Another Anti-HuffPo Rant from Tim Graham Topic: NewsBusters
Tim Graham still hates the Huffington Post. In a March 21 NewsBusters post, he denigrates it as a home for "rabid left-wing celebrity hate speech" and "slash-and-burn rhetoric from millionaire Hollywood leftists."
In fact, there arenofewerthansixposts at HuffPo, including from "millionaire Hollywood leftists" Ben Stiller and Alec Baldwin, respectfully mourning the death of liberal-turned-conservative actor Ron Silver.
Responding to a claim that HuffPo "publishes consistently thoughtful commentary," Graham responds: "For rebuttal, see our Special Report on 'Huffington's House of Horrors.'" As we've detailed, in his report, Graham cherry-picked just 19 posts out of the tens of thousands made on HuffPo over the two years prior to his report and baselessly extrapolates it to claim "These blogs may not be typical, but they are common."
Mark March 21, 2009, as the day pigs flew and hell froze over: the shamelessly liberal New York Times columnist Paul Krugman actually criticized the Obama administration.
Sheppard -- who is prone to such baseless exclamations -- assumes that Krugman is an ideologue like himself, which he is not. It would be much more shocking for Sheppard (or anyone else at NewsBusters, for that matter) to criticize a conservative for a reason other than not being conservative enough.
MRC Defends Joe the Plumber's 'Horny' Remark Topic: NewsBusters
It's not often you see the Media Research Center defending the right for someone to delcare himself "horny" -- especially since MRC honcho Brent Bozell just wrote a column criticizing the mocking of "purity rings and abstain[ing] from sex until marriage" -- but that's just what the MRC is doing.
During the MRC's Gala and DisHonors Awards, Samuel "Joe the Plumber" Wurtzelbacher "accepted" the "award" given to Chris Matthews by saying, "God, all this love and everything in the room - I'm horny." But reports on that, the MRC insists, were taking Wurtzelbacher's remark out of context. Ken Shepherd writes:
Granted, while it may have been a bit crass of a punchline, the remark came in the context of a night filled with many a ribald double entendre about the near-orgasmic delight the media has over President Obama.
Wurzelbacher's off-the-cuff comments were not scripted and he insisted that he is generally a very "serious" person, adding "that's about all the jokes I got, really" after joking that if the "[mainstream media] loved me anymore, I'd be in jail right now."
Of course, Akers didn't make note of those comments, instead saying he "mumbled a few other things about being the 'token redneck' and the media loving him, and then sat back down in a sea of conservative luminaries."
Brent Baker adds, regarding Keith Olbermann's singling out of the remark:
Of course, Olbermann preferred his homosexual innuendo to any context. Wurzelbacher was on stage to accept, standing in for ABC's Bill Weir, “The Obamagasm Award.” Weir won for ruminating over how “even the seagulls must have been awed by the blanket of humanity” at Obama's inauguration. Before that award, Olbermann's colleague, Chris Matthews, earned the “The Media Messiah Award” for boasting Obama gave him a “thrill going up my leg.” So Wurzelbacher's quip came after six nominee videos (three in each category) of journalists oozing over Obama.
So, really, aside from Matthews' remark, it was conservatives and MRC staffers who instigated the sexual metaphors, not Olbermann or anyone else. Thus, it should be no surprise that Wurtzelbacher felt comfortable enough in such an atmosphere to make his remark. The MRC is just upset that it's being reported at all.
On a related subject, Baker offers an incredibly lame retort to Olbermann's criticism of Brit Hume, who received the MRC's William F. Buckley Jr. Award for Media Excellence and thanked it "for the tremendous amount of material that the Media Research Center provided me for so many years when I was anchoring Special Report. I don't know what we would have done without them." Baker writes:
As if Olbermann doesn't graze a “buffet of daily talking points” from an “ultra-liberal media site.” The headline over a post earlier in the day on Media Matters' “County Fair” blog: “Accepting Buckley award, Fox's Hume thanked Media Research Center 'for the tremendous amount of material' they 'provided me for so many years when I was anchoring Special Report.'” Unlike Olbermann, however, Hume almost always credited the MRC so viewers were informed of his source.
