“Pocahontas” and the Rorschach Inkblot Test at the Lincoln Memorial
“Still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest”
“Never wrestle with a pig. You just get dirty and the pig enjoys it.” — Anonymous
On Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, many Americans found themselves reflecting on a short viral video from the Lincoln Memorial on Friday in which a group of White Catholic anti-abortion teens wearing MAGA hats appear to intimidate, and smirk at, a Native American elder singing resolutely and beating a drum. In an interview afterwards, Nathan Phillips claimed he was trying to defuse a situation between “two groups” and was intimidated by the mob of rowdy youth in MAGA hats.
Soon, a longer video surfaced showing the other group, five Black Hebrew Israelite street preachers, spewing hateful rhetoric at anybody who would listen, which eventually included the mob of around 100 Catholic teens. The student at the center of the controversy released a statement, with the assistance of a Louisville PR firm named RunSwitch, claiming he was also trying to defuse the situation and that the mob had assembled because it was provoked by the hateful rhetoric of the Black street preachers — “Black Muslims” as his mother apparently referred to them.
