ConWeb All Over the Map on Quran-Burning Pastor Topic: The ConWeb
The ConWeb just can't seem to figure out a consistent stand on Quran-burning pastor Terry Jones. It seems that every attempt to criticize it is countered with an instance of condoning it.
CNSNews.com: A Sept. 7 article by Nicholas Ballasy that was heavy on condemnation of Jones was followed by a Sept. 9 article by Patrick Goodenough detailing how the Quran had been burned throughout history, starting with an early caliph who ordered all rival versions burned -- thus seeming to offer tacit approval for Jones' burning, despite concluding with a pair of Christian ministers who oppose book-burning.
WorldNetDaily: As we noted, WND began the week with Aaron Klein's softball interview of Jones. It gre more conflicted from there:
An audio interview with anti-Islam activist Brigitte Gabriel opposing the burning.
A column by Ann Coulter calling the burning "a nasty thing to do," like building a mosque near Ground Zero. (Will this be the straw that finally causes WND to drop her column?)
A column by Craige McMillan condoning it, stating that "America's self-imagined elites should chill out about the Quran burning" and "let the god of Islam contend for himself."
NewsBusters: It also started by defending Jones, feeling sympathy for him under pointed CNN questioning. Then it moved toward being more consistently critical, mostly that it was being likened to the upcoming Glenn Beck-Sarah Palin shindig in Alaska and to "Ground Zero mosque" opponents. Brent Baker dismissed Jones as a "widely condemned Florida pastor with barely a few dozen followers." Then, Noel Sheppard blundered in to ask, "did the media negligently create this controversy?" sneering that Jones is "some unknown Pastor - with a following smaller than what's normally in line at an In-n-Out restaurant drive-thru!" Sheppard went on to pontificate:
For weeks now, the press as a result of America's opposition to the Ground Zero mosque have been trying to convince the citizenry that we are an Islamophobic nation that hates Muslims. Despite the lack of any supporting evidence, this has been the media narrative for approaching a month.
With this in mind, an attention-seeking, unknown Pastor advertising a Koran bonfire was exactly what the press needed to prove once and for all just how much antipathy there is for Muslims here.
Sadly, they gave this guy his fifteen minutes of fame without any regard for the harm that could be done to Americans living abroad, in particular those fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. More hypocritically, so-called journalists are now blaming Jones for endangering the lives of others.
Wouldn't this not be the case if they ignored him? Isn't it all the press attention he's gotten that has actually caused this controversy? If media really are worried that his actions might result in an international incident, given how few people there are in his own area that care what he's got to say, couldn't they just similarly pay him no mind?
[...]
Consider that the press are largely in favor of the Ground Zero mosque despite being in the minority concerning this matter. They base their view on the Islamic center backers having the Constitutional right to build at that location regardless of how anyone feels about it. Yet, these same people are now in an uproar over Jones without a care for his Constitutional right to burn Korans.
But couldn't the same argument be made that the "Ground Zero mosque" was ginned up by conservative media in order to push their anti-Mulsim agenda? Sheppard seems uninterested in answering that question.
Newsmax: It has largely stuck to wire stories on the controversy, and what little supplemental material it has run has been critical -- a column by Susan Estrich and an interview with its own Ronald Kessler.
Corsi Wrong on Supposed Clinton Attack on Obama Topic: WorldNetDaily
In a September 8 WorldNetDaily article, headlined "Et tu, Hillary? Panic button hit on Obama's colossal debt," Jerome Corsi writes that in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, Hillary Clinton "said the U.S. budget deficit under the Obama administration poses a national security threat and projects a "message of weakness" internationally."
In fact, Clinton made no mention of Obama during that segment of the speech, and her words, in full context, are critical of the Bush administration, not Obama's.
Corsi hints at that by noting Clinton's specific reference to the activities of the Bush administration, but he dismissed it as "an apparent effort to blame President George W. Bush for the federal budget deficit problem."
But then, does any sentient being with a lick of sense take anythingCorsiwrites as face value? Didn't think so.
Obama Derangement Syndrome Watch, Ben Shapiro Division Topic: CNSNews.com
If Obama were a dog, he'd be a bad dog. The kind of dog that routinely drinks from the toilet, and simply will not be taught that drinking from the toilet is bad manners (think Obama on health care).
He'd be the kind of dog that barks at all hours of the night, just for attention (think Obama's pathetic need for constant adulation). The kind of dog that runs from intruders when danger's in the air (think Obama on Iraq, Iran, Russia, North Korea, China-hell, just think about Obama's position on any country that isn't an American ally). The kind of dog that chews on the furniture out of pure spite (if Obama's actually going to chew on the furniture, by the way, let me be the first to suggest he start with the new, hideous Oval Office accoutrements).
