THE great thing about American conservatives is that they fight back. They are not cowed by the Left, or by virtue-signalling liberals. They have steadfastly pursued the case of what became known as the Covington Catholic High School Scandal. We reported on it here.
You may remember. It followed last January’s March for Life in Washington DC, when the Press erupted with claims that a video showed boys from Covington, a Kentucky Catholic high school, who’d been on the march, harassing Nathan Phillips, a Native American activist, outside the Lincoln Memorial.
Additional extended video and first-hand accounts soon revealed that this was an egregious example of fake news.
Phillips was the one who waded into the group waiting for its bus and decided to beat a drum inches from the face of one of the boys, Nick Sandmann. The boys had merely performed school cheers in hopes of drowning out racist taunts from members of the Black Hebrew Israelites fringe group.
A tale of fake news and anti-Catholic hysteria it was, as Laura Perrins wrote, ‘a Leftist dream – to have a white, pro-life, Catholic male wearing a Trump Make America Great Again hat recorded harassing a Native American. What suited their prejudice better? The Twitter and media mob was unleashed with a ferocious intensity. Disgracefully, it wasn’t just the social media, but the mainstream media too that eagerly misreported this story with apparent total disregard of the boys they smeared.
The damage done to the boys thrown into this hostile limelight is difficult to quantify, not least ‘the psychological impact of having powerful individuals condemn you because the story fits their preconceived ideas, biases and agendas’.
Nor, as Laura wrote at the time, should we be under any illusions. It was more than a mistake. Post the Kavanaugh hearings, the media in the United States are in full-on hate mode against Christians.
But a fightback against this injustice began. As various media figures either tried to keep the original narrative alive or refused to unequivocally retract or apologise for their initial claims, attorneys representing the students filed defamation suits against numerous media outlets and public figures.
These included The Washington Post, CNN, NBC Universal, Democrat presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren, the Maggie Haberman of the New York Times, comedian Kathy Griffin, ABC News’s Matthew Dowd, Princeton University’s Kevin Kruse, Left-wing activist Shaun King, and Rewire editor-in-chief Jodi Jacobson.
Finally it looks as though they may get their come uppance.
The defamation suit against the Washington Post got a new lease of life on Monday, allowing the suit to move forward. Reversing a prior ruling, a judge has allowed Nick Sandmann, the boy at the centre of the case, to sue the Washington Post.
It is a significant win, not just for the young man, but for the battle against the hypocritical and vicious Left.
