Sandmann/Rittenhouse 2024- "I Know I Am, But What Are You?"
A very sad place where maturity, compassion, and decency go to die
Hey, remember that little weenus Nick Sandmann who got in that nasty confrontation with Native American Elder Nathan Phillips during the Indigenous People's March in 2019? Naturally the Right made the then-17-year-old a hero, even giving him a speaking spot at the RNC in 2020. Always be trolling!
If our teenagers showed that kind of disrespect to an adult, we'd ground them for life. But no! Sandmann's parents filed a real life defamation suit against half the media outlets in America for defaming their poor, innocent, and most importantly well-mannered baby.
"ABC’s reporting conveyed the false and defamatory gist that Nicholas was the face of an unruly hate mob of hundreds of white, racist high school students who physically assaulted and harassed Native Americans who were engaged in peaceful demonstrations, song and prayer at the National Mall," read a complaint seeking $20 million from the network. Sandmann was originally represented by Kraken lawyer Lin Wood, but the pair parted ways after a Parler post in which the attorney appeared to advocate for executing the Vice President by firing squad in the wake of the Capitol Riot.
I don’t know what Nick Sandmann is like now, but in 2019 he was a perfectly smug and entitled MAGA-hat-wearing 17-year-old asshole. You remember him, right? He was the smiling jackass who got into a confrontation with Native American Elder Nathan Phillips. Sandmann blocked Phillips because he could and became a hero of the Far-Right because they LOVE them some White, Right-leaning assholes.
I don’t have kids, but if Nick Sandmann were my son, he’d have been grounded until he was 32. His parents, though, decided to enable and support his lack of manners and human decency by filing suit against ABC News for their reporting of the incident. Their suit asked for $20 million “for defaming their poor, innocent, and most importantly well-mannered baby.” And because being an immature dickhead is a right guaranteed by the Constitution. Really. It’s in there. Somewhere.
Right. ‘Cuz MAGA assholes gonna asshole, knowhutimean? They believe they own the world and NO ONE, especially no bleeding-heart LIBRUL, can tell them what to do.
It’s just too bad Sandmann’s lawyer lacked an inside voice.
So Mr. Sandmann canned Lin Wood (something about not playing well with others, I’m guessing), which was too bad because Wood wasn’t around when the s**t hit the fan.
The Washington Post, CNN, and NBC took the lowest ultimate cost route and settled with the Sandmanns for undisclosed sums that were likely more than enough to make Nick Sandmann undeservedly rich.
Of course, “rich” and “classy” rarely go together. Especially when MAGA hats are involved.
Amazing, isn’t it, how Conservatives have nailed how to monetize poor manners, immaturity, and piss-poor behavior? Because companies will too often cave in and settle lawsuits because it results in the lowest ultimate cost to them, and in this case, they wanted to be rid of an entitled, snot-nosed brat.
[B]ut Sandmann still had hundreds of millions of dollars of pending claims against ABC, CBS, Rolling Stone, Gannett, and the New York Times.
"Had" being the operative word since Senior US District Judge William Bertelsman just bounced the kid's dumb LOLsuits out of court for oh, shut up, that is not defamation, you little pisspants snowflake.
Okay, that's not the actual name of the legal doctrine, but it's not that far off. Essentially, the alleged defamatory language here amounted to articles saying that the little weenie "blocked" Phillips's path. And the sum total of the evidence was a bunch of videos of the stand-off, a handful of conflicting witness statements, and testimony from Sandmann and Phillips.
"Although lengthy, Sandmann’s deposition contains relatively little testimony pertinent to the issues at hand," wrote Judge Bertelsman dryly. In short, the kid thought he was being "mature" by "standing his ground," but he could see as how Phillips might have perceived this as "blocking." For his part, Phillips said that he did, in fact, feel like his path was "blocked."
Sandmann's lawyers argued that the papers had made false statements of fact in articles claiming that their client "blocked" Phillips. But the court ruled that "'blocking' is an imprecise term capable of different meanings," and "a reasonable reader would understand that Phillips was simply conveying his view of the situation."
"Phillips’s statements that Sandmann 'blocked' him and 'wouldn’t allow [him] to retreat' are objectively unverifiable and thus unactionable opinions," Judge Bertelsman wrote,
cockblockingdismissing the case.
Unsurprisingly, Sandmann’s attorney has promised to appeal. Yeah, I know; there’s nothing worse than watching someone undeservedly and desperately trying to extend their long-since-expired fifteen minutes of fame. It’s SO déclassé.
Nick Sandmann should be working at a Wawa at a godforsaken rural rest stop somewhere in Methville, Kentucky. We should’ve never heard his name again, much less seen his picture. And yet, here we are, subjected to that smug, spoiled, entitled smirk all over again. As nonviolent as I try to be, I’d like to wipe that smirk off his face.
This circus is another example of Conservatives finding ways to monetize lousy behavior and create a double standard in which they ensure they’re held to much lower standards than Liberals. They use and misuse the judicial system to punish those they feel have done them wrong, yet they whine and complain about those who attempt to hold them accountable. Is this hypocritical? Youdamnbetcha…but Conservatives don’t live by the rules most decent, moral people do. Winning isn’t everything to them; it’s the ONLY thing.
In this case, Nick Sandmann attempted to use mob behavior to his advantage. His parents enabled that by filing suit against media organizations doing their jobs and trying to report the truth. To the Sandmanns, anything less than portraying their son as a well-mannered angel was tantamount to character assassination and libel. This is despite the fact that he was (and probably still is) an immature asshole, which, sadly, turns out to be a very lucrative pursuit if handled properly.
Of course, the truth has never mattered as much to Conservatives as much as their ability to manipulate the narrative to their political (and, in this case, financial) advantage. They have no qualms about working the system to shape outcomes into results that favor them.
For example, the Sandmanns and their attorneys knew that corporations tend to settle nuisance suits out of concern for the lowest ultimate cost. So there’s a good chance that the Sandmanns knew that no matter what happened, they would make beaucoup bucks. That may sound despicable, but it’s how the American legal system works. A plaintiff can often make bank regardless of their case's merits (or lack thereof). All you need is an absence of morals and the willingness to manipulate the system to your advantage.
Don’tcha just LOVE America??
So basically, he’s going to burn the settlements in lawyers fees