Monday, January 21, 2019

Covington students and Phillips the Indian drummer

So I must confess, I didn't really understand what all of the fuss was about on this one. I saw what I "thought" was the video in question, and had a lot of problems reconciling what I saw with what I was hearing.

To be clear the video I saw walked through the following events:

  • I saw a large crowd of boys who were gathered in an area outside of some buildings. It was later determined that they were waiting for their busses.
  • I saw some of them chanting and cheering (from most accounts they were chanting school spirit messages in response to a small group of protesters who were attempting to engage them).
  • Then you saw a small group of people wander into the middle of the crowd. One would have been Phillips (who was carrying his drum) and there were two or three others carrying what appeared to be a video camera, with portable lights (like you would see a news crew carrying). 
  • The man in question walked up to the boy wearing the MAGA hat and started pounding the drum and singing. The people behind turned on the lights and started filming.
  • The video was not close enough to see much, other than the student in question just sort of stood there. Some of the other students close by started turning around and watching the man. Some of them started to clap along with the drum beat and doing some sort chanting or singing.

It was clear from watching this particular video (as I saw it) that the man in question was looking to get some sort of reaction either out of the boy in question, or others who were in the same crowd. I strongly suspect that this particular boy was chosen because he was wearing the MAGA hat. It was equally clear that the people with the video equipment were there to catch the action (or reaction) as it were.

Now the troubling part for me was that the stories I had heard was that this poor old Indian man was just minding his own business, singing a song and beating a tribal drum, when suddenly he was surrounded by a bunch of high school catholic hooligans who were openly threatening him. The picture of the Indian Drummer and the boy in the MAGA hat was sold to the general public as the boy getting in the drummer's face (as opposed to what had really happened - which was exactly the opposite).

Then you ended up with the Drummer telling people that all of these boys were mocking him, that he felt threatened by the boy in the hat, and that he felt that the crowd that had gathered around him was on the verge of a violent outbreak.

Of course the violent outbreak never took place. Catholic high school students are not generally prone to beating up old men for no reason. 
_______

Lastly it turns out that your impression of these events were likely determined by which of the two videos you saw. Those who saw the video I saw (which was taken with a cell phone from a ways away) would see things much like I did. There is no question that the instigator in this situation (right or wrong) was Phillips, not the Covington Students.

Those who saw the scripted video made by the videographers who were accompanying the Indian drummer likely saw exactly what the videographers wanted you to see. They saw a poor old Indian man beings surrounded, harassed, threatened, and mocked by a bunch of racist white privilege christian conservatives.

Whether or not you saw the kids as either somewhat amused and confused by the events, or mean and mocking also probably was determined by which of these videos you saw. It simply isn't clear from either video what was in the collective mindsets or what exactly was being chanted. In fact, it's hard to determine exactly what percentage of the overall crowd was even aware of the drummer in question.  Much of this is left up to the best guess of the person watching, and likely whatever preconceived mindset is about the people in question.

In other words, this is all bigotry and prejudices (assumptions and pre-judging).  But this is exactly the world we now live in folks and exactly why things are so tense. 

4 comments:

Commonsense said...

The news media are now scurring (at the behest of their lawyers) to put out the "full" story. This was a very bad four days for the media.

cowardly king obama said...

The students statement matches the video and the Indian activist keeps changing his story but this is another good summation:

Racist Liberals And Their Media Enablers Smear Innocent High School Students

The story was a perfect fit for the liberal narrative — white students in “MAGA Hats” harassing a sweet, innocent Native American just minding his own business. Racism, pure and simple, and the media ran with it Saturday. The only problem was it wasn’t true. But by the time any “journalists” bothered to look into the story, it had already been reported. Journalists and celebrities called for the heads of the Covington Catholic High School students, then the truth came out.

Liberal Native American activist Nathan Phillips claimed he’d been surrounded by the students while they chanted “build the wall,” only that didn’t happen. After Phillips became a media star, more videos of the confrontation emerged and showed he was the aggressor. His story changed significantly, multiple times, even as TV hosts preached that he was the victim of Trump-inspired racism. It was an embarrassment that should cost some of them their jobs, or at least lead to some soul-searching, but neither will happen because being a liberal means not only are you not bound by reality or standards of honesty, you never have to say you’re sorry.

https://dailycaller.com/2019/01/21/media-mistakes-buzzfeed-cohen-covington-catholic-high-school-podcast/

Anonymous said...




nathan phillips is a professional asshole who has been stirring turds since the 'occupy' days. i wonder if he's even native american. probably as much as ward churchill and the italian guy they put in a head dress and made shed a phony tear in those old pollution commercials from the 70's..

hopefully these kids stay safe. the effort to doxx them was instant and intense.

C.H. Truth said...

Many of the groups (but not all) have apologized for attacking the Covington Students. At one time, there was calls for them all to be expelled from school over this.

My own local rag had to change their headline on the story (but how many people read the correction after reading the headline). The original headline "Students in MAGA hats mock Native American" was seen by all readers. Only a few will probably ever see the correction...

which of course is the point, right?

The STrib is now offering the "new story" from Phillips, which was that he waded into the crowd to try to "ease" tensions between these students (waiting for their busses) and another group that was attempting to start something with the Covington students (calling them faggots and telling them to go back to Europe).

So now, rather than his original story that he was minding his own business, he has backtracked to being a "peacekeeper". Sort of a confusing twist of his own recollection, huh?

The reality is that both the group who were mocking the Covington Students and the Indian were attempting to goad the students into doing something. The film crew was there to catch whatever they could. Turned out that they had to make something up.

But to many, the Catholic Covington boys are still the bad ones.