SIO177: Covington Catholic and the Monument Showdown

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:28 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode 177. I'm your host, Thomas Smith, and, wow, lots to talk about. Okay, occasionally, everything just kinda works out in a weird way. First off, I was on Godawful Movies lately, that was, well, I guess it just came out as of me recording this, so check it out, it was a lot of fun. That is probably my, no offense to anybody else, but that's gotta be my favorite show to do, it just, we, somehow, we always just seem to click so well, and it was a ton of fun, and this time, for the first time, I had to kind of try to fill Eli's shoes a little bit because he was the host who was missing, so no way I did that, but I did my best, and I think, I think it was really good, so check it out.

0:01:15 Thomas: While we're on the topic of other shows, you know, Philosophers in Space is still fantastic, as always, I hope you are checking that one out, and we just did our first, uh, it's, it, not Godawful Movies, it is not Law'd Awful Movies, or, uh, as I, as I thought of calling it, Phil-Aw-Full Movies. No, it, uh, it's called Not a Satire Aaron, or NASA for short, and, uh, we just battlefield Earth over there on Philosophers in Space, and, wow, that's a terrible movie. Uh, but you might want to check that out, and check out that show, it is really good, and there's so much going on there, we have some good guests coming up too, it's a fun one. It's a lot of what I wanted this show to be, but we found kind of a different and better venue for it. So that's why I talk less philosophy on this show than I used to, because now all the philosophy is going on over there.

0:02:04 Thomas: So Philosophers in Space, check it out. All right, enough promoing other stuff. Today's episode. So I actually had been been kind of feeling like I haven't done a, you know, a commentary, a rant, anything like that in a while. You know, I do a little bit for voicemail episodes, but it feels like it's been a while since I've devoted an episode to it. So, it's kind of, you know, it was kind of in the back of my mind. I was feeling that, you know, maybe I ought to get back to that. And then I happened to notice the, not the initial controversy. I'm going to talk about that in a second, but I I noticed like the second wave of controversy over the Covington Catholic kids at the National Monument with the Native American elder and the black Hebrew Israelites, that whole confrontation. I noticed sort of the second part of that, which was, oh, no, we're all wrong.

0:02:54 Thomas: Check out the video, all that stuff, and the reactions there. And I had seen enough people on different sides of it who I kind of listened to, who I think, you know, as I'm always doing, I'm reading, I'm sure you are too, you're reading stuff, you're thinking, yeah, no, that's not quite right, or that's right, or whatever, and I had seen enough things where I thought, you know, I have something I could say about this, a number of thoughts that I kind of wanted to do it, and then subsequently I finally caught up on a backlog of email, and several people had emailed asking me to do an episode on it, and after that I got like two or three tweets saying, "Hey, you should cover this." So it's interesting, there's a, that doesn't happen all that often where there's, you know, occasionally it does, but where there's that much, um, reaction or people asking me to do a specific episode.

0:03:41 Thomas: And by the way, I, I appreciate it. So if you ever want that, if you're ever like, Hey, do this episode, especially, you know, patrons or people in the Facebook group, please absolutely feel free to do that. You know, oftentimes that's a good way to gauge people's interests. If I see a number of people, you know, asking for a certain topic. Anyway, that aside, I think I'm going to start off real meta on this one. Real meta, like meta, meta, beta, which I tend to be sometimes as I just went meta there, meta-ing myself. Anyway, I have some guesses as to why people want this particular episode. First off, I want to talk about, again, going meta, as I mentioned earlier, I didn't bother with the first wave of this controversy.

0:04:32 Thomas: So to set some of the facts, just in case you live in a cave and you don't follow this stuff, what happened was on Friday, yes, Friday, Friday last, I think that's the 18th or so, there were a couple of things. These are all things that were pretty, in the grand scheme of things, they wouldn't get much coverage. We probably wouldn't have heard about it. There was a March for Life, what I believe to be an anti-women's rights march. That's always fun, but a March for Life. And there was also a small Native American protest at At the, and it ended up in the Lincoln Memorial, this is all in, in D.C., uh, happening, of course, and, And.

0:05:19 Thomas: Toss into the mix a small group, four to six people, essentially hate preachers, honestly, these are the black Hebrew Israelites spewing garbage, you know, homophobic, sexist, at times racist garbage, and that all converged, and I don't think anyone would have cared except there was a video that resulted, as there always is, and there was some pretty iconic-looking photographs that came from it, showing a high school kid, a white high school kid in a MAGA hat, you know, the red MAGA hat that we all know, smiling some would say, in a look that a lot of people interpret as smiling condescendingly, a little bit mockingly staring down an older Native American man beating a drum and doing what I think he said was some sort of Native American prayer song.

And so what happened was a level one of the controversy was "MAGA hat wearing white high school kids surround elderly Native man and taunt him." That was how it was presented by some people, by some people. I'm not going to say the media put a pin in that, I am not going to say the media, there were certain sources that described it as that, there were a lot of Twitter posts that described it as that, they went viral, that kind of thing.

0:06:51 Thomas: And everyone is pretty, pretty universal that, you know, these students were in the wrong and they were horrible and all that. And to the point where the diocese, like some of the leaders in the Catholic Church in that town and whether from Kentucky or some crap, this Covington Catholic School, they actually were like, this is not acceptable. You know, to the point where some conservatives and even some of the church leaders around that area or even some, I think, involved with the school were saying, oh, yeah, this is not acceptable. And then what happened? Well, let's pause there. We'll pause there because I wanted to get a little meta. I saw the picture, you know, on social media and all that, and I ignored it. And I want to talk about why.

