# Covington Catholic High (in case it hasn't been mentioned already) **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [January 20, 2019, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/covington-catholic-high-in-case-it-hasnt-been-mentioned-already/828090 "2019-01-20T02:23:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 30
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2019, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/covington-catholic-high-in-case-it-hasnt-been-mentioned-already/828090/581 "2019-01-24T01:25:09Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > You asked–and unless the band is named [Mark Berndt](https://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2013/11/ex-teacher_mark_berndt_who_fed.html), I don’t think you know the story. Once you click, you can’t un-know it. Here to fight ignorance, aren’t we? Anyway, no to urban legend, yes to isolated incident. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2019, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/covington-catholic-high-in-case-it-hasnt-been-mentioned-already/828090/582 "2019-01-24T01:25:16Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > You asked–and unless the band is named [Mark Berndt](https://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2013/11/ex-teacher_mark_berndt_who_fed.html), I don’t think you know the story. Once you click, you can’t un-know it. DAMN. Now that’s fucked up. (Although I hate to say it – I’ve heard worse) ---
**Author:** ![Hamlet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hamlet/32/2818_2.png) [@Hamlet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hamlet)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2019, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/covington-catholic-high-in-case-it-hasnt-been-mentioned-already/828090/583 "2019-01-24T01:48:07Z")
> [@doorhinge](#): > > What’s the matter? Does it make you feel bad about yourself when people won’t do what you tell them to do? Does it bother you when people think for themselves? How dare they? Don’t they know that you have feelings, too? I can’t help but picture you with a paddle wheel, you know like those they use at Church Festival days, where you simply spin it and whatever inanity comes up, you type it in. Doorhinge’s Wheel of Non-Sequitors and Insults. Whether it makes sense or actually even remotely touches on anything someone says doesn’t matter at all. Just spin the wheel and get your reply! > [@doorhinge](#): > > fyi - This thread is about Covington Catholic High (in case it hasn’t been mentioned already) I get that. You have 40 responses in this thread alone. Quite a bit of time and effort with the wheel spinning. I did a quick search, so I can’t swear by the results, but the 40 responses in this thread are 40 more than your responses in the Mueller Investigation, Trump’s Shutdown, Trump Clusterfuck, and Stupid Republican threads combined. It speaks volumes about what is important to you. Some privileged white kid having a handheld drum beaten within his earshot while his friends chant racist comments gets your juices flowing. The indictment of Trump supporters, Russian collusion, the shutdown, and the myriad of idiocy from the Republican party however don’t even get your ire up. You’re exactly what the Republican party wants and needs in their base. ---
**Author:** ![bobot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bobot/32/21622_2.png) [@bobot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bobot)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2019, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/covington-catholic-high-in-case-it-hasnt-been-mentioned-already/828090/584 "2019-01-24T01:55:11Z")
> [@Hamlet](#): > > … > I get that. You have 40 responses in this thread alone. Quite a bit of time and effort with the wheel spinning. > > I did a quick search, so I can’t swear by the results, but the 40 responses in this thread are 40 more than your responses in the Mueller Investigation, Trump’s Shutdown, Trump Clusterfuck, and Stupid Republican threads combined. … That is some quality quick searching! ---
**Author:** ![dorvann](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/df705f/32.png) [@dorvann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dorvann)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2019, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/covington-catholic-high-in-case-it-hasnt-been-mentioned-already/828090/585 "2019-01-24T02:28:31Z")
I know this isn’t directly related but this controversy just reinforces my negative view of social media and Twitter in particular. Everyone is rushing into judge what happened and a lot of people are advocating violence. The people in charge of Twitter really need to adopt a no-tolerance policy for anyone who advocates any sort of violence and/or doxxing against a living person. Otherwise I’m afraid someone is actually going to end up dead in the future. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2019, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/covington-catholic-high-in-case-it-hasnt-been-mentioned-already/828090/586 "2019-01-24T02:41:40Z")
What Twitter should actually do is declare itself a common carrier, and therefore it would have no responsibility for policing content whatsoever. No one goes after the phone company if you get a harassing phone call. As soon as an information service starts curating content, it becomes a publisher rather than a carrier, and it assumes responsibility for that content. And the volume on twitter, facebook etc is so great that they can’t hope to police it all. They have been putting their faith in bots, but AI is nowhere near the capability of detecting the kinds of nuance required. Once one of these services gets successfully sued for libel because they allowed libelous content on their site, the floodgates will open, the lawyers will come out of the woodwork, and the lawsuits will fly fast and furious. I’m surprised it hasn’t happened already. ---
