Destroying Mimi Groves

Were it not for the New York Times the story would probably not have been much noticed. It’s a small incident, from a high school in Virginia, about how one malicious teenager set out to destroy a classmate.

In the hands of the New York Times it became an anti-racism morality play. For reasons that will remain unmentioned, the Times is all over any story that allows it to teach about racism. It does not care whether the information is inaccurate or false. It will run stories like its 1619 Project because they make a point about anti-racism.

The simple fact that every historian who examined the 1619 Project saw it for the lie that it was, made not a whit of difference.

In Shakespeare’s words, the 1619 Project is: “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Dare we mention that the Times, being the propaganda arm of the Democratic Party did not raise any hue and cry about Virginia governor Ralph Northam’s using his medical school yearbook page to put up a photo of a Klansman and a man in blackface. Not a problem, the media declared, because Northam was a Democrat.

If the Times had any sense of shame it would understand that it has disgraced itself, over and over again.

Now, in another appalling episode, it has taken out after a child, a girl named Mimi Groves for having posted something offensive when she was 15. And it has lionized a despicable wretch named Jimmy Galligan for having done everything in his power to destroy Mimi Groves.

As it happens, Groves lives in Virginia, in a place called Leesburg, named after Robert E. Lee, so naturally, her childhood indiscretion has been blown up by the New York Times into an expression of racist oppression, of a piece with slavery and Jim Crow.

The story has been widely covered, so I will not go into all the details, but when Mimi Groves got her learner’s permit at age 15 she posted a remark wherein she used a racist epithet.

Young Galligan, a biracial student whose father is white, but apparently not especially woke, conspired to punish Groves. So he held on to the three-second post for years, waiting for the time when he could spring it on the world in a way that would cause maximum pain for Mimi Groves. Sadism, anyone?

One has not read all the commentaries, but one would suspect that feminists would rush to defend a woman who is being purposefully abused by a male being. Unfortunately, this feels like yet another instance of the silence of the feminists.

When star cheerleader Groves was accepted into the University of Tennessee and was chosen for the nationally recognized cheerleading squad, Galligan sprung his attack. He posted the video. When the three second video went viral the University of Tennessee, in a disgraceful manifestation of cowardice, forced Groves to withdraw her acceptance into the school.

She is currently attending a local community college. Galligan is attending a Christian college in California. No one seems to believe that he did anything wrong, though his foresight and planning suggests clearly that he acted with pure malice. When did it happen that a good Christian should feel proud of being malicious?

Galligan wanted to destroy another human being, to render her life miserable, to make her a pariah in her community. He feels absolutely no regret and would happily do it again. After all the New York Times is cheering him on.

Nothing quite like destroying a child's life to make a biracial student feel like a hero in the struggle for civil rights.

Of course, Galligan has done great damage to the cause of civil rights. This is so, not merely because of what he did, despicable as it is, but because he has been widely lauded for his action. The society at large, led by the moral eunuchs at the New York Times, finds his to be acceptable behavior. 

If your cause is sufficiently just you have the right to destroy children. We are no longer in the world of the marketplace of ideas. We have entered an amoral universe where power manifests itself in its ability to destroy people on the grounds of their race.

And we have diminished the reputations of black people across the country. If blacks are allowed to destroy white people for statements made during childhood, why would a white person want to associate with them. Galligan and the New York Times have set back the cause of civil rights.

One notes, as has been noted, that young Groves has apologized profusely for her childhood indiscretion, which represented little more than an echo of the kind of language that fills up the hip-hop songs that teenagers love to listen to. Cardi B uses the n-- word all the time and no one cares, even though she is Hispanic.

By the moral calculus of the New York Times, Groves committed an unforgivable sin. In truth, every religion contains the concept of forgiveness, of the forgiveness of sin. Those who atone or do penance for their sins are forgiven.

Except for the teenaged Mimi Groves-- her sin was so egregious that she will never be forgiven. Now, the disgraceful behavior of Jimmy Galligan has become a moral paragon.

For those who are not familiar with the ins and outs of theology, I will note, in passing, that Christianity does identify one unforgivable sin-- namely, blaspheming the Holy Spirit. Jesus Christ says so in Matthew 12: 32.

As for the meaning of the statement, the Bishop of Hippo, Augustine himself declared that the one unforgivable sin was-- impenitence. And yet, clearly Groves was penitent.

See also, Ezekiel 18:22;

None of the transgressions that they have committed shall be remembered against them; for the righteousness that they have done they shall live.

I would posit, as a point worthy of your consideration, that psycho analytic theory does posit, as an article of faith, that the past always haunts the present, that we never escape it. We might be able to diminish its hold, but we do not escape it.

Whereas the book of Ezekiel declares that once the past is atoned for, it should be forgotten, the new psycho morality suggests that it can never be atoned for enough.

In some theories, we are haunted by the traumas experienced in childhood. In others, we are crippled by our sinful wishes. This suggests that if we want to find a pseudo religion where sins can never be forgiven, we should look to the psycho world. 

The other side of the issue lies in what are called resilience studies. While psycho theorists claim that you will never get over the traumas visited on you during childhood, resilience studies suggest that nearly two thirds of people do.

So, Mimi Groves was penitent about her use of a bad word when she was 15. Jimmy Galligan is proud of the fact that he destroyed another human being, out of pure malice. In a society that had a moral compass, Galligan would be paying a price. 

Rod Dreher raises the salient issue. 

This Times story will follow Jimmy Galligan everywhere too. If that kid applied for a job at my firm, I would never hire him. If he were my co-worker, I would stay away from him, lest I offend him and get the Little- Anthony-from-The-Twilight-Zone treatment. He has shown the kind of person he is: a hateful progressive who takes pleasure in causing others unnecessary pain and suffering for the sake of virtue. He wants to terrorize others. Everybody who goes to college with him now, and who crosses his path, should consider themselves forewarned.