0:07:36 Thomas: And I'm not, this isn't a judgy thing or, you know, anything like that. I just want to describe kind of where my head is at because I don't know, maybe, maybe people find it useful. I'm not sure, but I, this, I want to know what people are trying to get out of this, you know, cause let's assume by the way, let's assume that it's, it is among the worst version of this which is, you know, white, MAGA hat wearing high school kids mock Native American man. I don't know what, what, why so many of us are getting involved in that. And I want to be very specific here because clearly on the worst version of it, let's just take the, again, the first broadcast, you know, tweeted out version of that.

0:08:23 Thomas: Yes. Disrespectful, racist, um, you know, awful high school MAGA hat people like they're awful. I'm not in any way, in any anyway, saying that that's okay. What I'm saying is I'm to the point now where I don't know what we're doing with that. You know, I just mean on a personal level, like, I, what are you doing with that, because for me, here's what I see, I see something that is 100% in accordance with my, what I already know about the world, you know, like I see oh, that's facts about the world as I already saw them, you know, they'd be like if, if there's a picture of a traffic light and some cars stop at the traffic light, and then it turns green, and then they go.

0:09:08 Thomas: It's like, yep, that's how all that works. There's nothing, nothing to see here. I don't really. And what I mean by that is there's not, it's already, there's like high school kids at a March for Life rally, you know, wearing Make America Great Again hats is already awful. That's already there's nothing they're going to do that's going to change my opinions, really. And furthermore, there's no, this isn't something with a policy solution. There are times I want to talk about outrage, you know, there are times and you've, you've heard me be outraged on the show plenty. I'm not, I'm not judging anyone who was outraged about this, but all I'm talking about is for my personal mental health.

0:09:53 Thomas: This is, this is just a personal approach. And I wonder if maybe it might be beneficial to talk About, I don't know, maybe it's not, but for my personal approach, I do believe there are times when we do need to get more outraged. Certainly, I'm not at all trying to be one of those, oh, stop all the internet outrage, everybody. Calm down. No, no, not at all. I think there are things we are not outraged enough about. I don't think we are outraged about kids in cages and family separation and people at the border trying to to declare asylum, not being allowed to, being killed, being starved to death in places in South America, some of which are probably because of things that America has some culpability in. Lots of stuff that I think we should be more outraged about.

0:10:41 Thomas: And stuff specifically that would include, I don't know, policy, foreign policy, whether it's things that we can do something about this. When I saw this, I saw, yes, this is that culture. Yes. This is a culture of white kids, privileged white kids with Make America Great Again hats. Yes, they would be racist toward native. We, the president of the United States engages in racist name calling toward Elizabeth Warren and other Republican leaders, by the way, join in. Uh, there's the the clip you might've seen of the, that one guy doing, doing a racist Indian call, you know, like this art, this is there, this exists. I know this exists, I'm not, this is not news. Uh, I am not saying we should be okay with it by any stretch, but for this specific bit of news, literally just talking about this one, I don't know what I was going to do about it.

0:11:36 Thomas: You know, I, there's no, there are people who I guess want to like, and I don't think it can possibly be any of you listening, but but apparently there, you know, there's a lot of people online who in this situation, and there's plenty going the other way too, who want to like dox the person or threaten them or, you know, try to message people, their family or anybody involved and say how horrible they are and all that. I'm not that person. I have no desire to do that. I don't think it accomplishes anything. I don't, you know, even if it's might be totally deserved, by the way, I don't think it's, it's, you know, I don't think it's a good thing to do. It doesn't do anything. So for me, I saw this picture, I saw this thing, and I said there's nothing for me to do here, it's just another depressing story, just like, you know, kids starving to death in Yemen. Well, maybe not like that. In Yemen, see, there might be something we can do there, there's a policy, we can vote about it. This is a culture thing, I don't know.

0:12:35 Thomas: Short of trying to make some media articles, video, whatever it might be, that would teach entitled, blind, biased white Catholic kids, white Catholic men, by the way, because it's a boys' school, to not be douchebags, you know, like, I don't know, I would, whatever that is, I want to do it, but I don't know that me raging at this picture was going to do. So, I skipped it. I stayed out of it, didn't care.

I wouldn't say, I wouldn't say didn't care, again, I'm not saying if you were outraged, you were wrong, I'm not saying that, I am just saying for me, personally, I didn't bother with it. So then comes round two, so we'll go back to the storyline here, round two of this is when I kind of noticed it a little more, it's been the last couple days, people started saying, oh, what, you know, there's a, did you watch the whole video, new details emerge, here, I'll read some, there is a good article that's kind of on the anti-Covington Catholic side, I guess I'll call it for now, that had a few headlines, let me read them. New York Times, Fuller picture emerges a viral video, CNN, a new video shows a different side of the encounter, Atlantic, I failed the Covington Catholic test, next time there's a viral story, I'll wait for more facts to emerge, Huffington Post, new video complicates uproar over incident between student and Native American man, Washington Times, new videos shows Native American men confronting Catholic teens, confronting, that's not right.

0:14:09 Thomas: So yeah, that's all the, that's the second round, like, oh, no, more to the story. And I want to be, I want to be fair here factually. I think there are a few distinctions, I think there are few inaccuracies that went around that, that it is important to me to fix. I think it is important to be accurate, because here's the thing, if the story in your mind or in the media, some, some element of the media's mind, some Twitter person, whoever, if the the story was presented as, you know, MAGA hat-wearing teen boy, Catholic school, whatever, kids surround Native American elder and start taunting him. If that was the story, it's important to correct a few basic facts. What did happen was these awful Black Hebrew Israelites who were spouting, you know, again, homophobic, sexist, racist garbage, because they have horrible beliefs.

