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Sunday, May 18, 2014
WND's Farber Rants About Non-Existent 'Voter Fraud'
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Barry Farber rants in a May 13 WorldNetDaily column:

As a commentator, I often revisit that little American girl who asked her father during the Vietnam War, “What if they gave a war and nobody showed up?”

You’re grown up now, Baby. And it’s already happened! At least the attackers have shown up big-time, but we defenders have yet to take the field.

One single fraudulent vote is an “attack” on our democratic system. Massive voter fraud is a massive attack. The website Watchdog.com tells us that a group known as the Virginia Voters Alliance counted 44,000 voters registered in Maryland as well as Virginia. An additional 40 to 60 thousand dead voters were found to be on the active voters list in that one state of Virginia, according to the Social Security Administration. It’s not just Chicago any more.

Actually, none of that is evidence of "voter fraud." Dead people on voter rolls is fairly common, as is people who might be registered in two places -- in the case of Maryland and Virginia, both states surround Washington, D.C., and it's not uncommon for people to move between the two states.

Not only is it not "voter fraud," it's not even voter registration fraud in the vast majority of the cases -- there's simply a need to clean up voter rolls to removed duplicates and the dead.

While Farber insists that arguments against voter ID laws are "comically weak," the type of voter fraud this would counter is virtually nonexistent.


Posted by Terry K. at 6:56 PM EDT
MRC Touts Birther's Endorsement of MRC
Topic: Media Research Center

Ken Oliver-Mendez devotes a May 16 NewsBusters post to an interview with Sen. Ted Cruz's father, Rafael Cruz:

As a travelling pastor, Rev. Rafael Cruz, father of Sen. Ted Cruz, is in a unique position to sense where the political winds are blowing in this mid-term election year. During a visit to the Media Research Center, the elder Cruz said that with just over five months to go between now and Election Day, he sees major conservative gains ahead, including the retirement of Sen. Harry Reid as Majority Leader that would come with Republicans winning control of the United States Senate.

Oliver-Mendez also promotes the elder Cruz's endorsement of the MRC: “You are doing something that is absolutely necessary in this country when we have so much of the liberal media that they have ceased to be broadcasters, they have ceased to be really journalists and they have become mouthpieces for the administration. They have apparently no concern for truth – all they want to do is promote the talking points of the administration – so you are standing in the gap.”

What Oliver-Mendez didn't do, however, is mention the elder Cruz's history of inflammatory statements, which include saying that President Obama is a Marxist who should go "back to Kenya," falsely claiming that “the first bill President Obama signed into law was to legalize third trimester abortions" (in fact, it was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, and he has never signed any law approving third-trimester abortions), and asserting that gay marriage is some kind of government conspiracy.

Oliver-Mendez runs MRC Latino, the MRC's Hispanic media-monitoring operation. Between this and the MRC's longtime hostility to Hispanics and their issues, the success of this venture seems rather dubious.


Posted by Terry K. at 1:26 PM EDT
Updated: Wednesday, May 21, 2014 9:48 PM EDT
Saturday, May 17, 2014
WND's Unruh Takes Up Colin Flaherty's Race-Baiting Baton
Topic: WorldNetDaily

It seems that WorldNetDaily has dismissed race-baiter extraordinaire Colin Flaherty as a correspondent -- as we've noted, he has apparently taken his talents to Breitbart. WND appears to have decided it can handle its race-baiting needs in-house.

Taking up Flaherty's race-baiting baton at WND is Bob Unruh, who wrote a May 15 article about how "a black teenager is facing charges as an adult for what authorities are describing as the revenge arson of the home of a white woman and her two children." As Flaherty so often did, Unruh asserted there is a "racial factor" to the crime but does not prove it.

But Flaherty remains at WND in spirit -- WND did publish Flaherty's race-baiting book, "White Girl Bleed A Lot," after all, and thus Unruh must promote it: "A surging number of black mob attacks, mostly on white victims, has been in the news for several years, and specific incidents have been documented in author Colin Flaherty’s book, 'White Girl Bleed A Lot: The Return of Racial Violence to America and How the Media Ignore It.'"

