"A federal judge in Kentucky Friday threw out a defamation lawsuit filed against The Washington Post by Covington Catholic High School student Nicholas Sandmann..."

"... and his family over the paper's reporting of an incident between the young man and a Native American man this past January in Washington. The lawsuit, which was filed in February, sought $250 million in damages and accused the Post of practicing 'a modern-day form of McCarthyism' by targeting Sandmann and 'using its vast financial resources to enter the bully pulpit by publishing a series of false and defamatory print and online articles ... to smear a young boy who was in its view an acceptable casualty in their war against the president.'... In a 36-page ruling, U.S. District Judge William Bertelsman noted that the Post never mentioned Sandmann by name in its initial coverage of the incident, referring only to groups of 'hat wearing teens.' Bertelsman added that 'the words used contain no reflection upon any particular individual' and thus could not be constituted as defamation. The judge also ruled that the newspaper used language that was 'loose, figurative,' and 'rhetorical hyperbole which is protected by the First Amendment....  Judge Bertelsman said in the ruling that he accepted Sandmann's contention that 'when he was standing motionless in the confrontation with Phillips, his intent was to calm the situation...' But he noted that Phillips asserted that he was being blocked from passing, and Phillips' opinion was reported by the newspaper. 'They may have been erroneous ... but they are opinion protected by The First Amendment,' Bertelsman wrote."

Fox News reports.

We're told there will be an appeal, but I think there is good reason to believe the district judge got it right.

"What The Washington Post put out is barely worth comment. WaPo committed gross journalistic malpractice and cannot undo its deeds..."

"... with an editor's note that purports to correct the record over a month after it led a frenzied mob in trashing a minor's reputation. The Sandmanns would never accept half of a half-measure from an organization that still refuses to own up to its error."

Said Todd McMurtry, an attorney for the Covington Catholic schoolboy Nick Sandmann, quoted in Reason.

I read WaPo's statement as basically a defense of its own coverage, as it took place in real time. It reads:

"Low-level employees were asked to perform duties they described as demeaning, like washing her dishes or other cleaning — a possible violation of Senate ethics rules, according to veterans of the chamber."

I'm afraid I must do a third post on the NYT article "How Amy Klobuchar Treats Her Staff."

I just want to focus on the subject of a U.S. Senator asking low-level staff to do cleaning and the journalism of calling it "a possible violation of Senate ethics rules, according to veterans of the chamber."

Why can't we have better reporting? Who are these unnamed people who make vague statements about ethics rules? Is this good journalistic ethics? What makes someone a "veteran of the chamber"? Could you be more specific?! Did you find out how little cleaning tasks like collecting coffee cups and rinsing them out are handled by other Senators?

It strikes me as unfair to waft "a possible violation of Senate ethics rule" without telling us what the rule is or committing to exposing and casting aspersions on all the Senators who ask staff to clean things.

If low-level staff think this kind of work is demeaning, let's talk about that. If there's no specific rule against assigning them cleaning tasks and there should be, then make a rule. Don't mobilize a fake rule for the purpose of taking down a candidate that you want out of the way.

For a while, I've had a tag "NYT pushes Kamala," where I've been collecting evidence of my hypothesis, and this post gets the tag. Does Kamala Harris have staff who are asked to do things like clear away coffee cups? Please check that for me and apply the same standard of newsworthiness and sneering at her if she does, because I think you're trying to clear away Amy to help Kamala.

And by the way, that's not going to help Kamala. Quit acting like she needs help, and quit pre-destroying her competition. Kamala could fail, and Kamala fans might need Amy.

And, NYT, you'd better make sure none of this coverage is sexist. Why am I hearing about the woman who expects her staff to clean up after her? Is it because the male Senators never do such things or is it because — on some level of consciousness — you expect a woman to do the cleaning?

"The suit alleges that The Post 'targeted and bullied' 16-year-old Nicholas Sandmann in order to embarrass President Trump."

I'm reading about the lawsuit against The Washington Post in The Washington Post.

“In a span of three days in January of this year commencing on January 19, the Post engaged in a modern-day form of McCarthyism by competing with CNN and NBC, among others, to claim leadership of a mainstream and social media mob of bullies which attacked, vilified, and threatened Nicholas Sandmann, an innocent secondary school child,” reads the complaint.

It added, “The Post ignored basic journalist standards because it wanted to advance its well-known and easily documented, biased agenda against President Donald J. Trump by impugning individuals perceived to be supporters of the President.”

