MRC Whines That Michelle Obama's Oscars Cameo Was 'Propaganda,' 'Intrusive' Topic: Media Research Center
Following in the footsteps of other right-wingers, the Media Research Center has declared that Michelle Obama's cameo appearance at the Academy Awards to present the award for best picture was horrible.
Jeffrey Meyer grumbled in a Feb. 26 NewsBusters post that "the Washington Post’s Sally Quinn admitted that Michelle Obama’s Oscar appearance was, in Bill O’Reilly’s words, 'Hollywood Left boosterism,' but gushed that it was a 'brilliant idea.'"
The headline for Meyer's post, however, read: "WashPo’s Sally Quinn Admits Michelle Obama’s Oscar Appearance Was Propaganda; But Thinks It Was Brilliant." Since when does "Hollywood Left boosterism" equal "propaganda"? Meyer doesn't explain, perhaps because it's something axiomatic among right-wingers or something.
Meanwhile, Clay Waters grumbles in a Feb. 26 TmesWatch post that Obama's appearance was "intrusive" and "politicized" and whined that a New York Times didn't read his mind and complain about the appearance like he wanted:
The question isn't whether the first family can lower themselves to the level of popular culture; that was settled the night then-candidate Bill Clinton played saxophone on the Arsenio Hall show in 1992. It's the question of the vastly different ways Hollywood treats those political figures, depending on their party.
[...]
Steinhauer continued missing the point by insisting the question of Michelle Obama's appearance was one of "propriety," as opposed to a question of blunt and intrusive liberal political boosterism.
But Waters never identifies what, exactly, was "political" about her appearance.
Will WND Report on Dov Hikind's Blackface Stunt? Topic: WorldNetDaily
We've detailed how New York state assemblyman Dov Hikind is part of Aaron Klein's mighty Wurlitzer -- one of the WorldNetDaily reporter's go-to-guys when he feels thet need to bash liberals on the subject of Israel. Klein and Hikind are both admirers of far-right Israeli extremist Meir Kahane, so it's no surprise the two would have a symbiotic relationship.
But we somehow suspect that Klein and WND won't be reporting Hikind's latest offense:
Brooklyn Assemblyman Dov Hikind says he's sorry if he offended anyone with the blackface makeup he wore for his Purim party this weekend -- but insists his costume choice wasn't meant to be anything but "innocent" fun.
"In hindsight, I should have picked something else. It never crossed my mind for a split second that I was doing something wrong. It was as innocent as something can be," said Hikind, who drew heavy condemnation for wearing an Afro-style wig and having a makeup artist darken his skin for his basketball-player getup.
"People in the community were dressed up as Arabs. What was that about?" asked Hikind, an Orthodox Jew who's known for his impassioned critiques of anything he thinks smacks of the slightest anti-Semitism, according to our Reuven Blau, who was on scene for the presser outside the longtime lawmaker's home.
"My wife was dressed as the devil. And she's not a devil. It was to look different on Purim without deep intentions. I just wanted to look different and unrecognizable," Hikind said.
"I understand people's sensitivities. Nobody meant anything. It was not meant to offend you or hurt you in any fashion. I'm sorry people were offended. It was not meant that way."
Expect WND to sweep this unflattering story about a cherished source way, way under the rug -- just as Klein and WND refused to report on the sex scandal of Israeli President Moshe Katsav, presumably because Katsav was a member of the right-wing Likud Party.
CNS Fails To Identify Conservative Black Leaders As Conservative Topic: CNSNews.com
A Feb. 22 CNSNews.com article by Penny Starr touted how "a group of black leaders" claimed at a National Press Club gathering that "gun control dates back to laws before and after the Civil War that prohibited or restricted African Americans from owning firearms" and "spoke out in defense of the Second Amendment."
But the despite the presence of prominent black conservatives such as Star Parker and Ken Hutcherson, Starr did not identify them or any other speaker at the event. Starr identified one speaker, Stacy Swimp, as "president and CFO of the Frederick Douglass Society," but failed to identify the group's ideology as conservative.
