The problem is, neither of these distillations captures the truth, which is hidden somewhere in a mess of different segments of different recordings showing different offenses by different parties. It’s true that the Hebrew Israelites shouted invective at the kids, and it is true that the kids chanted school cheers to drown them out. It’s also true that the schoolboys, whether someone else was mean to them beforehand or not, were giggling as they let loose with offensive war whoops and tomahawk chops while a Native American man beat his drum before them. It’s true that one of them ripped his shirt off in a signal of self-assured dominance. And it’s true that a smirk is a smirk.<doc-sep>Why is the Covington Catholic controversy still the nation’s biggest story? It started simply enough. A short viral video shot on Friday shows a group of white teens in “Make America Great Again” hats surrounding a small group of Native American demonstrators, including an elder from the Omaha tribe named Nathan Phillips. One of the kids, identified as Covington Catholic High School student Nick Sandmann, gets up in Phillips’s face and smirks, unaffected by Phillips’s drumming. It looks like a straightforward story of privileged racist white kids harassing a peaceful Native protester. But shortly after the clip went viral, to universal and at times vitriolic condemnation, a pushback began in right-of-center media. They argued that mainstream media and left-wing activists alike were being unfair to the kids, who were actually defending themselves from insults and harassment from a separate group of protesters, members of the fringe Black Israelite movement. Even President Trump weighed in: Nick Sandmann and the students of Covington have become symbols of Fake News and how evil it can be. They have captivated the attention of the world, and I know they will use it for the good - maybe even to bring people together. It started off unpleasant, but can end in a dream! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 22, 2019 In response, some left-liberal commentators defended the initial coverage, pointing to the fact that at least one Covington student made a racist tomahawk chop gesture in the direction of the native protesters. I’ve now watched footage of several different angles on the incident closely, ranging from the short clip that first went viral to a nearly two-hour video shot by one of the Black Israelites. My lukewarm take is that it’s impossible to know with certainty who has a more accurate read of the situation. It’s clear some of the kids were confused by Phillips; it’s equally clear some of the kids were making racist gestures. We don’t know what was in Sandmann’s head when he got in the elder’s face; his statement on the incident, edited by a GOP-connected PR firm, is hard to credit fully. Yet despite the inherent uncertainty in the footage itself, both sides continue to dig in, accusing the other of willful blindness and bad faith. It’s been four days since the initial incident, which had nothing like the policy significance of the still-ongoing shutdown fight. Still, it’s the most divisive and talked-about issue in American public life right now. Why? The answer is that the Covington videos are kind of Rorschach test, showing each side seeing what it wants to in a way that’s more revealing about their own worldviews than the actual incident. The left, which sees white supremacy as one of its fundamental enemies, was quick — in some cases, too quick — to identify Sandmann and his classmates as villains. The right’s reaction, in turn, revealed several of its core animating assumptions that white Christians are persecuted minorities, that overzealous social justice warriors represent an existential threat to a free society, and that the media is on their enemies’ sides. This led them to be credulous — in some cases, too credulous — of the boys wearing MAGA hats. It’s tempting to view this incident as a sideshow, a social media kerfuffle with no real significance. But read properly, it provides a sort of skeleton key to our increasingly identity-focused politics, explaining the real ideological divides that animate much of modern American politics. The power of the MAGA hat Here’s something to ponder: Would this event have gone viral if the Covington boys weren’t wearing MAGA hats? My guess: There’s a decent chance the answer is no. Covington Catholic High School is a wealthy, heavily white, all-boys school in Park Hills, Kentucky. Sandmann and the other students were in Washington to attend the March for Life, a large anti-abortion demonstration held annually. Given that backstory, a conflict between these kids and a minority protester was already primed to go viral. But it’s the specifics of the footage, including those hats, that really set things off. According to Sandmann’s statement, he and his classmates were waiting at the Lincoln Memorial to board buses back to Kentucky. While waiting there, the Black Israelites hurled obscenities at the Covington kids — calling them ”dusty ass crackers” and “a bunch of incest babies,” among other foul things. Instead of walking away, the Covington boys decided to respond with a round of group cheers — and, mystifyingly, the chaperones let them. It’s hard to tell in the videos what they’re saying, but they clearly get riled up. At one point, a student rips off his shirt as the rest cheer and jump. That was when Phillips, the Omaha elder and a retired Marine, decided to intervene, and marches into the space between the two groups. Somehow — it’s not clear from the footage — Phillips and his small group get fully