The suit was filed by Sandmann’s parents, Ted and Julie, on Nicholas’s behalf in U.S. District Court in Covington. It seeks $250 million because Amazon chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos paid that amount for the newspaper when he bought it in 2013....

An interesting basis for the claim of damages. When I just saw the headlines I guessed that $250 million was the estimated value of the life Sandmann would have had if the media hadn't ruined his reputation.

The Sandmanns’ lead attorney is L. Lin Wood, who represented Richard Jewell, the security guard falsely accused in the bombing of Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta in 1996. He also represented John and Patsy Ramsey in pursuing defamation claims against media outlets in connection with reports on the death of their young daughter, JonBenet....

Did Richard Jewell win his lawsuits? According to Wikipedia, it looks like there were 5 lawsuits, 4 of which were settled (with the amount of the settlement only known for the one against NBC ($500,000)). The Atlanta-Journal Constitution fought and won — with the court saying, "because the articles in their entirety were substantially true at the time they were published—even though the investigators' suspicions were ultimately deemed unfounded—they cannot form the basis of a defamation action."

Back to the new WaPo article. Here's an interesting juxtaposition of paragraphs:

The Sandmanns’ suit asserts that the newspaper “bullied” Sandmann in its reporting “because he was the white, Catholic student wearing a red ‘Make America Great Again’ souvenir cap.”

It calls Phillips “a phony war hero [who] was too intimidated by the unruly Hebrew Israelites to approach them, the true troublemakers, and instead chose to focus on a group of innocent children.”

I read between the lines: If we're going to be sensitive about "bullying," this lawsuit is bullying the Native American man ("phony war hero") and the black men ("unruly"). WaPo's argument might be that there are a lot of colorful characterizations that get expressed, but they're not really falsehoods in the sense that ought to matter. That is, it shouldn't be so hard to report the news with vivid prose, and courts should refrain from delving into the motivations of the various speakers and judging who's got a "bullying" mentality. I'm not choosing sides at the moment, just trying to picture how the lawsuit might play out.

The WaPo article ends with the assertion that "A plaintiff must show that a defendant acted with 'reckless disregard' to sustain a defamation action." I don't think that's right. Sandmann was a private citizen. You on have to show "reckless disregard" ("actual malice") when you're suing a public figure. That's the First Amendment standard dating back to New York Times v. Sullivan.

Interestingly enough, it was just yesterday that Clarence Thomas wrote an opinion (concurring in the denial of certiorari) arguing that the U.S. Supreme Court ought to reconsider New York Times v. Sullivan. This was a defamation case brought against Bill Cosby by a woman who accused him of rape. The court below had decided that the woman, Kathrine McKee, was a "limited person public figure" who would have to show that Cosby had "reckless disregard" for the truth when he said defamatory things about her. She "thrust" herself into the public debate by talking about Cosby.

McKee asks us to review her classification as a limited-purpose public figure. I agree with the Court’s decision not to take up that factbound question. I write to explain why, in an appropriate case, we should reconsider the precedents that require courts to ask it in the first place.

Thomas wants to take up the entire question of the higher standard rather than to tinker with the scope of what it takes to trigger the standard, what it means to be a "public figure."

We should not continue to reflexively apply this policy-driven approach to the Constitution. Instead, we should carefully examine the original meaning of the First and Fourteenth Amendments. If the Constitution does not require public figures to satisfy an actual-malice standard in state-law defamation suits, then neither should we.

Well, that's a big deal! But it's only Clarence Thomas. And yet, who knows? President Trump, who's been appointing Justices lately, has said he wants it to be easy to sue for defamation. Maybe things are moving in that direction.

But in any case, Nick Sandmann wasn't a public figure when the media jumped on him and mauled him!

"Investigation finds no evidence of ‘racist or offensive statements’ by Covington Catholic students during incident on Mall that went viral."

WaPo reports.

The report, prepared by Greater Cincinnati Investigation, Inc. and dated Feb. 11, employed four licensed investigators for approximately 240 hours to take statements from students and chaperones, as well as to interview third-party witnesses and review about 50 hours of video....

The investigators said they found no evidence that the students responded in an offensive manner to the Black Hebrew Israelites or that they chanted “Build the Wall.” After asking chaperones, they performed a school cheer, according to the report, to drown out the Black Hebrew Israelites.

Other key findings include testimony that the students felt “confused” by Phillips’s approach. Investigators said they found no evidence of “racist or offensive statements by students to Mr. Phillips,” though some performed a “tomahawk chop.”