In a follow-up article on an interview with Parker at the event, Starr again failed to identify Parker as conservative. Starr also stated that the event was "billed as a Black History Month press conference" but failed to explain that it was a gathering of conservatives.
Given that their conservatism was the one main trait the participants in the event had in common, it's strange that Starr would want to hide such a relevant piece of information from her readers, especially when her MRC overlords have a fit every time the "liberal media" fails to identify a misbehaving Democratic politician as a Democrat.
NEW ARTICLE: WorldNetDaily's Very Lively Gay-Bashing Topic: WorldNetDaily
Not only does WND pretend that anti-gay activist Scott Lively's book linking gays to Nazis hasn't been discredited, it has served as his apologist over allegations that he's linked to Uganda's proposed "kill the gays" law. Read more >>
MRC Thinks 'Left-Winger' Reporter In TV Show Is A 'True to Life Depiction' Topic: Media Research Center
Media Research Center vice president for research and publications begins a Feb. 24 NewsBusters post this way:
HBO’s Sunday night dramady, Enlightened, is delivering something very rare: A true to life depiction of a journalist – specifically identified as a reporter for the Los Angeles Times – as a very obvious left-winger, one who cavorts with and reads books by far-left authors and goes to the newspaper newsroom wearing a “John Kerry for President” shirt.
Well, not so much -- the depiction is more of a caricature of what right-wingers like Baker think a journalist is rather than a "true to life depiction."
Unlike the vast majority of MRC employees, I have actually worked in journalism.The vast majority of the journalists I worked with are not conversant on the works of Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, and they certainly wouldn't be caught dead wearing a T-shirt from any political campaign, liberal or otherwise, in the newsroom lest they be accused of having a bias.
The fact that Baker and the rest of his MRC cohorts really believe that the journalist character on "Enlightened" is "true to life" demonstrates just how out-of-touch the MRC is with how journalism works -- which makes their "media research" highly suspicious, since they seem to believe that their wishful thinking is reality.
There are bookies in London who will take your bets on who will be the next pope. As long as they’re such sports, will they make book on this: Is there anything President Obama can do or say that will pierce his magic shield and turn American mass media reverence into rage?
Obama is the most incredible player American politics has ever met. He insults Israel, and gets almost 80 percent of the Jewish vote twice! He insults the U.K., returning a bust of Churchill to the British Embassy, and pays not one political penny in penalty. Solyndra wastes billions in taxpayer dollars plus the drowning of green dreams in wide-awake red ink, and like screen slapstick, the more pies he takes squarely in the face the more they like him.
[...]
Media is supposed to rectify, not ratify, our Obamas.
Those icy particles falling everywhere now are not snowflakes.
I actually watched Obama’s entire State of the Union address. I would like to think I was merely doing my duty as a citizen and as a political observer, but I’m beginning to worry that there is simply a streak of masochism that runs through me. After all, that’s an hour of my life I’ll never get back, and God knows I’m not getting any younger. If anything, just listening to and looking at His Arrogance has aged me considerably over the past five years.
With far-left crazies calling for an Obama dictatorship, it doesn’t take much of an imagination to picture the presidential pretender declaring a state of emergency and “postponing” the 2016 election. Nevertheless, I still believe there’s a 50-50 chance that won’t happen.
But even if the 2016 election is not quashed, I believe the odds of Der Fuhrbama’s running for a third term are probably in the area of 80 percent. What’s that you say? The 22nd Amendment limits a president to two terms? Oh, yeah, I forgot. After all, BHO would never dream of violating the Constitution, right?
Similarly, if your state government is implementing a Health Care Exchange (as stipulated in Obamacare), it is implicitly colluding with the Obama administration in the neutralization of your constitutional liberties. In addition to having been passed with marginal legality and being an unconstitutional law, there are countless provisions therein that promise to immeasurably erode our liberties.
While we may have limited influence on the would-be dictator in the White House and Congress, we have the names and numbers of those in our own states, counties and cities who are aligning with America’s universal enemies.
