Great article on how the media uses political pawns like this. -------------- David Hogg Is Fair Game for Critics https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/02/david-hogg-is-fair-game-for-critics/ The Parkland survivor has chosen to insert himself into an important national policy debate. We who disagree with his views on guns have a duty to speak up against them. David Hogg, the telegenic 17-year-old who survived the shooting in Parkland, is not a crisis actor, an FBI plant, or the secret brainchild of a Soros-backed CNN plot. He’s a political advocate engaged in a political debate, and he should be treated as such. Since the multiple murders at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Hogg has emerged as a sort of Schrödinger’s Pundit, whose status within the debate sits contingent upon his critics’ willingness to push back. The game being played with his testimony — by adults, not by Hogg — is as transparent as it is cynical. For ten days now, Hogg has been as permanent a fixture on the nation’s TV screens as anyone bar the president. In each appearance, he has been invited without reply to share his ideas on our public policy. This he has done, emphatically. Among the proposals that Hogg has advanced are that the most popular rifle in America be federally prohibited; that the NRA be regarded as a haven for “child murderers”; that Americans boycott Amazon, FedEx, and the state of Florida; and that Governor Rick Scott take responsibility for the failures of another elected official. In addition, Hogg has held a gun-control rally in New Jersey, slammed the president as a coward, criticized the federal response to the hurricane in Puerto Rico, made comments in support of funding for wind and solar power, taken a pre-emptive stand on Florida’s imminent senatorial election, and suggested that, as a matter of general policy, cops cannot be expected to protect the citizenry if they believe they might be outgunned. For this advocacy — and that’s what it is — Hogg has been feted as a key leader within a “mass movement” that is determined to reform America; he has been praised for his attempt to “force change”; he has been cast, including by himself, as a lion who refuses to back down; and, in some of the more cunning quarters of the left, he has been turned into a walking demonstration of the need to lower the voting age. At no point has anyone hosting him suggested that his relevance is limited to his capacity to describe his experience; rather, he has in every instance been asked to join a public political fight — a fight, remember, that relates to nothing less foundational than the American Bill of Rights. And yet, when other Americans have seen fit to respond, Hogg’s defenders have cast him upon the instant in diametrically opposite terms: As an irrelevance; as a mere “kid”; as a grieving ornament who sits well outside of our national conversation. This is extraordinary. How obvious, one wonders, do his champions intend to make it that they are using him to launder their views? And how clearly must they reveal that, despite their protestations to the contrary, they in fact have no respect whatsoever for his agency? Far from being “mean,” those contending with Hogg’s pronouncements are accepting that he has an opinion, and that it is worth countering. In the last few days, a handful of people have begun to push back against the substance of Hogg’s views, and, in each case, have been met with the insistence that they should simply “ignore him” as they would ignore a tenth-grade book report. Yesterday, I criticized Hogg for his routine incoherence, and immediately encountered a host of apologists who submitted that to engage with his remonstrations was “mean” or “inappropriate” or an example of “punching down.” The political incentives behind this tactic are obvious, but, substantively, the line has it utterly backward. It is condescending to ignore somebody arguing about politics, not to take them on. Far from being “mean,” those contending with Hogg’s pronouncements are accepting that he has an opinion, and that it is worth countering — that is, they are doing exactly what Hogg’s boosters have asked: treating him as the leader of a movement. Could it be, perhaps, that those boosters don’t really mean what they are saying? Or could it be, perhaps, that Hogg has become a liability and that his champions now regret having thrust him into the limelight? One certainly couldn’t blame them if they did, for Hogg is in fact a pretty poor advocate. And why, pray, would he be otherwise? Suffering through a terrible crime gives a person no special insight into its causes, and Hogg has no special insight into its causes — or, frankly, into anything else. He’s ignorant about basic civics; he’s liable to backward reasoning; and, unable as he is to synthesize the evolving talking points upon which he relies, he has increasingly come across as slippery. In perhaps his most embarrassing moment thus far, he shifted from arguing that the cop on duty who stood outside and did nothing while his classmates were slaughtered was correct to demur (not a great message, all told) to making the opposite case when he sensed an opportunity to lay the blame at the feet of Governor Scott — who, of course, had nothing to do with running the sheriff’s department responsible for failing to save his classmates. Demosthenes he is not. Even worse has been Hogg’s attitude toward those who have had the temerity to disagree with him. Here, one suspects, he has been let down by those around him, the loudest of whom have evidently led him to believe that our complex political discourse can be circumvented by the blunt issuing of demands. The gun debate in America remains intractable, consisting not only of difficult legislative questions, but of elaborate constitutional, sociopolitical, historical, and criminal inquiries, too. For some reason, David Hogg has come to suppose that he can slice through this reality by issuing threats: Give me what I want, or I’ll stop using FedEx; give me what I want, or I won’t go back to school; give me what I want, or Florida’s economy gets it. And, by the way, I’m going to outlive you… This, suffice it to say, is not how republics work, and whether he likes it or not, Hogg lives in a republic. There is no Angry Victim clause in our constitutional text. David Hogg is an American, and he should speak as often and as loudly as he wishes. Moreover, if CNN believes that its present monomania will serve it well in the long run, it should continue to give him a platform. But there must be no inoculation for either party, nor must those who agree with the gun-control agenda attempt to shield its purveyors from rebuttal. Hogg did not choose to be involved in a school shooting; that, sadly, was beyond his control. But he has now chosen to play pundit on a topic of import to millions. And, in a free and robust nation, once that line is crossed, all bets are bound to be off.