According to the report, one of the chaperones told students that if “they engaged in a verbal exchange with the Black Hebrew Israelites, they would receive detention when returning to school.”...

The top-rated comment at WaPo is: "I trust this information because the truth always comes forth when the Catholic Church investigates itself."

"Viewers cannot determine the intention of an artist’s work. Art also exposes society’s blind spots. Blackface is only a glimpse of a larger issue."

"The larger issue is the lack of representation of marginalized people and their voices in Phoenix.... At the downtown Phoenix restaurant, my concern that the photograph of men in blackface was a threat to me and my face and voice were ignored. A business’ photograph of men with blackened faces culturally says to me, 'Whites Only.' It says people like me are not welcome. The operators of that downtown restaurant can choose to take the photograph down, leave it up or create a title card with an intention statement. No matter their decision, I think the photograph should be taken down — sacrificing one image for the greater good."

Writes Rashaad Thomas — "a husband, father, a veteran of the U.S. Air Force, poet and essayist" — in "Phoenix restaurant says this is a photo of coal miners. But I see offensive blackface."

Here's the photo that troubled Thomas so much that he doubled down even after he learned he was mistaken in not understanding that these are human beings whose faces were darkened not by their own deliberate imitation of black people but by terribly hard physical labor:



Thomas is saying the picture made him feel so bad that he wants the restaurant to proactively spare him from his own misperception. He's not taking this opportunity to reflect on his own good fortune — he is able to be a poet and an essayist — in comparison to the grinding work of coal miners. And I can see that he's getting mocked for calling attention to what is, after all, his mistake.

But if it were my restaurant, I wouldn't put up a photograph that was subject to this misperception. I like to think that if I were considering decorating my restaurant wall with this photograph, I would at least notice that some people might think this is white men in blackface and I would pick something else. Certainly, if I'd put it up and a customer confronted me with this misperception I would feel compassionate and very eager to let him know not just what the picture really was but also that I never meant for anyone to imagine that it was blackface. And, really, I would hold myself to a higher standard. Quite aside from blackface, I would ask myself whether my comfortable establishment should trade on the aura of poor coalminers. It's "poverty porn."

From the Wikipedia article, "Poverty porn":

Poverty porn... has been defined as "any type of media, be it written, photographed or filmed, which exploits the poor's condition in order to generate the necessary sympathy for selling newspapers or increasing charitable donations or support for a given cause." It is also a term of criticism applied to films which objectify people in poverty for the sake of entertaining a privileged audience.... Poverty porn is used in media through visually miserable images, in order to trigger some sort of emotion amongst its audience....

Now, of course, I see that the men are smiling and enjoying the alcohol and camaraderie. That's what makes it seem like a good idea for a restaurant photograph. It says, no matter how hard your day, and especially if you've had a very hard day, it's great to spend some time hanging out over drinks.

But messages can be misheard. You could be standing on the street one day, smiling, and find out half the world reads your face as an asshole racist smirk.

"It just beggars belief that the same liberals who fret about 'micro-aggressions' for 20-somethings were able to see 16-year-olds absorbing the worst racist garbage from religious bigots..."

"… and then express the desire to punch the kids in the face. How did this grotesque inversion of the truth become the central narrative for what seemed to be the entire class of elite journalists on Twitter? That’s the somewhat terrifying question. Ruth Graham on Slate saw a 16-year-old she’d seen on a tape for a couple of minutes and immediately knew that he was indistinguishable from the 'white young men crowding around a single black man at a lunch counter sit-in in Virginia in the 1960s' or other white 'high school boys flashing Nazi salutes.' Even after the full context was clear, Graham refused to apologize to the kid, or retract her condemnation.... Across most of the national media, led by the New York Times and the Washington Post, the narrative had been set. 'I’m willing to bet that fifty years from now, a defining image of this political era will be that smug white MAGA teen disrespecting a Native elder and veteran. It just captures so much,' Jessica Valenti tweeted. 'And let’s please not forget that this group of teens … were there for the March for Life: There is an inextricable link between control over women’s bodies, white supremacy & young white male entitlement.' This is the orthodoxy of elite media, and it is increasingly the job of journalists to fit the facts to the narrative and to avoid any facts that undermine it.... Liberal democracy is being dismantled before our eyes — by all of us."

From "The Abyss of Hate Versus Hate" by Andrew Sullivan (New York Magazine).

