Host Greg Gutfeld said Rittenhouse, who’s on trial for charges including first-degree intentional homicide, “did the right thing” by making “sure these violent, disgusting dirtbags weren’t roaming the streets.”
BY CALEB ECARMA
NOVEMBER 12, 2021
Kyle Rtttenhouse looks back as attorneys argue about the charges that will be presented to the jury during proceedings at the Kenosha County Courthouse on November 12, 2021.
BY SEAN KRAJACIC-POOL/GETTY IMAGES
In a turn of events so familiar it was almost predictable, Kyle Rittenhouse, the Illinois teen who brought an AR-15 to last year’s Kenosha, Wisconsin, Black Lives Matter protests and used it to kill two people and wound a third, is being hailed by Fox News stars as a “good kid” who “did the right thing.” Prosecutors have described Rittenhouse—who was 17 at the time of the shootings, and is currently on trial for various criminal charges, including first-degree intentional homicide—as a vigilante killer, though Rittenhouse himself took the stand this week to claim he had acted in self-defense.
Fox News host Greg Gutfeld seemed inclined to believe the vigilante argument, but said in this case, vigilantism was justified. “He did the right thing,” Gutfeld said. “He did what the government should have done, which was to make sure these dirtbags—these violent, disgusting dirtbags—weren’t roaming the streets.”
Amazingly, at least one person on the network has compared Rittenhouse to George Floyd. “I have a problem with the inconsistency that I see from the left and people that claim…to fight for the rights of the people,” said Fox News contributor Lawrence Jones. “If you agree that the state shouldn’t have the knee on someone’s neck and kill them, then how could you support the state intentionally targeting a young man that it shows in the video, that it’s self-defense?”
Rittenhouse, who drove from his home in Illinois to attend the Kenosha protests, has insisted he was there to defend property owners and act as a field medic. Jeanine Pirro, a former New York state judge turned Fox News host, is doing her best to advance Rittenhouse’s version of events. “He was a good kid, he went there to clean up the graffiti on the buildings,” she said, adding that his showing on the witness stand “exemplified” what a defendant should do. During the segment, Geraldo Rivera rejected Pirro’s description, saying that Rittenhouse is a “dopey kid with a hero complex” and had no reason to be at the protests. Pirro shot back: “First of all, I don’t think he’s a dopey kid. Just because he isn’t Mr. Cool from New York City doesn’t make him a dopey kid, okay? This kid practiced CPR training, he was a police explorer, he was a fire cadet.… That’s a good kid. That is the kind of kid who can grow up and have a moral core.”
On Thursday night, Sean Hannity attempted to gin up more sympathy for the teenage shooter by airing a softball interview with his mother, Wendy Rittenhouse. At one point, Hannity asked how it impacted her and her son when Joe Biden supposedly depicted Rittenhouse as a white supremacist during the 2020 election. (When Rittenhouse was released on bail prior to the trial, he publicly appeared with members of the Proud Boys—a far-right group that has drawn headlines for instigating violent brawls at leftist protests—and was spotted flashing the “okay” sign, a hand signal that can be code for “white power.” A close acquaintance of the Rittenhouses told The New Yorker that neither he nor Rittenhouse knew the men were Proud Boys, or the significance of the “okay” gesture.) “President Biden don’t know my son whatsoever, and he’s not a white supremacist. He’s not a racist. And he did that for the votes…. He defamed him,” Wendy Rittenhouse said after Hannity asserted that he has not seen “any evidence whatsoever that he is such a person.”
In a turn of events so familiar it was almost predictable, Kyle Rittenhouse, the Illinois teen who brought an AR-15 to last year’s Kenosha, Wisconsin, Black Lives Matter protests and used it to kill two people and wound a third, is being hailed by Fox News stars as a “good kid” who “did the right thing.” Prosecutors have described Rittenhouse—who was 17 at the time of the shootings, and is currently on trial for various criminal charges, including first-degree intentional homicide—as a vigilante killer, though Rittenhouse himself took the stand this week to claim he had acted in self-defense.
