MRC: Jefferson Must Be 'Exonerat[ed]' Of Sexual Relations With Black Woman Topic: Media Research Center
Right-wingers apparently find the idea that Thomas Jefferson may have had sex with a woman of a different race that it must be fought whenever possible. We've previously detailed how Accuracy in Media called it a "smear."
Now, the Media Research Center aims to fight history, declaring that Jefferson's alleged sexual relations with black slave Sally Hemings is something he must be "exonerat[ed]" from. Matt Philbin writes ina Sept. 1 MRC Culture & Media Institute article:
Fact: The man who wrote so eloquently about basic human liberty in the Declaration of Independence was himself a slave owner. Unproven theory: That man had a sexual relationship with one of those slaves and fathered at least one of her children.
If you're a liberal journalist, the fact makes you inclined to believe the theory, and ideology and political necessity take you the rest of the way. At least, that has been the case in reporting on the Jefferson-Hemings historical controversy over the last decade and more.
It will be interesting to see if a new book that goes a long way toward exonerating Thomas Jefferson receives the same kind of breathless coverage as evidence the media cited to condemn him. Or if CBS produces a miniseries to correct the one it made exploiting that evidence.
Speaking of unproven claims, Philbin goes on to assert that when DNA testing proved a Jefferson-Hemings hookup of some kind, "Liberal journalists, then desperate for ways to defend President Bill Clinton during his own sordid sex scandal, pounced on the news that a descendent of Hemings shared some of our third president's DNA." Philbin offers only a couple anecdotal quotes, which falls far short of the vast left-wing conspiracy Philbin claims.
Philbin later goes on to reference "assumptions of Jefferson's guilt" in alleged sexual relations with Hemings, as if it was a crime akin to robbery or murder -- or a crime, period, 40 years after anti-miscegenation laws were overturned by the Supreme Court. Who knew that the MRC was still so squeamish about race-mixing?
WND's Unruh Misleads About Obama Administration, Statutes Topic: WorldNetDaily
Bob Unruh begins an Aug. 31 WorldNetDaily article on the right-wing Judicial Watch filing yet another nuisance lawsuit against the Obama administration over the Defense of Marriage Act by claiming that the administration is "picking and choosing which of the nation's laws it wants to enforce." Unruh further suggested that DOMA should be enforce because it was "congressionally approved and presidentially signed."
At no point does Unruh explain that the reason the administration has decided to decline to defend DOMA in court is because it considers the law to be unconstitutional. Unruh also does not explain that there is well-established precedent for presidents to refuse to defend statutes they view as unconstitutional -- indeed, presidents from Thomas Jefferson to George W. Bush have done it. Nor did Unruh offer any evidence that Judicial Watch is aware of this precedent.
Unruh misled further by referencing "the Obama administration's recent decision to stop the deportation of large numbers of illegal aliens, in apparent violation of the nation's own immigration laws." That's a false description of the administration's action; in fact, the administration is exercising prosecutorial discretion in prioritizing the deportation of illegal immigrants who have committed criminal offense over those who have not. Again, prosecutorial discretion is well established in U.S. law, recognized even by conservative justices such as Antonin Scalia and William Rehnquist.
As is de rigueur for Unruh, he allows only one side of the story -- that of Judicial Watch -- to explain its case and mislead about what the other side thinks. He makes no effort to contact any Obama administration official for a response to Judicial Watch.
Noel Sheppard Still Thinks Gloating Over Insults = Media Criticism Topic: NewsBusters
Noel Sheppard was so thrilled when Charles Krauthammer called President Obama "President Zero: zero economic expansion, zero jobs, zero ideas on how to cure the economy" that he devoted an entire NewsBusters post to it.
And he got such a charge out of Rich Lowry saying that Al Sharpton will "never be President of the United States because he can’t read a teleprompter" that he devoted a NewsBusters post to that, too.
What does repeating the insults of others have to do with the Media Research Center's purported mission of media criticism, and how does it not violate the MRC's 501(c)3 status? We have no idea, but Sheppard does this a lot.
McCaughey Falsely Attacks Obama Nominee Over VAT Topic: Newsmax
In her Sept. 2 Newsmax column, Betsy McCaughey writes:
On Monday, President Obama appointed Alan Krueger to head the Council of Economic Advisers. Krueger advocates imposing a value-added tax (VAT) to the nation’s tax burden. Here comes the Vanishing America Tax.
In fact, as we've detailed, Krueger does not advocate a VAT; he brought it up in a blog post "only as a suggestion for serious discussion" without offering an endorsement.