surrounded by Covington students. This is the key moment, captured in this high-quality footage from the news organization Indian Country Today: If you watch this footage, focusing especially on the way Sandmann interacted with Phillips, you can see why it instantly captured national attention. A bunch of white kids joining in Native chants is problematic to begin with; doing it in a heated moment, with one of the boys up in a Native elder’s face, creates an even more disturbing impression on first viewing. But the thing that took this to the next level, that elevated it to the level of all-consuming national controversy, was the MAGA hats. So much of the horrified reaction on social media focused on the fact that the boys were wearing President Trump’s symbol. For many, the hats themselves are a sign of supporting not just the president but more explicitly his nativist and anti-minority proposals for making America great. To don the hat is to pick a side, not only in favor of the GOP but against minorities more broadly. “A crowd of white teenage boys wearing MAGA hats is, to certain groups of people, inherently threatening,” writes Quinta Jurecic, a sharp commentator at Lawfare.<doc-sep>James Fallows: The confrontation on the Mall By Sunday morning, more videos had surfaced, and I started looking for the clip that showed them chanting support for the wall. I couldn’t find it, but I did find a confrontation more complicated than I’d first believed. I saw a few people yelling terrible insults at the students before Phillips approached, which cast an ugly pall over the scene. I saw Phillips approach the students; I had believed him when he said he’d intended his drumming to defuse the tension, but I also wondered how a group of high-school students could have gleaned that when he didn’t articulate it in a language they might understand. I hated the MAGA hats some of the kids were wearing, their listless tomahawk chops, the way some of their chanting mocked Phillips’s. But I also saw someone with Phillips yelling at a few of the kids that his people had been here first, that Europeans had stolen their land. While I wouldn’t disagree, the scene was at odds with the reports that Phillips and those with him were attempting to calm a tense situation. As I watched the longer videos, I began to see the smirking kid in a different light. It seemed to me that a wave of emotions rolled over his face as Phillips approached him: confusion, fear, resolve. He finally, I thought, settled on an expression designed to mimic respect while signaling to his friends that he had this under control. Observing it, I wondered what different reaction I could have reasonably hoped a high-school junior to have in such an unfamiliar and bewildering situation. I came up empty. Read: Stop trusting viral videos Let’s assume the worst, and agree that the boy was being disrespectful. That still would not justify the death threats he’s been receiving. It would not justify the harassment of the other Covington Catholic student who wasn’t even in Washington, D.C., but who was falsely identified as the smirker by some social-media users. Online vigilantes unearthed his parents’ address and peppered his family with threats all weekend long, even as they were trying to celebrate a family wedding, accusing them of raising a racist and promising to harm their family business. The story is a Rorschach test—tell me how you first reacted, and I can probably tell where you live, who you voted for in 2016, and your general take on a list of other issues—but it shouldn’t be. Take away the video and tell me why millions of people care so much about an obnoxious group of high-school students protesting legalized abortion and a small circle of American Indians protesting centuries of mistreatment who were briefly locked in a tense standoff. Take away Twitter and Facebook and explain why total strangers care so much about people they don’t know in a confrontation they didn’t witness. Why are we all so primed for outrage, and what if the thousands of words and countless hours spent on this had been directed toward something consequential?<doc-sep>The Media Research Center and 34 conservative leaders are demanding an apology from “the liberal media” for their rush to judgment about the videotaped encounter from Jan. 18 between the teens from Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky and Native Americans at the Lincoln Memorial. “The liberal media's promotion of this false narrative incited death threats to these kids and their families. If not for the leftist media’s contempt for pro-lifers and President Trump, this ‘story’ would have never reached the magnitude that it did,” the statement read. “We denounce any media outlet that continues to so dishonestly attack the Covington Catholic kids, and we call on them to apologize for the bullying behavior that continues to result in threats of violence against the kids, their school and their community.” Criticism has been widespread since videos showed the students, some wearing "Make America Great Again" hats favored by many Trump supporters, facing off against an Omaha Nation elder and a cluster of Black Hebrew Israelites. Both school officials and the Native Americans involved have said they've received death threats since the encounter spread online and in the media. But the various sides say they've been misunderstood, and that partial images were taken out of context. The episode has prompted a national discussion on civility in politics, the seeming lack of tolerance for those of differing political beliefs and how both are influencing the nation's