**Author:** ![Thing\_Fish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecb155/32.png) [@Thing\_Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing_Fish)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2019, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/covington-catholic-high-in-case-it-hasnt-been-mentioned-already/828090/587 "2019-01-24T02:45:05Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > How does Trump get 36% approval among blacks when only 8% of black voters voted for him? > Not trying to derail the thread, just perplexed. “Approval” is measured on a binary approve/disapprove scale. It indicates that someone has a generally positive view of a politician, but doesn’t necessarily mean that they might not have a MORE positive view of another politician, or of _many_ other politicians. So a politican’s “approval rating” will often be much higher than the percentage of votes they could realistically expect to get in an actual election. (Not always; in 2016, both major party candidates got a percentage of the vote that significantly exceeded their approval ratings. This was because there was a large group of voters who didn’t “approve” of either candidate, but still had to pick one). Even so, given that Trump’s approval rating is only 40% among ALL Americans, I have to conclude that the Rasmussen poll is either an outlier or not very recent. ---
**Author:** ![dorvann](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/df705f/32.png) [@dorvann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dorvann)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2019, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/covington-catholic-high-in-case-it-hasnt-been-mentioned-already/828090/588 "2019-01-24T02:47:57Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > What Twitter should actually do is declare itself a common carrier, and therefore it would have no responsibility for policing content whatsoever. No one goes after the phone company if you get a harassing phone call. > > As soon as an information service starts curating content, it becomes a publisher rather than a carrier, and it assumes responsibility for that content. And the volume on twitter, facebook etc is so great that they can’t hope to police it all. They have been putting their faith in bots, but AI is nowhere near the capability of detecting the kinds of nuance required. > > Once one of these services gets successfully sued for libel because they allowed libelous content on their site, the floodgates will open, the lawyers will come out of the woodwork, and the lawsuits will fly fast and furious. I’m surprised it hasn’t happened already. The services should probably be more worried about a wrongful death suit if someone ends up getting killed do to a social media-induced lynch mob. Even if legally they aren’t found liable, the PR nightmare could easily put them out of business. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2019, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/covington-catholic-high-in-case-it-hasnt-been-mentioned-already/828090/589 "2019-01-24T02:58:18Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > You expect wrong: they tailor searches based on what they think you’re looking for. Whether it’s a big problem is of course debatable, but Google has worked that way for a decade. > > It’s definitely a big problem for you to not realize how Google works, to think your search results reflect an unvarnished truth rather than an algorithm’s attempt at pleasing you. I am familiar with Google’s personalized search. I just didn’t expect it to heavily modify this type of search. Personalized search most commonly influences results by location - if I search for a product it prioritizes products available closest to me. It also can modify search based on what web sites I routinely use, so if I do a search which includes one of my favorite web sites in the results, it will be elevated over the others. Of course, since Google doesn’t publish the algorithm none of us really know exactly what they are doing. They may be using a million different pieces of data they have on me to ‘tailor’ my search. But what I wouldn’t expect is for that search to grossly change factual queries. If I search for ‘fastest car in the world’ and Google knows I search for Camaros a lot, I would not expect it to bring up a Camaro site if the Camaro is not, in fact, the fastest car in the world. In this case, the search was ‘black people wearing Maga Hats’. And my search did roughly turn up images of black people wearing Maga hats, as you would expect. But other people here claim that when they do the same search, they see Kanye and all the rest are white people. So I guess if you really wanted or needed some pictures of black people wearing Maga hats, it appears Google is actively thwarting thst search. Try turning personalized search off (easy enough to do), and let me know what the query results show in the image tab. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2019, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/covington-catholic-high-in-case-it-hasnt-been-mentioned-already/828090/590 "2019-01-24T03:04:21Z")
> [@dorvann](#): > > The services should probably be more worried about a wrongful death suit if someone ends up getting killed do to a social media-induced lynch mob. Even if legally they aren’t found liable, the PR nightmare could easily put them out of business. Sure. I actually spent money on this - I ran an information service for a few years, and we were worried about things like people posting child porn. So we consulted a lawyer, and the lawyer recommended thst we do nothing, and even better, remove any tools that would even theoretically look at our user’s content. As the lawyer said, once you deny one person’s content you are declaring your responsibility for content management, and the courts would hold me liable for any crimes of that sort committed on our service. Our only safety was to maintain a strict hands-off policy and claim common carrier status if sued. I am surprised this hasn’t happened yet to facebook, Twitter or YouTube. All of them now have content policies and claim to police their content, and yet all have let plenty of content through that could be legally actionable. ---
