Candidate Obama in 2008 came out with this zinger of condescension about folks in the hinterlands: “They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations”. It’s as if the blue-collar dwellers outside the east and west coast soirees of the well-off are wallowing in falsehoods. Really, the urban fashionistas believe this drivel. Though, the pot-and-kettle thing keeps passing through my head. The self-proclaimed haute couture in look and thought have their own bigoted, ignorant fictions bouncing in their craniums. Legends abound in Appalachia and among the coastal with-it.
Widespread oppression of the “marginalized” – a special designation awarded to any group organized and loud enough – is gospel among the beautiful people. These people haven’t left the world of the “Mississippi Burning” script. To them, the “oppressed” are abused up and down the US interstate system. Big journalism acts as the modern Hesiod of these urban legends. Mythology isn’t an ancient phenomenon. It’s alive and well among attendees at Dem Party fundraisers.
But wiping egg off the faces of urban America’s “better” people is developing into a habit. Jussie Smollet is one among many rotten egg producers. Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Maxine Waters, the functionaries at MSNBC, the networks, Hollywood, WaPo (The Washington post), NYT, et al – the list is getting too long – can’t wait to jump at the bait. They w-a-n-t to believe the myth is true. The only problem is that the playing field is littered with lies.
Let me count the ways. Be prepared, the list is long.
(1) In November 2016, a Muslim woman at U. of Michigan caterwauled that a 20-something white male threatened to burn her if she didn’t remove her hijab. The WaPo was hoaxed. Hoax #1.
(2) Taylor Volk, a bisexual student at North Park U., said she was targeted with hateful notes and emails shortly after Trump’s election victory. Hoax #2.
(3) In, once again, Nov. 2016, Ashley Boyer of Philadelphia blamed that staple of these fibs – white/male/Trump supporter – for harassing her with a gun and getting rid of the “n’s”. The charge went viral only to be debunked by police. Hoax #3.
(4) An 18-year-old Muslim woman in Louisiana in Nov. 2016 (Getting the idea?) charged white men for robbing her and yelling racial slurs. The only problem: it wasn’t true because she said so. Hoax #4.
(5) In May of 2017, racial slurs, anti-gay insults, and Nazi references were spray painted on a church by, as it turned out, the church’s own organist. The WaPo ended up cleaning its face of egg. Hoax #5.
(6) An 18-year-old Muslim woman, Yasmin Seweid, of NYC in Dec. 2016 declared that she was assaulted by drunken white Trump supporters in the subway. She confessed. Hoax #6.
(7) Dec. 2016: David Williams of Denton, Texas, torched his own car and spray painted “n’ lovers” on his garage. A police investigation exposed the scheme as a hoax, but not before David and his wife garnered $5,000 from a GoFundMe page. Hoax #9.
(8) A Muslim student at Beliot College in Feb. 2017 found anti-Muslim smears on his dorm room door. He did it according to the Beliot police chief. Hoax #8.
(9) Synagogues and Jewish schools were the subject of bomb threats in March 2017. Surprise, the peril was linked to Trump. Well, a US-Israeli man was arrested. Wait, the story gets richer. An ex-reporter with The Intercept, Juan Thompson, kept the pot boiling with new threats to Jewish community centers. He would be indicted shortly thereafter. Hoax #9.
(10) In May 2017, racist, anti-black notes appeared at St. Olaf College. The WaPo had to walk back their story after a black student was identified as responsible for the slurs. Hoax #10.
(11) Racist messages – “Go home n***er” – were discovered at the Air Force Academy’s prep school. Sadly for the hate-crime posse, one of the targeted black students was the author. Hoax #11.
(12) A Kansas State University student reported to police racist graffiti on his car in November 2017. Later he admitted to doing it himself. Hoax #12.
(13) Racist graffiti is all the rage with hoaxers. In Nov. 2017, racist graffiti was discovered on the mirror in a Missouri high school. He prank was conducted by a “non-white” enrollee. Hoax #13.
(14) A Texas waiter at an Odessa steak house Facebooked in Dec. 2018 a racist slur on a napkin, and it went viral … of course. The only problem: The waiter admitted to faking it. Hoax #14.
(15) The Covington Catholic High School episode of Jan. 2019 was a disgrace. The WaPo and the Detroit Free Press were all over the story with an account of an elderly Native American being abused by prep-school white boys in MAGA hats. The story as it ran in the media – to put it mildly – was misleading. The Black Hebrew Israelites taunted the kids with vile insults and Nathan Philips (the Native American activist) provoked them by incessantly chanting and pounding his drum in their faces. Hoax #15.
(16) A spate of anti-Semitic vandalism hit NYC in Nov. 2018. It turned out that the culprit was a Democratic party activist and former City Hall intern, not a follower of Alex Jones. Hoax #16.
(17) Donald Trump was blamed for the arson of a black church in Greenville, Miss., back in Nov. 2016. The WaPo must have been embarrassed when a fellow black congregant was fingered as responsible. Hoax #17.
(Thanks to the Daily Caller for the list.)
Why the mad rush to believe the unbelievable? The answer might be found in the need to validate a pre-recorded fable of the world. Traditional journalistic skepticism be damned. It’s full-speed-ahead toward a much too deeply rooted folklore in our commercial and media centers, aka big cities. Big media has been caught in too many falsehoods. Their credibility is shot. If they can’t deliver reliable news and information, what can they serve up?
A void exists to be filled by the rhetorical burps of Twitter and Facebook and the retinue of “fact checkers”, and they are linked in a miasma of interrelationships. Facebook, for instance, uses Snopes.com to filter “fake news” and hate speech. Snopes is a mess, if court documents in the divorce of the married co-founders is any indication. Former candidates for political office (on a “dump Bush” platform), prostitutes, vixens with a “dome” complex on pot, and no functioning standards of objectivity are rampant (reported by Forbes and The Daily Mail). A fact-checking degree is offered at some colleges but that’s no guarantee. Naïve and left-leaning 21-year-olds aren’t about to produce the gospel.
What we are left with is each one of us running to our corners with our personal “truth”, emotional explosions when faced with pushback, no deliberation, and a mountain of urban legends that are held in a death grip like a Bible in a foxhole.
RogerG