Fox News host Greg Gutfeld seemed inclined to believe the vigilante argument, but said in this case, vigilantism was justified. “He did the right thing,” Gutfeld said. “He did what the government should have done, which was to make sure these dirtbags—these violent, disgusting dirtbags—weren’t roaming the streets.”
Amazingly, at least one person on the network has compared Rittenhouse to George Floyd. “I have a problem with the inconsistency that I see from the left and people that claim…to fight for the rights of the people,” said Fox News contributor Lawrence Jones. “If you agree that the state shouldn’t have the knee on someone’s neck and kill them, then how could you support the state intentionally targeting a young man that it shows in the video, that it’s self-defense?”
Rittenhouse, who drove from his home in Illinois to attend the Kenosha protests, has insisted he was there to defend property owners and act as a field medic. Jeanine Pirro, a former New York state judge turned Fox News host, is doing her best to advance Rittenhouse’s version of events. “He was a good kid, he went there to clean up the graffiti on the buildings,” she said, adding that his showing on the witness stand “exemplified” what a defendant should do. During the segment, Geraldo Rivera rejected Pirro’s description, saying that Rittenhouse is a “dopey kid with a hero complex” and had no reason to be at the protests. Pirro shot back: “First of all, I don’t think he’s a dopey kid. Just because he isn’t Mr. Cool from New York City doesn’t make him a dopey kid, okay? This kid practiced CPR training, he was a police explorer, he was a fire cadet.… That’s a good kid. That is the kind of kid who can grow up and have a moral core.”
On Thursday night, Sean Hannity attempted to gin up more sympathy for the teenage shooter by airing a softball interview with his mother, Wendy Rittenhouse. At one point, Hannity asked how it impacted her and her son when Joe Biden supposedly depicted Rittenhouse as a white supremacist during the 2020 election. (When Rittenhouse was released on bail prior to the trial, he publicly appeared with members of the Proud Boys—a far-right group that has drawn headlines for instigating violent brawls at leftist protests—and was spotted flashing the “okay” sign, a hand signal that can be code for “white power.” A close acquaintance of the Rittenhouses told The New Yorker that neither he nor Rittenhouse knew the men were Proud Boys, or the significance of the “okay” gesture.) “President Biden don’t know my son whatsoever, and he’s not a white supremacist. He’s not a racist. And he did that for the votes…. He defamed him,” Wendy Rittenhouse said after Hannity asserted that he has not seen “any evidence whatsoever that he is such a person.”
Rex Huppke: Guilty or innocent, Kyle Rittenhouse should disgust us all
What if the Kyle Rittenhouse character is cast as a Black 17-year-old, and the scene is an area outside one of former President Donald Trump’s rallies?
Rex Huppke
We should — all of us — be disgusted with Kyle Rittenhouse. That all of us aren’t is a problem. A profound one.
Set aside for now Rittenhouse’s legal guilt or innocence in the killing of two men and the injuring of a third during a night of protests and chaos in Kenosha. We now wait for Monday’s closing arguments in his murder trial, and then we’ll wait for the jury’s verdict, and there will be time to approve or disapprove of the outcome.
For now, let’s consider the bigger issues, the elements of this case that reflect where America stands as a society. Let’s consider what the very idea of a “Kyle Rittenhouse” means, and how our divided reaction to him reveals a far deeper and far more dangerous problem than one armed person in a Midwestern town on a hot August night of civil unrest.
We have to consider these things because there are not just disagreements over Rittenhouse’s guilt or innocence. There are people — many — on the right who consider the now 18 year old not just innocent, but heroic. He has been hailed by them as an All-American patriot who did what the police or the government wasn’t willing to do. Some say he should one day run for public office. Some have compared his prosecution to child abuse.
Not long after the night Rittenhouse shot and killed Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber and wounded Gaige Grosskreutz in 2020, conservative commentator Michelle Malkin tweeted: “ALL THE BEST PEOPLE #StandWithKyle. It’s now or never ... and, yes, it’s war.”
In a recent piece on Fox News’ website, host Tucker Carlson wrote: “Kyle Rittenhouse went to Kenosha to clean up the filth left by the rioting Biden voters.”