Ellis Washington Being Ellis Washington Topic: WorldNetDaily
Did white guilt + black victimhood = Obama in '08? Will white guilt + black victimhood = Obama in '12? When Rush declared on Inauguration Day 2009, regarding the presidency of Barack Obama, "I hope he fails," the liberals went wild in a fascist mob frenzy, equating Rush's statement of affirmation essentially as a racist declaration of treason. What Rush really meant (and liberals fully understood) was that he hoped that President Obama's policies (i.e., Marxism, socialism, Keynesianism, growing the welfare state exponentially, amnesty for illegal aliens, green energy, oppressive taxes and regulations, war socialism, bowing to dictators, destroying liberty, favoring Muslims, undermining Christianity and turning the Constitution into a suicide pact) would fail.
[...]
How did America get into this catastrophe called Barack Hussein Obama whose socialist policies have given us zero jobs in August? Endemic education propaganda is the short answer. My long-view theory places the blame directly on our public school establishment's unholy alliance with socialism, unionism and secularism when the NEA was established in 1857. Two years later Darwin's evolution propaganda screed was published, "The Origin of Species," which over time was comprehensively integrated into the public school curriculum, especially science, but also in colleges, universities, law schools, graduate schools, business schools and medical schools. Later, under John Dewey's influence, education was essentially manipulated to indoctrinate students to accept as ipso facto an anti-Christian, anti-American worldview rooted in Darwinian evolution and materialism, Marxist socialism, Nietzschean atheism, relativism and Freud's perverse sexual theories.
[...]
or example, when GOP candidate Gov. Rick Perry calls Social Security a "Ponzi scheme," a "monstrous lie," and a "violent" attack on core American values, the propaganda press when ballistic – but Perry was right. I just wish more Republicans would have the guts to attack the Big Lie of any liberal policies that favor stealing money from its owners and giving it to those who didn't earn it and don't constitutionally deserve it. However, today a venerated Harvard law professor like Randall Kenned can regurgitate Rush's "I hope he fails" statement and twist it to mean the opposite of what Limbaugh meant, and most people will believe Kennedy over Rush still three years later because reason, logic and deduction have been replaced with feelings, envy and race guilt.
In November 2008, when 96 percent of my people were beguiled by Obama's black skin, slick slogans and welfare rhetoric to vote for a man who utterly despises them, whose Marxist, socialist, Keynesian economic policies traps them at 51 percent unemployment in some big cities (it was 25 percent during the Great Depression) and favors Margaret Sanger's Black Holocaust policies that aborts them at greater percentages than any other racial group, it reminded me of several columns written by Dr. Thomas Sowell as well as Dr. Shelby Steele's excellent book, "White Guilt: How Whites and Blacks Together Destroyed the Promises of the Civil Rights Era" (2006). It was white guilt and black victimhood that propelled the white vote for Obama. Rush said, "We can assuage our guilt by voting for a black candidate and proudly telling everybody we did and that sends the signal, 'We're not racist,' and they get rid of their guilt." In return Obama gives America the resurrection of the fascist FDR, the welfare state and the Great Depression, Part 2.
CNS Body-Counters Tout Lack of Troop Deaths in Iraq Topic: CNSNews.com
When August became the worst month ever for U.S. military deaths in Afghanistan, you'd think CNSNews.com would have pounced on that news right away, given its history of hyping troop deaths in Afghanistan in order to attack President Obama (and, in particular, its politicizing of the deaths of 30 troops in a helicopter crash that contributed greatly to August's toll).
But, surprisingly, it hasn't yet, even though it's usually quick to crank out a body-count article in the first day or two of the new month. Instead, a Sept. 2 article by Patrick Goodenough announces that "August marked the first month since March 2003 that not one member of the U.S. military was reported to have died in Iraq or while deployed in neighboring areas in support of operations in Iraq, either in combat or non-hostile circumstances."
Of course, in contrast to its Afghan body-counting, CNS has a history of touting decreases in troop deaths in Iraq.
Ilana Mercer is not taking kindly to her white-supremacist leanings being outed.
Mercer devotes her entire Sept. 2 WorldNetDaily column to attacking me, weirdly focusing on a couple of ConWebBlog posts instead of the much more comprehensive article I wrote on Mercer's views.
One of her complaints about said blog posts: that I "omitted quotation marks" in excerpting from her column. Actually, it's clear that the indented text is the part being directly quoted, though it's partially obscured in one post by the placement of a picture of Mercer. Still, the direct quote is preceded by a paragraph ending in a colon, which is also a common indicator that I'm directly quoting someone.
