Ingraham: The left's electronic character assassins exposed
A look at the leftist media's smear attempt against the Covington Catholic high school students.
The left's electronic character assassins have been exposed. Boy, that was quick. A few days after we learned the truth about the incident at the Lincoln Memorial involving some pro-life high schoolers, a Native American activist and a handful of hateful black supremacists, the media sure want to put it all in the rearview.
Of course, the school wants this over – they stupidly fell for the nefarious, defamatory spin and jumped on their own students. And by the way, the school still hasn'tt retracted their initial statement of condemnation. Ditto for the diocese, which is shameful.
But the group that has the most to lose includes the bottom-feeders from the infotainment industry because they seized on this as a convenient opportunity to brand young Trump supporters as racist.
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"To surround an indigenous elder and chant ‘build the wall,' kind of exposes that it really has nothing to do with border security. It seems like it's an issue of race and white supremacy," said tribal attorney Tara Houska on MSNBC.
Only the video doesn’t show these kids chanting "build the wall" — and it was the "elder" who confronted them, while walking toward the students. They didn’t surround him.
So how did this nothing story become such a media bonfire? Twitter furnished us with a big clue. On Monday, it suspended the account @2020Fight. It was that account that first disseminated the edited, one-minute long video of the confrontation and the meme that set this entire narrative in motion. Like quicksilver, the video was viewed more than 2.5 million times and racked up more than 14,000 retweets. And of course, major media picked it up – lapped it up.
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CNN Business asked Twitter, though, about the identity of the party or parties controlling the account - good for them - and it saw a discrepancy between the bio (supposedly of a California school teacher) and the profile picture — which is that of a Brazilian blogger. So, the profile didn’t match the bio. Finally, Twitter suspended the account claiming the following: "Deliberate attempts to manipulate the public conversation on Twitter by using misleading account information is a violation of the Twitter Rules."
Now Twitter has some pretty tough rules against abuse and hateful conduct — policies that are unfairly applied to, at times, some conservatives for just speaking their minds. Twitter’s rules state clearly that "you may not engage in the targeted harassment of someone, or incite other people to do so. We consider abusive behavior an attempt to harass, intimidate or silence someone else’s voice."
It goes on: "You may not promote violence against, threaten or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation." It also forbids the dissemination of hateful imagery on Twitter.
Given all that, perhaps not only that account @2020 Fight, but other Twitter accounts, need to be suspended. The writer Reza Aslan tweeted a photo of Nick Sandmann and asked, "Have you ever seen a more punchable face than this kid’s?"
Now, if that is not an incitement to violence, I’d like to know what is. That’s not funny, that’s for sure. And now Sandmann’s family has been terrorized, and subjected to death threats. Bounties have been put on these poor kid's head.
And the wildly, wildly unfunny Trump hater Kathy Griffin posted a tweet begging people to "dox" the kids at the pro-life march — publish their home address and phone number -- just to make it easier to find them. And assume not to bring them chocolate chip cookies, but to harass them. How is that not using Twitter to "harass" and "threaten"?
And with the prospect of violence in the air, some commentators immediately moved to all-out dehumanize these kids. CNN's Ana Navarro in a now-deleted tweet called the Covington students "a—wipes." Miami must be so proud. Mollie O’Reilly, the editor of the lefty, Catholic rag Commonweal, tweeted, "You don’t let your kid wear a MAGA hat, and then act offended when they get taken for a racist." Other tiresome liberal Catholics, like Frs. James Martin and Edward Beck, were the worst, though, because they were using these innocent students to advance their anti-Trump animus on Twitter. Father Edward tweeted, "My feelings about the Covington boys are unchanged since the first reporting... and boys should not have been permitted to wear MAGA hats if they were representing the school."
Here’s our wish: That this type of sadistic on-line savagery be shut down by Twitter and other powerful social media platforms. It’s time that they start evenly enforcing their rules of conduct against all parties — including ones on the left.
BuzzFeed reporter Anne Helen Petersen revealed herself when she tweeted a picture of the Covington High Student next to Brett Kavanaugh with the following message: "One theme of the conversations over the past 24 hours — how deeply familiar this look is. It’s the look of white patriarchy of course, but that familiarity — that banality — is part of what prompts the visceral reaction. This isn’t spectacular. It’s life in America."
Actually, it’s life through the eyes of a true hater, someone truly intolerant. “This is how white men look! Look at them! Look at their faces!”
What is he supposed to look like? I thought everyone was supposed to look however they wanted to look. Isn’t that what liberalism is? Their own truth … look however they want to look like. Whatever you want to look like is supposed to be okay with them. Not if you’re white guy who happens to be Catholic, wearing a MAGA hat, or are nominated by Trump.
Just for a moment, assume that some racist put up a picture of two black men and said the exact same type thing Petersen did about this student and Kavanaugh —replacing the word white with black. You think Twitter would allow that person to remain on their platform? Well, they wouldn’t, and they shouldn’t. Ditto for Anne Helen Petersen. Her comment is racist.
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On Tuesday, "The View's" Joy Behar, in a moment of, perhaps, accidental candor, revealed what this was all about, When asked why the media rushes to judgment and gets burned, she responded, "Because we’re desperate to get Trump out of office. I think that’s the reason, I think the press jumps the gun a lot because we’re just—we have so much circumstantial evidence against this guy that we basically are hoping that you know [Michael] Cohen's got the goods and what have you. And so, it's wishful thinking."
Wishful thinking in both cases – the BuzzFeed story and Covington. Here’s our wish: That this type of sadistic on-line savagery be shut down by Twitter and other powerful social media platforms. It’s time that they start evenly enforcing their rules of conduct against all parties — including ones on the left.
Adapted from Laura Ingraham's monologue from "The Ingraham Angle" on January 22, 2019.
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