"As soon as the new view of Sandmann emerged, I said (ask Meade), people need to resist trashing Phillips."

"Both Phillips and Sandmann were ordinary people living private lives in obscurity. They each did something that got them into the spotlight, but neither really asked or was at all prepared to be inspected and judged by millions. We should be charitable toward both of them. Ideally, they would never have been a news story at all. It is the media — mainstream and social — that deserve criticism."

I'm just front-paging something I wrote in "The Green Rat Café."

This made me want to read "The Principle of Charity" (Wikipedia):

In philosophy and rhetoric, the principle of charity or charitable interpretation requires interpreting a speaker's statements in the most rational way possible and, in the case of any argument, considering its best, strongest possible interpretation....

[Donald] Davidson sometimes referred to it as the principle of rational accommodation. He summarized it: We make maximum sense of the words and thoughts of others when we interpret in a way that optimises agreement. The principle may be invoked to make sense of a speaker's utterances when one is unsure of their meaning...

[There are] at least four versions of the principle of charity...

1. The other uses words in the ordinary way;
2. The other makes true statements;
3. The other makes valid arguments;
4. The other says something interesting.

A related principle is the principle of humanity, which states that we must assume that another speaker's beliefs and desires are connected to each other and to reality in some way, and attribute to him or her "the propositional attitudes one supposes one would have oneself in those circumstances"...

I'm making a tag "the principle of charity/humanity," because I think it might help me (and you!) remember to do something I very much believe in doing. You might say it's too similar to calling for civility (which I'm known for calling "civility bullshit"), but it's not the same thing. It's not about tone. It's about interpretation and understanding.

"At the time of Jesus... striking with the back of the hand a person, who was deemed to be of a lower socioeconomic class, was used as a means to assert authority and dominance."

"If the persecuted person 'turned the other cheek,' the discipliner was faced with a dilemma: The left hand was used for unclean purposes, so a back-hand strike on the opposite cheek would not be performed. An alternative would be a slap with the open hand as a challenge or to punch the person, but this was seen as a statement of equality. Thus, by turning the other cheek, the persecuted was demanding equality. [Walter Wink, in Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination] continues with an interpretation of handing over one's cloak in addition to one's tunic. The debtor has given the shirt off his back, a situation forbidden by Hebrew law as stated in Deuteronomy (24:10–13). By giving the lender the cloak as well, the debtor was reduced to nakedness. Wink notes, that public nudity was viewed as bringing shame on the viewer, and not just the naked, as seen in Noah's case (Genesis 9:20–23). Wink interprets the succeeding verse from the Sermon on the Mount as a method for making the oppressor break the law. The commonly invoked Roman law of Angaria allowed the Roman authorities to demand that inhabitants of occupied territories carry messages and equipment the distance of one mile post, but prohibited forcing an individual to go further than a single mile, at the risk of suffering disciplinary actions. In this example, the nonviolent interpretation sees Jesus as placing criticism on an unjust and hated Roman law, as well as clarifying the teaching to extend beyond Jewish law."

From the Wikipedia article "Turning the other cheek," which I'm reading this morning after seeing a comment from Char Char Binks said...in last night's Sly Rat Café:

What was Nick Sandmann supposed to do when approached by the snuggle-toothed Elder? Run away? Give him money? Offer to suck his dick? Seriously, we need to know in case it happens again.

My first-pass answer, written over there in the comments, was:

As Sandmann himself said to Savannah Guthrie, it would have been better to turn and walk away.

Then I wanted to read about turning the other cheek. I was surprised by Wink's interpretations, and I wonder if one's whole life and manner of thinking is affected by having a name that denotes a facial expression.

"And if they had been Black...."

Anyone who watches those video and praises those kids for poise and restraint is full of crap.

They were acting like thugs.

And if they had been Black, “thug” is the only word that would’ve been used and none of them would be on the TODAY show.

This country is diseased.

— Imani Gandy (@AngryBlackLady) January 23, 2019

I'm putting this up to show you that it's being said. I don't agree with the perception — I'm certain I would not say "thug," so I know it's not the "only word" — but I understand that many people have this perception and are choosing to encourage it in others, and I find it terribly sad.

The Covington Catholic schoolboy's interview with NBC.

Nick Sandmann looks very different — much younger — in this video:



Via Real Clear Politics:

SAVANNAH GUTHRIE, NBC 'TODAY' HOST: Do you feel that you owe anybody an apology? Do you see your own faults in any way?

