The only people who can any longer deny
with a straight face the reality and pervasiveness of Fake News are fake
journalists and their fellow travelers in the Democratic Party.
Actually, there’s in addition a third
group of people whose members will, when the opportunity to virtue-signal to
leftist elites presents itself, indignantly deny that much of the contemporary
world of journalism is Fake News. In fact, this group of “conservatives” will
even go so far as to indulge and promote the fakery.
The
recent case of the Covington Catholic school boys is illustrative in a number
of ways.
As everyone now knows, over a
week ago a highly edited video surfaced that was doctored in such a way as to
suggest that a group of MAGA hat-wearing teenage white boys, who came to the nation’s
capital for the March for Life, went out of their way to harass an elderly
American Indian and Vietnam War veteran.
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The
online mob formed quickly. Its readiness to issue categorical
denunciations of the teens was matched only by its readiness to call for
violence, including homicidal violence, against them.
And
the mob was bipartisan.
That’s correct: The usual
suspects among Big Conservatism, or “the Big Con,” for short—those who spare no
occasion to exhibit to the New York Times, MSNBC, CNN,
Washington Post, etc. their outrage over President Trump’s
tweets—were sure to let the world know that their outrage over this matter was
second to none.
Obviously,
so-called “Never Trumpers,” the Kristols and Podhoretzes, were all too anxious
to relegate themselves even further to the nether reaches of irrelevance by
showcasing their moral righteousness to their allies on the left. Yet
other “conservatives,” those like Ben Shapiro and Salem Broadcasting’s Hugh
Hewitt, who selectively support President Trump, depending on the day, also
spared not a moment in piling upon the Covington kids.
So
too did such prominent “conservative” Roman Catholic public intellectuals, such
as Princeton University’s Robert P. George, pounce.
The most disgraceful, the
most sickening, display of moral exhibitionism, however, came from National Review. The latter’s deputy
managing editor, Nick Frankovich, likened the American Indian activist who
aspired—and failed—to antagonize the Covington boys to Christ while equating their conduct toward him
with that of the Roman soldiers who executed Him.
The boys may as well
have spat upon the Lord’s cross, Frankovich insisted.
You
read this correctly.
My friend, the writer
Christopher DeGroot, recently coined the term “moral prostitutes”while characterizing the
Big Con. This is an apt description: The men and women of Big Conservatism have
gone beyond virtue-signaling in the case of the Covington Catholic boys.
They engaged virtue-whoring.
The virtue-whores of the Big
Con began whistling a different tune, though, not long after they turned tricks
for their leftist pimps. Had they only waited the additional so many
hours before the unedited version of events was
released—the version that they should’ve known would be released—they wouldn’t
have had to be seen for the caricatures of themselves that they’ve become (or
have always been?).
Unsurprisingly, as it turns
out, the Covington Catholic students aggressed against no one. It is they who were accosted by Nathan Phillips, the
left-wing Indian activist who, along with the Democrats in the media, sought to
convey the false impression that he was a
Vietnam War veteran.
It was the white, MAGA
hat-wearing Catholic kids who
traveled from Kentucky to Washington D.C. to affirm the cause of the unborn who
were made to suffer verbal abuse both by Phillips’ fellow American
Indians and the “Black Hebrew Israelite” men who approached them.
The unedited video of these
encounters reveals to all with eyes to see that of these three groups assembled
not far from the Lincoln Memorial, it was the white, pro-life, Christian,
Trump-supporting adolescents who acted like the
adults in the room. Conversely, the grown men of color
who they were accused of having harassed were the ones who conducted themselves
like teenage punks.
This was the proverbial
textbook illustration of Fake News at its absolute best (or worst). Rich
Lowry and his colleagues at National Review were
subsequently quick to do an about face in deleting their condemnatory tweets
and Frankovich’s article likening the Covington kids to Christ-killers.
Neither did the current custodians of Bill Buckley’s magazine waste any time in
calling out “the media” for having “bought” Nathan Phillips’ dishonesty.
They were not, though, in
much of a rush to acknowledge the ease with which they bought both Phillips’ lies and those of the
media.
The
Covington students, both those who were involved in this incident as well as
their peers who didn’t attend the March for Life, have had their lives
irrevocably changed. They have been on the receiving end of a relentless
barrage of vitriol, including threats of murderous violence against them and
their families. Nick Sandman’s is now a national household name of
notoriety, thanks to the Fake News industry.
But the virtue-whores of the Big Con
contributed to the plight of these poor kids as well.
Everyone makes mistakes, of
course. Yet the idea that those “conservatives” who joined the feeding frenzy
made an honest mistake strains credibility to the snapping
point. Given that they are pundits who have been around, in many cases,
for decades, they are either lying when they purport to have been misled by the
leftist press or they are incompetent with respect to their craft.
How
can anyone who is so much as remotely familiar with the standard operating
procedure of the “mainstream” media ever have been even tempted to believe the
Covington story, to say nothing of actually believing it?!
As soon as I heard about it (through
a leftist colleague), I was convinced that it was Fake News, a media concoction
that was tailor-made to advance the left’s current ideology of choice, an
ideology that is anti-white, specifically anti-white male, anti-Christian, and
anti-Trump. Given the left’s perpetual quest to find the great White
Oppressor, and the endless number of hoax “hate-crimes” that it has invented to
that end, how can anyone, or at least any self-proclaimed conservative pundit,
not be skeptical when informed that these students
sought to start trouble with a bunch of black and Indian adults? Among
other tips that this was Fake News is the fact that adolescents who attend
pro-life rallies tend not to go roaming the streets of the nation’s capital
looking to start fights with racial minorities (or anyone).
Whether this most embarrassing of episodes of
virtue-whoring will prove to be a watershed moment of sorts for the Big Con is
left to be seen. Peoples’ lives, children’s lives, have been made
significantly worse in part because certain self-styled conservatives couldn’t
resist their impulse to prove to the folks at CNN, MSNBC, and The New York Times that they aren’t “racists.”
Peoples’ lives, children’s lives, innocent children’s lives, are now in jeopardy
because self-proclaimed conservatives wanted to showcase to the left just how
good they are.
In truth, their efforts to join the
vicious mob that targeted the Covington kids reveal that they aren’t very good
at all.
Jack
Kerwick [send
him mail] received his doctoral degree in philosophy from Temple
University. His area of specialization is ethics and political philosophy. He
is a professor of philosophy at several colleges and universities in New Jersey
and Pennsylvania. Jack blogs at Beliefnet.com: At the Intersection of Faith
& Culture.