The race-baiter is dead at WND. Long live the race-baiter.


Posted by Terry K. at 9:57 PM EDT
Friday, May 16, 2014
Suddenly MRC Is A 'Religious' Organization, Sues To Exempt Itself From Obamacare Mandate
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center has decided it's a religious organization. According to who? The Media Research Center.

The MRC announced May 15 that it has "self-certified as a religious organization" and its's suing the federal government to get exempted from Obamacare's contraception mandate:

Today the Media Research Center (MRC) announced that it has filed a motion in US District Court for a preliminary injunction seeking to block enforcement of the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate, which forces people of faith to subsidize health insurance plans that include abortion inducing drugs, contraception, and sterilization. A hearing has been set for June 6.

“This lawsuit is about religious freedom and the conscience rights of individuals to operate their enterprises free from government coercion, reprisal, or punishment,” MRC Founder and President Brent Bozell said. “The Obamacare mandate destroys the ability of free people to practice their faith in their everyday lives and forces them to either reject their faith or face crippling government imposed fines and punishment; in our case over $4.5 million dollars per year. We do not stop being religious, moral people the moment we walk out of our houses of worship.”

The MRC contends that under ACA rules it has self-certified as a religious organization and is therefore exempt from the mandate. The MRC is the first organization that has asked the court to affirm its "self-certification.”

For nearly three decades, the MRC has been the nation’s premier defender of pro-life views and Judeo-Christian values from attacks by the liberal media. Bozell and other employees of the MRC practice and live by Judeo-Christian values, and believe abortion, whether through the actions of an abortionist or a drug, is the taking of innocent human life. Under the First Amendment, the MRC and its employees have the right to practice and abide by their faith in their everyday lives including in the operations of their mission-oriented non-profit organization.

The MRC starts things off with a lie -- morning-after pills are not "abortion inducing drugs."

Second, the MRC's mission statement says nothing about religion:

Since 1987, the Media Research Center has been the nation’s premier media watchdog. We don’t endorse politicians and we don’t lobby for legislation. MRC’s sole mission is to expose and neutralize the propaganda arm of the Left: the national news media. This makes the MRC’s work unique within the conservative movement.

The Media Research Center’s unwavering commitment to neutralizing left-wing bias in the news media and popular culture has influenced how millions of Americans perceive so-called objective reporting.

Integrating cutting-edge news monitoring capabilities with a sophisticated marketing operation, MRC reaches nearly 170 million Americans each week to educate them about left-wing bias in the media.

The Media Research Center is a research and education organization operating under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Contributions are tax-deductible to the maximum extent of the law. The MRC receives no government grants or contracts nor do we have an endowment. We raise our funds each year from individuals, foundations, and corporations.

Only the MRC's Culture & Media Institute has a declared mission that involves religion, claiming it's "dedicated to correcting misconceptions in the media about social conservatism and religious faith."

Third, if living by "Judeo-Christian values" is a requirement for employment at the MRC -- as one might expect from a "religious organization" -- the MRC should have no problem releasing its employment records to demonstrate that Christianity, if not the Catholicism followed by many top MRC leaders, is an ironclad requirement for employment there. It should also be able to demonstrate that it has relieved people of employment, or not hired them at all, for being insufficiently Christian.

Oh, wait -- doesn't discrimination on the basis of religion violate federal civil rights laws? Yes, yes it does.

It seems the MRC has put itself in a bit of a pickle with this lawsuit. If it proves it's a religious organization, it has to fundamentally alter its mission -- and, thus further marginalize itself. Why should the larger conservative movement pay attention to a media-bias group that can only examine the issue from a religious viewpoint?

If the MRC is unable to prove it's the religious organization it's "self-certified" itself to be, it has to explain why it has engaged in hiring discrimination.