Mercer then decides to defend the indefensible in portraying militant South African white supremacist Eugene Terreblanche as an "innocent":
Krepel began his litany by accusing me, on June 12, 2011, of lionizing Eugene Terre'Blanche, the murdered leader of South Africa's Afrikaner Resistance Movement. This daughter of an anti-apartheid activist (me) also stands in the dock for "pining for the days of apartheid," and helping to hide Terre'Blanche's "group's history of violence and white supremacism."
In the "War on White South Africa," I had reported on the manner in which the controversial 69-year-old Mr. Terre'Blanche was bludgeoned to a pulp with pangas and pipes by two black farmhands. The old Afrikaner had not threatened anyone
But Terry Krepel bays for the blood of Terre'Blanche, who "reaped what he sowed." Or so writes Krepel of Terre'Blanche's "violent life" and "violent death."
What, then, of the many farming families who've met a similar fate?
As my book "Into the Cannibal's Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa" documents, South Africa's farmland is a vast burial ground for thousands of farmers. How does Krepel dismiss their deaths? And why does Krepel conceal that the Terre'Blanche killing bore the telltale signs of a farm murder?
Do these victims deserve the fate that befell Terre'Blanche?
(See, Ilana? The above section is indented. That means I'm directly quoting you.)
Of course, I did not celebrate Terreblanche's death; I merely pointed out that Terreblanche lived a violent life -- he once beat a man into a coma, and he led an invasion of a South African black homeland that resulted in the deaths of 37 people -- and it's unsurprising that his death was violent as well.
Mercer, while calling herself the "daughter of an anti-apartheid activist," couldn't quite serve up a blanket condemnation of South Africa's apartheid regime:
People fuss about apartheid having denied the majority its democratic rights (the vote). Denying people political privileges does not necessarily amount to depriving them of natural justice.
As explained in the book, apartheid "did more than disenfranchise the majority; it denied the majority's economic freedoms. Citizenship rights, after all, are not natural rights. It is natural rights that the law ought to always and everywhere respect and uphold.
"In its police state methods – indefinite detention without trial, declarations of a state of emergency – apartheid destroyed the individual defenses of equality before the law, the presumption of innocence, habeas corpus and various other very basic freedoms. That the apartheid regime contravened natural justice by depriving Africans of rights to property and due process is indisputable as it is despicable." (Page 231)
Disputes about democracy notwithstanding, there can be no disagreement over Krepel's crappy journalism.
(Again, indented text means direct quote.)
Any criticism she has of apartheid, however, is contradicted by her behavior, whether it be defending Terreblanche, her repeated suggestions that blacks are too stupid to run a country, and and her association with the website VDARE, which its editor describes as "white nationalist."
I've been engaging Mercer and others in the comment thread at thebottom of her article. As of this writing, she has yet to acknowledge that Terreblanche was a violent white supremacist, nor has she explained her other "white nationalist" associations.
Kennedy Derangement Syndrome Watch Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Tim Graham has long been a Kennedy-hater, to the point of helping his MRC colleagues repeatedly misrepresent a statement by the writer of a profile of Ted Kennedy to portray it as praise when, in context, it was meant to be criticism.
So it's no surprise to see Graham whine in a Sept. 2 NewsBusters post, under the headline "Will the Network 'News' Ever Stop Kennedy Shoe-shining?" that "The network news divisions just never stop making deals to promote the Kennedy family and the omnipresent Kennedy mythology and mystique," further complaining that an upcoming Kennedy special on ABC "carries the usual assumption that every last American finds it endlessly fascinating to ponder the lives of these allegedly heroic, historic, and glamorous people."
This comes, by the way, from the same organization that does quite a bit of shoe-shining of the mythology and mystique of Ronald Reagan, devoting entire reports to burnishing his legacy.
This Exists: 'Newsmax Health Special Report: Cheney’s Heart Dream Explained' Topic: Newsmax
Yes, Newsmax really did devote an entire article to this:
Dick Cheney raised plenty of eyebrows with his recent revelation that he had a prolonged dream while undergoing heart surgery in which he was strolling in a beautiful Italian village and drinking coffee.
Cheney’s strange vision does not surprise renowned heart surgeon Dr. Chauncey Crandall, who has had many patients tell him about similar, incredibly realistic dreams they experienced during cardiac surgery.