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blog...ize-the-parkland-kids/?utm_term=.db8188be55b6 Can we criticize the Parkland kids? The Parkland kids are all right — and then again, they aren’t. This tension between viewing the victims of an untold trauma as the best available advocates for gun restrictions and viewing them as, well, victims of an untold trauma has forced commentators on both sides of the debate into contortions. When National Review editor Charles C.W. Cooke tried to slice through one of those knots in an essay on Tuesday, it did not go well. Cooke’s piece, titled “David Hogg Is Fair Game for Critics,” made an already angry Internet angrier still. Cooke was cruel, he was heartless, he was attacking a child who was speaking up only because he and his classmates had been attacked already. What Cooke really argues is this: Many liberals say the Parkland children are the perfect people to explain how to prevent an experience they themselves have had — but that, though they’re adult enough to helm a mass movement, they’re still too childlike for critics to come after them. Cooke says liberals can’t have it both ways. He has a point. The Parkland survivors should be taken seriously, and sincerely, by those who agree with them and those who disagree alike. Liberals shouldn’t call these children essential to an important debate at one moment and too delicate to engage with the other side at another, just as conservatives shouldn’t say the survivors are too innocent to participate and at the same time criticize them as conniving leftists exploiting their friends’ deaths for fame or political gain. But what Cooke and his opponents don’t spare the time to articulate is the difference between bashing Hogg’s arguments and bashing Hogg himself. No one likes ad hominem attacks, at least in principle. But in this case, those attacks are even less constructive, and even more callous, than usual. That’s because they’re being leveled at a child, and because that child just saw 17 gunned down at his school. And because of the way the debate over Hogg began: with a far-right conspiracy campaign to cast him as a “crisis actor.” For every conservative who has pointed out the inconsistency in Hogg’s defending the deputy sheriff who stayed outside the school during the shooting and then excoriating Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) for that officer’s failure, there are tens of others who have left substance aside. Instead, they call into question Hogg’s motivations. They accuse him of climbing over the dead bodies of his peers. They accuse him of pretending the killed were his peers at all. It’s one thing to say Hogg gets it wrong on guns, or that threatening boycotts of everything and anything isn’t the surest route to legislative change. It’s another to cry out that Hogg is a liar or an idiot who doesn’t deserve a spot on our television screens. No wonder liberals are on alert when reproof comes Hogg’s way or the way of his fellow survivors. That reproof is so often tinged with vitriol not simply for what these kids are saying but also for who they are. It’s natural to want to protect young people whom society has failed to protect. And while Cooke may be correct that it’s inconsistent to inoculate a movement’s leader from criticism on the merits, shielding a child from spite and slander is another matter. In a country where everyone is mad all the time and everyone has the tools to put that madness on the Internet, we often avoid the challenge of addressing someone’s arguments and go after their character instead. Changing that culture might be a big ask in the 21st century, but teenagers who’ve just been through tragedy seem like a fine place to start. Correction: This blog post incorrectly stated that 17 of David Hogg’s classmates were killed. Seventeen people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School were killed, but only 14 were students. This version has been updated.
Why Did It Take Two Weeks To Discover Parkland Students’ Astroturfing? The response was professionalized. That’s not surprising, because this is what organization that gets results actually looks like. It’s not a bunch of magical kids in somebody’s living room. By David Hines MARCH 1, 2018 “Can you believe these kids?” It’s been a recurring theme of the coverage of the Parkland school shooting: the remarkable effectiveness of the high school students who created a gun control organization in the wake of the massacre. In seemingly no time, the magical kids had organized events ranging from a national march to a mass school walkout, and they’d brought in a million dollars in donations from Oprah Winfrey and George Clooney. The Miami Herald credited their success to the school’s stellar debate program. The Wall Street Journal said it was because they were born online, and organizing was instinctive. On February 28, BuzzFeed came out with the actual story: Rep. Debbie Wassermann Schultz aiding in the lobbying in Tallahassee, a teacher’s union organizing the buses that got the kids there, Michael Bloomberg’s groups and the Women’s March working on the upcoming March For Our Lives, MoveOn.org doing social media promotion and (potentially) march logistics, and training for student activists provided by federally funded Planned Parenthood. The president of the American Federation of Teachers told BuzzFeed they’re also behind the national school walkout, which journalists had previously assured the public was the sole work of a teenager. (I’d thought teachers were supposed to get kids into school, but maybe that’s just me.) In other words, the response was professionalized. That’s not surprising, because this is what organization that gets results actually looks like. It’s not a bunch of magical kids in somebody’s living room. Nor is it surprising that the professionalization happened right off the bat. Broward County’s teacher’s union is militant, and Rep. Ted Lieu stated