We'll be watching this.


Posted by Terry K. at 9:54 PM EDT
Updated: Friday, May 16, 2014 9:56 PM EDT
WND Still Obsessed With Female Teachers Having Sex With Students
Topic: WorldNetDaily

For years, WorldNetDaily has been obsessing over feamale (but not male) teachers who have sex with their students, to the point where it keeps a creepily detailed list of offenses over the past decade. Of course, as with its "black mob" race-baiting, cherry-picking incidents does not a epidemic make, and WND has never explain why it's so fixated on female teachers.

Joe Kovacs adds another one to the prurient pile in a May 14 WND article:

With the large number of teachers having sex with their students across America, it was virtually inevitable a case would arise where a student’s grades might be affected.

Now an Oklahoma English teacher is in hot water for giving a failing student an A+ after allegedly having sex with the male teenager multiple times.

Kovacs does not back up his claim of a"large number of teachers having sex with their students," and, needless to say, does not explain why female teachers are inherently more newsworthy in WND's editorial agenda than male teachers.


Posted by Terry K. at 3:27 PM EDT
MRC Circles Wagons Around Its Favorite Right-Wing Radio Hosts
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center has a symbiotic relationship with top right-wing radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh -- they promote the MRC's work, the MRC rewards Limbaugh's misogyny by starting a "I Stand With Rush" website.

The MRC also attacks any perceived threat to the right-wing radio empire, which explains Tim Graham and Brent Bozell's May 14 column attacking Mike Rogers, who's leaving Congress to start a radio show he says will be less vitriolic than the likes of Rush. Them's fightin' words:

Those who attack the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Mark Levin — as too conservative, too vitriolic or simply unhinged — have that right, even if, as is so often the case, they rely on others rather than listen to the shows themselves. That's what liberals do.

There are pretenders to the throne of conservative talk radio who claim to be so much less "poisonous" and stupid than Limbaugh, Hannity, Levin, et al. — and travel the same character-assassination route. Congressman Mike Rogers told The New York Times he's retiring in January to join Cumulus Radio for a national show, because "I think there is room for a more productive, you-might-actually-learn-something kind of talk radio in the marketplace."

Rogers, call your office.

Rogers is such a genius he thinks you launch a career in conservative talk radio by pandering to The New York Times. The article begins with Rogers denouncing all those members of Congress "who would rather raise their profiles and get into the media" than pass legislation. Rogers is so dense he can't see that he's denouncing the very road he's walking down.

[...]

What Rogers doesn't see is that he isn't just insulting talk show hosts. This "productive conservative host" is insulting his audience. They are morons, knuckle-draggers unable to think for themselves, unable to be smart. Yes, this is a man who will find a receptive audience on talk radio.

[...]

Limbaugh has been the king for decades now. He is a broadcasting legend. Hannity and Levin also have millions of loyal fans. But the liberals and the "reasonable" people just don't want to acknowledge reality. In this business, it's the market that decides. And this market has embraced Limbaugh, Hannity and Levin as emphatically as it has rejected the pretenders.

America should thank its lucky stars for these radio stars that Rogers disparages. They have done more than anyone to save this country and its tradition of liberty.

And Rogers? He'll be just another failure.

At no point do Graham and Bozell defend the content of Limbaugh, et al -- they can't, given that the have previously condoned Limbaugh's misogyny. They're simply engaging in a logical fallacy that because such hosts are popular, they must be right. And even that's a dubious prospect -- in addition to its fallacious foundation, Limbaugh's station swap at the start of the year has not brought big ratings to his new stations.

Given that, Rogers must be a real threat to Limbaugh if Graham and Bozell are devoting an entire column to attacking him.