If Obama's a dog, he's a puppy that has never been housebroken, whose owner continually babies it and never requires basic standards of behavior. President Obama has never had to make a living; he has never had to face the consequences of his behavior, whether that behavior is hanging out with terrorists, doing cocaine, or attending a racist church for 20 years. He's never been held accountable. Finally, he's being held accountable. He doesn't like it, so he's rhetorically urinating in the middle of the living room.
Obama, like a bad puppy, acts badly because he doesn't recognize that he's not in the true position of authority. The American people stand above him. He is a public servant, a servant of our will. He seems not to believe that-in fact, he thinks that America's the dog, he's the master, and he can simply order Americans to agree with him. He's utterly disconnected from reality.
In short, Obama has to learn to obey the American public. If not, we'll continue to treat him like a bad dog. Only worse, since he refuses to learn. And in November, he'll find out that bad dogs don't get any electoral Scooby treats.
-- Ben Shapiro, Sept. 8 CNSNews.com column, published at CNSNews.com
In his Sept. 8 WorldNetDaily video, Molotov Mitchell takes on Andrew Breitbart for claiming that raising questions about Barack Obama's birth certificate was "not a winning issue" -- a mere seven months after Breitbart made the claim.
Mitchell praised Breitbart, claiming he has his respect "as a fellow conservative as a savvy media producer," but cited polls showing an increase in Americans who believe Obama was not born in the United States as evidence that Breitbart should rethink his stance.
Mitchell then touted about in 2008, his film company "released the first major viral video about Obama's eligibility," in which he interviewed birther attorney Philip Berg. In the video, Berg pushes the conspiracy that FactCheck.org is covering up for Obama by claiming the birth certificate he released is genuine because it's "owned by Annenberg of Chicago," which "Obama sat on the board for for a number of years, dispersing up to $60 million a year." In fact, Obama never sat on the board of the Annenberg Foundation, which is headquartered in California; Obama was board chairman of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a local education reform group started with an Annenberg Foundation grant. Berg also repeats the discredited claim that Obama's grandmother claimed that Obama was born in Kenya.
This is the man Mitchell trusts to tell the truth about Obama's birth.
The real laugher is that Mitchell introduced the video by asserting, "I am not into conspiracy theories. I don't wear tinfoil hats."
That Mitchell has embraced such falsehoods -- which he has done elsewhere -- shoots down his case that being a birther is a winning issue, since Mitchell has built his case on a pack of lies.
Then again, ol' Molotov isn't exactly known for letting the facts get in the way of his propaganda, is he?
WorldNetDaily's Zombie Lies March On Topic: WorldNetDaily
When we detailed how WorldNetDaily's Joe Kovacs spread lies about Elena Kagan purportedly representing President Obama in birther-related lawsuits -- followed quickly by a complete walkback and replacement of Kovacs' article with something else -- we noted that the original falsehood-laden article was reposted at numerous other websites, thus ensuring it will live forever uncorrected.
Snopes.com, which published a debunking of the story that sent WND scrambling, is now reporting that it got an angry email from someone questioning the debunking and accusing it of being politically biased liars. Snopes continues:
This correspondent's e-mail was also posted to the web, and from there it was embellished and sent winging around the Internet through e-mail forwards and blog posts, all undertaken by people who also didn't bother actually reading our article or otherwise verifying the veracity of what they were reproducing — they gleefully passed it on with complete disregard for the truth because it seemingly confirmed concepts they wanted to believe.
This phenomenon prompted a wave of e-mail messages to us (many of them collected here) from people who mindlessly forwarded us the original message, accused us of being liars, insisted they would never, ever trust us again, and demanded that we remove the "false" information about the non-existent Obama/Kagan eligibility connection from our site. All of these correspondents had clearly not made even the slightest effort to read our article (if they had, they'd have known that we didn't claim no docket items containing the names "Kagan" and "Obama" existed); they instead either blindly accepted the accusatory e-mail at face value or repeated the very same error that WND made and then berated us for supposedly stating that "there were no such dockets."
Every single one of those correspondents received a detailed response from us explaining why they were mistaken. To date, we haven't received a single apology.
So, WND's zombie lies continue to live. Exactly what Joe Kovacs was paid to do. Good job, Joe -- your sleazy pack of lies accomplished exactly what you and Joseph Farah wanted.
New Article: How David Kupelian's 'Evil' Works Topic: WorldNetDaily
The WorldNetDaily managing editor's new book is filled with the same factually suspect moralizing as his last one, though (so far) without the unethical promotion gimmicks. Read more >>
The headline of a Sept. 7 CNSNews.com article by Terry Jeffrey reads, "Obama Used ‘Invest,’ ‘Investing,’ or ‘Investment’ Seven Times in Labor Day Speech to Describe Federal Spending and Special-Interest Tax Loopholes."
MRC Flails to Portray Couric As Biased Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has long tried -- and failed -- to paint Katie Couric as an unrepentant liberal and her stewardship of the "CBS Evening News" as an unrelenting font of liberal bias.
