Covington Catholic student may not have set out to become an avatar for Trumpism, but he sure is now

Covington Catholic High School in Park Hills, Ky.Lisa Cornwell/AP/Associated Press

I HAD LONG SINCE forgotten about the Covington Catholic story, which is what we do now — we forget about things.

This week yet another report on the president’s alleged attempts to obstruct justice in the special counsel investigation emerged and we yelled at each other about it for a few hours then moved on. The human brain is not equipped to keep up with the current pace of political calamity, so we forget about things — unless they refuse to be forgotten.

When was the last time you thought about the confrontation between the students and Native American activist Nathan Phillips? It was a month ago, which by now is forever. Would you have been able to dredge up the name of the boy at the center of the story? It’s Nicholas Sandmann for the record, and I just had to look it up again even though I read a new story about him 10 minutes ago. The smirking MAGA teen we all had to have an opinion about is back, and now you have to think about him again because his parents and his lawyers won’t allow us, or him, the swift mercy of zeitgeist oblivion. His visage is a political asset too valuable to squander it seems, which is what brought us all here in the first place.

Attorneys working on behalf of Sandmann and his parents filed a $250 million defamation lawsuit against the Washington Post on Tuesday, claiming in part that the newspaper “ignored basic journalist standards because it wanted to advance its well-known and easily documented, biased agenda against President Donald J. Trump by impugning individuals perceived to be supporters of the President.”

They’re not wrong that Sandmann was a potent political lodestone, the mere dawning of his now infamous MAGA cap working as a cipher for collective political bloodletting. I suppose I should include a disclaimer that simply wearing the hat does not make one a racist or what have you, because I don’t want to be sued myself, but it is very easy to understand why so many people might have jumped to that conclusion based on, oh, let us say almost everything anyone wearing the cap including its originator have ever said and done. But in the discourse that followed the incident and in interviews he gave after the confrontation, Sandmann, and his supporters, have bristled at that ideological transubstantiation.

“As a 16-year old secondary school student, Nicholas’ political beliefs are anything but established and entrenched in his young mind,” the lawsuit points out. That may be true, many of us did things we regret when we were young and also did things we regret when we were old.

So, let us say then, to be fair, that Sandmann knew not what he was doing. Let us presume he was just a simple boy on a field trip without a full grasp of the connotations many minorities imbue the dumb hat with. Let us unbundle the image of this polite boy from the policies and the proclivities of Donald Trump. Let us allow that Nick Sandmann is not the president and it might be unfair to assume he has anything in common with his agenda. If that were all true, wouldn’t framing the mainstream media as biased and out to get Trump and his supporters, and hoping to enact retribution against one of the president’s main perceived media enemies be a really weird way to distance yourself from him?

Like it or not, by suing the Post, Sandmann’s parents — and they are likely more to blame here than he is — have further intertwined their son’s identity with the man whose presidency has been defined, aside from its main tenents of xenophobia and racism, as an unyielding assault on the First Amendment.

On Wednesday, Trump tweeted in response to the story about alleged obstruction of justice on his behalf that “The New York Times reporting is false. They are a true ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!”

Days before he asked “how do the Networks get away with these total Republican hit jobs without retribution?” after a viewing of Saturday Night Live. “Likewise for many other shows? Very unfair and should be looked into . . . ”

On Wednesday morning, responding to the lawsuit, Trump tweeted in support of Sandmann. “Covington student suing WAPO,” he wrote in part. “Go get them Nick. Fake News!”

Please do not equate our innocent son with the political agenda of a president, he is barely old enough to understand, the suit seems to say. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we’re going to exact revenge on the president’s enemies using the same argument he makes regularly.

“The Post wanted to lead the charge against this child because he was a pawn in its political war against its political adversary — a war so disconnected and beyond the comprehension of Nicholas that it might as well have been science fiction,” the lawsuit claims.

It’s a curious way to protect the boy’s reputation. Most of us would have forgotten by now. But here is the boy again, and here is the picture of his face and his face in the hat, and thanks to the lawsuit, he’ll be dragged through the news cycle again. He may not have set out to become an avatar for Trumpism, but he sure is now.

Luke O’Neil is a journalist from Massachusetts who writes the newsletter “Welcome to Hell World.” Follow him on Twitter @lukeoneil47.