Posted by Terry K. at 1:39 PM EDT
WND Crawls Back In Bed With Discredited Filmmaker Joel Gilbert
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily was so desperate to destroy President Obama in 2012 that it embraced Joel Gilbert, a filmmaker untethered by reality who had just released a smear job baselessly speculating that Obama's real father and claiming that Obama's mother had posed nude for a photographer. Despite the fact that the latter claim was utterly discredited, WND's Jerome Corsi promoted a Gilbert assertion that Obama's wedding ring bore an Islamic inscription, a claim so fraudulent on its face that Corsi's fellow birthers were compelled to debunk it.

And in true WND style, Corsi never told WND's readers that Gilbert's Obama fantasies been been repeatedly discredited.

Gilbert has now rewarded Corsi for his omerta -- Corsi has a part in Gilbert's new film. An unbylined May 13 WND article touts Gilbert's new project:

Filmmaker Joel Gilbert, who produced the 2012 documentary “Dreams from My Real Father,” presenting the case that Communist Party activist Frank Marshall Davis was the biological father of Barack Obama, has produced a new film, “There’s No Place Like Utopia,” scheduled for theatrical release this summer.

“The film is similar in style to the highly successful Michael Moore films,” Gilbert told WND.

“The narrative follows me as I journey across America and take audiences on a humorous and horrifying exploration of progressivism, amnesty for illegals, race relations, Islam in America, political correctness and Barack Obama himself, who promises to ‘remake the world not as it is, but as it should be,’” Gilbert said.

In the film, Gilbert depicts Barack Obama as the wizard in the classic “The Wizard of Oz.”

[...]

Featured in the film are commentaries from WND staff reporter and author Jerome R. Corsi, WND columnist and author Jack Cashill, as well as conservative author David Horowitz and former KGB officer Konstantin Preobrazhensky.

Again, WND refuses to tell its readers that Gilbert is a charlatan on a scale of the Wizard of Oz, peddling lies designed to deceive gullible right-wingers.

And why would WND do such a thing? They're in business together -- the article includes links to the WND store to buy his discredited Obama smear job. WND will never tell the truth about Gilbert until his films have been cleared out of the WND store, and probably not even then.

Just consider it yet another reason nobody believes WND.


Posted by Terry K. at 2:24 AM EDT
Thursday, May 15, 2014
MRC Still Touting Gosnell Crowdfunding, Still Won't Ask About Billboard
Topic: Media Research Center

Matt Philbin effuses in a May 9 Media Research Center item:

Here’s a story for the nightly news: a plucky upstart overcomes establishment hostility to reach a seemingly impossible goal. The problem is that the nightly news is the establishment, and the Gosnell Movie project, which just reached its initial crowd-funding goal, deals with something they don’t want to talk about.

Headed by producer Phelim McAleer and wife Ann McElhinney, the Gosnell Movie campaign has reached its initial goal of raising $2.1 million from more than 23,000 individual donors through the crowd-funding site Indiegogo. The money raised will fund a scripted TV drama based on abortionist Kermit Gosnell’s trial and grand jury report. 

There's no mention, however, of where McAleer got the money to post a billboard outside Kickstarter headquarters in an act of revenge for Kickstarter imposing standards on McAleer's  crowdfunding campaign (which ultimately used another website).

Billboards are costly, after all. Did McAleer use his crowdfunding money to pay for it? If so, did he receive permission from his crowdfunders to use the money in that way?

Those are basic questions that go to the heart of whether McAleer is a good steward of the millions he's raising for his propaganda film. But Philbin apparently doesn't want to know the answer -- he's too busy making sure McAleer is pocketing even more cash.


Posted by Terry K. at 3:14 PM EDT
NEW ARTICLE: Crazy Conservative Medicine
Topic: WorldNetDaily
Let's look back at the writing career of factually challenged WorldNetDaily columnist (and past president of a far-right medical group) Dr. Lee Hieb. Read more >>

Posted by Terry K. at 12:38 PM EDT
Wednesday, May 14, 2014
MRC Desperately Tries to Smear Warren Buffett By Tangentally Tying Him to Gosnell
Topic: WorldNetDaily

The Media Research Center still can't get the "research" part of its name down.