youth. The statement called the Covington boys “innocent.” GREG GUTFELD ON THE COVINGTON CATHOLIC STUDENTS “We now know the kids of Covington Catholic were the real victims of the altercation in front of the Lincoln Memorial,” the statement added. “This is bigotry and its own brand of hatred. It is an ongoing display of anti-Trump, anti-life, anti-Catholic and anti-Christian bias. These are blatant bullying tactics designed to make conservatives and people of faith think twice before standing up for their beliefs or even having the audacity to wear a ‘MAGA’ hat in public, let alone smile while doing it.” CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP The bishop overseeing Covington Catholic High School apologized last week for his and the Diocese’s rush to judgment. “We apologize to anyone who has been offended in any way by either of our statements which were made with good will based on the information we had,” wrote The Most Rev. Roger Foys. “We should not have allowed ourselves to be bullied and pressured into making a statement prematurely, and we take full responsibility for it.” The Associated Press contributed to this report.<doc-sep>
Catholic school students in Trump hats. A Native American elder beating a drum. Black Hebrew Israelites hurling bigotry. This chance encounter on the National Mall that winter afternoon blew up into a near perfect storm fed by the kinds of divisive social issues roiling the nation. Liberals and conservatives alike saw what they wanted to see in videos captured on smartphones at the scene. It seemed as if everyone with a Twitter account had an instant opinion as the first video clip, reflecting only a brief portion of the Jan. 18 encounter, raced across the world. In the aftermath, USA TODAY analyzed more than 3 million tweets and thousands of public posts on Facebook, from the moments after the video of Covington Catholic students' encounter with Native American activist Nathan Phillips was posted to President Donald Trump's tweets days later. The volume and velocity provide an illuminating example of how social media and the news media can be exploited to fuel outrage in a deeply divided country, even as the full picture of an event is still forming. All it took was a nudge from a few suspicious accounts on Facebook and Twitter. Partisan fervor mixed with high emotions did the rest. Nearly 24 hours after the first published story, more than 30,000 tweets an hour mentioned Covington. More:What to know about Black Hebrew Israelites Tweet after tweet fed the outrage machine, swiftly condemning the students, who appeared to critics to have surrounded and mocked Phillips at an Indigenous Peoples March in Washington, D.C. Then media coverage began to accelerate. Among the students who were attending a March for Life anti-abortion rally in the capital, Nick Sandmann was singled out for the way he smiled at Phillips as the two stood face to face. Religion scholar Reza Aslan wrote on Twitter: "Have you ever seen a more punchable face than this kid’s?” Finger-wagging from millions of strangers quickly escalated to threats. "Name these kids," comedian Kathy Griffin demanded of her 2 million followers. "I want NAMES." A film producer tweeted – then deleted – a scene from the movie Fargo: "#MAGAkids go screaming, hats first, into the woodchipper." Even after a longer video emerged showing that the confrontation began after a group known as the Black Hebrew Israelites targeted the boys and began yelling insults at them, which Sandmann called "hateful things," no one could agree on what happened. A month later, they still haven't. An investigation conducted on behalf of the Diocese of Covington concluded last week that the students did not instigate the incident and made no "offensive or racist statements," though the report acknowledged some students made a "tomahawk chop" gesture. The investigation determined, as did reporting by some news outlets, that Phillips had approached the students as they exchanged words with the Black Hebrew Israelites, contradicting what he first said when describing the standoff. Phillips said he stepped between the students and the Black Hebrew Israelites to defuse the "volatile" situation. But fuller video of the entire encounter shows Phillips walk past the Black Hebrew Israelites and up to the students. Phillips, a member of the Omaha tribe, responded to the school's report by saying the students were disrespectful: "I ask everybody to remember what we all saw – students performing a culturally appropriated ‘school chant’ and the tomahawk chop just feet away from me on that fateful day." Lance Soto, an indigenous leader from Covington, told the Cincinnati Enquirer: "I hope that our people realize that it’s not up to white people to determine what is racist or derogatory toward Native Americans." Bishop Rev. Roger Foys of the Diocese of Covington argued the reaction from the students on the National Mall was expected and "one might say even laudatory." "The immediate world-wide reaction to the initial video led almost everyone to believe that our students had initiated the incident and the perception of those few minutes of video became reality," Foys said in a letter sent to parents last week. "In truth ... our students were placed in a situation that was at once bizarre and even threatening." The ease with which political divisions can be exploited on social media and are then amplified by the news media is a lesson for our time, says Klon Kitchen, senior research fellow for technology, national security and science policy at the Heritage Foundation. But, Kitchen says, the real problem is us.