0:15:03 Thomas: They're a lot like the Westboro Baptist, that comparison's been made. I think it's somewhat appropriate, honestly. Their beliefs are gross. It's not cool. Anyway, the story apparently is these Covington Catholic boys, again, after protesting women's rights and being against women's rights in March, they went over to the Lincoln Memorial to do some sightseeing, and the black Hebrew Israelites were spouting pretty bad stuff at them, you know, calling them, uh, bad names, uh homophobic slurs, some racist slurs stuff like that. So, you, I can already, I, I relate a little bit to what it must be like as a high school kid to deal with that.

0:15:50 Thomas: Like, I don't know that I'm equipped to handle that very well, even now, like much less when I was in my teens. Uh, and what they decided to do in response, response, which again, I don't, I honestly, I can't really fault them for so far in the story. What they decided to do in response was their school spirit chants, like their basketball team, whatever sport chants that they do, uh, which ends up being pretty loud and intimidating. And, um, uh. Especially to people who don't know what they are might be a little shocking, but they decided to do that to kind of drown out the, the Westboro Baptist like, uh, street preachers. And then the Native American elder who kind of saw what was happening, took it upon himself to get in between them and, and in his mind, try to keep the peace a little bit by doing his Native American prayer song.

0:16:48 Thomas: And, uh... that's what he did. And I think to a certain extent it might have worked by the way, but, but that was how he saw it. And that's kind of the best version of the story. That's like the PR, the Republican PR firm version, literally actually. And this poor kid who's in all the pictures in, in, In the words of the PR firm that was hired to make his statement, he was just trying to appease the situation. He was, he was not at all trying trying to mock anybody. He was smiling as a show of peace and also was saying a silent prayer that things don't get out of hand, which I find to be very suspect. I don't really believe any part of that, but that's me. If you want to believe his statement, obviously you're free to do so.

0:17:34 Thomas: So that, so the best version of the story came out, you know, like then by best, I mean, like the most favorable toward the white, uh, MAGA hat wearing Catholic high school kids, boys, and that's when all the mea culpa started happening. So you got Twitter personalities doing that. You got celebrities, you got Kathy Griffin or whatever. You've got people apologizing. I can't believe I judged them. Uh, mea culpa, mea culpa.

And I think as a, as some pretty good art, uh articles have shown, For example, I'll pull up one here. There's one on The Guardian by Jason Wilson, which is titled, I think the title pretty much says it all, How Conservative Media Transformed the Covington Catholic Students from Pariahs to Heroes, and I think it's a, that's a pretty good article, and it points out how even, even some Fox News people were against these kids for a while until it was reframed deep in the conservative, you know, dark web, I don't know what you call it, but, but in the super conservative far right corners of the web, there was, you know, a new storyline emerged, which was, in fairness, partially based on facts, partially based on facts that weren't made clear initially. And then the pendulum swung the other way toward like these poor victims.

And that's when, you Know, and pretty much everybody latched onto that in that I've seen in, you Now, even the New York Times, even The Daily does an episode where they do their Or as much as I'm a fan of the daily and I listen, they've been getting increasingly frustrating with their both sides stuff, you know, with the. Well, the people on the right see it this way, and the people of the left see it this way.

It really is just a Rorschach test for your beliefs, and then that's how they describe it, and there's no, you know, there's not value judgment, and that's a good way

0:19:27 Thomas: To constantly move the Overton window to the right when one side becomes more and more extreme and horrible, and your job is just to say what the two sides say, and try to present some centrist view of it, then you're gonna, the center will keep moving toward the right.

And so then I think what happened, now we're getting to current times here, because the reason I think so many people wanted, or at least asked for an episode, insofar as they care what I have to say, is that I think there was a certain reaction, so there were people who were critical initially, so, you know, might have rage-posted about the Covington Catholic High School Boys, and then when they saw the facts, there were a couple different ways they could go, there was some people who said, ah, I got this wrong, here's the actual facts, sorry about that. That. And then there are other people, and right now I'm just describing, I'm not doing any value judgment. I'll do that later. Don't worry. There are other people who I think either felt they were not incorrect the whole time, or maybe due to some feeling of having been entrenched before and not wanting to be wrong. Maybe, I am saying, depends on who the person is. Found other ways to still be correct in their mind about what happened.

And I imagine that a lot of people who might've emailed me are wondering where Where the right reaction might be, you know, like, how do we sort out, they're, they might be looking for some reinforcement somewhere of either, oh, yes, no, the kids were crap all along, or maybe, like they, maybe they want it the other way, maybe, they want, oh Thomas is a fair guy, sometimes, Maybe he'll come down on the side of, we got it wrong, and we need to be fair, and, you know, I'm, I, I always, am gonna do my best to, to just speak what I find to be the truth, and try to declare my biases as much as possible, and I promise, I will, I, I'm still in description mode, and that, that's what I imagine drove a lot of the desire for me to do an episode on it.

And, uh, so that, that's as far as descriptions go, that's where I think we are. And, you know, a lot of the people who initially reacted very angrily toward the high school students, a lotta them are very smart people who then found ways to kinda reinforce that, like, okay, yes, but, okay yes, yes there was more to the story, but check out the blackface that happened at the basketball game, check out these other things, and I think a lotta people are wondering, like, is that valid or is that defensiveness or whatever, and, I'll give my opinion on it, so, here we go.

