Topic: Media Research Center
We've detailed how Media Research Center chief Brent Bozell railed against isolated instances of anti-Semitism at Occupy Wall Street and related protests (and trying to pretend they were more widespread than they were) while assembling a motley crew of so-called "Jewish leaders" who lack anything beyond a cult-sized constituency to back him up.
If Bozell was genuinely concerned about anti-Semitism, he would have started rooting it out of his own organization.
The MRC's "news" division, CNSNews.com, publishes the twice-weekly syndicated column by Pat Buchanan. In May 2010, CNS published a Buchanan column in which he complained that if Elena Kagan's nomination was successful, there would be too many Jews on the Supureme Court: "If Kagan is confirmed, Jews, who represent less than 2 percent of the U.S. population, will have 33 percent of the Supreme Court seats. Is this the Democrats’ idea of diversity?"
As we noted at the time, Bozell said nothing about Buchanan's column, even though around the same time he and the MRC were excoriating Helen Thomas' statement that Jews should "get the hell out of Palestine."
In addition to Buchanan's borderline anti-Semitism -- in his new book, he attacks American Jews for having made themselves an "endangered species" by supporting the right of abortion -- he has refused to disavow the idea that minorities have inferior genes, attacked Barack Obama's mother as an "ethno-masocist," and appeared on a self-described "pro-White" radio show to promote his new book.
As opposed to the "Jewish leaders" Bozell scrounged up to criticize Occupy Wall Street, the Progressive Jewish Alliance and Jewish Funds for Justice have combined to call for MSNBC to stop giving airtime to Buchanan's bigotry.
Will Bozell follow this example and stop publishing Buchanan's column? Or will Bozell prove himself to be a partisan hack more interested in scoring political points than living out his declared principles?
We're guessing the former -- after all, one of his MRC lieutenants, Tim Graham, has already penned a defense of Buchanan.
In an Oct. 28 NewsBusters column, Graham writes:
Buchanan clearly writes with a white racial consciousness, even a tribalism. This was also true of Buchanan when he first joined MSNBC. Some of the passages singled out by the lefties (on TPM Muckraker) do argue that whites are being submerged, even vanishing under diversity. I find this pessimism overwrought. But can blacks like Van Jones say with a straight face that they don’t have an angry racial consciousness, a tribalism? It’s only that they’re the oppressed ones? With a black president, when does this stop being true?
It's almost comical that they would claim with some sort of shock that Buchanan "takes every opportunity to stoke the racial anxiety and fear that exists among some white people. In short, Buchanan wants to pit white people against people of color." And what has Al Sharpton done, and the other black race-baiters, constantly pitting black people against allegedly racist Republicans? If stoking racial anxiety is disqualifying, why does Sharpton been awarded a nightly platform?[...]
Most Americans today don’t want to be that racially conscious, that white Americans panic over still “steering” the national wheel as a racial royal "We." Conservatives often especially want to prove they’re not racially obsessed. This (in some part) explains the current wave for Herman Cain – which is not to dismiss his successful life and leadership.
But some of Buchanan’s allegedly offensive prose is simply true. Take the passage about minority journalism organizations: “Half a century after Martin Luther King envisioned a day when his children would be judged ‘not by the color of their skin, but the content of their character,’ journalists of color are demanding the hiring and promotion of journalists based on the color of their skin.” Merit is not completely overlooked, but it can certainly seem secondary when groups are organized around skin color.
Graham then goes on to play the equivocation (and gay-bashing) card: "Again, you have to laugh at the idea that Buchanan's the 'extremist,' while gay groups that want to teach sex education to six-year-olds and let seven-year-old 'transgendered' boys join the Girl Scouts aren't extreme. They're the 'sane, clear-thinking people.'"
Graham made no mention, however, of Buchanan's complaints about Jews, even though his boss purports to be fighting against such things.
