers   
   XPost: alt.politics.republicans, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh   
   From: bwoodward@fakenews.cnn.com   
      
   There was far more than met the eye to the Covington Catholic story,   
   but that didn’t stop the popular press from vilifying its students.   
   If you’re in a public place and someone starts heckling you, are you   
   entitled to heckle back? How about if someone does something much   
   worse than heckling you in a public place? What if that person in fact   
   takes a drum up to you and starts banging it in your face? Are you   
   entitled to heckle back? How about smirking? Are you allowed to smirk?   
      
   I think you are, even if you’re wearing a MAGA hat. Even if you’re an   
   entitled brat. Even if you’re an entitled Catholic brat.   
      
   We’ll stipulate that the Catholic boys from a high school in Kentucky   
   were a little obnoxious when an indigenous man named Nathan Phillips   
   banged a drum at them in front of the Lincoln Memorial on Friday. But   
   Phillips was being a lot more obnoxious. To put it another way, if you   
   were minding your own business in a public place and someone came   
   right up to you and put a drum up to your face and made a huge racket   
   inches from your nose, would you be happy about it?   
      
   The kids from Covington Catholic High School in Covington, Ky., were   
   ambassadors for causes much bigger than themselves: Catholicism and   
   the right to life. As such, they should have comported themselves   
   better than to jeer and do a tomahawk chop in front of Phillips.   
   Ideally, the kids would have ignored him and walked away. Until about   
   ten minutes ago, it was broadly agreed in our culture that kids are   
   allowed to do some dumb things because they’re kids. Should these   
   kids’ lives be ruined because some of them responded to obnoxious   
   provocation by being a bit rude themselves? I’d say their reaction was   
   if anything more restrained than you would expect from teenagers. I’d   
   advise them to do better next time. I certainly wouldn’t consider   
   expulsion.   
      
   Phillips, on the other hand, is an adult, and he repeatedly lied about   
   what happened to the Washington Post, which was utterly taken in by   
   him and reported everything he said uncritically.   
      
   It would have been revolting if Nathan Phillips had been minding his   
   own business doing a tribal chant while a gang of kids swarmed around   
   him and started jeering. That’s what many media outlets reported:   
   “Boys in ‘Make America Great Again’ Hats Mob Native Elder at   
   Indigenous Peoples March,” ran a New York Times headline over a story   
   that said “a throng of cheering and jeering high school boys” were   
   “surrounding a Native American elder.”   
      
   That isn’t what happened. Phillips was the aggressor in the situation.   
   It’s a curious feature of our culture that people aggressively seek to   
   be victimized, go out of their way in hopes of getting punched in the   
   face, but here we are. People do that because they know the media hand   
   out condemnation based on perceived ranking in the victim hierarchy.   
   “Old Ypsilanti man” is near the top, while “privileged-looking young   
   white male probable heterosexual in a MAGA cap” is the absolute   
   bottom. The surface appeal of the story short-circuited the reporters’   
   brains to such a degree that they failed to perform basic tasks such   
   as asking the people they were accusing for their version of events.   
   The Times and other outlets had zero evidence that a “mob”   
   “surrounded” Phillips, except a claim of Phillips that he has since   
   backed away from.   
      
   Phillips has on at least one other occasion gotten himself into what   
   he says was a racist altercation with a group of youths. This one,   
   four years ago, also involved him approaching others, in this case a   
   group of college students. (“Why did Phillips go over to the fence?   
   Why not just walk away?” wondered a reporter. “For me just to walk by   
   and have a blind eye to it,” Phillips said. “Something just didn’t   
   allow me to do it.”)   
      
   Friday he waded into a group of Covington students, evidently hoping   
   to troll a response out of them suitable for a viral video. According   
   to the Washington Post, Phillips, 64, said that he felt threatened by   
   the teens and that they swarmed around him as he and other activists   
   were wrapping up the march and preparing to leave. This is a lie. They   
   didn’t swarm around him. He strolled right into the middle of their   
   group:   
      
      
   Matthew Schmitz   
   ?   
   @matthewschmitz   
    · Jan 19, 2019   
   Replying to @matthewschmitz   
   Given that people are calling for the firing of a priest and the   
   expulsion of students, I hope that the celebrity priests and media   
   Catholics who expressed judgments on the basis of less evidence will   
   speak out again if more evidence suggests that things were not so   
   clear-cut.   
      
      
   Matthew Schmitz   
   ?   
   @matthewschmitz   
   Here is a video clearly showing that Nathan Phillips approached the   
   students. On the basis of the evidence we now have, I believe that   
   people who issued categorical and one-sided condemnations of the   
   students should retract and apologize. pic.twitter.com/GxmXcMuQgC   
      
   14.3K   
   6:29 AM - Jan 20, 2019   
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   Phillips then pivoted to a completely different version of his story   
   with the Detroit Free Press, in which he admitted that he approached   
   the students, not the other way around. His interviews and the various   
   videos of the incident paint a picture of him saying he is a)   
   terrified of the Catholic students yet b) walking right up to and into   
   their group; a) doing his best to leave yet b) pressing forward   
   insistently; a) trying to go up the steps of the Lincoln Memorial yet   
   b) not noticing that there is a clear path up those steps   
   approximately ten feet to his right.   
      
   Phillips, who claims to be a former Marine and a Vietnam veteran, told   
   the Free Press the Covington kids “were in the process of attacking   
   these four black individuals. I was there and I was witnessing all of   
   this. . . . As this kept on going on and escalating, it just got to a   
   point where you do something or you walk away, you know? You see   
   something that is wrong and you’re faced with that choice of right or   
   wrong.”   
      
   Because naturally, when you see a group of individuals “attacking”   
   another group in a public place where there are lots of police, the   
   proper response when you’re a 64-year-old man is not to inform a cop   
   but to take charge of the situation yourself. Go up to the   
   “attackers,” stand toe to toe with one of them and start loudly   
   banging a drum in his face. This is a known mollification technique   
   and it absolutely can never fail to defuse tensions. However, if it   
   does fail, what you should do is move the drum even closer to the   
   other person’s face, so it’s just a few inches from the guy’s ears,   
   and keep banging away for several more minutes.   
      
      
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