0:22:01 Thomas: Go. And I, I also have the benefit of not having commented initially, so I don't, I don't have a, you know, I didn't have a reputation either, you now, like, I wasn't entrenched one way, and so now, I'm, I need to keep that point of view or reinforce that point, so, I guess that does help from my perspective to try to have, I think it might give me a tiny bit more credibility in that I'm not going to be trying to double down on anything, because I didn't, I didn't comment on the first thing at all, so.

So I'm just approaching it from now we have all, I think, as much information as we could possibly deal with on this. Like we've got all the angles, all the videos, all that background, all of that stuff. And here's, here's I guess where I come down on it.

My opinion I think if we look at the anti-Covington crowd, the people who are angry about this, and, uh, Spoiler, I think they're, they're pretty justified, I think they are perhaps a little too angry at the one smiling kid and, and he, I think maybe got a little too much of the, uh, of the hate, and maybe as a group, a lot of the other kids who did a lot of racist taunting and all that kind of stuff avoided maybe just because they didn't end up in that picture, you know, right face to face with the, with the Native American elder, they sort of avoided some of the backlash that maybe they deserved, because here's, when I look at my overall feeling of what happened here, what, my, my um, I, I won't say bottom line, but, what I feel like is, these kids were still racist and disrespectful,

0:23:40 Thomas: Um, but I actually don't, in all the videos I've seen, I never really saw the main smiley kid, you know, who looks way too smug, that we all, you know, let's admit that we kind of want to punch that kid in that picture, but I don't-, I never saw him really do any of the, like, Tomahawk stuff, you know, the racist Native American taunts and Tomahawks, all that stuff, like the, that kind of stuff, which is what my main problem with With this group of kids would be, and why I think some outrage is still perfectly warranted, because they were still very disrespectful and racist and stuff like that.

But, again, this is a weird thing to me, you know, because, like, I don't, if I take either scenario, I don't know what changes in the world, you know, like that, like two sides are, are, I think it is accurate to say that two sides, are kind of grasping for two different outcomes here, for two different judgments, but, for me, there's almost no difference between them, there is not that much difference between them. And let me, let me tell you why.

So, if we take the left, say, then the left is, is, like, if take the, the left's version of this, and we just kind of take their, their interpretation as granted, it would be a bunch of MAGA hat wearing, you know, high school boys who just got done protesting women's rights, who come from a high school that somehow allows their fans, fans in basketball games to wear blackface, even if it's not specifically blackface.

0:25:21 Thomas: It might be some school color thing. Still, they seem to allow it. And the worst interpretation is they were disrespectful and racist and surrounded this Native American man and were condescending to him. OK, that's like, that's likes, you know, if we take that for granted. And And then, like, the other side, let's say we take the right-wing side version of facts, it's like, oh, no, no, no, no, it was the slightly more respectful kind of MAGA hat wearing, anti-women's rights, Catholic, toxic masculine high school boys who wear blackface at a school, but it's okay because it's school color, you know what I mean? The difference, there seems to be a big difference between somebody, like people on the right and people on on the left believe there's a difference there, from my perspective, where I'm standing, there's no difference there.

0:26:10 Thomas: And I think it's because the right thinks that's okay. Like the right thinks there's an okay version. That's what it is. The right thinks it's like, no, no. There's an acceptable version of a MAGA hat wearing, again, anti-abortion rights, toxic masculinity, or just I'll say masculinity just because we're taking their side, masculine high school boys, they think there's an okay kind of that, like that's no no, they were the of the acceptable acceptable variety who didn't surround the Native American, like that seems to be the main difference, that they did, the Native American guy walked up to them and not the other way around, and like that, that one thing is somehow the, like, makes a difference to people, and this is, again, going back to why I, I almost, I don't care as much about this, maybe because that, okay, cool.

0:27:05 Thomas: So we'll even, we'll take your facts like the, even if the Native American man ran up there and started the whole thing, it changes almost nothing for me. Because for me, there is no acceptable version of a MAGA hat wearing anti-women's rights, toxic, masculine high school boy who goes to high school that lets its, its, uh, kids wear blackface. There is no, there's no acceptable versions of it. It doesn't matter if they were like, oh, buy your leave, sir, please, play us a Native American tune, we're all respectful about it. Like, it doesn't matter. That's, that's all, that, you know, that's why I don't care. I want to be very very clear here that I am not both sides-ing it, by the way. I am saying the right-wing version can't even be right.

0:27:52 Thomas: Like, it doesn't even, it's so dumb to me, it is so out of touch from reality that even their best facts are wrong. Like even if I granted all the best facts about it, it still doesn't change it for me, that that's what I'm saying, so don't, don't, I know it's been a little bit of an abstract thought process here, but don't for a second think I'm saying both sides are wrong, I'm saying there's no difference between the sides because the right interpretation is so meaningless, that that is what I am saying. Because in my opinion, the MAGA hat is a symbol of racism. It just is. It is, and here's the thing, it's sort of like, you know how back when we were all just doing atheism and stuff, one of the quotes you'd have about religion is like, what separates just a religion from a cult?

0:28:41 Thomas: And the answer is just the number of people who believe it. And I kind of think that can tend to be true, you Not always because, you know, there's other differences, but the point is that some of these beliefs that make no sense, i.e. religious beliefs, are seen as ridiculous when it's like three people. You know, you're like, what? You believe, youknow, such and such as, you believe there's little spirits in a Marie Kondo. You believe there are spirits in all the clothes that you're throwing away. That's ridiculous kind of thing. Versus, oh wait, no, 80% of people in this country believe that Jesus, you know, that Noah or whatever it is, you don't like Noah's Ark happened and all that.