“We don’t usually talk that much about it, but I’ve had many, many heart transplant patients that when they awakened, they went through story upon story of these vivid dreams,” said Dr. Crandall, chief of the cardiac transplant program at Palm Beach Cardiovascular Clinic in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., and author of Newmax’s “Heart Health Report.”
Oddball, interesting item, sure. But "Newsmax Health Special Report"? Please.
WND Finds Another Anti-Gay Book to Tout Topic: WorldNetDaily
Any organization that would tout a discredited, rabidly anti-gay book like "The Pink Swastika" -- and then pretend it hasn't been discredited -- is up for pretty much any anti-gay tripe.
And so, WorldNetDaily has latched onto something called "A Queer Thing Happened To America" by Michael L. Brown. WND promotes it in an Aug. 30 article:
There are plenty of pro-family, anti-"gay"-agenda books out there ... but this one is considered so radioactive that no publisher would touch it.
Why?
Mainly because Dr. Michael Brown tells the story of the pro-"gay" sea change in American culture almost entirely with reference to sources that no pro-"gay" activist could dispute.
He tells the story in their own words.
Well, obviously, a publisher did touch it, since it exists in book form; therefore, it isn't that radioactive.
The book seem to be all about gay-bashing and denying that those doing the gay-bashing are being hateful in doing so:
"Hate" means: "To hold to Judeo-Christian principles and values; to stand for biblical morality; and to take issue with homosexual practice."
The pro-alternate lifestyle tactic is to "make the person with whom you differ into a small-minded, mean-spirited bigot. The playing field becomes unequal, and your ideological opponent becomes a monster whose ideas are unworthy of serious discussion..."
"Things have shifted so dramatically – they have literally been turned upside down – that it now appears that no matter what you say and no matter how carefully and graciously you say it, if you dare to differ with the GLBT agenda, if you believe that it is immoral for a man to have sex with another man, if you do not support same-sex marruage, then you are an extremist, a bigot, a Nazi and a jihadist."
Brown brought one of the sleaziest gay-bashing smears to WND in the form of an Aug. 28 column that sought to liken gays to pedophiles:
Consider, for example, this statement from the late John Hopkins professor John Money: "Pedophilia and ephebophilia (referring to sexual attraction felt by an adult toward an adolescent) are no more a matter of voluntary choice than are left-handedness or color blindness. There is no known method of treatment by which they may be effectively and permanently altered, suppressed, or replaced. Punishment is useless. There is no satisfactory hypothesis, evolutionary or otherwise, as to why they exist in nature's overall scheme of things. One must simply accept the fact that they do exist, and then, with optimum enlightenment, formulate a policy of what to do about it."
Now, go back and reread that paragraph, substituting the word "homosexuality" for "pedophilia" and "ephebophilia." How interesting!
[...]
In point of fact, all the principle arguments commonly used to normalize homosexuality have been used to normalize pedophilia and pederasty, as I documented in painstaking (and painful) detail in "A Queer Thing Happened to America," where I also made clear that I was not equating homosexuality with pedophilia but was instead comparing the arguments used to normalize both.
Brown also regurgitates Judith Reisman's attacks on Alfred Kinsey, even though her work has been discredited as well.
Brown, like WND, is clearly interested much more in gay-bashing than facts.
Newsmax's Ruddy Can't Quite Give Up Middle East Dictators Topic: Newsmax
In his Aug. 30 column, Newsmax editor Christopher Ruddy's praise for moves to get rid of Middle Eastern dictators is weirdly tempered by their supposedly good side.
Ruddy writes that while Egypt's Hosni Mubarak was corrupt, he was also a U.S ally:
At the time of the Cairo demonstrations, I praised President Barack Obama's decision to move against the Mubarak regime and push for his ouster. Since then, the developments in Egypt are worrisome and should create anxiety about what's next for Libya, Syria, and other Arab states, including Saudi Arabia.
We should not forget that Mubarak was, in fact, a staunch ally of the U.S. over three decades. He kept alive the Camp David peace accords signed by his predecessor, Anwar Sadat. The peace with Israel was a cold one, but real nonetheless. He also kept Islamic radicalism at bay.
Still, Mubarak, his family, and cronies were corrupt and his regime fell under its own weight after a popular uprising, and perhaps with a helpful push from the Obama administration.
Now, Mubarak, on his death bed, is being tried in a Cairo court, lying in a cage. This image of Mubarak in a cage seems a terrible symbol of what happens to leaders that befriend the United States and champion their interests.
