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Opinion

Media Attacks on Covington Students All Too Familiar

No doubt you’ve heard the storyline. Yahoo News screamed, “Students in Trump hats mock Native American.” USA Today fired out this headline, “'Mob mentality' in video scary: Native American faced hostile student crowd.” Erik Abriss, a contributor to New York Media’s pop culture site Vulture, tweeted, “I don’t know what it says about me, but I’ve truly lost the ability to articulate the hysterical rage, nausea, and heartache this makes me feel. I just want these people to die. Simple as that. Every single one of them. And their parents.”

Rage, hysteria, hate, and threats all emanate from the Left at this altercation last weekend. It wasn’t just the Left, though, that responded angrily. National Review wrote an article attacking the students entitled, “The Covington Students Might as Well Have Just Spit on the Cross.” Never Trumper Bill Kristol wrote a tweet attacking both the students and President Trump.

It seems as if the Left and Right were united in condemning the acts of the Covington students.
There’s only one problem; the media got it wrong. Shocking, I know. The Covington students were not the aggressors and a longer, more complete video substantiates that they were, in fact, the ones being attacked by another group of protestors.

To their credit, National Review pulled their article and even the ever-liberal Trump-hater Kristol deleted his tweet. The Wrap, on January 21, 2019, reported that Erik Abriss had been fired. Their article notes, “Digital company INE Entertainment has fired a journalist who publicly wished for the death of several Covington Catholic High School students and their parents in a pair of tweets over the weekend.” S.E. Cupp tweeted, “Hey guys. Seeing all the additional videos now, and I 100% regret reacting too quickly to the Covington story. I wish I’d had the fuller picture before weighing in, and I’m truly sorry.” John Harwood quickly agreed with her.

So, what we have here is a failure to communicate? Yes, and a whole lot more. It isn’t just that the media made a hasty rush to judgment (which they did), published and pontificated without the facts (which they did and do a lot) or viciously attacked and inspired radicals to threaten physical violence against innocent people (which remains a tragic outcome of this episode).

The root cause as to how and why this happened is readily apparent to anyone who’s been paying
attention. The ones being attacked by the media were white male teens who attended a pro-life rally and who happened to be Trump supporters. That’s the toxic brew that sets off rage; white males, pro-life, and Trump supporters.

According to the Left, those kinds of people are dangerous, despicable and disgraceful. Alyssa Milano tweeted, “Let’s not forget—this entire event happened because a group of boys went on a school- sanctioned trip to protest against a woman’s right to her own body and reproductive healthcare. It is not debatable that bigotry was at play from the start.” Milano continued her diatribe, “The red MAGA hat is the new white hood.”

There’s a lot there to unpack, but Ms. Milano asserts, and many on the Left agree with her, that
Catholic young men protesting abortion is bigoted and that those who support President Trump or deign to wear a red “MAGA” hat are the new KKK.

The Left hates those who are pro-life. Abortion is the sacrament of the political Left. The left has little room for white males.

The news reports continually note the race of the young men from Covington without noting any
diversity. Only Nick Sandman, the high school junior who is face to face with Native American protestor Nathan Philips, notes it when he wrote about the taunts he and his fellow students heard from the Black Hebrew Israelites, “They also taunted an African American student from my school by telling him that we would ‘harvest his organs.’ I have no idea what that insult means, but it was startling to hear.”

The Left also hates our president. They want to equate any connection to him as racist, hateful and ugly. Isaac Bailey, a professor at Davidson and a CNN contributor writes, “It matters that they wore ‘Make America Great Again’ hats.” He continues, “It is a signifier for those who believe America was great during some point in the past they dare not name, knowing if they do, it would reveal a time when it was worse for people of color.”

Again, there’s a lot to unpack here. Christians and those who are pro-life are easy targets for the Left and their Media allies. Now, though, according to Professor Bailey, to support Donald Trump is to be a racist. That’s the Left’s plan of attack. They want to vilify white Christians, preferably males, who are pro-life and if they support President Trump, they are racist. That’s how an incident that happened while high school kids waited for a bus became a cause for the Left, at least until the truth emerged.

Truth, that might be a new concept for those on the Left and their media allies. The truth is coming out about the Covington students, though they and their families are still under attack and receiving death threats.

The truth is that President Trump has been better for people of color than any of his recent
predecessors. Black unemployment under President Trump is at a record low. More African-American
families have more money and access to job. That truth might be hard to swallow for Ms. Milano or Professor Bailey, but to the African-Americans in my neighborhood, that’s incredibly good news.

We can’t let the Left define the terms that form the basis for their attacks. I hate that they hold any power in our government at all, but because we didn’t get out in big enough numbers, they control the House. Let’s make sure that what happened to the Covington kids isn’t forgotten as we prepare for the 2020 election.

Bill Thomas

Bill Thomas lives in Washington, Missouri and is a professor at St. Louis Christian College. He's also on staff at First Christian Church in Washington, Missouri. He's authored two novellas, From the Ashes and The Sixty-First Minute published by White Feather Press of MI and three Bible studies, Surrounded by Grace, The Critical Questions and More and The Road to Victory published by CSS Publishing of OH.

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