David Brooks wrote this piece – “The Cruelty of Call-Out Culture” – almost a solid week before the Covington kerfuffle, in which a dishonest media led a pack of bovine keyboard commandos to a high-tech lynching of a MAGA hat and the kids standing around it. But the episode brought it back to mind for me.
Brooks details a fascinating – and by “fascinating”, I mean “terrifying” – episode involving a chain of online “denunciations” that seem reminiscent of the sort of thing that got millions killed under Mao and Stalin. And the chain led back to one, er, man:
The guy who called out Emily is named Herbert. He told [NPR podcast] “Invisibilia” that calling her out gave him a rush of pleasure, like an orgasm. He was asked if he cared about the pain Emily endured. “No, I don’t care,” he replied. “I don’t care because it’s obviously something you deserve, and it’s something that’s been coming. … I literally do not care about what happens to you after the situation. I don’t care if she’s dead, alive, whatever.”
When the interviewer, Hanna Rosin, showed skepticism, he revealed that he, too, was a victim. His father beat him throughout his childhood.
In this small story, we see something of the maladies that shape our brutal cultural moment. You see how zealotry is often fueled by people working out their psychological wounds. You see that when denunciation is done through social media, you can destroy people without even knowing them. There’s no personal connection that allows apology and forgiveness.
My theory? The Covington social lynching, like the paroxysm of gleeful hate around the Kavanaugh hearings, are the result of an awful lot of people who’ve never learned to see political differences as anything but “hate” being told to “punch a Nazi” – and they can’t find any actual Nazis, because there are bowling leagues in Cincinnati with more people and political clout than the Nazi party in the USA today – but then again, to them pretty much everyone they disagree with is a Nazi…
…and they can’t punch, anyway. So they use the only weapons they have; the social media mob.
I can’t get past the smug, entitled grin of the central MAGA gentleman. I can’t reconcile this with his lawyerly statement, or the additional context of the situation. The context disappears, and I’m left with that Cheshire Cat smile.
If I’m not mistaken, they are now being “managed” by some Republican aligned PR consultancy.
Let’s consider two group of high school kids: the survivors from Parkland and the Covington group. One group is heralded for their maturity and innate wisdom that we must recognize and honor, but can’t be criticized because they’re “just kids”. The other group are pilloried and called racist products of bad parenting, and they are physically threatened, with calls to be doxxed and denied college admission. Others publicly fantasize about violence being done upon them because they think differently than the so-called moral arbiters – even though they’re just kids. Neither group volunteered for their exposure, and I don’t say their trauma is equal, but I wonder – if some whacko gets stoked to take a gun to the Covington school, would those kids then be validated and honored? Actually, I’m not really wondering.
Sorry, Emery, but again, you interpreted his expression to fit the false narrative put out by your fellow haters.
I wonder what your expression would look like if someone started beating a drum and chanting in your face?! Sheesh!
BH, I read that the kid was standing still and trying to smile in vain effort to defuse the situation. I believe he also said he was praying at the time. Poor kid: waiting for a bus, accosted by leftists a**holes, provoked by an leftist fraud, and now vilified for his face by not only the left by also the True Conservatives.
I wonder just how long it is before people, Normals, start to hit back.
Cute. But also too easily excusing bad behavior. Catholic school kids on an outing to a anti-abortion demonstration proceed to mingle and mock another group of demonstrators attending a completely different event are not to be given a free pass so easily, and neither should the adults who should have been minding them and helping manage their behavior. The Catholic school I attended would not have been so forgiving.
Bad behavior now equals standing still and smiling, while having someone beat his drum a foot from your ear and wash you in his halitosis while he chants in a language unknown to you. Thanks for that update to behavior norms, Emery.
Well, Emery, I guess by your logic, ANTIFA protesters can do whatever they want then.
Emery demonstrates the folly of rushing to judgment based on edited video, and also demonstrates the concept of confirmation bias. The MAGA hat is a symbol of hate to the leftists.
The intense scrutiny on a bunch of high school students– including a young man WHO WASN’T EVEN THERE (and was in fact volunteering with the Special Olympics, but that didn’t insulate him and his family from death threats and slander)– while giving a pass to a leftist agitator who meets certain “protected-class” checkmarks demonstrates the Achilles Heel in the social-media lynch mob: They only have power as long as enough people care what they have to say. Being a Gen-X’er, I’m question why I should care what someone who doesn’t have all the facts (or worse, ignores the inconvenient ones that weaken the collective outrage) has to say about the topic on Twitter. As Millenials ask themselves this same question, Facebook and Twitter will weaken in influence.
The social media lynch mob has an actual body count, in that poor souls who measured their self-worth based on what others thought of them on-line opted to commit suicide when their self-worth was seemingly devalued. Each day, we see more examples of how prevalent this toxicity has become.
Catholic school kids on an outing to a anti-abortion demonstration proceed to mingle and mock another group of demonstrators attending a completely different event are not to be given a free pass so easily, and neither should the adults who should have been minding them and helping manage their behavior.
None of what you described happened. Literally none of it. There is a 2 hour video of the whole thing. The only thing the Covington kids did was start to chant their school song to attempt to drown out the racist chants of the Black Hebrew Israelites. The Black Hebrew Israelites were the ones yelling racist epithets, including calling at least one black Covington student who was wearing a MAGA hat, a nigger. The Indian protestor was the one who approached the Covington kids and got in Sandmann’s face. No one attacked, yelled at, approached or otherwise attempted to make contact with him. It was 100% on him.
The Catholic school I attended would not have been so forgiving.
The Covington Catholic School principal and administration need to ask for a whole heaping helping of forgiveness since they threw their own students under the social media mob-driven bus before they bothered to find out what really happened.