The latest example of the MRC's history of shoddy research is a May 13 report by Mike Ciandella and Katie Yoder attacking Warren Buffett for funding "abortion groups":

They say the key to successful investing is diversification. But Berkshire Hathaway Chairman & CEO Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor known as the  “Oracle of Omaha,” is a one-issue man -- and that issue is abortion.

Through the foundation he financed with more than $3 billion of his own money, Buffett donated $1,230,585,161 to abortion groups worldwide from 2001 to 2012. These groups, including Planned Parenthood, NARAL and the Population Council, either campaign for pro-abortion legislation, perform abortions themselves, or helped develop the controversial abortion drug RU-486. Buffett gave an additional $21 million to these groups between 1989 and 1996. (Tax forms between 1997 and 2000 are not available.)

So the $1.2 billion that Buffett gave to these organizations is enough to pay for the abortions of more than 2.7 million babies in the womb. Those figures come from the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute, which says the average amount paid for a surgical abortion in the United States is $451 for the first trimester. That accounts for the majority of abortions.

To put that in perspective, Warren Buffett donated enough money to abortion groups to perform as many abortions as there are people in the entire city of Chicago.

Note how wildly overstated Ciandella and Yoder's claims are. "Abortion groups" is a laughably overbroad assertion, demonstrating the MRC's intent for this to be a political attack instead of objective research. After all, only 3 percent of Planned Parenthood's services are abortion services.

The "perspective" that Buffett donated enough money to abort "the entire city of Chicago" also has no business in a supposed "research" document.

Further, for all their fulminating about "abortion groups," Ciandella and Yoder provide no evidence whatsoever that Buffett foundation money directly paid for any abortions.

But they're not done. Ciandella and Yoder's next step is to smear Buffett by trying to tie him to rogue abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell:

One year ago, on May 13, 2013, the infamous abortionist Kermit Gosnell was convicted of three counts of murder and one count of manslaughter in a case the major media tried their best to ignore. Another of the groups Buffett funded inspected Gosnell’s clinic -- subsequently described in court documents as a “house of horror” -- and didn’t report conditions at the “worst abortion clinic” the inspector had ever seen to Pennsylvania authorities.

Again, Ciandella and Yoder provide no evidence that Buffett has any personal link whatsoever to Gosnell -- it's just a disgusting smear.

Further, the grand jury report on the Gosnell case placed much more blame on state health officials for years of failing to act on complaints about Gosnell's practice -- they "were repeatedly confronted with evidence about Gosnell, and repeatedly chose to do nothing" -- than the NAF, which had inspected his clinic about a year before Gosnell was arrested in response to him applying to become an NAF member.

Nevertheless, the MRC's Dan Gainor wrote a FoxNews.com op-ed that even more explicitly tried to link Buffett to Gosnell:

May 13, 2014, marks one year since Philadelphia abortion Dr. Kermit Gosnell was convicted of first-degree murder “in the deaths of three babies who were delivered alive and then killed with scissors at his grimy, ‘house of horrors’ clinic,” according to the Associated Press. Gosnell instantly became the face of abortion in the prolife community.

But there’s another, more recognizable face pushing abortion in the U.S. – liberal billionaire Warren Buffett. The so-called “Oracle of Omaha” has donated more than $1.2 billion to abortion organizations from 2001 to 2012.

That’s equal to the cost of roughly 2.7 million first-trimester abortions – more than twice the number of abortions that occur in an entire year in the United States. Unlike Gosnell, however, everything Buffett has done has been entirely legal. But Buffett does share something else in common with the abortionist. Both their stories have been largely unreported.

Like his underlings, Gainor does not prove that Buffett is directly "pushing abortion."

The most damning evidence of the MRC's partisan intent, though, is that Ciandella and Yoder devote 11 paragraphs of it to how "pro-life organizations expressed outrage at the amount of Buffett’s support dedicated to the demise of babies in the womb." Ciandella and Yoder claim they "reached out to both The Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation and Berkshire Hathaway," but got no response.