Similarly, while Ruddy condemns Syria's Assad regime for crushing protests, it's mitigated by keeping the peace with Israel:
With Egypt and Libya cooked, the Obama administration appears anxious to overthrow the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad. But we need to ask again, Who replaces al-Assad?
Al-Assad is a dictator, but we should note several things. First, he and his father, have kept stability along the Syrian and Israeli border since war lasted erupted in 1973. It appears Syria has been anxious to modernize and even to be accepted by Western powers, but it has been rebuffed for several reasons.
Nevertheless, the al-Assad government’s recent efforts to crush civilian protesters should be universally condemned.
Al-Assad himself had been educated and trained as an ophthalmologist in England. The young al-Assad who took power in 2000 after the death of his father appeared to bring a whiff of fresh air into Syria.
Ruddy concludes: "The U.S. would be wise to go slow in demanding regime change, until we have a clear plan on who replaces the 'bad guys.'" Does Ruddy really think that support for the U.S. and their allies somehow make repressive dictators somehow less "bad"?
Corsi Is Even More Rabidly Birther Away From WND Topic: WorldNetDaily
It appears that the birther stuff Jerome Corsi pushes when he's away from WorldNetDaily is even more crazy than what he publishes there.
Media Matters found a video of a presentation Corsi gave to a tea party group in Arizona, in which he peddled his birther conspiracies. Corsi had this exchange with an audience member:
WOMAN: Does it concern you that he doesn't look a thing like Sr -- Obama Sr. -- but he does look a lot like Malcolm X?
[Laughter from audience. Man off camera says "that's a good one."]
CORSI: There's no proof that he is Malcolm X's son. He does not look like Barack Obama Sr. at all, and I've had a lot of questions as to whether he's the father. Want to know what I think? I've always thought the father was Indonesian. There's an Indonesian look alike very much like Barack Obama, and I think his characteristics are more Indonesian than they are -- and she might have met some Indonesian at [unintelligible] bar one night and that might be how it happened.
Media Matters also notes that Corsi's activism site, 1776 Nation, is planning a "Millionpatriotsmarch" in Washington Oct. 1 that at this writing is falling well short of that goal; only three people have said they're attending.
CNS' Jeffrey Still Gallup-Mining, Inventing Arcane Measurements to Attack Obama Topic: CNSNews.com
It seems Terry Jeffrey really doesn't have anything better to do as CNSNews.com editor-in-chief than mine Gallup polls for into he can use to attack President Obama and promote conservatives. He has cranked out a couple more Gallup-related articles this week:
Meanwhile, Jeffrey is continuing to find ever more arcane ways of manipulating economic numbers to make Obama look bad. Jeffrey asked in an Aug. 31 article: "Will Barack Obama become the first president in the post-World War II era during whose term real gross domestic product never grew in any quarter at an annual rate greater than 4 percent?" Of course, that's not a standard measurement of presidential economic competence; Jeffrey appears to have just made it up.
Because Jeffrey continues to obliterate the line between news and opinion at CNS, he writes in this "news" article:
For Obama to match that, the economy would need to be growing at 6.3 percent right now.
So, why isn't it?
Perhaps it is simply because people who in other periods would be investing their money, taking risks, building businesses, creating jobs and making themselves and their neighbors wealthier people are holding back out of the reasonable fear that under President Obama, there could be escalating government taxation and regulation, which would make their hard work and investment not worth the risk.
Looks like someone cares a lot more about scoring political points than reporting facts objectively.
UPDATE: Jeffrey pounded out yet another Gallup-related article:
I appeared on Episode 8 of Media Matters' Blogdome! podcast last week to talk about the right-wing freakout over the Canadian origin of the bus President Obama used on his recent Midwestern tour.
Molotov Mitchell Defends His Embarrassing Rap Video Topic: WorldNetDaily
Molotov Mitchell devotes an extra-long edition of his weekly WorldNetDaily video to reading, mocking and rebutting an essay by California-Berkeley professor Elizabeth Abel's critique of Mitchell and his crew's embarrassing anti-Obama rap "One Term President."
We can't find a copy of the critique ol' Molotov claims to be reading from on the Internets, but in Mitchell's version, Abel is criticizing the implicit racist and anti-Muslim tone of the video. That seems to be more in-depth analysis than is deserved for anything Molotov does, much less this silly video, but Mitchell gamely tries to make Abel look as bad as possible while defending the indefensible (he insists that "I'm sick of smelling like a mosque after Ramadan" "is a funny line, and you know it").
But then, Mitchell misspells "Berkeley" in the final on-screen text, so what does he know?