Unless Ilhan Omar publicly retracts her 10:42pm tweet from last night and apologizes PROPERLY (“I am sorry for what I said”, not “I am sorry if what I said was offensive or misunderstood” weasel words), I hope she gets her ASS sued off by the attorney working to protect the name and reputation of the Covington students.
sorry for not un-italicizing the last two paragraphs.
OK, let me get this straight; when “Black Hebrew Israelites” hurl sexual slurs at the group for an hour, and then our fake war hero gets in their face, and high school kids are expected to maintain perfect composure. However, the adults that were berating them can pull all kinds of stunts and not be called on it because….why?
Sorry, Emery, but you’re saying a lot about your thinking process, none of it printable in polite company.
Clearly a mob of white, Catholic, high-school males, looking for trouble. You know what they’re all like.
Going back to the Brooks column, his fears are absolutely valid. The call-out culture and the rush to destroy the life of the latest villain du jour are a direct result of the incredible sense of narcissism that seems to infect an ever increasing number of people. Where did this come from? In my opinion, it is a by product of the coddling of children. Not letting them experience cognitive dissonance and defeat (participation medals, everyone’s a winner!) at an early age, and not giving them the tools to deal with/work around/grow from that cognitive dissonance and defeat is partially responsible for today’s call-out culture.
Emery, you posted your comment at 10:43 on January 23rd. By that time, the entire 2-hour video filmed by the Black Israelites had been available for days and commented upon extensively in the media. I’ve seen it. I think the kids did a pretty good job of refusing to engage with the hecklers and certainly didn’t see the events you describe in your posts. Here’s a link:
https://www.greensboro.com/warning-offensive-language-full-video-of-covington-catholic-students-black/youtube_8383524a-d9b5-5c5b-a751-5e864a3ac645.html
I’m only seeing a couple of possibilities here:
a. you’re so completely out of touch with current events that you didn’t know the video exonerated the kids
b. you knew the video existed but didn’t bother to watch it because you’re a low-information voter who makes up his mind on a photo and headline
c. you don’t care about the truth, only The Narrative, so even after watching the video, you still blame the kids for standing still and smiling, not the adults who were shouting at them.
Have I missed one? Care to explain what’s going on with you? Why has the entire rest of the electronic community deleted their criticism and apologized, but you haven’t?
JD, Emery is too busy to take time to reread something after he’s already had his mind made up. Eternal vigilance is required to search for threads to jack and other course pleasures. Perhaps he could add “The Brothers Karamazov” to his reading list:
“The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love, and in order to occupy and distract himself without love he gives way to passions and coarse pleasures, and sinks to bestiality in his vices, all from continual lying to other men and to himself.”
I wonder what your expression would look like if someone started beating a drum and chanting in your face?!
What I wouldn’t give to find ou…oh wait; Damn you dyslexia!
Never mind.
JD
the choice you’re overlooking about Emery’s comment is:
D. emery plagiarized the comment from some comments he saw on FB
BTW Emery, by virtue of your continuing to post lies about those kids, you are just as likely to be sued by their lawyer for libel. Kids don’t have to prove anything.
Am I missing something here? While the narrative may not be exactly what everyone thought initially, the look on that boy’s face and the behavior of the ones around him showed nothing but disrespect and disdain for someone who is different.
The boys absolutely did jump up ankd down and Tomahawk chop. When they were accused of harassing the Native American drummer, their parents called in a PR firm. I can’t think of a bunch of more entitled children and parents than these people.
Nothing I have seen in viewing the extended video has changed my mind: the kids were disrespectful and their behavior should be chastised.
There’s nothing Dunning_Kruger hates worse than kids who’s parents have wherewithal to protect them from reprobates…throws him off his game, big time.
Entitled little bastards, he calls ’em as he fires the Free Candy van up and drives off.
…kids were disrespectful and their behavior should be chastised.
I swear, if any leftist degenerate ever posted anything creepier than that on SITD, I’ll eat my hat.
Chilling. I’m literally shaking.
Emery, could be disdain for someone different, or it could be that he’s had it with leftist rectii harassing him and his friends for the previous hour or so.
Honestly, I don’t get what it is with you guys. You’ve got adults harassing these kids for an hour or more in hugely vile ways, and somehow when the kids show a little bit of anger at their behavior, it’s the kids’ fault? Seriously?
I’d have hoped that the left would absorb their own rhetoric about the perils of victim blaming, but apparently I am way too optimistic, especially in your case.
At one point in the past, I had decided Emery was smarter and more sensible than his posts, he was playing the troll, he was just throwing out stupid shit to get a rise out of people. I quit responding to him.
Then he made a couple of intelligent comments so I responded. That led us to this now. I’m convinced. He’s hopeless. He may have brains, but if so, they’re locked away in a little box that says “Do Not Open Without Orders.” And Orders come only from authority figures on the Left, the spokespeople for The Narrative, whose Orders must be obeyed without a thought.
Emery is living in Orwell’s world, where we were never at war with Eastasia until suddenly he’s told we are, at which point he is confident we were always at war with Eastasia, no recollection, no analysis, no conflict. The short-term memory is dumped and the new program is loaded.
The most chilling thing about Emery is the reminder that people like him actually do exist. There’s a small, vocal group of commenters here. We risk falling into an echo chamber. Good guy with a gun shoots bad guy? Good for him! But then there’s Emery. God help the good guy if Emery gets on the jury.
I didn’t make a New Year’s Resolution this January – got caught up in other business. Here’s a chance to correct that: I will not respond to Emery’s idiot comments this year. Yes, it’s a pie-crust promise: easily made, easily broken. But it’s a start.