Hate! It’s all the rage these days. Blind political hate mixed with fake news – a recipe for disaster. Take for example the mainstream media’s blow out last week concerning a bunch of Catholic high school kids from Kentucky attending a school trip to Washington to take part in the ‘March for Life’ in opposition to current abortion laws.

These students from Covington Catholic High School had a prearranged meeting time to assemble at the Lincoln Memorial to board buses for the trip back to Kentucky. While the students waited to board the buses they got into a strange confrontation with ‘Native American’ Nathan Phillips — an elderly man beating a small drum with a stick. One of the students – Nick Sandmann — stood smiling toe-to-toe, eye-to-eye with the man. There was no violence not even any pushing or shoving but there was ‘group-chanting’ coming from these boys from Kentucky that took on the rhythm of the drum beats. Many of them – including Sandmann — were wearing ‘Make America Great Again’ red ball caps made popular during President Donald Trump’s successful presidential campaign in 2016.

Of course all of this was recorded by several mainstream media outlets and videoed by countless smartphone cameras and posted all over social media with the stunning backdrop of the Lincoln Memorial. The media went wild calling the incident hateful disrespect for a ‘Native American.’ They went on and on about this and that — and they all got it all wrong. What happened that day was nothing more than a fun moment of interaction between these boys and the elderly man beating the drum. The boys knew nothing about the man beating the drum and he knew nothing about them. The entire incident had zero news value.

Subsequent interviews with the ‘Native American’ and Sandmann revealed the media made it all up according to how they saw the incident not remotely related to the truth. To add insult to injury it didn’t help when Phillips claimed — in a TV interview — to be a Vietnam veteran, which later proved false but he did serve in the U.S. military just not in Vietnam like he said.

Here’s what the media saw – red ‘MAGA’ hats, Kentucky boys and anti-abortion Catholics. That’s what the media wanted to see. To them a red ‘MAGA’ hat represents racists, boys from Kentucky are all pro-Trump redneck gun-and-Bible toting racists and they are Catholic ‘white privileged’ racists. The media spin on this entire matter verges on mass insanity.

For instance, last week on CNN during ‘Cuomo Prime Time’ with Chris Cuomo, Trump-hater and CNN commentator Angela Rye drew comparisons between red ‘MAGA’ hats and other hate symbols.

“I wish for one moment we can talk about what we see,” Rye said in a report on Breitbart News. “Because people are talking about what is happening right now as a result of what happened in this particular incident, is our varying perspectives and I think that’s such a powerful point. Like, forget Donald Trump for a moment and just think about the symbol of that red hat. When I see the ‘Make America Great Again’ hat now, Chris, I am triggered. I’m so triggered …

“This ‘Make America Great Again’ hat is just as maddening and frustrating and triggering for me to look at — as a KKK hood. Like that is the type of hatred that his policies represent.”

On CNN, Rye is a frequent critic of President Trump. Last month she claimed Trump’s border wall was all “about xenophobic, racist, bigoted beliefs that he holds” and it had nothing to do with national security.

If anything is to be learned from the Covington Catholic High School media fiasco — it’s not safe to wear a ‘Make America Great Again’ hat in public and whatever you do don’t wear a MAGA hat with a Christian Cross around your neck – you might get shot.

About the Author Britt Nelson relocated to Costa Rica in 2011 from Florida, where he served as news editor for the Palatka Daily News, a newspaper owned by the New York Times Regional Newspaper Group (NYT-RNG) for 20 years.

Nelson served the NYT-RNG for 18 years in Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina and Florida as a correspondent, reporter, staff writer, senior staff writer training new reporters, copy editor, page designer, editorial writer, editorial page editor and editorial board member.