Rittenhouse, then 17, traveled from his home in Antioch, Illinois, with an illegally purchased AR-15 style rifle to the scene of widespread protests over the shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man, by a white police officer. Let me state that more generally: A 17-year-old armed with a powerful rifle crossed state lines and placed himself smack-dab in a chaotic and potentially violent scene.
Is our common sense so eroded by political divisions and tragically twisted concepts of masculinity that we can’t all agree that no 17-year-old should be traipsing around any city at any time of day with a weapon like that?
Are we ready to start heroizing teen vigilantism? Do we want untrained youth whose prefrontal cortexes, the part of the brain responsible for controlling impulses, aren’t fully developed, patrolling streets with deadly weapons?
Does anyone really think that’s going to end well? It certainly didn’t in Kenosha.
The bottom line is this: The people hailing Rittenhouse as a good ol’ American boy who had the guts to stand up to lawbreakers are only doing so because they’re OK with the type of people he killed. In the Rittenhouse-as-hero narrative, the three men he gunned down were not people on the opposite side of the ideological fence — they were the enemy. They were either supportive of or consorting with groups protesting the police. They were, as Carlson wrote, “filth.”
Fox News host Greg Gutfeld, recounting the criminal records of two of Rittenhouse’s victims — records Rittenhouse couldn’t possibly have known about when he shot them — said Thursday that the teenager “did the right thing.”
Gutfeld went on: “He did what the government should have done, which was to make sure these dirtbags, these violent disgusting dirtbags, weren’t roaming the streets!”
By Gutfeld’s logic, we should stand up and applaud any 17-year-old who takes up an illegally purchased Smith & Wesson M&P 15, a military style rifle, and guns down people with criminal histories.
Is that something we all agree on? Is that where we’re at in America these days?
More importantly, is everyone fine with all this if the Kyle Rittenhouse character is cast as a Black 17-year-old, and the scene is an area outside one of former President Donald Trump’s rallies? If that teen with a still-developing prefrontal cortex feels his life is threatened by someone outside that rally, and the teen opens fire, is he going to get the same hero treatment? Will the criminal backgrounds of his victims make them “disgusting dirtbags” who got what was coming to them thanks to a righteous youth vigilante?
What we’re missing by focusing intently on Rittenhouse’s guilt or innocence, on the verdict soon to come, is just how messed up a country we are if we don’t feel collective disgust over a dumb teen slinging a rifle across his chest and heading into an out-of-control situation.
What we’re missing is the overt racism of cheering a teenager like Rittenhouse in those circumstances while saying a teenager like Chicago’s Adam Toledo — a 13 year old shot and killed by a police office after dropping a handgun and starting to raise his hands — got what was coming to him.
This is all wrong. This is all wildly, fundamentally wrong. We can disagree over the individual circumstances of these or any other cases. But we can’t ignore the vastly different ways a white teen and a teenager of color are treated when they’re armed. And we can’t, for the love of God, encourage, revere or in any way normalize armed young people acting like judge, jury and executioner.
Rittenhouse’s presence in Kenosha was as abnormal as it was unnecessary. We should be disgusted by it. We should be disgusted by him and by anyone cheering him, no matter the jury’s verdict.
If we can’t agree on that, if we can’t see what’s happening here and recognize it as a profound problem, we’ve lost our center, our sense of decency and our minds.
Rex Huppke
Nov 12, 2021
KENOSHA NEWS
KENOSHA NEWS
We should — all of us — be disgusted with Kyle Rittenhouse. That all of us aren’t is a problem. A profound one.
Set aside for now Rittenhouse’s legal guilt or innocence in the killing of two men and the injuring of a third during a night of protests and chaos in Kenosha. We now wait for Monday’s closing arguments in his murder trial, and then we’ll wait for the jury’s verdict, and there will be time to approve or disapprove of the outcome.
For now, let’s consider the bigger issues, the elements of this case that reflect where America stands as a society. Let’s consider what the very idea of a “Kyle Rittenhouse” means, and how our divided reaction to him reveals a far deeper and far more dangerous problem than one armed person in a Midwestern town on a hot August night of civil unrest.