0:29:31 Thomas: That scene is not ridiculous just because enough people believe it in a similar way. The idea that conservatives and even centrists, I think, will shake off the idea that the MAGA hat is itself a racist symbol by saying, Look, it's not racist. Half the country is Republican. Half the country's Democrat. And you can't say one half of the country as racist. That doesn't mix. That doesn't count. There's too many of them to be racist, essentially. That is honestly kind of the... I know they don't explicitly say that, but that's what's behind what they're saying, which is you can'T just declare that one side... They're just wearing the hat of the team, the political team they like, you know, they can't just say that's racism.

0:30:17 Thomas: There's, you know, come on, that's you lefty communists or something, you know? And for me, no, it's, it doesn't matter that whatever, it's probably not half the country, but even, you know, 30, 35%, whatever it is, thinks that the MAGA hat is awesome. And then they're just supporting their Donald Trump. It doesn't matter how many people think it's not a racist symbol. To me, it is. It just is a racist symbol. Some people like to do this thing, where they say, oh, no, look, Republicans aren't all race, a lot of them hate Trump, they hate all the rhetoric, you know, a, lot of the, they, they don't like the, some of the stuff he said, they're all the, the sexual harassment, all this stuff, they like it, but they care about the Supreme Court, and they can't vote, you, know, they couldn't have voted for Hillary, because they, care about abortion, whatever, and fine, I'll actually grant that those people do exist.

0:31:09 Thomas: Exist. I think to a certain extent, I think my Catholic family is that, they might be a little further right, you know, they might be a little more on board with with Trump than I might hope, you know, but but like those people do exist, the people who are just like, well, I don't like Trump but I'm still Republican, and he's gonna, he put in the Republican judges and all that, and they could even be like really anti-Trump racism, you know, but they're just like, I'm sorry, it's still better, better than murdering kids in the womb or whatever. But you know what those people don't do? They don't wear MAGA hats. So even if those people do exist and you want to paint a rosy picture about how actually not racist they are, and they're just Republican, they're pro-life, and they they're just stuck with this racist.

0:31:57 Thomas: And you can be as generous as you want with that. Those people don't wear MAGA hats. My Catholic family doesn't wear MAGA hats. And if they did, I would tell them to go F themselves And I would not be around that because that, that is a step further. The, the, the make America great again, hat is not the, Oh, I just, I wanted a justice out of the deal. No, that's, ooh, I love when Trump triggers everybody and says that Mexicans are rapists and mocks disabled reporter. It does all that stuff. I love that. He wears this hat. I'm going to wear this hat that's that there's... there's no good version of that. There's just isn't. You don't put on a Klan hood but in a, oh no, it doesn't, no, I'm not wearing it like the KKK does, I like that they trigger liberals, the fact that liberals don't like the KKK, so I wear it.

0:32:50 Thomas: No. Sorry. That's not how anything works. These kids are awful in my opinion, and here's, here's, you know, we'll go through all the evidence, and a lot of these facts are things that people latched on to to try to double down and say, no, I wasn't really wrong despite the new facts, and you can judge for yourself how much you you buy into it, but they bring up a lot, lot of valid things. And so maybe they are right. Maybe they are. Here's one. The fact that there is another video of these kids sexually harassing some women before this happened. It's the same kids. And one of them says, it's not rape if you enjoy it. Like, they clearly, they have awful Misogynistic, sexist views, or at least are very comfortable taunting strangers with rape jokes, jokes, which is awful. So they're awful for that.

Thing for a minute, so, some people did try to grasp straws that were not sustainable, like, they tried to find a bunch of, like, white power hand signals, and then other people, I think rightfully, are saying, no, that's a three-point, this is a basketball game, they're doing the three- point shot thing, and, yeah, that, I, I, I think that's, it is the three point shot, that, that's it, that, don't, don't have that argument, that, not worth it, if you're trying to say, no, no, they're not signaling three-pointer, they're signaling white power at a basketball game, that's, that's a tough argument, I don't buy it, I think it's three-porner, but the blackface thing, now this,

0:34:21 Thomas: The the right wing says, oh no, no, it's part of a blackout, they call it, it's, uh, school colors, and they all dress in black, or, I'm not actually, it's not clear if it's the school colors, but one way or the other, they dress in black, they paint themselves black, and then it's this creepy thing for the other team because it's a blackout, no, he's around, okay cool, maybe I will grant you, I will, just for fun, just because I can, I will, I will say, not a single person who participated in this blackface paint and body paint thing has an ounce of racism, well, I won't say that, has is doing so, I will grant you hypothetically, none of them are doing so with the intention of it being blackface. Like they're not, none of them have that in mind.

0:35:09 Thomas: I'll grant you that just for fun. I don't know that it's true, but just because I can, because the broader point is you go to a school that is so white and out of touch and blinded by bias that not a single person in the staff and the leadership is like, "Hey, uh, I know we're doing a blackout thing and it's fun basketball thing, but like here's the history of this, and why, how about let's just not do the face part.

How about you do, you wear black clothing, wear a full black bodysuit thingy, but don't do the black part of the face with the white eye, like, don't. That has a bad history, even if you don't mean it, even if you just innocently, you don't know any better, you're an ignorant high school boy from Kentucky," you don't know any better, that's fine. I'll grant you that they don't have a single staff member there who is like, maybe let's just, here's the rule, we're not doing that, that's too offensive. There's gonna be people, by the way, the picture that's going viral is there's a black player on the other team who's standing there on the three point line, and there's some kids in what looks like blackface. That's something that you don't mess with. Attention, white America.