But how many of those citingsfully described the MRC and a right-wing activist organization? Given Fox News' longtime refusal to identify the MRC's ideology when its representatives appear on the channel, we suspect very few, if any.
Further, Hume and Fox News portrayed him and his "Special Report" as a straight news show, which MSNBC has never really done with Olbermann's "Countdown."
WorldNetDaily's fraudulent coverage of the Obama birth certificate non-controversy expands its scope by adding the Supreme Court to the conspiracy.
A March 21 WND article by Bob Unruh uncritically repeats lawsuit-happy birth certificate obsessive Orly Taitz's accusations that the only possible reason the Supreme Court has refused to take up the case is because of tampering:
But she wonders whether the justices actually were given the pleadings to review.
"I believe … that there was tampering with documents and records by employees of the Supreme Court and the justices never saw those briefs," she alleges in a letter to the FBI's Robert Mueller, the Secret Service's Mark Sullivan and Attorney General Eric Holder.
"Three hundred five million American citizens … need to know whether a foreign national is usurping the position of the president and the commander in chief," she wrote.
[...]
Taitz said she's also concerned that the Supreme Court docket was somehow modified.
"Did somebody from outside break and enter into the computer system of the Supreme Court or was it done by one of the overzealous employees who wanted to keep Obama in the White House?" she asked.
"I demand to see the printout of entries of both internal docket seen by justices and the external docket seen by the public to verify if those were identical at all times, particularly between January 20th and January 23rd," she said.
She also raised the possibility that justices' signatures may have been "stamped" on documentation.
Unruh presents no critique of Taitz's conspiracy, nor does he offer up the possibility that the reason the court hasn't taken up the case is because there's no merit to it (which WND pretends it didn't tell readers last August) and it's being promoted by Obama-haters with an axe to grind.
Melanie Morgan's March 20 WorldNetDaily column is an attempt to get her "best friend," Catherine Moy, to run for a vacant U.S. House seat. Morgan calls Moy "a journalist by trade."
Actually, "right-wing hack" is much closer to the truth.
As we've detailed, Moy has quite a history of acting as a partisan automaton. Most notoriously, Moy uncritically regurgitated the claims of crazy person Andy Martin in a lawsuit against Media Matters (and me) for calling him anti-Semitic. Moy has yet to correct the false and misleading claims she has made, nor has she ever updated her reporting to note that Martin's lawsuit was laughed out of court, due in part to his lengthy history of filing nuisance lawsuits (not to mention that there is ample evidence to support the claim that Martin is anti-Semitic). Such hackery made Moy a contender for our Slantie Awards last year.
Moy is, quite simply, a dishonest reporter. While dishonesty doesn't necessarily disqualify her from a career in politics (indeed, she's gotten herself appointed to a city council seat in Fairfield, Calif., though she has yet to run in an election), that's probably not the motivation Morgan wants people to know about.
Tapscott Lies About Obama, Healthcare Topic: Washington Examiner
Mark Tapscott doesn't stray from scary, misleading right-wing boilerplate in attacking President Obama in a March 19 Washington Examiner column. Here's just one example:
Finally, there is Obama’s vision of a nationalized health care system. A Federal Health Board like that envisioned by former Sen. Tom Daschle, Obama’s first choice as secretary of health and human services until unpaid taxes derailed his nomination, would become America’s equivalent to Britain’s National Health Service.
Tapscott is repeating a discredited talking point from John McCain. In fact, Obama is not planning to nationalize health care. AsPolitiFact detailed, Obama's plan leaves in place the private health care system, but seeks to expand it to the uninsured.
