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Apologies Come Flooding In After Larger Picture of Covington Boys Is Revealed

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The problem with hot takes is that they often require people to extrapolate from incomplete information. There are certain circumstances where this is extremely problematic — say, if it involves high school kids being blamed for a racist incident based on a short video and the fact they were wearing “Make America Great Again” hats.

Unfortunately for everyone who had en fuego takes involving how horribly racist the kids from Covington Catholic High School were, it turns out there was a longer video than the one that first appeared on Twitter.

It also turns out that Nathan Phillips, the Native American activist at the center of the claims, was pretty much a liar and that the incident was instigated by the fine racists with the Black Hebrew Israelites, who called the teenagers “a bunch of incest babies,” among other racial slurs.

Do you think the media misrepresented the Covington Catholic case on purpose?

So yes, that was pretty wrong. For those who had condemned the teenagers, there seemed to be two paths.

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For those on the left, there was usually either deleting all of the tweets they had made or doubling down, coming up with insane reasons why your lying eyes didn’t get why the Covington kids were still incorrigible bigots.

The more sensible figures decided to either back away or issue an apology.

As The Daily Caller noted, the apologies began to roll in after Reason’s Robby Soave did a piece on how badly the media had missed it on the Covington story:

Soave’s piece noted how the longer version of the video from the incident contradicted Phillips’ original story and showed the kids as, for the most part, confused at just what was happening.

CNN’s Jake Tapper retweeted Soave’s story:

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Conservatives who had judged the teens harshly were also quick to apologize.

Charlie Kirk, founder of the conservative group Turning Point USA, David Brooks, the New York Times’ in-house conservative columnist (by Times standards), and Meghan McCain, daugher of the late Sen. John McCain, were among them.

There were even some on the liberal side of things — like actress Jamie Lee Curtis — who apologized for their rush to judgment.

Then again, there were some people who were so attached to their side of the story that they were willing to do anything to preserve the narrative.

As a representative sample of that side of the aisle, I present to you Rep. Ilhan Omar, whose sympathies were with the Black Hebrew Israelites and who accused the boys of shouting “It’s not rape if you enjoy it,” a statement not credibly backed up by anything:

She ended up deleting it. Apparently, that’s the liberal Democrat lawmaker version of apology.

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C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he's written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014.
C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he's written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014. Aside from politics, he enjoys spending time with his wife, literature (especially British comic novels and modern Japanese lit), indie rock, coffee, Formula One and football (of both American and world varieties).
Birthplace
Morristown, New Jersey
Education
Catholic University of America
Languages Spoken
English, Spanish
Topics of Expertise
American Politics, World Politics, Culture




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