NICK SANDMANN, COVINGTON CATHOLIC STUDENT: As far as standing there, I had every right to do so. My position is that I was not disrespectful to Mr. Phillips. I respect him. I'd like to talk to him. I mean, in hindsight I wished we could have walked away and avoided the whole thing.

"Are you really trying to write one of your pretend-evenhanded, both-sides-do-it, 'let’s all get together and learn something' columns about this incident?'"

Said Ross Douthat's conscience, as told by Ross Douthat in "The Covington Scissor/Welcome to another controversy algorithmically designed to tear America apart."

The term "scissor" refers to "a statement, an idea or a scenario that’s somehow perfectly calibrated to tear people apart — not just by generating disagreement, but by generating total incredulity that somebody could possibly disagree with your interpretation of the controversy, followed by escalating fury and paranoia and polarization, until the debate seems like a completely existential, win-or-perish fight."

Got that? The idea comes from a short story that identified a few "scissors":

... the “ground zero mosque,” the N.F.L. and the national anthem, the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings... that baker who wouldn’t make a cake for a gay wedding....

We used to just say "wedge issues," but I guess "scissors" connotes greater precision on the part of the cutter and greater flimsiness on the part of the people getting divided.

Douthat has conversation with his conscience. Here's how it ends (with the "conscience" (?) in italics):

I still don’t know what really happened with Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford, and neither do you.

Cuck.

O.K., I think we’re done here.

Done? We’re just getting started. This was only the 40th worst Scissor, you said it yourself. Wait till we get to No. 20, or No. 5. You don’t agree with me yet, but you’ll get there. You’ll get there.

I don’t think so. I’m not as vulnerable as you think.

Oh, are you planning to delete your Twitter account?

What? No. I mean, I need it for my job.

The top-voted comment — by a lot — isn't about Douthat's struggle against divisiveness. It's the left side's digging in:

Remind me where in the Bible does Jesus condone mocking an elderly man — with offensive tomahawk gestures, wearing smug smirks and provocative political hats? Those weren't inclusive, friendly cheers, they were jeers. Seems to me the only person following the example of Jesus was Mr. Phillips, trying to diffuse the situation. If there were chaperones accompanying the boys, they stood back and let it happen. The children of Covington Catholic are not pious innocents in this incident, though the press release carefully crafted by a PR firm hired by the parents would have you believe otherwise — ridiculous and even more offensive, privileged whitewashing.

"If you smile at me, I will understand/'Cause that is something everybody everywhere does in the same language...."

There's an old hippie lyric about understanding that — ironically — can't be understood anymore.



CORRECTION: I had the lyric in the post title miswritten — now corrected — because I'd copied and pasted it from this old post:

"[I]n countries like Germany, Switzerland, China, and Malaysia, smiling faces were rated as significantly more intelligent than non-smiling people."

"But in Japan, India, Iran, South Korea, and... Russia, the smiling faces were considered significantly less intelligent.... In countries such as India, Argentina, and the Maldives, meanwhile, smiling was associated with dishonesty...."

At the link — to "Why Some Cultures Frown on Smiling/Finally, an explanation for Bitchy Resting Face Nation" in The Atlantic — there are some charts arraying the countries from one extreme to the other.

I was explaining this out loud to Meade, and he sang: "If you smile at me, I will understand/'Cause that is something everybody everywhere except India does in the same language...."

Erstwhile idiot becomes genius.

I just ran across this cartoon from the March 19, 1949 issue of The New Yorker:



That caption is: "Wouldn't you think they'd have a place for withdrawals, too?"

At the time, she was laughed at as a fool, but from our point of view, she's envisioning the ATM machine. Genius!

Why am I reading the March 19, 1949 issue of The New Yorker?, you ask.

I wanted to see the old J.D. Salinger story "The Laughing Man," because I was talking about it in the comments to yesterday's post, "With a gun against my belly, I always smile." That post was about the criticism of the Covington Catholic schoolboy's smile, which was not a natural smile, but a forced smile, and I had got to thinking about our sensitivity to smiles that don't arise out of relaxed happiness.

That moved the commenter Nonapod to say, "One of the more tragic smiles is from the silent film 'The Man Who Laughs'" and to link to this:



I said:

Thanks, Nonapod. I had never seen that before. Fantastically melodramatic and completely effective.

