March 28, 2018

Conservatives Are Now Mocking David Hogg for Getting Rejected by Some Colleges

Oh, and they’re also comparing the high school senior to Hitler.

Andrew Harnik/AP

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The student leaders demanding action on gun control in the wake of last month’s Parkland, Florida, shooting have been the focus of intense attacks on the right, many of whom have promoted baseless conspiracy theories and mocking memes to undermine the students’ messages.

But this week took an especially vitriolic turn when conservatives seized upon a new video interview featuring David Hogg, in which the 17-year-old from Marjory Stoneman Douglas discusses having recently learned that he was rejected by several California colleges, including UCLA. 

In the video posted by TMZ on Tuesday, Hogg appears gracious as he reflects on the string of rejection letters. He acknowledges the disappointment but says that his mind’s been focused on the movement.

The most eloquent part of the interview comes when Hogg is asked if he was at all surprised by the rejections considering his newfound national prominence. “I’m not surprised at all, in all honesty,” he says in the video. “I think there’s a lot of amazing people that don’t get into college, not only [who] do things that I do, but because their voices just aren’t heard in the tsunami of people that apply to colleges in such an impacted school system here in America.”

That, however, hasn’t stopped conservatives from mocking Hogg. Fox News host Laura Ingraham went as far as to deride Hogg for the “totally predictable” rejections in light of Hogg’s GPA and SAT scores. 

The conservative site The Blaze wrote about the video to claim Hogg’s unhappiness these days “has more to do with the fact that he hasn’t been granted admission into preferred colleges than it does with the fact that 17 of his school peers were gunned down in February’s mass school killing.”

Meanwhile, a Minnesota lawmaker has been under fire for comparing Hogg to Hitler Youth—a malicious attack also embraced by the far-right news sites InfoWars and Breitbart.

Hogg later responded to Ingraham’s tweet with a call for advertisers to boycott her show.

This post has been updated to include Hogg’s response.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

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