WND Columnist Likens Obama to Abusive Spouse Topic: WorldNetDaily
America, the great lady, has been conned! And like a woman seduced by a smooth-talking scoundrel, we feel used.
He held us in his arms and looked us in the eye. He told us to trust him, and that he would make everything all right. All we had to do was give ourselves to him.
[...]
He said he would give up his friends and give himself only to us. We would be his one true love. But right after the ceremony he ran off with our credit cards, and when they reached their limit, he opened new ones in our name. He spent almost all of it on the friends he said he would leave behind.
He promised change, and he brought change all right, but change for the worse. We're no more secure now – in fact, the debt he created made things more uncertain than ever.
We feel so used!
But he's got explanations. He said it was all a misunderstanding. It had to happen – just this once, but never again!
[...]
Why do we fall for guys that abuse and take advantage of us? Have we so little self-respect that after they use us and abuse us, we make excuses for them and take them back?
We are so vulnerable to those who know how to play us!
But now we are stuck in this relationship for four years. It's frightening – if he has done this much damage already, what will he do when the honeymoon's over! That's a long time to suffer abuse!
WND Can't Stop Lying About Obama's 'Civilian National Security Force' Topic: WorldNetDaily
A March 19 WorldNetDaily article by Bob Unruh on a possible new "volunteer corps" rehashes WND's previous lies about President Obama's statements regarding a "national civilian security force":
Many, however, are raising concerns that the program, which is intended to include 250,000 "volunteers," is the beginning of what President Obama called his "National Civilian Security Force" in a a speech last year in which he urged creating an organization as big and well-funded as the U.S. military. He has declined since then to elaborate.
That is an utter and complete lie. As we've detailed, Obama has, in fact elaborated: he wants to expand the State Department's foreign service, as well as AmeriCorps and the Peace Corps.
Unruh goes on to claim that WND editor Joseph Farah "used his daily column first to raise the issue and then to elevate it with a call to all reporters to start asking questions." Either Farah and Unruh are lazy, or they're willfully ignorant. This information is easily available, yet they can't or won't look for it.
It's easier to smear than to tell the truth, it seems. But we already knewthat.
A March 19 NewsBusters post by Kyle Drennen complained that a CBS report on President Obama's picks in the NCAA men's basketball tournament "failed to mention that the head coach of Duke University’s men’s basketball team, Mike Krzyzewski, recently criticized the President for being distracted by March Madness: "Somebody said that we're not in President Obama's Final Four, and as much as I respect what he's doing, really, the economy is something that he should focus on, probably more than the brackets."
But Drennen fails to completely quote Krzyzewski. After he said the part that Drennen quoted, Krzyzewski added: "Why would I care about that? I love the guy, and I think he's gonna be great." Puts that earlier remark in a different context, doesn't it?
Waters Parrots Misleading Attack on Obama Judicial Nominee Topic: Media Research Center
A March 17 NewsBusters post (and TimesWatch item), Clay Waters repeats a claim by Wendy Long of the right-wing Judicial Confirmation Network that Obama appellate court nominee David Hamilton "is ... a fundraiser for ACORN." Waters neglects to mention that Hamltion's experience as a "fundraiser for ACORN" took place for one month 30 years ago.
ConWeb Seizes on Unverified WashTimes Editorial Topic: The ConWeb
The ConWeb eagerly repeated a Washington Times editorial -- not a "news" article, an editorial -- asserting that "President Obama is quietly ending the federal firearms program, risking public safety on airlines in the name of an anti-gun ideology." The editorial contains no named sources or, really, any sources at all; only "multiple interviews" are cited, but no elaboration is provided.
The Times appears to extrapolate that claim from a report -- like the rest of the editorial, unsubstantiated -- that "The Obama administration this past week diverted some $2 million from the pilot training program to hire more supervisory staff, who will engage in field inspections of pilots." But the editorial does not explain how moving money from one program to another equals the end of that program, nor does it say how much total money the training program has.
