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Wednesday, January 23, 2019

Fake News Fricasseed by Fact Checks

(Image by Tom Stiglich)
Over the Martin Luther King weekend, a story went viral on Twitter about a group of white teenage boys, wearing MAGA hats, surrounding and taunting an elderly Native American man at the Lincoln Memorial.

The internet exploded with outrage--to include calls for the boys to be doxed, assaulted and murdered--over this blatant incident of racism in the Nation's Capital.

By Monday, thanks to diligent YouTubers--who did the job journalists won't do--only two facts proved to be true.

1.  The boys were white high students from Covington Catholic High School, KY.
2.  They were wearing MAGA hats.

Everything else about the story turned out to be false.

Everything.

Did the lamestream news media issue retractions?

No.

Did the members of the social media mob issue apologies, or delete their posts?

Some did.

To say I'm appalled at the amount and intensity of the invective spewed against these boys is an understatement.

Since further words fail me, I'll present a series of links to tell this sordid story.

One of the first YouTubers to provide an even-handed account was Tim Pool, who on Sunday (20 Jan 2019) provided there was more to this story.

The following day, Tim came to the conclusion that it was the Native American lied, the media is covering for him and social media is doing nothing.

And of course, Hollyweird celebrities, like Chris Evans who played Captain America, went "full Hydra" and called for doxing the Covington boys.


(Image by A.F. Branco)

But it wasn't Democrats, snowflakes, and social justice whiners who got triggered by this fake news story.  Mark Steyn called-out the RINOs who joined the virtue-signal stampede.

Not only did last weekend's MAGA Teen Racist Narrative wither under the harsh light of fact checking, but the story of the Native American, Nathan Phillips, being a Vietnam War veteran started to come into question.

In fact, Phillips has a history of activism.  Shortly after the incident at the Lincoln Memorial, he tried disrupting a Catholic mass.

First, the folks at This Ain't Hell, requested Phillips' service records.  Then the next day the WaPo corrected their story about Phillips serving in Vietnam.

None of this, however, has quelled the social media mobs baying for blood.

As one friend reported about his leftists coworkers:  "...it doesn't matter what the facts are, the initial take on the story points to a basic truth, which is what matters."

So we can count on the Two Minutes of Hate directed at the Covington Students to continue.  Or, as Independent Man likened it to an NPC mantra Red Hat Boy Bad.

Liz Wheeler said this is why you can't trust the mainstream media (which includes the ongoing RussiaRussiaRussia Investigation).

And Brittany Hughes asked: Haven't we had enough yet?

At least Paul Joseph Watson assured us that it's okay to smirk and Guy Benson explained why the Covington Case matters to conservatives.

It's also been noted, primarily by Guy Benson and Tim Pool, that one or two of the Twitter accounts were fake and outside the US.  One would assume since leftists are still triggered over Our Grand Nagus' Russian Collusion, they'd be wary of anything on social media.

Or the mainstream media for that matter.

I trust our neighborhood trash collectors over both of them.

Speaking of which...
(Image by Lisa Benson)

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