Poor Harvey the Hurricane Hawk. First, he loses his way in the storm battering the Texas coastline, and then, he has the bad sense to pick a problematic rescuer, turning his adorable viral video into a flash point for the Left.
Let’s start with the nice stuff. A Houston taxi driver named William Bruso found himself the unlikely caretaker for a Cooper’s hawk when the animal flew into Bruso’s taxi, ostensibly to escape the wind and rain from Hurricane Harvey. Stunned by his new friend, and worried that the bird (who might have been injured) wouldn’t survive the storm, Bruso named the hawk, “Harvey” after the storm, and took him home.
A video of Bruso finding Harvery went viral over the weekend.
Since the bird didn’t appear seriously injured, Bruso let Harvey stick around and hunker down with his family through the storm, with the promise that they’d take him to a wildlife rescue when it was safe. They eventually did, on Monday morning, and the center was very gratefu for Bruso’s help: it turned out Harvey has a broken wing — an injury that prevents him from flying — meaning that without Bruso’s help, Harvey wouldn’t have survived the storm.
But Harvery’s first video did so well, his rescuers kept making videos, updating the internet on Harvey’s progress. Around the 5th video, however, things started to go wrong. See if you can spot why the internet exploded and turned on Harvey’s rescuers.
Yep, that’s a Confederate flag. Two, actually.
Now, having a Confederate flag doesn’t necessarily make you a racist or, really, even much of a Confederate. But given that these last two weeks have been consumed with arguing over whether the enduring symbols of the American Civil War have a damaging effect on race relations in this country …
There’s nothing in any of the Harvey videos to indicate that Bruso has any white supremacist leanings, but this is the internet, so not only was he immediately accused of abject racism, but he was endlessly chided for “exposing” the poor, defenseless raptor to his racist ideas.
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For starters, no one can arrest you for simply having a flag. And it’s highly unlikely the authorities in flood-ravaged Houston have any time to go around questioning the motives of a guy from Texas with a couple of flags, particularly one who was kind enough not to let an injured hawk die on his watch.
Harvey himself hasn’t been “tainted” by whatever Bruso happens to believe; he’s probably just glad to be out of the storm.
[Via Hot Air]