I'll pretend, again, I'm just, I's feeling so generous. I grant that you have not a racist intent in your body when you do this. It doesn't matter. The same way you don't just, for funsies, even though you don't mean it, wear a Clan hood, you also don't, for funsies, where blackface. It's too offensive.

0:36:55 Thomas: It's too, uh, evocative of a horrific racist past that, that is threatening to, to people who are still alive. By the way, there are still black people alive from a time when things were way worse than now. It's not great now, but it's way worse than now. And it's not, that's something we're just, we'll give it up, white people. Let's, let's go ahead and give up. Same, same with using the N word. Uh, I believe anyway, that's my opinion. I just don't, I'm not going to do it because I I'm happy to give up whatever benefit people see that as. I don't know why people seem to be threatened by the idea that they can't use the N word. I'm happy to give it up because I don't, what do I care? It's a word and it can be awful.

0:37:40 Thomas: And there are a lot of black people I know who say, I have no, I do not have ownership of that word. I shouldn't use that word, and I say, you know what I say to that? Sure, sounds good. I would rather, why not? What was the cost to me? Okay, I won't use that word, okay. I'm not going to dress in blackface. Oh no, there goes my kick-ass Halloween costume. Like, what is the sacrifice? There's no cost to it, and that's part of the, I think, blind spot that a lot of white people in this country have. They see it as some attack. They can't, oh, but I didn't mean it. Oh, I didn't mean that. That's not, how dare you? Whatever. It's like, no, you got somebody at that school in a school. You know, there's a lot of adults there.

0:38:25 Thomas: This is not just the kids. There's a whole lot of people there. There's also a lot adults there who need to be able to have the wherewithal to say, no. Sorry, I'm turning you away from this basketball game. Go take the makeup off your face. Let's, it's not. We can give that up. You know? That's how it should be. So, that's the kind of school you're going to. You're going to a school that can't even do that. So, yeah, these kids are largely awful, maybe there's a few good apples mixed in there with the bad, I don't know, here's what I know, I'm not messaging or doxing or threatening any of these kids, I dont know any of them, so as far as I'm concerned, these kid suck and that's how I feel about them, there's nothing rides on it for me. © But there's a lot of unfairness in this whole thing. There's a LOT of unfair.

0:39:10 Thomas: First off, I want to talk about some counter-arguments. You know, we got the Tucker Carlson's or the Greg Gutfeld's. Honestly, when I hear their voice, sometimes they blend together. I heard one of them on a podcast. One of them said, "You know, liberals are doing the same judging they say we do. They judge these kids as guilty by their MAGA hats before they had all the facts." And I just want to quickly knock down that one. One, liberals are worried that police are going to judge black people, often kids, and the consequences are they shoot them and they die. So yes, liberals are concerned with that. The consequences here were that some, some, some kids were getting gotten angry at. That's not, the stakes are a little, little different there.

0:40:00 Thomas: Yes. We are worried about people in power, i.e. police officers who have literally have the power of life and death in this country. Yes, we are very worried about them deciding that Tamir Rice is a dangerous killer, even though he's just a young boy with a toy gun and he's shot to death. Yes we're worried about that. No, thinking people with MAGA hats are assholes is not equivalent to that. It's not even close. Another little counter-argument I saw people making, hey, why all the talk, well, it just shows the media, the bias here of liberal media, all that, why the talk about the white kids, none of the talk of how bad the black Israelites are, they're saying horrible things, wow, it's egg on our face, because we didn't do that, and I want to deal with this counter-argument, first off, yeah, the things the black, black, um, was it black Israelite?

No, I already lost it. Black Hebrew Israelites. That's what it is. The things they say are awful. They are awful! They have homophobic, disgusting, sexist, fanatical religious views. The reason no one cares about them in this instance, or no one should really care, is that, tell me, uh, how many politicians are Black Hebrew Israelites? How many members of Congress are Black Hebrew Israelites? How many presidents of the United States are or have been Black Hebrew Hebrew Israelites? How many Supreme Court justices have been black Hebrew? They're not, they don't have power. They don't. A MAGA hat wearing white person has almost all, until, by the way, until November, had every level of power in this country. Every single level of national power was Republicans wearing MAGA hats a second ago.

0:42:04 Thomas: We took one of them back, that they're still powerful, and and here's the example of that. How many, uh, interviews now have you seen with the the Black Hebrew Israelites? I've seen zero. How many Today Show interviews have you seen? Zero. How many presidential invites have they gotten? Zero. Uh, whereas the the smiling kid, the smirking kid, has gotten all that. He's got an interview, interview, interview. To be fair, some people are interviewing the Native American elder, I'll grant you that. That. Um, but he's gotten interviews, interviews, interviews, presidential invite, you know, cause Trump recognizes this is another cultural divide issue, and he's going to do what he does. Uh, cause he knows how to win on those issues. And the way he wins, by the way, is he just, he gins up support from his base.

0:42:52 Thomas: That's all I mean. So he, he keeps his side. He doesn't win the argument or do anything meaningful. He just keeps his site agitated. And if you keep your tiny, you, you know, 35% or whatever, or maybe you up it to 40 because everybody's so mad at liberals for getting something wrong here, potentially. That's how he uses it and he's good at it. And it's honestly, he's been successful at it But this so frequently happens, the people on Fox News cry, oh, victim, oh we're the, these poor white kids, you know, and then what happens is, they They get confirmed for the Supreme Court, is what happens. They get invited to the White House, they get a Today Show interview, that's what, what happened, that, that is the unseen part of your privilege if you're a white person in this country.