For Americans who believe in this nation, who believe in the ideals of liberty on which it is based and who believe they have the right to speak their minds, to raise their children as they wish, to keep what they earn, to defend themselves … for these Americans, there have been no more difficult years. As bad as the first term of Barack Hussein Obama has been, as he sought and succeeded in “fundamentally transforming” a free but beleaguered nation into a pauper and pariah on the world stage, the next four years promise to be worse. They promise to be worse because Obama no longer has any restraint on his behavior. His fellow travelers in the Democratic Party and among the GOP’s RINO contingent are similarly unfettered.
Where once the Democrats avoided stating explicitly what they wish for you and for this nation, knowing that their oppressive schemes and unsupportable economics would send voters running in the other direction, they now feel that anything they wish may be rammed down the throats of the American people. This is due, in part, to the fact that Romney was right: Half of the American people vote for a living as opposed to working for a living. They are no more interested in electing a Republican than they are in using something other than an EBT card to pay for their junk food. When a president as bad as Obama, as arrogant as Obama, as brittle as Obama, as defensive as Obama, as exhaustingly obnoxious as Obama, can repeatedly lie to, insult and lord his power over the American people, yet still gain re-election easily, there simply aren’t enough people interested in voting for liberty over security. The tipping point has been reached.
There has been great concern about how Tyrant Barack Hussein Obama has been out there attempting to win the hearts and minds of our young through his twisted and un-American ideologies.
Synonyms for a tyrant are oppressor, dictator, bully, despot, persecutor.
It goes without saying that illegitimately elected American President Barack Hussein Obama is the most anti-Israel president in U.S. history. I need not repeat in depth in this column how the “Mullah in Chief” has undercut the Jewish state at every turn – from backing radical Islamist revolutionary movements like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and elsewhere throughout the Middle East, to illegally releasing national security information that discloses sources and methods for fighting a war against Iran should one break out over this neo-Nazi regime’s acquisition of nuclear weapons.
Newsmax's Ruddy Defends Florida Gov. On Medicaid, Ignores His Medicaid Fraud Topic: Newsmax
In a Feb. 22 column, Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy praised Florida Gov. Rick Scott for agreeing to expand Medicaid in the state through the provisions of the Affordable Care Act, declaring it "a reasonable action for a conservative governor of the nation’s fourth most populous state." Ruddy went on to state that "Scott joins a number of conservative governors who have opposed Obamacare but believe it would be a disservice to taxpayers not to accept federal funding."
Ruddy went on to bolster Scott's alleged bona fides on the issue:
Scott, former head of the huge Columbia/HCA hospital chain, was an outspoken critic of Obamacare even before he ran for governor.
In 2009, he founded Conservatives for Patients’ Rights to oppose Obamacare, and backed it with millions of dollars of his own money.
Then in April 2010, a month after Obama signed the healthcare bill into law, Scott announced his candidacy for governor, and he later told Newsmax that Obamacare would be “devastating for everybody.”
Ruddy failed to mention a significant thing Scott did while head of Columbia/HCA: oversaw "the largest ripoff of taxpayers in the history of Medicare and Medicaid."
Who called it that? Newsmax. When Scott was running for the Republican nomination for Florida governor in 2010, a Newsmax article highlighted that the Miami Herald has reported that Scott resigned from Columbia/HCA in 1997 amid an FBI probe that ultimately led to the company paying a record $1.7 billion in criminal and civil fines for Medicare fraud. The company pleaded guilty to 14 felonies, most committed during Scott's tenure.
But then, that was when Newsmax supported Scott's Republican opponent, Bill McCollum. After Scott won the Republican primary, Newsmax pulled an about-face and endorsed Scott for the general election against a Democratic opponent, flushing all that talk about his corruption down the memory hole.
WND's Farah: Criticism Of My Billboard Campaign Means Liberals Hate God Topic: WorldNetDaily
Joseph Farah headlined his Feb. 20 WorldNetDaily column, "Why do liberals hate God?" The key piece of evidence is that one liberal blog criticized his new campaign to post billboards containing the Ten Commandments across the country.