We have to consider these things because there are not just disagreements over Rittenhouse’s guilt or innocence. There are people — many — on the right who consider the now 18 year old not just innocent, but heroic. He has been hailed by them as an All-American patriot who did what the police or the government wasn’t willing to do. Some say he should one day run for public office. Some have compared his prosecution to child abuse.
Not long after the night Rittenhouse shot and killed Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber and wounded Gaige Grosskreutz in 2020, conservative commentator Michelle Malkin tweeted: “ALL THE BEST PEOPLE #StandWithKyle. It’s now or never ... and, yes, it’s war.”
In a recent piece on Fox News’ website, host Tucker Carlson wrote: “Kyle Rittenhouse went to Kenosha to clean up the filth left by the rioting Biden voters.”
Rittenhouse, then 17, traveled from his home in Antioch, Illinois, with an illegally purchased AR-15 style rifle to the scene of widespread protests over the shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man, by a white police officer. Let me state that more generally: A 17-year-old armed with a powerful rifle crossed state lines and placed himself smack-dab in a chaotic and potentially violent scene.
Is our common sense so eroded by political divisions and tragically twisted concepts of masculinity that we can’t all agree that no 17-year-old should be traipsing around any city at any time of day with a weapon like that?
Are we ready to start heroizing teen vigilantism? Do we want untrained youth whose prefrontal cortexes, the part of the brain responsible for controlling impulses, aren’t fully developed, patrolling streets with deadly weapons?
Does anyone really think that’s going to end well? It certainly didn’t in Kenosha.
The bottom line is this: The people hailing Rittenhouse as a good ol’ American boy who had the guts to stand up to lawbreakers are only doing so because they’re OK with the type of people he killed. In the Rittenhouse-as-hero narrative, the three men he gunned down were not people on the opposite side of the ideological fence — they were the enemy. They were either supportive of or consorting with groups protesting the police. They were, as Carlson wrote, “filth.”
Fox News host Greg Gutfeld, recounting the criminal records of two of Rittenhouse’s victims — records Rittenhouse couldn’t possibly have known about when he shot them — said Thursday that the teenager “did the right thing.”
Gutfeld went on: “He did what the government should have done, which was to make sure these dirtbags, these violent disgusting dirtbags, weren’t roaming the streets!”
By Gutfeld’s logic, we should stand up and applaud any 17-year-old who takes up an illegally purchased Smith & Wesson M&P 15, a military style rifle, and guns down people with criminal histories.
Is that something we all agree on? Is that where we’re at in America these days?
More importantly, is everyone fine with all this if the Kyle Rittenhouse character is cast as a Black 17-year-old, and the scene is an area outside one of former President Donald Trump’s rallies? If that teen with a still-developing prefrontal cortex feels his life is threatened by someone outside that rally, and the teen opens fire, is he going to get the same hero treatment? Will the criminal backgrounds of his victims make them “disgusting dirtbags” who got what was coming to them thanks to a righteous youth vigilante?
What we’re missing by focusing intently on Rittenhouse’s guilt or innocence, on the verdict soon to come, is just how messed up a country we are if we don’t feel collective disgust over a dumb teen slinging a rifle across his chest and heading into an out-of-control situation.
What we’re missing is the overt racism of cheering a teenager like Rittenhouse in those circumstances while saying a teenager like Chicago’s Adam Toledo — a 13 year old shot and killed by a police office after dropping a handgun and starting to raise his hands — got what was coming to him.
This is all wrong. This is all wildly, fundamentally wrong. We can disagree over the individual circumstances of these or any other cases. But we can’t ignore the vastly different ways a white teen and a teenager of color are treated when they’re armed. And we can’t, for the love of God, encourage, revere or in any way normalize armed young people acting like judge, jury and executioner.
Rittenhouse’s presence in Kenosha was as abnormal as it was unnecessary. We should be disgusted by it. We should be disgusted by him and by anyone cheering him, no matter the jury’s verdict.
If we can’t agree on that, if we can’t see what’s happening here and recognize it as a profound problem, we’ve lost our center, our sense of decency and our minds.
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