**Author:** ![dorvann](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/df705f/32.png) [@dorvann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dorvann)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2019, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/covington-catholic-high-in-case-it-hasnt-been-mentioned-already/828090/591 "2019-01-24T03:11:24Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Sure. I actually spent money on this - I ran an information service for a few years, and we were worried about things like people posting child porn. So we consulted a lawyer, and the lawyer recommended thst we do nothing, and even better, remove any tools that would even theoretically look at our user’s content. As the lawyer said, once you deny one person’s content you are declaring your responsibility for content management, and the courts would hold me liable for any crimes of that sort committed on our service. Our only safety was to maintain a strict hands-off policy and claim common carrier status if sued. > > I am surprised this hasn’t happened yet to facebook, Twitter or YouTube. All of them now have content policies and claim to police their content, and yet all have let plenty of content through that could be legally actionable. The PR problem could actually be more damaging–Facebook,Twitter, and YouTube are all dependent on people having accounts. If there is an organized campaign for people start deleting accounts on one of the services that’s what would probably put them out of business. Myspace lost a lot of followers and they didn’t even have a campaign organized against them. ---
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2019, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/covington-catholic-high-in-case-it-hasnt-been-mentioned-already/828090/592 "2019-01-24T03:27:24Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > As soon as an information service starts curating content, it becomes a publisher rather than a carrier, and it assumes responsibility for that content. …you aren’t understanding how it all works. Twitter isn’t curating your content. Neither is google, or facebook, or whatever “information service” you have chosen to use. \*\*You \*\*are curating your content. What you watch, who you follow, what you like, its all fed into an algorithm and the service feeds up to you what it considers what it thinks you want to see more of. It recommends you follow more people with similar views: and eventually you create your own personally curated feedback loop. You see and hear only people that you agree with. Its these feedback loops that were exploited at the last US elections. People and organizations like Cambridge Analytica figured out how the algorithms worked. They had data they shouldn’t have had access too and they sold that data to people who used it to devastating effect. Its what pushed the margins of the [Brexit](https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-vote-leaves-dark-brexit-ads)vote from “Remain” to “[Leave](https://www.theguardian.com/membership/2018/sep/29/cambridge-analytica-cadwalladr-observer-facebook-zuckerberg-wylie).” If you weren’t targeted by the algorithms you never saw the ads: so nearly everybody never knew there was an active disinformation propaganda campaign going on silently in the background. The only people who saw the ads were people who were susceptible to those ads. It was utterly brilliant in a terrifying, horrible way. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2019, 6:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/covington-catholic-high-in-case-it-hasnt-been-mentioned-already/828090/593 "2019-01-24T06:07:38Z")
I went over to Pew to get an idea of what Trump’s approval rating among blacks was. It was 14% in June 2018. Their topline approval was 40% at the time, about what it is now. Disapproval among African Americans was 80%. > **[1. Views of Donald Trump](https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2018/06/20/1-views-of-donald-trump/)** > > The public’s views of Donald Trump across a number of dimensions – including his respect for democratic institutions, trust in what he says and whether he ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2019, 8:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/covington-catholic-high-in-case-it-hasnt-been-mentioned-already/828090/594 "2019-01-24T08:55:46Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > In this case, the search was ‘black people wearing Maga Hats’. And my search did roughly turn up images of black people wearing Maga hats, as you would expect. Heh. When I do it, I get random black people, plus Jack Black in a MAGA hat. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2019, 9:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/covington-catholic-high-in-case-it-hasnt-been-mentioned-already/828090/595 "2019-01-24T09:19:07Z")
The NY Times has a new article [here](https://nypost.com/2019/01/23/nathan-phillips-is-a-liar-not-a-victim). > [@](#): > > Nathan Phillips is a liar, not a victim > > Days after Nathan Phillips’ story of his confrontation with a group of students in Washington was thoroughly discredited, many on the left are still rallying behind him, pretending he was somehow a victim. > > This, even after both the New York Times and the Washington Post had to publish not just “clarifications” about the incident itself, but even corrections of his claim to be a Vietnam, or “Vietnam times,” veteran. (Turns out he was a stateside refrigerator technician, and frequently AWOL.) > > It also turns out Phillips made nearly identical allegations against a few college students four years ago. ---
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2019, 9:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/covington-catholic-high-in-case-it-hasnt-been-mentioned-already/828090/596 "2019-01-24T09:20:30Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > The NY Times has a new article [here](https://nypost.com/2019/01/23/nathan-phillips-is-a-liar-not-a-victim). …that’s not the fucking NY Times. ---