It made me think of the J.D. Salinger story "The Laughing Man," and I see from Wikipedia:

"The Laughing Man" is a short story by J. D. Salinger, published originally in The New Yorker on March 19, 1949; and also in Salinger’s short story collection Nine Stories. It largely takes the structure of a story within a story and is thematically occupied with the relationship between narrative and narrator, and the end of youth. The story is inspired by the Victor Hugo novel of the same name: The Man Who Laughs (L'homme qui rit)."

From Salinger's story (click to enlarge and clarify):

 

In Hugo's story...

In late 17th-century England, a homeless boy named Gwynplaine rescues an infant girl during a snowstorm, her mother having frozen to death whilst feeding her. They meet an itinerant carnival vendor who calls himself Ursus, and his pet wolf, Homo. Gwynplaine's mouth has been mutilated into a perpetual grin; Ursus is initially horrified, then moved to pity, and he takes them in. Fifteen years later, Gwynplaine has grown into a strong young man, attractive except for his distorted visage. The girl, now named Dea, is blind, and has grown into a beautiful and innocent young woman. By touching his face, Dea concludes that Gwynplaine is perpetually happy. They fall in love. Ursus and his surrogate children earn a meagre living in the fairs of southern England. Gwynplaine keeps the lower half of his face concealed. In each town, Gwynplaine gives a stage performance in which the crowds are provoked to laughter when Gwynplaine reveals his grotesque face....

Since I'm talking about the Catholic schoolboy's face again and looking into literature, I wanted to link to my son John's blog post, "Why are adults freaking out about a smiling kid?" which begins:

In the novel 1984, George Orwell wrote about a dystopian future where “to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for instance) was itself a punishable offense.” It was called a "facecrime."

From "1984":

It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself—anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime, it was called. The girl had turned her back on him again.

Podcaster Joe Rogan and NYT writer Bari Weiss talk about the Covington Catholic school boys.

Rogan wonders how "a hat with white letters" has become "so repulsive to half the country." His guest — Bari Weiss (a NYT columnist) — says "some people see it as the equivalent of a white hood." Rogan counters: "Kanye wears it."

Weiss: "It was this perfect encapsulation of our outrage culture." The little clip was "like a Rorschach test." On her first look, she saw the boys as bullying. But "The challenge of what it means as a journalist is to not see people as signifiers, as stand-ins, based on their identity." Weiss finds it "horrifying" that blue-check-mark Twitter adults were saying "This is the face of white patriarchy — the 16-year-old kid.... Reza Aslan said have you ever seen a more punchable face... Kathy Griffin was saying I need names, shame him, dox him. How do these people not see the implications of that?... The fact that adults who should know better are fomenting this and don't see how thin... the veneer of civilization is — like they're taking a pickax to it."

Rogan agrees with all that. He decries the "lack of nuance" and "people taking one side versus the other and sticking with it" and "not confronting their own personal biases" and "looking at these things through the eyes of This is the enemy/I'm on the good side/They're on the bad side/Let's get them."

Rogan shifts to the subject of his childhood. His parents were hippies and he grew up "living in the middle of the hippie world." And he thought of people on the left as "well-read, kind, compassionate people." And now, it seems to him — just in the last few years — "people on the left are calling for violence." He's missing something here, but it's nice to know that his parents were kind, and he's an interesting example of a person whose initial affiliation is with the left, so that he's inclined to think what the people on the left think of themselves, that they are the good people. So now he finds it "very confusing."

I had to pause to look up how old he is. He's 51. He's working on a theory that social media is making the difference, causing people to say "punch Nazis," etc., when they would not say that in person. Social media is having an effect, but I don't see why Rogan is ignoring/forgetting the left-wing violence that went on before Twitter arrived in our world. The hippie aura is powerful.

Rogan and Weiss talk about how the word "Nazi" has been expanded so that it covers a 16-year-old in a MAGA hat and irrationally justifies violence against him. Weiss says: "That's what a lot of people in very high positions of power in this country — at least in the culture — actually believe, and they don't understand the implications of hollowing out words like that." She works at The New York Times. "I know this personally, because I'm called alt-right, I'm called an apologist for rape culture, I've been called everything. I'm a centrist. I'm a Jewish, center-left-on-most-things-person who lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and is super-socially-liberal on pretty much any issue you want to choose. If I'm alt-right, what words do we have left for people who actually are that?" And if you use "Nazi" for a kid in a MAGA hat, what word is there for a hard-core white nationalist?

Rogan says he gets called "alt-right adjacent," even though he goes left on everything ("except guns").

