The Covington MAGA Hat Story was the war cry heard around the country. Locusts cascaded from the sky. The oceans turned red with blood. Vegans ascended to all levels of power. Writers for The Walking Dead kicked themselves for not having conceived that what should've initiated a more dreadful apocalypse was none other than the demonic action of... teenagers smiling. Hell hath no fury like a well-timed smirk. HIS MOUTH. OH HOW ITS CORNERS UPTURN. SHEILD YOUR BABIES!

And so, as we live in the desolation of a post-smirk world, we must hold each other and remember what's really important. Not our lives, not our families, not our sacred honor. No, what we hold most dear in times of traumatic smugness, what we must remember as we soldier on in times of terrifying eye twinkles, is the redeeming power of media narratives.

Also, and completely unrelated to the horrors of hate-infested snickering, an investigation found no racism or bigotry from the Covington boys. At all.

The report, prepared by Greater Cincinnati Investigation, Inc. and dated Feb. 11, employed four licensed investigators for approximately 240 hours to take statements from students and chaperones, as well as to interview third-party witnesses and review about 50 hours of video. Investigators were not able to interview either Phillips or Sandmann in person and instead reviewed the student’s written account.

I, for one, am immensely relieved that four licensed investigators spent 240 hours scouring over piles of forensic grins. My god. Imagine the fallout which may have devastated our very existence had investigators not spent so much of their time searching for evidence of hate, racism, bigotry from a gaggle of pimple-faced adolescents who, rather than falling to their knees in apology for their male whiteness when faced with an American Indian douche, smiled!

HE'S SMILING I KNOW IT

The investigators said they found no evidence that the students responded in an offensive manner to the black Hebrew Israelites or that they chanted “build the wall.” After asking chaperones, they performed a school cheer, according to the report, to drown out the black Hebrew Israelites.

BUT THEY SMILED, DAMNIT ALL. WE COULD'VED PERISHED!

I don't understand. Celebrities, media, news anchors, self-hating conservatives eager to get more likes and retweets from hateful liberals (please, please, please just LOVE ME), all told us, they all promised us, the Covington Catholic teenage boys were racism incarnate. How is it possible, oh sweet baby Jesus, these titans of racism were cleared of so much obvious hate?

No, it's not possible. I refuse to believe these boys are anything other than the harbingers of death. Twitter is never wrong. Outrage culture is always right. People who haven't heard of exercise or sanity should always be believed. Anyone who questions anyone else who is outraged is, in fact, a puppy-killing angel of bigotry.

Or... wait a minute. Maybe, just maybe, and bear with me here for the tiniest of seconds, the people running the media, the people delivering our news and information, are largely controlled by hate and bigotry themselves.

Either that, either the media behemoths are blinded by insane rage toward people who do not think as they do, or I need to build a fallout shelter. You know, for safety. In case a teenager with a MAGA hat does something truly dangerous. Like laughing. Oh my God.

~Written by Courtney Kirchoff