Posted on 01/22/2019 8:46:55 PM PST by Tired of Taxes
But the Covington story isn’t just a run-of-the-mill incident of viral outrage. It involved MAGA-hat-wearing teens and Native American activists. Those who shared the video in those first 24 hours, including many conservatives, seemed to feel it was emblematic of the vitriol and racism that drives the worst of American culture. But when new details shifted the story into more ambiguous territory, a well-oiled machine of pro-Trump personalities and sites saw an opportunity to strike.
For the students and their defenders, attempts by the media to complicate the narrative of the first viral video came too late. Online vigilantes had identified the teens. Sandmann said he had received “physical and death threats via social media, as well as hateful insults."
Now, a new viral outrage emerged. This time the villain of the story was the news media.
That outrage came from a parallel universe online, one that has been waiting for a moment like this. The pro-Trump Internet has, for years, worked to create a media environment that is designed to destroy the traditional news media and replace it.
The Covington story is the sort of thing the pro-Trump Internet . . . is made for. As videos emerged, showing Phillips slowly approach the teens during an altercation with a third group nearby, they went to work.
According to the pro-Trump media, the Covington teens were blameless, the only victims who mattered.
The liberal backlash against the teens, and who had apologized, and who hadn’t, and whether those apologies were sincere enough, became a breaking news story on the pro-Trump Internet.
Eventually the president weighed in, tweeting . . . “the students of Covington have become symbols of Fake News and how evil it can be.”
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
Pretty sure Ratherbiased made it into the Pearson libel database. ;-)
Maybe their youth as well. So essentially, they were targeted for racist, sexist, religiously bigoted, politically partisan, and ageist motivations.
Hence “The Smirk (tm)” which might not even have been a smirk... I’m just saying supposing it was, it oughtn’t to have been a big deal.
The conniving slimeball of newspaper editors on the Journolist seem to be a little paranoid. For years, THEY've worked to create a media environment that is designed to destroy and replace American tradition ("fundamentally transforming the nation"). They demonize, ostracize, and disenfranchise anyone speaking to preserve American traditions and heritage.
THEY've been hell-bent on destroying us. They're projecting again. Anything unhelpful or challenging to the groupthink of their socialist dogma is subject to derision and contempt, no common decency required. Those who join this cultural assassination attempt are led into a state of mental disease where they see themselves as double-plus-good citizens so long as they express blind hatred toward the politics of individualists.
< /rant >
“It’s all part of a right-wing plan to destroy the media and replace it.”
Yes...and??? (insert evil genius laugh here...)
If that’s not the plan, it damn sure should be. For that matter, perhaps we should follow the advice of the wise general who observed you should do nothing when the enemy is making an error.
The “Trump Internet” .... formerly known as The Truth
for those who would like to reply to the writers:
Tweet: Abby Ohlheiser WaPo
Viral stories take time to develop, this creates challenges for actual reporters, and the pro-Trump Internet is good at pouncing in the gap. We know this. The Covington story has become a really sticky example of all of that at work
22 Jan 2019
https://twitter.com/abbyohlheiser/status/1087858128132231169
Tweet: Paul Farhi WaPo
How it all went down. A viral story spread. The mainstream media rushed to keep up. The Trump Internet pounced. Something by @abbyohlheiser n’ me.
22 Jan 2019
https://twitter.com/farhip/status/1087868083425947649
The leftist talking point is that the case was more “complicated” than it first appeared. The leftists don’t want to admit that it was a setup and that they were willingly complicit.
No; just until the NEXT shiny object comes along.
Our memories are short and shallow any more.
If only Casey...
Well; in a darkened, sleezy theater...
Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend.
Inside of a dog; it’s too dark to read.
… but they simply stand there and give off the impression, ‘Don’t let us in.’
I actually do enjoy having them in.
I used to do it more, but I don’t as much now because I invited one in once and the next day she was in The Daily Mirror with her mother saying we were going to get married.
The media will drop the story for a while, until people forget the details. Then they will start referring to it in terms like: “White Catholic pro-life boys harassed innocent native American” and a brain-dead public will gladly believe the crap.
Per Captain Rhino:
Looked at Chief’s video.
Couple of points for clarification about the pages shown from his service record book (SRB). (BTW, the Chief is connected, this info is definitely not from a DD 214. This is an actual scan of his assignments page.):
1. Rifleman for two days.
This is just an admin entry to put him back on to a Marine Corps unit’s rolls after he returned from his initial recruit training and MOS training. Likely this reserve rifle company was providing admin support for all Marine Corps Reserve (MCR) Marines living in the general Omaha area. He was probably joined on 721106 so he could liquidate his travel claim and get his regular pay. The rifleman designation is a default entry. Once they processed his paperwork, he is transferred (by another unit diary entry) the next day (721107) to a MCR aviation utility unit in Lincoln, Nebraska. That’s were he is going to do his weekend drills.
