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A sports journalist for the website Deadspin just pulled a Jussie Smollett and minted a new Nicholas Sandmann at the same time.
You remember Jussie Smollett, right? In 2019, Smollett, an actor on the television show “Empire,” reported to the police that he was the victim of a hate crime in Chicago. He claimed that two men attacked him, using racial and homophobic slurs, and even tied a noose around his neck.
However, as the investigation progressed, inconsistencies in Smollett’s account led the police to suspect that he had staged the attack himself. Two brothers, Abel and Ola Osundairo, were arrested in connection with the incident but were later released without charges. They claimed that Smollett had paid them to stage the attack.
In a surprising turn of events, Smollett was indicted on 16 felony counts of disorderly conduct for making false reports to the police. However, in a controversial decision, all charges against Smollett were dropped by the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office in March 2019.
The case was not over though. In February 2020, Smollett was indicted again by a special prosecutor on six counts related to the alleged attack. He was found guilty on five of the six counts in December 2021.
That’s what a beleaguered America, suffering from the woke plague, might call poetic justice. Or really just “justice.” Smollett’s case of faking a “racial hate crime” should serve as a warning. Instead, “journalist” Carron Phillips appears to have interpreted it as an example to follow.
On Monday, November 27, Phillips published an article at Deadspin titled, “The NFL needs to speak out against the Kansas City Chiefs fan in Black face, Native headdress.”
The key piece of “evidence” Phillips presented in his article was a deceptive photo of a nine-year-old Kansas City Chief’s football fan. The photo he chose to lead with was just a profile shot of one-half of the boy’s face, painted black, making it look like the young fan was in “blackface.” Phillips’ utterly reprehensible start to his “reporting” went like so:
“It takes a lot to disrespect two groups of people at once. But on Sunday afternoon in Las Vegas, a Kansas City Chiefs fan found a way to hate Black people and the Native Americans at the same time.”
Ah, yes. The age-old act of “hating” minority groups by dressing up for a football game.
Phillips went on to add,
“This is what happens when you ban books, stand against Critical Race Theory, and try to erase centuries of hate. You give future generations the ammunition they need to evolve and recreate racism better than before.”
Apologies, I should have warned you before sharing that quote in case you were drinking something because you probably spit it out in disbelief.
If I am tracking with Phillips’ logic, standing against the divisive, worldly ideology of Critical Race Theory leads to (checks notes)…young boys painting their faces for their favorite football teams.
Remember I mentioned both Jussie Smollett and Nicholas Sandmann at the start? Here is how Phillips is making the next Sandmann before our eyes: Falsely accusing a young boy of being racist is exactly what the regime media did to Sandmann. The incident occurred at the Lincoln Memorial in January 2019. Nicholas Sandmann, a 16-year-old student from Covington Catholic High School, was shown in a video standing face-to-face with a Native American activist named Nathan Phillips during the Indigenous People’s March. The video went viral and sparked a controversy, with many social media users and major media outlets spinning it as Sandmann trying to intimidate Phillips and, as a white boy, being “racist” against a Native American.
This was utter garbage, as unedited video that came out soon after clearly showed. Sandmann ultimately sued multiple media outlets for libel and reached settlements with CNN, Washington Post, and NBC.
Phillips has libeled Holden Armenta. It’s a Sandmann redux. What is it with the woke picking on children?
Because here are the facts: Armenta, the young fan, only had half of his face painted black. The other half was painted red. You know, for the team’s colors. Which are black…and red.
I guess that possibility never even entered Phillips’ woke-poisoned mind. In the age of social media, where information is disseminated at lightning speed, the responsibility of journalists to verify facts before publishing has never been more critical. Yet, it seems that Phillips was far more interested in advancing another fake narrative about microaggressions in America than doing real journalism.
This act of misrepresentation, aimed at shaming the young boy and the team for innocent actions, is not just unethical but also harmful. It fuels false narratives of racism in America.
In an interesting turn of events, it’s come to light that young Holden is actually Native American (not that it should matter). The New York Post reports:
“The boy’s outraged mother, Shannon Armenta, shared numerous images of her son getting a warm reception at the game — while suggesting Deadspin focused on a photo that hid the fact that half her son’s face was painted red.
‘This has nothing to do with the NFL,’ she wrote, suggesting the photo was picked purely ‘to create division.’
‘He is Native American — just stop already,’ she wrote of her son.”
But facts and reason are lost on Phillips. In a now-deleted post on X, he doubled down:
“For the idiots in my mentions who are treating this as some harmless act because the other side of his face was painted red, I could make the argument that it makes it even worse.”
The Daily Wire noted that “Phillips was immediately pummeled in the replies to his post, which garnered thousands of responses. The Community Notes feature on X also added a note saying the writer ‘failed to provide full context’ that the boy’s face paint is a reference to the football team.”
Proverbs 18:17 reminds us that “The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him.”
These are good words to live by in an age when fake news journalists are working overtime to spin up false narratives about fake hate crimes — although it was pretty clear almost everyone saw right through Phillips’ “case” even before the rest of the story came out.
Some torches aren’t meant to be passed on. But Phillips did his best to pick up the Smollett torch and keep it burning in 2023. Thankfully, it looks like fewer and fewer people are falling for this nonsense.
Even more than revealing how broke woke journalism has become, this entire incident makes this reality crystal clear: The demand for racism in America far exceeds the supply.
Which is why the race-baiters literally have to make stuff up.
I guess they can keep doing that. And for those who care about the truth, human decency, and young boys at football games having fun, we can just keep ignoring them.
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