The MRC tries yet again in a new "Profile in Bias" to mark Couric's fourth year at CBS. It begins by citing its own report after her first year -- which, as we detailed, could only come up with a dozen instances of "liberal bias" from 200-plus shows. (Media Matters, meanwhile, found 17 instances of "conservative misinformation" from Couric during the same time period.)
The new report claims to serve up "Katie Couric's top forty most biased quotes from her four years at CBS." That's much less impressive than it sounds -- it amounts to less than one a month.
Actually, it's even less than that, since the MRC is also counting things Couric wrote on her blog or did, other CBS shows, and even a Facebook chat. We counted 12 non-"Evening News" attacks, which makes the instances of alleged "Evening News" bias much closer to one every two months.
For most people, that would be a pretty good record. But the MRC tolerates no deviance from the right-wing agenda, so even just one instance would be sufficient to brand Couric as "liberal."
Of that paltry evidence of "liberal bias," it's unsurprising that some examples are hypersensitive takes. For instance, two entries are questions to President Obama deemed insufficiently hostile. One was simply Couric's repetition of New York Times columnist Tom Friedman's statement that Obama is "better at making us smarter than making us angry."
That, apparently, is the best the MRC can do in trying to brand Couric as biased, telling us that its researchers had to seriously struggle to come up with 40 examples.
Ronald Kessler's Sept. 7 Newsmax column presents the idea that Saddam Hussein wanted to develop nuclear weapons as some sort of recent revelation. Kessler proclaimed that the Iraq war "eliminated a nuclear threat," adding that "the mainstream media largely ignored Saddam’s admitted plans to pursue nuclear weapons."
Of course, it's not news that Saddam wanted to have nuclear weapons. The more important question was whether he had the capability to do so. Kessler, however, seems to be conflating ambition with capability -- and Kessler ignores evidence that Saddam lacked the capability to do so in any quick fashion, despite Kessler's unsuported statement that Saddam planed to develop "nuclear capability within a year."
As the CIA points out, Iraq's nuclear weapons program was dismantled in 1991. While Saddam likely intended to resume the nuclear program once sanctions were lifted against the country, those sanctions never were lifted. Saddam attempted to keep his nuclear scientists together and even ordered key equipment buried in one scientist's garden in anticipation of the day that sanctions were removed, the Iraq Survey Group report noted that Iraq's nuclear capability had decayed, not grown, after 1991. As ISG head David Kay stated:
Despite evidence of Saddam's continued ambition to acquire nuclear weapons, to date we have not uncovered evidence that Iraq undertook significant post-1998 steps to actually build nuclear weapons or produce fissile material. However, Iraq did take steps to preserve some technological capability from the pre-1991 nuclear weapons program.
Desire to have nuclear weapons is not the same thing as having the capability to do so. Kessler's attempt to pretend they are is dishonest.
NewsBusters' Double Standard on Juvenile Taunts Topic: NewsBusters
Mark Finkelstein devotes a Sept. 7 NewsBusters post to complaining that MSNBC's Ed Schultz "no fewer than four times referred to FNC host Steve Doocy as Steve 'Douche-y.'" Finkelstein -- who headlined his post "Schultz Goes Below Belt with Juvenile Name-calling of Fox's Doocy" -- sniffed that this was "middle school-worthy mispronunciation."
Of course, NewsBusters is no stranger to juvenile name-calling. For instance, a September 2008 post by Noel Sheppard is headlined, "Did MSNBC Throw Matthews Out With The Bathtub Boy's Water?" Sheppard helpfully explains: "Finally, for those scratching their heads about the headline, 'Bathtub Boy' is Fox News John Gibson's pejorative nickname for Olbermann."
Apparently, name-calling is only juvenile when liberals do it.
NewsBusters Feels Sympathy for Quran-Burning Pastor Topic: NewsBusters
Matthew Balan, in a Sept. 7 NewsBusters post, portrays Terry Jones, the Quran-burning pastor, as a victim after a CNN anchor dared to criticize him for the planned stunt. Balan wrote that CNN's Kiran Chetry "used General David Petraeus's denunciation of a planned Koran burning by a church to blast the church's pastor for any subsequent deaths of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan."
Balan, curiously, doesn't highlight exactly what Petraeus said about the Quran-burning, leaving it buried in the transcript: "Their actions will in fact jeopardize the safety of young men and women who are serving in uniform over here, and also undermine the very mission that they're trying to accomplish."
Later, Balan wrote, "Chetry turned theologian and quoted Scripture to Pastor Jones as she continued to question his planned action."
It's not often you see a Media Research Center employee rooting for the burning of holy books, regardless of religion, but Balan -- like WorldNetDaily seems quite willing to acquiesce to this hateful pastor.