2. Hanging around Lincoln.
He is joined to Marine Wing Utility Squadron 4 (MWUS-4) the next day (721108). MWUS-4 is a place you would expect a refrigeration mechanic to be assigned. The extract shown in the video for this period has standard entries: annual entries for audits and an entry showing him going onto annual active duty for training (ATD) and coming off it 2 weeks later. The last entry we were shown is of his transfer in December 1973. Since we lack the next entry (being joined to the new unit), we should not read too much into this entry. The earlier DD-214 extract shows him not returning to active duty until August 1974, so he was still somewhere in the reserves, perhaps at a unit a little closer to home.
3. Then Something Happened.
In the normal course of events, a Reservist does initial active duty for recruit training and MOS training. (This can be split up if there are no school slots immediately available after completing recruit training.) When not on active duty, reservists drill one weekend a month with their unit and attend two weeks of active duty for training annually(ATD). This is the pattern for the 6-8 years of a typical reserve contract. If you break the contract (by not attending drill weekends or ATD, failing to maintain standards, etc.), you can be ordered to active duty. I am not certain but I also believe it is possible to request to be called to active duty so you can end your contracted period of service earlier. Given his subsequently less than stellar conduct, he was probably ordered to active duty for some significant infraction.
4. His first UA(AWOL) was the last straw for some CO.
The next assignment page entry the Chief shows us is in May 1975 (750519) when he is run to Unauthorized Absence (UA) status. (Absent Without Leave (AWOL) is entered so that the 30 day minimum clock on that offense is simultaneously started in case the Marine is gone longer than a month.) Two days later, 750521 he is sent to confinement (the Brig) for two months. He returns to duty on 750722. He was UA, according to the entries for one, maybe two days. Under normal circumstances, 2 days UA is not punished by two months in the brig. You get 2 months in the brig (usually along with being reduced in rank and fined) when your enlisted and officer leadership is finally, really, and truly feed up with your nonsense. At this point, he has been back on active duty a little less than a year. Imagine what has been going on to reach this point of exasperation with the private. Interestingly, when he goes UA for six days in September 1975, there is no confinement. He just goes back to duty. He is put in UA status again on 751206 but we don’t have any more entries to see how the offense was handled.
5. He may have “Bad Paper.”
What follows is speculation since his full SRB is not available to examine, but I suspect that he might have already been awaiting an administrative discharge or had been tried by a courts martial.
During the early and mid-1970s, the Marine Corps faced a crisis in the number of poor performing Marines it was having to process for discharge. (It was not the only service experiencing this problem.) This toleration of petty infractions sometimes was the case if the unit was being forced into carrying the Marine on its rolls while awaiting completion of the often considerable time required for the automatic review process by an overburdened military judicial system. This review is required when a bad conduct or dishonorable discharge is ordered as part of the sentence of a courts martial. At times during this period, this process was so long that a Marine would complete the confinement portion of their punishment and return to the unit to await the final administrative process. At that point, how much further punishment could be inflicted on someone who had essentially nothing left to lose? The resulting situation was essentially an uneasy truce between the unit and the Marine awaiting discharge. The unit didn’t unduly harass the Marine if the Marine was more or less conforming to expected minimum standards of performance and behavior. In return, the Marine had three squares a day, a place to sleep and bathe, got some portion of a private’s pay, and could go on liberty if he stayed out of/didn’t cause further trouble.
Later in the 70s, the Marine Corps would develop the “Expeditious Discharge Program,” which streamlined the discharge process and greatly shortened the time required from many months to often less than a month to discharge a poor performing/trouble making Marine. Real criminals, as always, continued to be tried and punished by courts martial.
It is unclear if there was or wasn’t a courts martial in his case because the DD-214 extract lists “Not on File” under Transcript of Courts Martial Trial. Considered in context, “Not on file” cannot be considered the equivalent of “N/A.”
On the other hand, the DD-214 simply states his duty status as “Discharged.” So, if there was no courts martial, he might have gone out the gate with a “General” or “Other Than Honorable” discharge based on his low proficiency and conduct marks.
A General discharge is the very best he could have left with because, as the Chief said, still a private after four years of service says something special - and it isn’t good - about the quality of your service.
That’s mostly been my plan.:)
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