Despite lacking any verified claims, the ConWeb shilled the Times editorial as if it were ironclad:
Newsmax's David Patten cited "a report in Tuesday’s Washington Times" (again, it was an unsourced editorial, not a "news" article) to claim that Obama "wants to disarm U.S. pilots." Patten quoted "a Second Amendment advocate" criticizing the purported claim.
CNSNews.com's Susan Jones also uncritically repeated the Times' claim and quotes the head of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms criticizing it.
One thing neither Patten nor Jones bothered to do was contact anyone actually involved with the actual pilot training program -- the federal Transportation Safety Administration and the Air Line Pilots Association. According to FoxNews.com, the TSA called the Times editorial "inaccurate," and the ALPA stated that the editorial editorial "couldn't be further from the truth."
Newsmax's Jim Meyers has posted a rewritten version of the Fox News story, while CNS has thus far not been moved to tell both sides of the story.l
Bozell Joins Judicial Watch's PR Team Topic: Media Research Center
Brent Bozell joins Newsmax and WorldNetDaily in signing on as public-relations agents for Judicial Watch by using his March 17 column to uncritically regurgitate JW's attacks on Nancy Pelosi:
The media largely skipped the story last week that the group Judicial Watch found that Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s aides fussed about the need to have high-level military aircraft like the Gulfstream G-5 at Pelosi’s beck and call: "It is my understanding there are NO G-5s available for the House during the Memorial Day recess. This is totally unacceptable...The Speaker will want to know where the planes are," Kay King wrote. In another note, when told a certain type of aircraft would not be available, King complained: "This is not good news, and we will have some very disappointed folks, as well as a very upset Speaker."
Bozell doesn't bother to mention -- perhaps because it wasn't in the JW press release Bozell was cribbing from -- that the first email he cited came in regard to obtaining a plane for a bipartisan congressional delegations, not for Pelosi's personal use.
Yes, Joseph Farah Is A Homophobe Topic: WorldNetDaily
In the midst of defending Jackie Mason for his use of the word "schvartze" to describe Barack Obama (and curiously failing to mention the historic context of the word as a derogatory insult) Joseph Farah writes in his March 18 column: "I certainly have been labeled a 'homophobe,' because I believe homosexual behavior is immoral – a sin. And I say it. I write it. I publish it."
No, Mr. Farah, you have been labeled a "homophobe" because you have, in fact, exhibited homophobic behavior.
Example 1: Farah threatened to sue Wikipedia because someone had altered his bio at the website to call him a "noted homosexual." It would be logical to assume that WorldNetDaily's war on Wikipedia has some basis in this perceived slight.
Example 2: Farah had an even bigger anti-gay freakout in 2006, when he decided that a college professor who detailed Farah's and WND's anti-gay activism was out to kill him. How so? Because the writer ended his column by rhetorically asking, "Who will rid us of the evil lunatics?" The professor responded to this by explicitly denying that he wanted to kill Farah -- which only enraged Farah even more: He called the professor a "nutcase" and "the Ward Churchill of the pro-perversion, anti-Christian crowd" and added, "Since homosexuals don't reproduce naturally, they need to recruit – not to be their children, mind you, but to be their prey."
Would a person who is not homophobic react so irrationally to 1) having the truth of his anti-gay activism pointed out and 2) being jokingly called gay? We think not.
Farah already has trouble handling criticism as it is, and his homophobic freakouts are an extension of this. Perhaps he needs to get some therapy or something to deal with this stuff better.
Noel Sheppard loves to be shocked by things that aren't shocking. In a March 17 NewsButers post, Sheppard demonstrates this propensity once again as he declares "shocking" that the Washington Post would publish a column that runs to the defense of Jim Cramer and CNBC and bashes Jon Stewart.
Wouldn't it be more shocking if NewsBusters permitted one of its bloggers to defend Stewart? Absolutely. Why are Sheppard and his colleagues so afraid of diversity of opinion?