UPDATE: NewsBusters did temper things a bit later, with Scott Whitlock declaring unhappiness that the upcoming Glenn Beck-Sarah Palin shindig in Alaska was mentioned in the same sentence as the Quran-burning. "Beck's rally, which will take place in Alaska on Saturday, will obviously not involve the burning of the Koran," he huffed.
WND Finds Suitably Homophobic Replacement for Coulter Topic: WorldNetDaily
The latest addition to WorldNetDaily's "Taking America Back" conference, Michael Savage, has one key advantage over dumped speaker Ann Coulter: He may hate gays even more than Joseph Farah does.
WND's Klein Gives Quran-Burning Pastor The Softball Treatment Topic: WorldNetDaily
A Sept. 5 WorldNetDaily article promotes an radio interview by WND's Aaron Klein of Terry Jones, pastor of a Florida church who plans to stage a burning of Qurans on Sept. 11.
The attached audio shows that Klein conducted a softball interview, not really challenging any of Jones' claims, not even the nonsensical one that the burning is geared toward "radical Muslims" and not "moderate Muslims" -- who just happen to follow the same Quran. Klein is also much more interested in the death threats Jones claims he has received over the planned burningthan Jones' lack of concern that the burning might provoke an attack against American interests.
As Klein and WND rush to defend and promote Jones, others are backing away from him. Richard Bartholomew details how the publisher of Jones' screed "Islam Is Of the Devil," Creation House, has scrubbed the book from its catalog and website. Meanwhile, Little Green Footballs notes that Jones has posted a video insisting that the N-word is not racist.The video was posted before Klein interviewed Jones, indicating that Klein either did insufficient research before his interview or that he knew about it and chose not to bring it up.
Heck, even Gen. David Petraeus thinks Jones' Quran-burning is a bad idea.
So, Aaron and WND: Is this a guy you really want to be defending?
CNS Columnist Takes Ginsburg Out of Context Topic: CNSNews.com
In a Sept. 4 CNSNews.com column touting the anti-abortion film he made, "Maafa 21," Mark Crutcher writes:
Ironically, within days after the first edition of Maafa 21 was released, U.S Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was being interviewed by a reporter for The New York Times and made the following statement when asked about Roe vs. Wade – the decision that legalized abortion: “Frankly, I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.”
Here is the most radical abortion proponent that’s ever been on the Supreme Court openly conceding that the arguments made in Maafa 21 are absolutely accurate. She is admitting that the legalization of abortion was not about women’s rights or reproductive freedom; it was about eliminating certain groups of people. In other words, it was about eugenics.
In fact, Ginsburg did no such thing -- she attributed that view to others, adding that "There will never be a woman of means without choice anymore" and that a law restricting abortions "affects only poor women, and it can never be otherwise, and I don't know why this hasn't been said more often."
Meanwhile, Crutcher's "Maafa 21" has its own issues. Michelle Goldberg writes that the the film takes Margaret Sanger out of context to falsely claim she specifically targeted blacks for abortion, as well as tells outright lies about Nobel-winning economist and family planning advocate Gunnar Myrdal as some who "believed that not only could blacks not help themselves, he felt that nobody could help them, and the only solution in his eyes was to get rid of them"; in fact, he opposed racism.
WND's Welch Conflicted Over Beck Topic: WorldNetDaily
Dave Welch is conflicted over Glenn Beck in his Sept. 4 WorldNetDaily column. While Welch appears to appreciate some of the things Beck has done, there is the issue of him being a Mormon:
The furor over Glenn Beck's Mormon faith and his defense by some evangelical leaders, following closely on the heels of President Obama being called a "devout Christian," does raise critical questions. How far can we ally ourselves with those who believe differently toward common goals without compromising our convictions? Does it matter what we believe?
We can and must stand together with Mormons on a cultural/political level as we have in particular on sanctity of life and defense of marriage issues. I pray that one day the evangelical churches will exhibit one half as much commitment of manpower and money to those causes. However, we are not just different denominations.
I'll restate that active Mormons are not America's problem – inactive, weak and compromised Christians are. Pastors who stay safely in their stained glass towers are. However, Mormonism is not Christianity.
[...]
The fact is that by any definition of historic Christian doctrines and theology as compared to those that of LDS adherents, we are on a different planet.
Welch goes on to affirmatively cite a pastor who wrote that 'Mormonism is correctly categorized as a CULT." Welch adds, "Mormonism is not Christianity, and anyone who asserts differently is either ignorant or dishonest."
Welch concludes:
Glenn Beck could certainly be a follower of Jesus … but which Jesus? It matters. Regardless, he can be a patriotic, God-fearing American who understands the vision of our founding fathers and has given a voice and platform to strong, dynamic Christians like David Barton, Jim Garlow and others who present the real Jesus.
WND has a history of promoting people who have issues with Mormonism.