0:43:41 Thomas: That's the privilege. You might not know you have it, and to be fair, I think, you know, these kids probably are ignorant of their privilege. I think they probably are. But that is, the privilege is, if we think, if, if anybody thinks, oh, it might have been unfair to these poor white kids, national tour, baby, national media tour. Um, which side was able to hire a PR firm?

Was it the Black Hebrew Israelites, or was it the rich kid with rich parents who are able to literally hire a Republican-tied PR firm to handle this whole thing and help them out with it? Who, that's, that's the privilege. And the other thing I want to sound off on is there is a certain amount of interpretation here, you know, take the smiling kid, for example, people look at that, they see, wow, he's being arrogant, condescending, disrespectful of the Native American, he issues a statement, again, PR firm writes a statement for him that says, no, no I wanted to smile to show that it wasn't going to escalate, you It is, it is, it's tough, especially when you're dealing with a high school kid. It is hard to be on the side of like mind reading where you're like, no, no. I'm reading your mind. I know what actually was happening.

That is tough that that's something I'm hesitant to try to do here. So there's a certain amount of you might want to grant some level some level of. Of benefit of the doubt, but when you see, there's a lot, there is too much of it, like, people are granting too much, like oh, no, they're just high school kids, they are all fine, look at all the racist, you know, the tomahawk stuff they're doing, the way they're mocking,

0:45:23 Thomas: Watch the whole video and see how many times they do mock the Native Americans, and I think it's pretty clear what's going on in their minds, actually, I think, largely, they show it a lot of times, now, if you want to grant this kid, cut him a tiny amount of slack for being a high school kid, kid and smiling.

And it's tough and it's uncomfortable to decide that he's He's the new Martin Shkreli or whatever, I think that's a bit harsh, give a high school kid a slight break, but I can tell you a couple things to kind of go out on here, first off, part of this is pretty uncomfortable because I could have been one of these kids, I didn't go to a Catholic all-boys high school by any means, but you guys all know, if you've been listening, you know that I was raised conservative, and while I never would have been a ringleader of anything like this, and I don't think I attended any, you know, but that's, that's more because of the specifics of my family, because I was raised by an agoraphobic person, you Know, who we weren't, we weren't big political marchers, like going out and doing stuff like that. You know, I was, I just, I happened to be just as I happened to be raised conservative and I had no say in the matter.

It's just what our household was. Our household was a Fox news household. I didn't get to decide that I was born into that. But similarly, I also didn't get to decide that I was born into a house that never would do any sort of marching. So you could play with a couple of variables there and there, but for the grace of God go I, I could have been somebody who would have been there.

0:46:56 Thomas: And that allows me to do two things. Step one, it allows me with a pretty high degree of confidence that yes, even when these people were silently smiling, they were not saying a prayer of peace. They they were saying, oh my God, look at this ridiculous Native American guy. Look at his little drum. Look what he's doing. That's what they're thinking. I can tell you for sure. Because you know what? It's what I would have been thinking because I was raised badly. I'm glad I was able to be exposed to enough things to grow out of it. And so that allows me to do a couple things. A, to say that I think they were being racist and they were thinking arrogant, racist his thoughts, but also it allows me to, and it also worries me like, okay, well, if had I grown up in this era of cell phone technology, would I, could I have been, you know, tarred as this forever and what effect would that have had?

0:47:51 Thomas: And, you know, I wanted to add a further note on, uh, on the on just the smiling stone face. I want to add a quote from someone, Adam Howard, says, was interviewed in this Vox piece, and he had a quote that I just wanted to throw in here. "Even in the other videos, Sandman was," that's the kid, "was still looking stone-faced, smirking. That privileged white male gaze that every minority is familiar with, when that gaze is upon you as a minority, you know what it communicates, and it communicaes that you are inferior to me. I have a particular kind of perception of myself that places me above you. That performance was also being reinforced by all his classmates, classmates kind of cheering him on," end quote. I think this is right, I agree with that. I think that is what that can communicate. I think you can see the embodiment of privilege in all these kids and the way they they act, you can, you can see it.

0:48:46 Thomas: And again, it pains me to tell you that I can remember the other side of that. When I did, as a white kid, have this feeling of, as conservative, of a superiority over people like this. Thank you. It pains me to say, but I think it also makes me that much more certain that what Adam Howard says there is true. So, back to what I was saying, part of me does want to say, oh, wait, I was, I could have been one of these kids. And therefore, you know, we, we gotta, we hopefully we can give kids room in our society to grow up, to be not less MAGA hat wearing and more podcasters.

0:49:33 Thomas: No, no, we don't want that. Uh, but, but to grow, you know, from my point of view, I would, I would hate it if we didn't allow kids or, or even not kids, by the way, this even applies to, to anybody really to, to, allow the space to, to grow and evolve hopefully while recognizing that's largely not going to happen, but it does happen. But then I remember, so I do, I do want that space. So that's why, again, that's That's why I'm not sending death threats or doing well, there's a million reasons, but that's why I'm Not Doing Anything With This. That's one of the reasons. But also, I remember the other side of this, that conservatives do not grant that same empathy to when it's a black kid.

0:50:21 Thomas: You know, here's a quote that I found in this. As Stacey Patton wrote so eloquently in 2014 in an op-ed in the Post, "In America, black children don't get to be children." If Smith were right, Jordan Davis, 17, wouldn't have been killed in 2012 for playing loud music in Florida. Tamir Rice, 12, wouldn't have been killed in 2014 for playing with a toy gun in a Cleveland park. A bikini-clad Dajerria Becton, 15, would have been manhandled by a Texas police officer at a pool party in 2015. 2015. Oh my God. That was in 2015. Gosh, these all feel like yesterday. Anyway, and those are only the ones I can think of off the top of my head, and quote. Yes, absolutely. That is something that is the other side of this.