Yeah, that's pretty much it. Farah's main response is to write: "By posting the Ten Commandments on billboards across the country, I’m hardly imposing my will or God’s will on anyone. I’m simply pricking the public’s conscience."
So why all the spewing?
Because people don’t like to be reminded of their sin.
I don’t like it any more than anyone else. But if we want to experience everlasting life with God, it’s necessary to confront our own sins and repent of them.
I share the Commandments in love with everyone – even liberals who hate God.
Of course, Farah is not only imposing his will through his billboards, he's hiding his involvement by promoting the website thetencommandments.com onthe billboards instead of WND -- even though the website redirects to WND.
As far as being reminded of his own sin goes, let us once again note that WND, under his leadership, has become a sewer of anti-Obama hate and lies over the past five years.
We haven't heard Farah repent to God or his readers (who need to hear it more than God does) for the dishonesty of his website -- apparently, he's too busy begging for cash to put up more Ten Commandments billboards.
NewsBusters Whines That Woody Guthrie Isn't Described As A Dirty Commie Topic: NewsBusters
The headline on a Feb. 22 NewsBusters post by Mark Finkelstein screams, "Mika Giggles Like Schoolgirl Over Sex In Woody Guthrie Book—Ignores His Communist Ties."
What do the two have to do with each other? Nothing. But Finkelstein really, really wants us to know that Guthrie was a dirty commie:
Woody Guthrie was an American original who wrote some enduring music and did a lot to publicize the plight of the people of the Dust Bowl. There's just one little inconvenient truth about Guthrie: he ran in Communist circles. Though it's reported that he never officially joined the party, he's quoted as saying that the "the best thing that I did in 1936 was to sign up with the Communist Party." He also wrote 174 columns for the Communist Party's Daily Worker newspaper.
But nary a mention was made of Woody's Communist connections on Morning Joe today. Instead, Mika Brzezinski giggled like a schoolgirl over the numerous, explicit sex scenes contained in a recently-discovered novel that Guthrie wrote, House of Earth.
Brzezinski is talking about a novel Guthrie wrote, in which Guthrie's alleged communism has no direct link, if there is any link at all. Finkelstein fails to explain any relevance Guthrie's political views have in discussing a work of fiction. It appears that Finkelstein just wants to red-bait.
Finkelstein fails to mention that much of Guthrie's communist activity occurred in the 1930s, when capitalism wasn't exactly doing well. And as others have pointed out, the Communists wouldn't let Woody be an official Communist, even if he'd really wanted to join, because he was too much of a free spirit.
But facts become inconvenient when Finkelstein is red-baiting, and he complains once again that the dicussion of Guthrie's book was "sanitized to remove Communist references."
Michael Thompson writes in a Feb. 18 WorldNetDaily article:
Hollywood legend Bruce Willis’ latest entry in the “Die Hard” franchise took No. 1 in the box office over the weekend, bucking a trend of flops by his “Expendables” co-stars Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone.
Both Stallone and Schwarzenegger’s recent box office woes came after they labeled the Second Amendment “expendable.”
In contrast to Stallone and Schwarzenegger, Willis, starring in “It’s a Good Day to Die Hard,” had come out in defense of the right to bear arms as Democrats in Washington propose unprecedented restrictions on guns.
But Thompson provides no evidence that the actors' statements on gun control had any bearing whatsoever on the performance of their films.
This is what's known as the correlation-equals-causation fallacy -- claiming that because two events happened concurrently, it means that one directly caused the other. Since Thompson has not demonstrated that one caused the other, he should not have argued that it did.
MRC Unhappy That Coerced Sonograms Are Described As Coercion Topic: Media Research Center
In a Feb. 19 MRC Culture & Media Institute item, Kristine Marsh takes offense at a Huffington Post article about a gay couple viewing the sonogram of the child a surrogate mother is carrying. Why?
It’s strange for HuffPo to celebrate sonograms in this instance, but be so vehemently against them in cases of abortion.
In 2011, the site repeatedly expressed outrage over the proposed pre-abortion mandatory sonogram laws in Texas, and similar measures in four other states, calling such measures “invasive” and “coercion.” HuffPo writer Anu Kumar staunchly opposed any kind of law, like sonograms, that would give more information to the woman who was going to have an abortion.
