Kyle Smith: Hatecrime and Facecrime

Some of the looniest and most prominent nonsense about the Covington kids, including this from Ruth Graham:

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. 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. . . .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. [Emphasis Smith's.]

The interesting thing, really, is that none of this is actually in the kid's expression. This is 100% Ruth Graham's problem. 100% subjective. 100% projection. The kid's expression ended up being a blank slate on which the contemporary progressive left painted its own self-portrait. This is, basically, how they see you if you're a white male. That's what they're projecting onto all of us. LOL "eyes twinkling with menace..." 

   It's funny, but these are extremely dangerous ideas.