That's what passes for "research" at the MRC. It has always been thus.


Posted by Terry K. at 11:20 PM EDT
Updated: Wednesday, May 14, 2014 11:22 PM EDT
WND's Monckton Has A Sad That Fox News Stopped Covering Birther Conspiracy Theories
Topic: WorldNetDaily

With his May 13 column, Christopher Monckton becomes the second WorldNetDaily columnist (after Burt Prelutsky) to lament that Fox News is too liberal for him. But Monckton is a birther dead-ender, and he's mad that Fox won't cover President Obama's birth certificate anymore:

Consider the question of the Obama “birth certificate.” On any view, this is an interesting story. An experienced, credible and much-decorated sheriff has published detailed and compelling evidence raising grave questions about the authenticity of several documents related to the identity of the occupant of the White House, and one of these documents remains on the White House website to this day.

Yet most news media have never subjected the “birth certificate” to scrutiny. Indeed, remarkably few have even been willing to admit that there is an investigation at all, still less to provide any reasonably detailed or factual account of its progress.

[...]

Consider the question of the Obama “birth certificate.” On any view, this is an interesting story. An experienced, credible and much-decorated sheriff has published detailed and compelling evidence raising grave questions about the authenticity of several documents related to the identity of the occupant of the White House, and one of these documents remains on the White House website to this day.

Yet most news media have never subjected the “birth certificate” to scrutiny. Indeed, remarkably few have even been willing to admit that there is an investigation at all, still less to provide any reasonably detailed or factual account of its progress.

Actually, Fox has given significant airtime to birther conspiracy theories. The problem, which Monckton is apparently unwilling to admit, is that the birther conspiracies have been discredited. Even an outlet like Fox News will eventually stop reporting things that aren't true.

That's a trait that apparently doesn't apply to Monckton.


Posted by Terry K. at 9:39 PM EDT
CNS Tries To Distrace From Bad News About Melting Polar Ice
Topic: CNSNews.com

This week, the New York Times reported that according to scientists, a large section of the massive West Antarctica ice sheet has begun falling apart and its continued melting now appears to be unstoppable, and if the findings hold up, they suggest that the melting could destabilize neighboring parts of the ice sheet and a rise in sea level of 10 feet or more may be unavoidable in coming centuries.

But the climate deniers at CNSNews.com don't want to talk about that. They'd rather take the "Squirrel!" approach and highlight something that reinforces their political ideology.

Thus, we have a May 13 article by Barbara Hollingsworth declaring that Himalayan glaciers are mostly not melting:

Nearly 87 percent of Himalayan glaciers are currently “stable,” neither melting nor advancing, according to a new study that cast further doubt on claims that melting glacial ice will help cause a dramatic rise in sea levels this century.

Often referred to as the “Third Pole,” the Himalayans contain “one of the largest concentrations of glaciers outside the polar regions,” according to the study by a group of Indian researchers that was published in the April 2014 edition of “Current Science.”

Hollingsworth makes no mention of the melting Antarctic ice sheet.


Posted by Terry K. at 2:57 PM EDT
WND's Unruh Cranks Out More Lazy, One-Sided Journalism
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily's Bob Unruh has long engaged in anti-journalistic practices like refusing to tell the side of the story he personally disagrees with. He's at it again in a May 8 article, which begins like this:

A California school district is going too far when it has public school students “bowing to the sun god” and participating in “liturgical/ritual religious practices” aimed at having them “become one with god,” according to a brief filed with an appeals court.

Yes, Unruh is once again  serving as a stenographer for a right-wing legal group, this time the National Center for Law and Policy, which is fighting yoga classes in a California school district.