**Author:** ![Ale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@Ale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ale)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2019, 9:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/covington-catholic-high-in-case-it-hasnt-been-mentioned-already/828090/597 "2019-01-24T09:41:23Z")
> [@dorvann](#): > > The services should probably be more worried about a wrongful death suit if someone ends up getting killed do to a social media-induced lynch mob. Even if legally they aren’t found liable, the PR nightmare could easily put them out of business. It’s not an “if” situation: [Social media rumours in India: counting the dead …a video clip shared on WhatsApp went viral in India in June 2018, with tragic consequences. In the clip, a man on a motorbike appears to be kidnapping a child from the street. The messages that accompanied the video as it was shared from phone to phone alleged that the incident had occurred in Bangalore and warned the community to be on the lookout for “potential child-lifters”. Vigilante mobs formed and killed an estimated 10 people. The clip was in fact part of a safety video produced by a child welfare group in Pakistan.]([https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-e5043092-f7f0-42e9-9848-5274ac896e6d](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-e5043092-f7f0-42e9-9848-5274ac896e6d)) WhatsApp is still around. Facebook based incitment was instrumental in creating the climate on which the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya population in Myanmar occurred a year or so ago [“Facebook has admitted it failed to do enough to prevent its platform being used to fuel political division and bloodshed in Myanmar. The company on Monday released a report that it commissioned into the damage caused in the Southeast Asian country by abuses of its social network, including efforts to whip up hatred against the Rohingya, a persecuted Muslim minority group. The report highlights yet another case of Facebook struggling to manage the rapid spread of hate and misinformation across one of its platforms — and the impact of those failings on society.”](https://edition.cnn.com/2018/11/06/tech/facebook-myanmar-report/index.html) This thread is just a small part of something that began with a manipulative Twitter post from a suspicious account, it shows how easy it is to get the hate started when social media is used by people to whip each other into a frenzy. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Economist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c89c15/32.png) [@Evil\_Economist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Economist)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2019, 10:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/covington-catholic-high-in-case-it-hasnt-been-mentioned-already/828090/598 "2019-01-24T10:18:41Z")
Apparently the Kovington Katholic Kids were [harassing people](https://twitter.com/roflinds/status/1087486166939680768?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1087486166939680768&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Froflinds%2Fstatus%2F1087486166939680768) even before the Phillips incident. According to that woman, they were yelling “Build the wall”, “MAGA”, and “Slut”. Also apparently the PR firm that the little asshole hired has a huge social media botnet, which is how the bullshit right-wing counter-narrative spread so quickly. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2019, 10:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/covington-catholic-high-in-case-it-hasnt-been-mentioned-already/828090/599 "2019-01-24T10:24:00Z")
> [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > …that’s not the fucking NY Times. D’oh! You are, of course, correct. Mea culpa. ---
**Author:** ![Heffalump\_and\_Roo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heffalump_and_roo/32/7691_2.png) [@Heffalump\_and\_Roo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heffalump_and_Roo)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2019, 12:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/covington-catholic-high-in-case-it-hasnt-been-mentioned-already/828090/600 "2019-01-24T12:19:35Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > The NY Times has a new article [here](https://nypost.com/2019/01/23/nathan-phillips-is-a-liar-not-a-victim). Just did a quick search on that opinion piece in the NY Post (as already noted), quite different than the NY Times. A [Snopes piece](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/nathan-phillips-vietnam-veteran/) says that the question of whether Phillips lied about being a Vietnam vet is “unproven”. His words in the transcript seem to say that he says Vietnam era or Vietnam times vet. CNN and the NY TImes made corrections to their transcript because they claimed he was a Vietnam vet, which is not something he clearly said. The [college incident](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6613425/Native-American-man-harassed-Catholic-students-targeted-before.html) was in 2015. > [@](#): > > In 2015, Phillips was living in Ypsilanti, Michigan when he encountered a group of three dozen college students ‘dressed in Indian garb’ > The students were enrolled in nearby Eastern Michigan University, according to Phillips > The ‘red-face’ party featured students who painted their faces red, wore feather hats, and chanted about ‘impregnating women’, according to reports > Phillips confronted the students and told them their party was ‘racist,’ he said > He claims that one of the students threw beer at him and told him to ‘go back to the reservation, you blank Indian’ I find it unsurprising that a person of color has faced two separate incidents involving their race. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/covington-catholic-high-in-case-it-hasnt-been-mentioned-already/828090.md?page=29) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/covington-catholic-high-in-case-it-hasnt-been-mentioned-already/828090.md?page=31)