After scolds saw the video of a smirking high school boy wearing a Make America Great Again cap staring down a Native American man banging a ceremonial drum on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, they unleashed holy fury on the 11th-grader and his Kentucky high school. How dare a gang of racist, entitled brats encircle and mock a peaceful man who'd done nothing wrong?
The fury was misplaced. As additional videos revealed, last Friday's standoff between hat-wearing Nick Sandmann and drum-beating Nathan Phillips was not what it initially appeared. The boys were mostly guilty of being immature.
Now, Sandmann and his classmates from Covington Catholic have been invited to the White House to meet the man who wears the original MAGA hat. They've gone from villains to heroes, when in fact they were just a bunch of teenagers caught in a crossfire of accusations.
What happened: The rowdy students, in D.C. for the annual pro-life march, caught unprovoked hell from a quartet of Black Israelites--they're troublemakers in New York City, too--who called them "crackers" and "racists" and "faggots." The boys gave it back with school chants and other kinds of brainless puffery.
Into this stupidness strolled Phillips and his drum, walking up to Sandmann.
The kids' hooting and hollering continued. In the loud throng, a few young jerks made tomahawk motions. Other offensive words have been reported but can't be clearly heard on video. Sandmann, face to face with Phillips, says he smiled to try to defuse a tense situation.
Whoever chaperoned the kids should've told them to cool it. They should learn about respect and de-escalation.
But nothing they did warrants death threats. Or a social media mob. Or a hug from a president who never saw a culture-war wound he couldn't fill with salt.
Editorial on 01/24/2019