Some celebrities and journalists are facing some serious Twitter-regret in the aftermath of the shameful cyber-mob attack on MAGA hat-wearing teens from Kentucky. As more of the original video of the event at the Lincoln Memorial on Friday afternoon was released showing that the group of Catholic school kids were actually the target of intimidation rather than the perpetrators of it, many in the Twitter-mob are quietly deleting tweets that were critical of the teens.
But just hitting the delete button doesn’t make things simply go away in today’s digital world. Kara Swisher, an op-ed writer for the New York Times, deleted a tweet that was captured by Screenshot Bot, a Twitter account that does exactly what the name implies — it takes screenshots of controversial tweets, which the authors tried to remove. Swisher’s tweet read, “I am thinking of finding every one of these sh***y kids and giving them a very large piece of my mind.”
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CNN personality and fake Republican Ana Navarro deleted a tweet calling out the parents of the Covington students. “Nobody is born racist. Bigotry is learned from parents, teachers, society and leaders. So yes, I sure as hell think Trump’s racist comments and constant dog whistles have contributed to Making A**wipes Great Again. It is why we must condemn racism everywhere and every time we see it.”
Some of the more honorable people who were taken in by the fake news have apologized for their tweets critical of the students. Dilbert creator Scott Adams posted a video in which he apologized for his initial reaction to a CNN story about the incident. “Upon seeing new videos and seeing different angles and seeing the complete video and seeing the context, everything that CNN reported about this was absolutely fake news,” Adams said.
Jake Tapper of CNN also sort of apologized, by posting a Reason.com story by Robby Soave that said that the longer video of the incident “strongly contradicts Native American veteran Nathan Phillips’ claim that Covington Catholic High School boys harassed him. The media got this one completely wrong.”
Actor Ron Perlman did not delete his initial tweet in which he called the student who was confronted by Phillips “a little b**ch” but he did sound a more conciliatory note this morning saying, “What we need of less in this country are the deep divisions that rip apart our emotions.”
Twitter itself has finally acted on the situation by suspending the account that allegedly started all the furor. However, many of the most hateful and violence provoking tweets — many of them tweeted by verified users — remain up.
A tweet by a Los Angeles DJ named Michael Buchanan, who tweets under the name Uncle Shoes, called on Twitter users to “LOCK THE KIDS IN THE SCHOOL AND BURN THAT BITCH TO THE GROUND.” This tweet has finally been removed although, at first, Twitter claimed that Buchanan didn’t violate Twitter rules.
A tweet by leftist gadfly Reza Aslan, which shows one of the Covington students smiling at Phillips while he beats his drum in the teenager’s face, asks the (hopefully) rhetorical question, “Have you ever seen a more punchable face than this kid’s?” remains up as of this writing.
Several tweets by alleged comedian Kathy Griffin calling for the doxing of the children in the video remain up as of this writing.
Faced with death threats and vile attacks from cowardly keyboard warriors, the student who was front and center with Phillips and the media apoplexy gave a full account of his version of the story. “I can only speak for myself and what I observed and felt at the time. But I would caution everyone passing judgment based on a few seconds of video to watch the longer clips that are on the internet, as they show a much different story than is being portrayed by people with agendas.”
Out of the mouths of babes….
The story of the Covington boys comes right on the heels of another fake news story, the lie published by Buzzfeed that President Trump instructed Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about the Moscow Trump Tower project. We seem to be in the middle of a fake news epidemic.
Perhaps the saddest part of this entire story about the Covington boys is that faced with actual and incontrovertible evidence that the boys did nothing to provoke the Native American Phillips and were, in fact, the targets of vicious name-calling by members the Black Hebrew Israelite cult, many are still sticking to the initial take on the story.
Also, where is the outrage about the racist and homophobic comments from those cultists? They called the students “crackers,” “school shooters,” and “incest children,” among other things.
Perhaps President Trump is right when he characterizes some in the media as “the enemy of the people.” In the rush to be first to report this story, no one investigated what the actual story was. Instead, they went with cherry-picked video and photos that supposedly confirmed their own biases. They attacked school kids because of their hats. In the end, this story is yet another example of a news media that is far more concerned with narrative than truth.
Image of Jack Morrissey’s Twitter about Covington kids: Archive.today
