The Covington Rohrschach Blob

Your opinion of what happened at the March for Life last weekend largely depends on your point of view on the Trump administration. You either…:

  • Watched the full two hours of video (or take the counsel of those who did) and have come to believe that that CNN edited the video maliciously, with full intent to defame a bunch of MAGA hats ahd the kids they were sitting on, or
  • believe that in abeyance of all the actual evidence, MAGA cap + white + Catholic private school = smug racist, evidence be damned

That’s Robby Soave’s conclusion over at Reason – the Covington Kids are a Rohrschach Blob that says more about the viewers and their opinions than they do about themselves.

But the most frustrating and worrying reactions have come from those who have convinced themselves that the extended video footage confirms their initial impressions. Of all the myriad examples of this, perhaps none is more contemptible than the effort by Deadspin‘s Laura Wagner, who writes, “Don’t Doubt What You Saw With Your Own Eyes.” Wagner accuses the Covington kids’ defenders—me among them—of “siding with some shithead MAGA teens and saying that 2+2=5 in the face of every bit of evidence there is to be had.”
But I know what I saw, and I think I know what Wagner saw, too. She saw a group of white teens wearing MAGA hats who had just engaged in partisan political activity on behalf of a cause she opposes (this last detail is more than sufficient on its own to convict the teens, according to several prominent progressive feminists). And that was enough.

Of course, this country – and by “This country” I mean “mobs of entitled bobbleheads spurred on by the agenda-driven parts of our idiot media” – have a dismal record of seeking truth:

In writing and speaking about this, I have drawn parallels to the Rolling Stone/University of Virginia gang rape hoax of 2014, which provides a powerful example of mainstream media getting a story very wrong in ways that permanently damaged the magazine’s reputation.
But in the less insane media world of 2014, at least the Rolling Stone debunking was accepted by pretty much everyone. When friends of “Jackie,” the alleged rape victim, came forward to help clarify that her alleged attacker did not exist, and was in fact a persona she had invented in order to catfish them, I don’t remember many major pundits sticking their fingers in their ears and pretending not to hear this.
The ongoing effort to pretend that videos of boys doing pep rally type cheers in opposition to a hate group is in fact evidence of deep-seated racism makes me wonder whether Rolling Stone truther-ism would have been much more common had the story come out in 2019.

Things are getting much, much worse out there.

13 thoughts on “The Covington Rohrschach Blob

  1. Citing any Deadspin writer for anything non-sports related is beyond moronic and means you lose any journalistic integrity you thought you had. If such a thing even exists in todays MSM

  2. Keep in mind that this whole thing was cooked up by Nathan Phillips who is appearing more and more like a phony.

    In this CNN interview, Phillips claims twice that he was a “Vietnam vet” as opposed to a “Vietnam era vet”.

    The Washington Post has corrected its earlier story, admitting that he was never deployed to Vietnam.

    Elsewhere, Phillips claimed to be a “recon ranger” – but some sites have claimed to have pulled his DD-214 which they say exposes him as a “freon-ranger”. A marine reserve refrigeration mechanic stationed in Lincoln Nebraska with a history of going AWOL

    While one has to wonder how a DD-214 was pulled so quickly and take it all with a grain of salt, one can also pull the CNN or MSNBC trick and say, “If true…..”

  3. The Left, since the age of Nixon, has been in the business of licensing hate. For a bunch of self-styled intellectalls, you would think that they would see the contradiction in “hating hate.”
    As a Christian, I am not allowed to hate people. All humans are equally beloved by God, are are valued higher than the angels. I can hate sin — that is, behavior, not people. The atheist Left has no such restrictions on hate. It is disgusting that politicians and pundits put race, sex, and ethnicity at the core of every person’s being.

  4. ” race, sex, and ethnicity” are the trifecta of successful manipulation!
    You lay a foundation of insecurity with appeals to race, then heighten their anxiety by establishing sexual ambiguity, and finally you apply a patina of impenetrable “otherness” via ethnicity and the subject will have trouble negotiating their way out of a paper bag. Best of all the sequence of attack is interchangeable; “ethnicity, race, and Sex”, “sex, ethnicity, and race”, etc

  5. MacArthur Wheeler,

    I read the post you linked on Nathan Phillipps and it looks credible, but given the events of the last few days, I am hesitant to jump on board, other than to do what the left and their adjuncts at NYC, WAPO, CNN, Buzzfeed, MSNBC, CBS, NBC, ABC, Salon, Slate and The Atlantic have done which is to say, “we can’t verify….but if this is true…..”

    🙂 🙂 🙂

  6. An attorney for the Covington students, school and alumni, just smacked down another darling of the left: Ilhan Omar. She was running her mouth and posting more lies. Lawyer advised: This is libel. Remove it or be sued.
    Neither the Democrats nor Sharia law can save her from that!
    It’s amazing how once the lawyer fired his first volley, how many lame stream media jackals are tripping over themselves to put out retractions and apologies. These kids could end up getting millions. Good for them I say! The lawyer also took the case pro bono.

  7. I can hate sin — that is, behavior, not people.

    No MP, you cannot. You cannot hate the behavior, because in the current year behavior defines who leftists are as people. That’s especially true for leftists that choose degenerate sexual behaviors, but also true for those that wear bandanas and torch college campuses.

    Today, it’s not enough that you’ve hoiked a toddler out of your womb, you must define yourself as first among equals by #ShoutingYourAbortion, or better yet, posting it to youtube.

    Succinctly, with leftists, what you see is what you get. And no, you cannot judge…just deal with it, bigot.

  8. Boss, I have high hopes for Omar, Tlaib and Occasional-Cortex this year. One really cannot underestimate their potential to torpedo the reprobate party, because their hatred is an integral part of who they are.

    Omar and Tlaib hate Jews; they grew up hating Jews. Omar didn’t think twice about lying to a room full of Jews about her support for divesting Israel; they’re Jews, fu_ck ’em. Cortex hates Capitalism, Caucasians, and by extension, she hates the country they built.

    All that hate cannot be contained within the meager intellects these women possess. Between them, they couldn’t top an IQ of 100. And because they are surrounded by a mob of admiring fellow dimwits, they do not see the need for any filters; they will blurt out their hate, often and without reservation.

    Omar deleted her hate filled tweet, but from what I’ve seen she hasn’t apologized. Could it be she doesn’t realize it lives within thousands of hard drives? Could she think, even for a minute, that it’s out of sight/never happened? I think so.

  9. During the Army McCarthy hearings, Sen Joseph McCarthy began questioning Joseph Welsh about a young lawyer in his office who was a member of the Lawyers Guild, a mouthpiece for the Communist party. In the back and forth banter, Welch go the better of McCarthy with the following:

    Senator, may we not drop this? We know he belonged to the Lawyers Guild … Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?

    McCarthy should have responded, “No sir, like you and your Communist brethren, I have no shame nor decency when it comes to advancing my agenda, and my agenda is advancing the cause of liberty.”

    If these #$@%^ are immune to shame, why should we be?

  10. I think, Swiftee, that it more important to do what is right by God than what feels good. God is good, and God always wins. I want to be on that team.

  11. BH: Slight correction.

    Lawyer advised: This is libel. Remove it or be sued.

    Actually, he said retract it or be sued. She deleted her tweet yesterday morning. To the best of my knowledge, she has not specifically retracted what she said. Like I said in my previous comment, I hope she says “I am sorry for what I said and I retract it” and not weasel words “I am sorry if what I said was offensive or misunderstood”. The second is not an apology nor a retraction.

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