Why I'm still talking about Covington

A week after the media meltdown over Covington, it's not surprising that some people are starting to say eh, this is old news; people have apologized, so why not give it a rest?

You could give various responses about the larger significance of the debacle, that some people haven't adequately recanted, etc.

But I want to add something, which is that this feels personal because it could so easily happen to any of us. The encounter was so mundane that you have to wonder what other non-events will be used to try to destroy you or me. It happened to be video-recorded not because it mattered, but because that's just so easy with 2019 technology.

I didn't have to worry about that when I was 16, but I can't help thinking: what would it have been like if this had happened to me when I was 16? Are some people not having that thought because they see him as the Other, and consequently lack empathy for him?

I also think about what will happen if I ever have a kid. Would my 16-year-old always stay on the right side of the face police? Or might he occasionally be awkward at that age? What if he had some kind of a mental or physical disability that caused him to have facial expressions or body movements that people took the wrong way? (I say "he" because so much of the vituperation that's been directed at the Covington kids has been explicitly based on their gender.)

In the past few days, I've been under the weather (getting better now, so don't worry about me), and sometimes as I've stood around in a public place, I've stopped to think: hey, I might have had an inappropriate facial expression just now, because of a combination of feeling a little out of it and feeling physically uncomfortable. If someone were video-recording me, could they find one still that made it look like I was "disrespecting" the wrong person?

When I see a post saying the kid's "smirk" (always that same exact word choice) is proof that there's something bigoted or wicked about him, I wonder if the person saying that has gone through life always making an appropriate facial expression for every social situation. Would you even want to be someone who always makes what others consider just the right expression? That sounds like someone who's very safe and inoffensive and well-scripted, not someone spontaneous and flawed and quirky.

I grew up in a far-left college town, and I've known so many young people who were free spirits, who were nonconformists, who were determined to be themselves no matter what anyone else said, who had a passion for noisy music and experimental art, who listened to the color of their dreams . . . And back then, it didn't seem incongruous that they were mostly on the left. Today, I see so many people on the left sternly admonishing a 16-year-old for having the wrong smile in the wrong place at the wrong time. That's a prissy attitude which seems like the antithesis of so many lefties I've known. How can you be a young person who identifies as left/liberal and take that attitude? I've always had my differences with the left, but for most of my life I at least would have admitted that hey, a lot of them are cool people, interesting people, people who are worth talking to, especially if you don't share their politics. And that has no resemblance to some of the self-appointed arbiters of propriety we've been seeing on social media.

I want to say to some of these people joining virtual lynch mobs based on the latest viral video: Is that really who you are? Or are you too afraid to say what you really think? Or have you forgotten what you really think because you're more focused on . . . looking just right?