Weiss says that when she first saw the still of the smiling boy, she had a visceral reaction, calling up memories of her schoolgirl days when teenage boys said cruel things to her, but she knows, and other adults ought to know, that you don't stop there. And if you're calling yourself a journalist, "your job is to figure out the facts of the case, not to make this into a kind of identitarian morality play." But that's what so many journalists did, and when more evidence came out, they only dug in.

"Twitter suspends account behind video of Native American’s standoff with teens."

The NYT Post reports.

The account, with the username @2020fight, was set up in December 2016 and supposedly belonged to a California schoolteacher named Talia — but the actual owner was by a blogger based in Brazil...

“This MAGA loser gleefully bothering a Native American protester at the Indigenous Peoples March,” read a caption with the video....

The official basis for the suspension isn't that the caption told us to view a video in a way people were stupid to go along with. It's that "misleading account information is a violation of the Twitter Rules." So Twitter is not purporting to take control of deceptive narratives imposed on video that trick people into thinking that they're seeing something directly when they're being slipped an interpretation. We're still challenged to wise up and know propaganda when we see it. Twitter can't, won't, and shouldn't help us with that.

"With a gun against my belly, I always smile."

Linked by Meade in the comments to "An affected or simpering smile; a silly, conceited, smiling look," which is a post about the criticism of the smile — the "smirk" — on the face of the Covington Catholic schoolboy Nick Sandmann.

Sandmann is smiling, but it's not a natural, happy smile, because — as he wrote in his statement — he was anxious and trying to express that he "was not going to become angry, intimidated or be provoked into a larger confrontation." So that's just about exactly the the position of Gary Cooper's interlocutor. Cooper ("The Virginian") says, "If you want to call me that, smile." And Walter Huston ("Trampas") smiles non-naturally and anxiously, as he says, "With a gun against my belly, I always smile."

When I think of a person who is smiling when he is not in a condition of relaxed happiness, I think of the beautiful Charlie Chaplin song "Smile" — sung with unearthly warmth by Nat King Cole:

Smile, though your heart is aching
Smile, even though it's breaking
When there are clouds in the sky
You'll get by...

ADDED: I think Bob Dylan was influenced by "The Virginian" when he wrote "The Ballad Of Frankie Lee And Judas Priest":

“Eternity?” said Frankie Lee
With a voice as cold as ice
“That’s right,” said Judas Priest, “Eternity
Though you might call it ‘Paradise’”
“I don’t call it anything”
Said Frankie Lee with a smile
“All right,” said Judas Priest
“I’ll see you after a while”

Isn't it interesting that the figure at the center of mass delusion is named Sandmann?

Wikipedia tells us:

The Sandman is a mythical character in Western and Northern European folklore who puts people to sleep and brings good dreams by sprinkling magical sand onto the eyes of people while they sleep at night, i.e. rheum....

Hans Christian Andersen's 1841 folk tale Ole Lukøje introduced the Sandman, named Ole Lukøje....

There is nobody in the world who knows so many stories as Ole-Luk-Oie, or who can relate them so nicely. In the evening, while the children are seated at the table or in their little chairs, he comes up the stairs very softly, for he walks in his socks, then he opens the doors without the slightest noise, and throws a small quantity of very fine dust in their eyes, just enough to prevent them from keeping them open, and so they do not see him. Then he creeps behind them, and blows softly upon their necks, till their heads begin to droop. But Ole-Luk-Oie does not wish to hurt them, for he is very fond of children, and only wants them to be quiet that he may relate to them pretty stories, and they never are quiet until they are in bed and asleep. As soon as they are asleep, Ole-Luk-Oie seats himself upon the bed. He is nicely dressed; his coat is made of silken fabric; it is impossible to say of what color, for it changes from green to red, and from red to blue as he turns from side to side. Under each arm he carries an umbrella; one of them, with pictures on the inside, he spreads over the good children, and then they dream the most beautiful stories the whole night. But the other umbrella has no pictures, and this he holds over the naughty children so that they sleep heavily, and wake in the morning without having dreams at all.

ADDED: Yes, yes, I know, and I knew when I wrote the post.... A hundred people are nudging me to include the candy-colored clown (which by the way sounds like another sobriquet for Trump):

"An affected or simpering smile; a silly, conceited, smiling look."

That's the definition of "smirk" in the (unlinkable) OED. I looked up the word because it was used over and over to refer to the smile on the face of the Covington Catholic schoolboy the media singled out to destroy over the weekend.

When is a smile a "smirk"? The dictionary says, when it's affected or simpering or silly and conceited looking.