on Twitter that his family knows Parkland student activist David Hogg’s family, so there were plenty of opportunities for grown-ups with resources and skills to connect the kids. That’s before you get to whether any of them had been involved in the Women’s March. According to BuzzFeed, Wassermann Schultz was running on day two. What’s striking about all this isn’t the organization. If you start reading books about organizing, it’s clear how it all works. But no journalist covering the story wrote about this stuff for two weeks. Instead, every story was about the Parkland kids being magically effective. On Twitter, I lost track of the number of bluechecks rhapsodizing over how effective the kids’ organizational instincts were. But organizing isn’t instinctive. It’s skilled work; you have to learn how to do it, and it takes really a lot of people. You don’t just get a few magical kids who’re amazing and naturally good at it. The real tip-off should have been the $500,000 donations from Winfrey and Clooney. Big celebrities don’t give huge money to strangers on a whim. Somebody who knows Winfrey and Clooney called them and asked. But the press’s response was to be ever more impressed with the kids. For two weeks, journalists abjectly failed in their jobs, which is to tell the public what’s going on. And any of them who had any familiarity with organizing campaigns absolutely knew. Matt Pearce, of the Los Angeles Times, would have been ideally placed to write an excellent article: not only is he an organizer for the Times’s union, he moderated a panel on leftist activism for the LA Times Book Festival and has the appropriate connections in organizing. Instead, he wrote about a school walkout, not what was behind it. (In another article, Pearce defined Delta caving to a pressure campaign’s demands as “finding middle ground.”) But it’s not just a mainstream media problem. None of the righty outlets writing about Parkland picked up on the clear evidence that professional organizers were backing the Parkland kids, either. Instead, they objected to the front-and-centering of minor kids as unseemly, which does no good: Lefties aren’t going to listen, and it doesn’t educate the Right to counter. The closest anyone got was Elizabeth Harrington at the Washington Free Beacon, who noted that Clooney’s publicist was booking the kids’ media interviews pro bono, and said that a friend (not Clooney) had asked him to do it. The result of all this is that the average righty does not understand what’s going on in activism, because all they see is what the press covers. The stuff that’s visible. It’s like expecting people in the Stone Age to grok the Roman army by looking at it. Conspiracy theorists happily fill this ignorance vacuum. On one hand, sure, the issue with people who believe in crisis actors and various other kinds of conspiracy theories is that they’re susceptible. If they didn’t believe in crisis actors, they’d believe in something else (and they probably do). But on the other hand, I think one reason there’s an opportunity for righty conspiracy types to get all hopped up on goofballs with respect to protests and such is the abject failure of the Righty establishment to explain to its people how protests actually work. This results in occasional hilarity when the Right tries to organize its own protests. For example, then-Internet celebrity Baked Alaska tried to create pro-Trump flashmobs in Los Angeles during the election. His efforts consisted of posting times and locations online. And that’s it. You see this attitude often among Righties: “We have the Internet! We’ll post a notice and people will show up!” Well, no; they won’t. It’s not that Baked Alaska needed a magical kid, because there are no magical kids. There’s just hard work, and our press and politicos do everyone a disservice when they pretend otherwise. Here’s an example of how to turn out people, cribbed from “Organizing for Social Change,” the activist manual published by the Midwest Academy, which has been around since 1973 and has trained over 30,000 activists, some of whom went on to found their own training schools. Say you run an organization that wants to impress a city councilman, and you’ve landed a meeting. You want your group to look bigger than it is. You’ve got 15 dedicated people you know will go, but you want to show the councilman 60 people. The first thing you do is get 10 people from other groups (you do know other ideologically aligned groups in the area, right?). That leaves 35 people. To get them, you don’t post an ad on Craigslist. You look in your database of people who’ve signed your petitions or whatever. Call and ask them to come. If they say yes, call them again a day or two in advance to confirm. Of the people who say yes twice, only half will actually show up. So you need 70 people to say yes twice. Expect to make seven times that number of phone calls to get them. That’s 490 five-minute phone calls, which breaks down to five people a night making phone calls for five straight nights. It’s not magical kids, and it’s not George Soros sprinkling money around. It’s hard work by people who’ve trained to do it. That’s a little more work than posting an announcement on Facebook. And that’s organizing. It’s not magical kids, and it’s not George Soros sprinkling money around. It’s hard work by people who’ve trained to do it. Now that the organizations are more open about their involvement, at some point the Parkland kids will go into the background a bit in media exposure, the same way Deray and Linda Sarsour did. That’s part of how organizing fame works these days: Two Minutes’ Heroes, in frequent rotation. But the problem remains: until the press covers organizing campaigns accurately, organizers will be able to punch above their weight politically even if they don’t win every election. In his excellent book “Hedgemony How-To,” leftist organizer Jonathan Smucker wrote, “Power tends to appear magical to those who have less of it, and mechanical to those who are accustomed to wielding it instrumentally.” Or, for that matter, to even seeing it instrumentally. For two weeks, journalists treated power as if it were magical. It’s not. It’s mechanical. The people organizing the response to Parkland, and a host of other causes, know that. So should you. David Hines is a specialist in forensic science and international human rights, with an extensive background working in conflict zones. He tweets at @hradzka.