That's right -- Marsh is complaining that a coerced sonogram is being correctly described as coercion.
Marsh goes on to insult women further:
Without seeing that obviously human and moving being inside her, a pregnant mother is kept from seeing what the pro-abortion side is hiding. Namely, that their logic is laughable and the idea that one person has the right to decide whether or not someone else gets to live is a travesty.
Does Marsh think women are so stupid that they must be forced to look at a sonogram to know that they're carrying a fetus? Apparently so.
The Week In Larry Klayman's Failed Lawyering Topic: WorldNetDaily
What has failed attorney Larry Klayman been up to this week?
First up, lying preacher Bradlee Dean revealed that he spent $77,000 on his failed, Klayman-represented lawsuit against Rachel Maddow. He finally gave up because the judge in the case refused to let Klayman transfer the lawsuit from a Washington, D.C., court to a federal court -- a move being done for the sole reason of depriving Maddow of one avenue of defense -- unless Dean paid $24,000 to Maddow's lawyers to mount a new defense.
Presumably, Klayman got a good chunk of that $77,000. Seems that Dean has a case for getting some of that money back by suing Klayman for incompetent representation. Also, there's the question of Dean got that $77,000 in the first place, given that he's supposed to be a nonprofit preacher.
(Meanwhile, a Dean representative sent a cease-and-desist letter to Wonkette trying to claim that Dean's reference to "the rod of correction" doesn't mean that he "advocated the beating of children." It also notes that Dean has retained an attorney in the case who is not Klayman.)
Then, Klayman lined up a new sucker -- er, client. He's now representing a group called Citizens To Protect Fair Election Results, which is trying to stop a recall campaign against Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio.According to the Arizona Republic, Klayman has sent a cease-and-desist letter to recall organizers, claiming that “There are no valid reasons for this recall petition" because Arpaio was just re-elected and that it's illegal anyway because Arizona prohibits the circulation of recall petitions against an official until he or she has held office for six months.
Just a couple of problems with that. First, legal experts (which Klayman is clearly not) agree that the recall prohibition limit doesn't apply to incumbents (which Arpaio is).
Second, Klayman has shown no interest in giving President Obama the same post-election deference he demands for Arpaio. Two days before Obama was inaugurated, Klayman was ranting that "its time to legally remove the tyrant Obama from our body politic and cleanse the nation of his evil and destructive march to abolish our liberty and freedoms."
Not only is Klayman an incompetent lawyer, it seems his moral standards are extremely flexible depending on who he's going after.
Oh, needless to say, Bob Unruh's WND article on the Arpaio recall petition fails to mention the conflict of interest that Klayman has also represented WND, nor does it note that Klayman is completely wrong about the petition being illegal.
UPDATE: The Phoenix New Times reports that Citizens To Protect Fair Election Results is headed by the leaders of the Surprise Tea Party, to whom WND's Jerome Corsi gave a birther presentation that led to a request from the group to Arpaio to investigate Obama's "eligibility" to be president. Funny how that goes around.
NewsBusters' Sheffield Knows Conservative Papers Need Sugar Daddies Topic: NewsBusters
In a Feb. 21 NewsBusters post, Matthew Sheffield highlights the New York Times Co.'s intention to sell the Boston Globe, adding: "Now here would be a nice opportunity for a conservative billionaire to actually have a real asset instead of some junk mail and some worthless TV ads. Are you listening, guys?"
This is actually an extension of a January post in which Sheffield called for "top-dollar donors on the right" to invest in media properties that "can serve as intermediating institutions for our ideas to the masses" instead of 'TV campaign ads, junk mail, and white papers that no one ever reads."
These posts show that Sheffield is implicting acknowledging a proven fact: A conservative newspaper can't survive in the free market on its own and needs a sugar daddy.