And as usual, Unruh lavishes attention on the claims of the right-wing yoga opponents while misrepresenting the other side. Unruh asserts that "a district judge said the school program is religious, but officials can teach it anyway," going on to paraphrase:

San Diego Superior Court Judge John Meyer heard the case and declared in his July 1, 2013, decision that yoga, including the Ashtanga yoga taught at Encinitis, is religious. But the judge also said that the district did not violate the Establishment Causes of the U.S. and California constitutions by hiring yoga instructors to teach yoga to students during class hours.

Actually, Reuters got it much more correct that Unruh can be bothered with:

A California judge refused on Monday to block the teaching of yoga as part of a public school's physical fitness program, rejecting parents' claims that the classes were an unconstitutional promotion of Eastern religions.

Judge John Meyer acknowledged that yoga "at its roots is religious" but added that the modern practice of yoga, despite its origins in Hindu philosophy, is deeply engrained in secular U.S. society and "is a distinctly American cultural phenomenon."

He also said the Encinitas Unified School District had developed its own version of yoga that was not religious but distinct and separate from Ashtanga yoga.

"A reasonable student would not objectively perceive that Encinitas School District yoga does advance or promote religion," he said.

Nowhere in his article does Unruh concede that yoga as practiced in America is secular, let alone directly quote anything the judge said.

Unruh must think he can get away with such sloppy and anti-journalistic work -- and since WND apparently has no problem with his anti-journalism, he's probably right.


Posted by Terry K. at 2:16 AM EDT
Tuesday, May 13, 2014
Meanwhile ...
Topic: Media Research Center
Media Matters uncovers more examples of right-wing media outlets picking up the Media Research Center's dishonest video purporting to debunk the "gun show loophole" -- as well as more examples of how easy it is to buy a gun at a gun show without a background check.

Posted by Terry K. at 11:09 PM EDT
WND Lets Right-Wing Christian Radio Hater Respond to Criticism of Christian Radio
Topic: WorldNetDaily

A May 10 WorldNetDaily article by Leo Hohmann highlights "disparaging comments" about Christian talk radio made by an official with the Southern Baptist Convention. Hohmann features one Christian radio host objecting:

Janet Mefferd, whose nationally syndicated Janet Mefferd Show originates out of Dallas and is picked up by 100 radio stations across the U.S., was among the first to take Moore to task for his comments.

“It seems like a little bit of a nuclear bomb to be throwing, on Dr. Moore’s part,” said Mefferd, who then played an extended audio clip of Moore’s speech for her audience before launching into a stinging monologue.

“I’m not sure who he is indicting, because I’m not sure exactly who he was listening to, but isolating this one quote, ‘If all I knew about Christianity was what I heard on Christian talk radio, I’d hate it too.’ I find that offensive. I find that really offensive,” Mefferd said.

“First of all, I can think of an awful lot of people in the Old Testament who were pretty darn bold preaching the truth and God was awfully pleased with them,” she said. “Jeremiah took a lot of flak for saying what the Lord wanted him to say. And God was saying some things that didn’t really sound like a real tone for dialogue. God was saying things like, ‘don’t pray for these people, I’m going to destroy them.’ He says that multiple times. Read the book of Jeremiah. Read what Jeremiah went through. Here’s this weeping prophet and he’s having to say these very bold things about judgment coming to the people of Israel and they hate him and they’re mad,” said Mefferd, calling on Moore to apologize.

“What about the other prophets? What about those throughout history who have boldly proclaimed things about sin?” she continued. “Does that mean they didn’t care about those they were preaching to or didn’t want those sinners to be reconciled to God? The whole point of saying that was to reconcile people to God, to get them to recognize that they were in trouble, that the wrath of God was on them and if they didn’t turn they would be destroyed.”

Hohmann doesn't mention that Mefferd is one of the main purveyors of hateful talk radio. She has hosted some of the most hateful guests -- Pam Geller, Linda Harvey, Peter LaBarbera, and Scott Lively among them. She serves as a conduit for right-wing Christian hate, and she clearly sees nothing wrong with that.


Posted by Terry K. at 3:16 PM EDT

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