But I'd like a deeper psychological explanation of what is supposed to be in the mind of the smirker and how observers of smiles decide they have a window into that mind. My hypothesis is: People see what they want to see. That means: When people tell you what they think they see about the inside of another person's head, they are opening a window for us to peer into their head.

And, of course, that means that if we talk about what we think we see in the mind of the observer of another person, we too reveal ourselves. We express misunderstandings and expose ourselves to being misunderstood. That's human life. I think it's quite wonderful, but it can be dangerous and painful.

Here are some the OED's examples of the use of "smirk":

?1570 T. Ingelend Disobedient Child sig. D.ivv Howe many smyrkes, and dulsome kysses?
1601 B. Jonson Fountaine of Selfe-love Palinodia sig. Mv From Spanish shrugs, French faces, Smirks, Irps, and all affected Humors.
1675 W. Wycherley Country-wife iv. 56 He has the Canonical smirk, and the filthy, clammy palm of a Chaplain.
1718 Lady M. W. Montagu Let. Sept. (1965) I. 439 A jolly face and a stupid smirk in his countenance.

My son John had a couple tweets yesterday pushing back against Slate:

How is it OK to make a national news story out of not liking someone's smile? Mocking someone's smile is as bad as telling someone they have to smile more, and we're all supposed to think the latter is blatantly offensive, right?

— John Althouse Cohen (@jaltcoh) January 21, 2019

Slate's Facebook post of this article calls the kid's facial expression "the smirk of evil." I don't know how adults can sleep at night after publicly trashing a kid and calling him "evil."

— John Althouse Cohen (@jaltcoh) January 21, 2019

So I clicked through to the Slate article, "The MAGA Teenager Who Harassed a Native American Veteran Is Still Unnamed, but We’ve Seen His Face Before." This is by Ruth Graham, from January 19th and with no update, and it's really creepy. Here are the last 2 paragraphs, which tell us so much about what's inside Ruth Graham's head:

But I think the real reason the clip has spread is simpler: It’s the kid’s face. The face of self-satisfaction and certitude, of edginess expressed as cruelty. The face remains almost completely still as his peers hoot in awed delight at his bravado. The face is both punchable and untouchable. Many observers recognized it right away.

The face is in this photo of a clutch of white young men crowding around a single black man at a lunch counter sit-in in Virginia in the 1960s, and in many other images of jeering white men from that era. The face is the rows of Wisconsin high school boys flashing Nazi salutes in a prom picture last year. The face is Brett Kavanaugh—then a student at an all-boys Catholic prep school—“drunkenly laughing” as he allegedly held down Christine Blasey Ford. Anyone who knew the popular white boys in high school recognized it: the confident gaze, the eyes twinkling with menace, the smirk. The face of a boy who is not as smart as he thinks he is, but is exactly as powerful. The face that sneers, “What? I’m just standing here,” if you flinch or cry or lash out. The face knows that no matter how you react, it wins.

"It wins." It. There is no person anymore. No "he," just an "it." There is no human, just an empty mask, as Ruth Graham sees it.

Looking into her mind, I think — and I show myself in saying this — that she believes she is and loves herself as a person of great empathy for human beings, and she is simply oblivious to the humanity of the teenager who she fears is harassing and mocking a person who looks to her like the kind of person she thinks of as Victim. She doesn't realize that she, a good person, could engage in victimizing, and when she looks in the mirror and smiles at herself, the expression on her face is never a "smirk."

"watch whiteness work."

watch whiteness work. https://t.co/wjcVGm4Akq

— deray (@deray) January 21, 2019

(DeRay Mckesson is a Black Lives Matter activist — Wikipedia.)

ADDED: Another we're-not-sorry angle:

“Assertions to the contrary are simply false.”

We’re to believe a 16-year-old wrote this statement. Huh. https://t.co/rKPw0C38VZ

— John Aravosis 🇺🇸 (@aravosis) January 21, 2019

I certainly hope the kid is not all alone. He should have adult counseling! I thought the statement sounded genuine — like a teenager telling a straight story — but I assumed that meant he had a good lawyer. And he should have a good lawyer.

AND: Here's a third approach to digging in:

Cannot be stared enough: Racist boys were there for a rally calling for pregnancy to be used as a weapon to subjugate women. They were wearing hats celebrating a man who bragged about assaulting women.

Their claims not to be bigots are pre-emptively nonsense.

— Amanda Marcotte (@AmandaMarcotte) January 21, 2019