The four most prominent conservative newspapers in the country -- the Washington Times, the Washington Examiner, the New York Post and the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review -- have been perpetual money pits, even when the newspaper industry as a whole was going gangbusters, that have been subsidized by wealthy, ideologically driven owners (or, in the case of the Post, subsidized by more profitable divisions of News Corp.).
This plight even afflicts conservative papers owned by for-profit conservative companies, as illustrated this week with the announcement by Eagle Publishing that it will either sell or close the weekly right-wing paper Human Events. If even a sympathetic right-wing publisher can't keep a right-wing paper alive, why would one get in the market now?
That's why Sheffield called for a "conservative billionaire" and not a for-profit company.
Sheffield also ignores that Boston already has a conservative newspaper in the Herald, which, yes, has been a perpetual money-loser (and, ironically, is printed and distributed by the Globe).
Sheffield's biggest obstacle to getting (more) right-wing billionaires to buy newspapers is convincing them they're not flushing money down a rathole given the current state of the newspaper industry as a whole and the historic financial performance of conservative papers. Which means that Sheffield needs to find some conservatives with more money than brains.
WND Columnists: Ben Carson for President! Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily columnists are joining in the cheerleading of Dr. Ben Carson's partisan attack on President Obama's policies in front of Obama at the normally nonpartisan National Prayer Breakfast -- so much so that they want him to run for president.
Jane Chastain gushed in her Feb. 20 WND column that Carson is "a gifted neurosurgeon who has a way with words as well as a scalpel," further gushing: "Yes, we could use a doctor – or two – in the White House. A Ben Carson/Tom Coburn ticket perhaps?"
Robert Ringer also endorsed the idea of a Ben Carson president, albeit in a fashion dripping with his usual infection of Obama Derangement Syndrome.
Ringer listed Carson -- whose "slash-and-burn comments" demonstrated that "he’s not interesting in tiptoeing or making nice to the left-wing enemies of freedom"-- among three candidates who could stop a third term for Obama.
Yes, you read that right. That's where the Obama derangement kicks in:
With far-left crazies calling for an Obama dictatorship, it doesn’t take much of an imagination to picture the presidential pretender declaring a state of emergency and “postponing” the 2016 election. Nevertheless, I still believe there’s a 50-50 chance that won’t happen.
But even if the 2016 election is not quashed, I believe the odds of Der Fuhrbama’s running for a third term are probably in the area of 80 percent. What’s that you say? The 22nd Amendment limits a president to two terms? Oh, yeah, I forgot. After all, BHO would never dream of violating the Constitution, right?
Ringer's column moniker "A Voice of Sanity" grows increasingly inaccurate with every column he writs.
MRC Writers Bash Abortion Movie, Won't Condemn Murder of Abortion Doctor Topic: Media Research Center
Brent Bozell isn't the only Media Research Center writer who is bashing a new documentary about abortion after the death of George Tiller without expressing any disapproval of Tiller's murder.
A Feb.18 MRC Culture & Media Institute item by Katie Yoder complain that the documentary "After Tiller"didn't paint doctors who perform third-trimester abortions as "murderers," ghoing on to rant that one of them, Dr. Leroy Carhart, is "a man who murders babies old enough for birth."
Yoder notes only that Tiller is "deceased" but not how he got that way -- being shot to death in church by anti-abortion extremist Scott Roeder. Given that she applies "murderer" to Carhart but not Roeder, it seems that Yoder would like Tiller's fate to befall Carhart.
And in a Feb. 19 CNSNews.com column, Rev. Marcel Guarnizo denounced "After Tiller" as "a great work of propaganda," smearing the doctors depicted in the film as "soulless" being who were "taught the deadly art of late term abortion by George Tiller." Guarnizo wasn't moved to condemn the murder of Tiller as the work of a "soulless" being.
As we've noted, the MRC endeavored immediately after Tiller's murder to distance Roeder from the anti-abortion movement, even though he had ties to a very significant anti-abortion group, Operation Rescue. CNS' Penny Starr insisted in 2010 that Roeder is "a mentally unstable man" despite the fact that Roeder did not mount an insanity defense at his trial and a psychologist hired by the defense found Roeder competent to stand trial.
We've 