0:51:06 Thomas: Once again, as a, as white man, it is easier. I think we are evolutionarily wired a little bit for it to be easier for me to see a white kid and think, oh man, that could have been, I could have been that conservative, shitty white kid. And I could have been, you know, I don't, I wouldn't want my life ruined back then. Wouldn't have given me the chance to grow into who I am today.

But at the same time, white conservatives are, and well, anybody, any any white people in this country are, often, and by the way, it can extend to black people, just as black police officers are often found to be as racist as white police officers due to the training and the biases that we have in this. Society that we live in. We see Tamir Rice or we see Trayvon Martin or whoever it is, and we think, well, yeah, but that guy was, you know, Trayvon, I mean, clearly he couldn't, what was he doing out there with a, with a hoodie up to no good? You know, that's what conservative America thinks. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure he probably just robbed a place or he's on his way to rob a place. You know? That's the bias.

That's, that's what we have to be careful for. That's what I've learned over these many years, as a white person, that's what is easy to think. And that's what we can't do. And so while I do want to grant kids the room to grow and evolve, because I think they have had no choice in how they're brought up.

0:52:40 Thomas: You know, I didn't choose to be brought up the way I was brought up, I was a hostage for, you know, and a willing hostage, a brainwashed hostage for 18 years And then fortunately, I got to go to college and expand my horizons. And over time, I get to be not a less crappy person over time. Hopefully still every day is a struggle still continuing. Anyway, so I want to grant that space, but also recognize that the next time, you know, there's one of these Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin, whoever it is, situations emphasize. I hope I hope conservatives. I hope you're granting this person the same empathy you would grant.

0:53:25 Thomas: This Smiling Sandman Kid, so I, I think that pretty much concludes everything I wanted to say about this, Thank you I think maybe there was a little more to say about toxic masculinity, because when you look at the way they were cheering, they were doing their basketball spirit cheers, and they, you know, to be fair, once again, to the facts, because I think it is important, I couldn't find anywhere where anyone was chanting build the wall, and the Native American man said they were chanting that, but none of the video evidence backs that up, and it's entirely possible that he sees MAGA hats, he hears those school spirit chants, and and kind of assumes or or, you know, it sounds like that's what they're doing. I wouldn't at all blame him for thinking that's what those chants would be when you see, you know, but it sounds like that that was wrong.

0:54:18 Thomas: It sounds like they weren't doing that. I can't find any proof of it anyway, but they were doing plenty of awful things. It's not just to exonerate them. But when I saw that kid take off his shirt and, you know, and all the, man, it took me back to high school, back when everybody thought the dumbest things were, like, cool, you know, like that kind of thing. Oh, he took off his shirt and let a cheer, a school spirit cheer, I can almost, I almost remember being at, like a basketball game in high school and thinking like, oh, that's so cool. And it's such a toxic, toxic masculine thing, you You know, like this is an all boys school and encourages this kind of behavior. Like why? I don't think it's a coincidence that, you know, even though, yes, they were only school spirit chants, it's not a coincidence that they're all the most aggressive, masculine, chest beating, intimidating chants.

0:55:08 Thomas: That's no coincidence. You know, that's that's a little, that's the touch of the toxic masculinity. But there's, I think, I think you've heard enough from me today, so I won't go too much more into that. All right, that's how I feel about it. I hope, I hope that was clear. I know I had some thoughts that were a little abstract and maybe sounded a little both-sidesy at first.

I assure you it's, it's not both sides in the way that, you know, that, that a lot of people are doing. Oh, I, you what I wanted to add just real quick. After hearing the New York Times do the, well, the liberals are seeing this, and of course they see it as the blah, blah, and then the right wing, they're seeing this. And everybody, they just see whatever they want to see.

I thought, you know what, I want to add to that list, let's add, and then the centrists are gonna say that the right is seeing it one way and the left is seeing the other, if we can add the centrists as like another predictable category, because that's that's the power the centrist has, you know, they're like, oh, here I am, the reasonable one, and I gotta look at the people on the right, they say everything's fine, the people on the left are like, no, they're all racist, I'm sitting here in the center, I'm the one with the clear eyes, you know, and I think, I don't know if it'll work, but but I like adding to that.

Yeah, the left sees it the left way, the right sees it the right way, and then the people in the center think they're better than everybody and see it a centrist way. We can just add it to the list, and then maybe the New York Times, they don't want to be those predictable centrists. If only we could get that going. Like, ah, predictable centrists!

Alright, let me know what you think, hey, next week is voicemail, this is a great one to chime in on, find that number in the show notes, leave a voicemail, I, I am very curious what people have to say, uh, I think I made my thoughts hopefully eventually clear, um, but, if there, if, if anything I said left you confused,

0:56:51 Thomas: Uh let me now and I can clarify. Clarify. All right, that's it for me, if you'd like to support the show, please go to patreon.com/seriouspod, or seriouspod.com support, it really means a lot, it makes the show happen, join the ranks, then join the Facebook group, if there's anybody who's been trying to get in the Facebook Group, message me, there's so much spam on Facebook, it's hard to keep up sometimes with those requests, but just shoot me a message if you haven't been let in, and you're a supporter, but yeah, join that group, it, it make the show happened, I really appreciate it, and I look forward to hearing from, you guys for this next next week's voicemail episode I think it'll be really interesting all right see you then