Society's Child
In other words, the video could have been scripted by a gender-studies professor from Middlebury, staged by the director of Gillette's viral ad on toxic masculinity, and given an official seal of approval from the American Psychological Association, the august organization whose recently published guidelines elaborating on the evils of "traditional codes of masculinity" made waves a few weeks ago. There it was: toxic (white) masculinity, for all to see and deplore.
"We were surprised and upset to see the inflammatory and offensive rhetoric used on Erik Abriss' Twitter account this weekend. He worked with the company in our post-production department and never as a writer," the company said in a statement to TheWrap on Monday.
"While we appreciated his work, it is clear that he is no longer aligned with our company's core values of respect and tolerance. Therefore, as of January 21, 2019, we have severed ties with Abriss."
Passions ran high on social media Saturday after video emerged of several students from Covington, many of whom were wearing "Make America Great Again" hats, surrounding a Native American elder who was in Washington, D.C. for the Indigenous Peoples' March. Many viewers believed the teens were attempting to taunt the elder, Nathan Phillips.
"This conduct need not have intent to harm; if severe enough, it does not have to consist of repeated incidents; and it need not be directed against a specific individual/group of Individuals," the school's policy states.
As The College Fix notes, the university has received a "Red Light" rating from the pro-free-speech group Foundation for Individual Rights in Education - a rating reserved for schools that have "at least one policy that both clearly and substantially restricts freedom of speech." FIRE's senior program officer Laura Beltz told The Fix that, although she did not know of any students who had recently been disciplined under the policy, that doesn't mean that the existence of such a restrictive policy was harmless.
"It's important to remember that, even when not enforced, policies that restrict constitutionally protected expression have an impermissible chilling effect on speech," Beltz told The Fix. "To use two policies at Southeastern Louisiana as an example, students may be discouraged from expressing themselves if they read a policy that requires registration of expressive activities a full seven days in advance, or one that calls things like 'offensive jokes' punishable harassment."
Four years ago, the school had continued a tradition where they had "white out," "black out," and "blue out" sporting events. The media has ignored the other colors and focused on photos they found of a "black out" game.
Beginning last year, the school banned face paint for the games. Additionally, this has nothing to do with the children or the families - it was the school.
Comment: There are many who realized they got duped by the initial fake news coverage of this event and promptly apologized once they understood the fuller picture. However, there are always those who are so consumed by ideology that they cannot and will not adjust their perceptions once new information becomes available. Their cognitive disability becomes all the more apparent in situations like this, and this is good. Rational people are better able to spot them and see how such distorted thoughts are not only without merit or value, but also in how such distortions are actually harmful.
A huge lesson for many who saw they were misled was in seeing how context matters. Some obviously have a hard time with this lesson as can be seen in those who insist on staying off the rails.
It came after a number of security alerts in the city yesterday. Although a number of hijackings took place, police declared late last night that the alerts were "hoaxes".
As part of its investigation into the explosion which the PSNI says was carried out by a group called "the New IRA", two 21-year-olds, a 42-year-old and a 34-year old were all arrested in the past few days. They've since been released without charge.
There were no injuries in the car bomb on Saturday night, and the attack has been roundly condemned in Ireland, Northern Ireland and Britain.
The PSNI responded to three security incidents in Derry yesterday that involved two vehicle hijackings and another incident where a van was reported abandoned outside a girls' secondary school.
The account claimed to belong to a California schoolteacher. Its profile photo was not of a schoolteacher, but of a blogger based in Brazil, CNN Business found. Twitter suspended the account soon after CNN Business asked about it.
The account, with the username @2020fight, was set up in December 2016 and appeared to be the tweets of a woman named Talia living in California. "Teacher & Advocate. Fighting for 2020," its Twitter bio read. Since the beginning of this year, the account had tweeted on average 130 times a day and had more than 40,000 followers.
Late on Friday, the account posted a minute-long video showing the now-iconic confrontation between a Native American elder and the high school students, with the caption, "This MAGA loser gleefully bothering a Native American protester at the Indigenous Peoples March."
Based on an out-of-context "staredown" between student Nick Sandmann and Phillips, high-profile liberals across Twitter went on a blitzkrieg of fake news over the weekend - falsely claiming that the Covington High School group harassed Phillips while chanting "build the wall" - which never happened.
The 36-year-old driver knocked down a policeman who tried to stop him, before plowing his car into a barrier before the gate, the Polish Press Agency reported.
A police spokesman said that the man will be tested for drug and alcohol consumption, and did not "react to anything" when police arrested him.
The man's motives remain unknown. The driver most likely lost control of his vehicle after the police officer initially tried to stop him, Polish news site Rzeczpospolita reported.
Situated in Warsaw's historic center, the 200-year-old presidential palace is the place of work and residence for Andrzej Duda, the Polish president. Duda was not in the building at the time of the crash, as he departed for the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Monday.
"The palace is safe and well guarded," Duda said through his press secretary. "Officers are doing their job well."
"I can confirm that at the time of his detention, Whelan had some documents containing state secrets, but I cannot go into details," Vladimir Zherebenkov, who represents Whelan, told reports on Tuesday.
Zherebenkov, however, suggested that his client may have been unaware that he was in possession of the secrets. "How he got it, what he was supposed to do with it, and whether Whelan knew that he had secret information is unknown," he said.
The former US Marine was seeking information on Russia of an "open" and "cultural" kind, the lawyer said, suggesting that his efforts were inspired only by his keen interest in Russian heritage.
This time it was BuzzFeed's Jason Leopold, "a reporter with a checkered past" (i.e., a history of inventing his sources) who broke the "bombshell" Russiagate story that turned out to be a bunch of horseshit. Leopold, and his colleague Anthony Cormier, reported that Trump had directed his attorney, Michael Cohen, to lie to Congress about plans to construct a Trump Tower in Moscow, thus suborning perjury and obstructing justice. Their sources for this "bombshell" story were allegedly "two federal law enforcement officials involved in an investigation of the matter."
Comment: It has by now become obvious to many in the US that they are being fed a diet rich in lies and short on truth. More and more people are turning to true alternative sources of information - which is precisely why we are seeing the attack on it being made so vociferously - and from so many different centers of power. But until the truth space is completely eradicated, it is of the utmost importance that voices like the author's continue to use words like 'horseshit' or 'bat-shit crazy' to give the public an accurate description of the quality of information being shoved down our throats.















Comment: See also: