MRC's Graham Would Rather Put Words In A Columnist's Mouth Than Talk About The Duggars
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center doesn't want to talk about the sexual abuse allegations against Josh Duggar -- witness MRC "news" division CNSNews.com burying its only mention of it as a blog.

And the MRC's Tim Graham is so desperate to not talk about that his post on the subject is actually about pretty much everything but.

In his May 26 NewsBusters post, Graham extremely narrowly focuses on a coule of supposedly offending lines in a Washington Post column on the subject by Alexandra Petri. But after a first-paragraph mention that Josh Duggar "was guilty of sexually abusing other children at age 15" -- not nothing that his victims included his own sisters -- the offense is never brought up again, and the Duggars themselves are mentioned only twice more in passing.

The vast majority of Graham's "open letter" to the Post is dedicated to raging at Petri for noting that the Duggar scandal "is a reminder of how badly the cult of purity lets victims down.” It involves putting a lot of words in Petri's mouth -- apparently, what Petri actually wrote wasn't worth getting upset over. She is "obviously bad at hiding her glee" over thte Duggar scandal, Graham declares without evidence, adding -- also without evidence -- that she "doesn’t believe in sin."

Graham also declares that he can read "between the lines" of what Petri wrote to determine what she actually meant to say: "Religious people have an unhealthy attitude toward sex, and are against educating children about sex. That's wrong." How convenient for Graham to put those straw-man words in Petri's mouth to attack her for them and knock them down as "wrong."

Graham does concede that Petri "is right to suggest that it is wrong to assert that someone who’s lost their virginity is immediately and permanently like a cup of spit or a dirty used bicycle – especially for pure, faithful children who’ve become the victim of sexual abuse." But he leaves out the critical context that this is the message the Duggars themselves publicly spread -- and, again, the fact that among Josh Duggar's victims were his own sisters.

This, by the way, is the only mention of Duggar's victims -- odd for an official of an organization that can't mention Ted Kennedy without bringing up Chappaquiddick or Bill Clinton without bringing up his sexual scandals. If Graham is trying to tamp down discussion of the Duggar scandal, he's also tamping down the fact that there were underage victims of a sexual assault. 

Graham then attacks "feminists and libertines" -- and he clearly believes Petri is among them through all of the words he put in her mouth -- who purportedly "have an unhealthy attitude toward sexual commitment, and are against educating children about preserving yourself for a committed relationship. Libertines insist virginity is impossible, unless you’re an indoctrinated robot...like they think of the Duggars."

By the time he attacks things Petri wrote a year ago that have nothing whatsoever to do with the Duggars but everything to do with smearing someone he doesn't agree with, it's clear how desperately Graham is to change the subject -- so much so that he's dragged his own family into it by professing that his wife "has never been a campsite or a used bicycle." Um, yay?

(Again, that metaphor was espoused by the Duggars, not Petri. Graham might want to keep that in mind.)

And then Graham goes to some really weird territory: "Post columnists could call me a loser or a nerd or something worse, but I know I have never exploited another human being like a blow-up doll or sought a quick thrill without an 'emotional stranglehold.'"

Remember: None of this has anything to do with what's happening with the Duggars -- and that's the way Graham wants it.

Graham rather deliberately misses the entire point of Petri's column, which he's careful not to mention:

When all sexuality is a sin, when even holding hands is off limits, there isn’t a clear line between permissible, healthy forms of exploration and acts that are impermissible to anyone, not just the particularly devout. This gospel of shame and purity has the potential to be incredibly harmful because it does away with important lines. (Studies not only suggest that abstinence-only approaches to sex education do nothing to decrease the incidence of sexual behaviors, but also that they can make them riskier and that they deprive kids of the vocabulary they need to discuss when bad things happen.) 

Graham even bizarrely complains that Petri quoted someone who he claimed believed "Duggar committed a crime, and definitely not a sin." That raises a question: Does Graham believe Duggar committed a crime? If so, shouldn't he be upset that the incident was not handled as a crime, instead being treated as a "sin" the family decided could be remedied through their own devices and not through, say, professional counseling for both the perpetrator and his victims?

All of Graham's histrionics are in service of distracting theMRC's right-wing audience from the Duggar scandal and the fact that Petri dared to write about it -- nothing else. The fact that his post is only the second original reference to appear on any MRC website (after the CNS blog post) is ample proof of that. But Rush Limbaugh's latest utterance, by golly, is considered "news" at CNS.

It's hard to criticize the media when you know they're right. Graham knows that the media is generally doing a good job on the Duggar story, and he also knows that the MRC can't defend the Duggars too vociferously lest it appear to condone Josh Duggar's behavior. Hence, this effort at misdirection to drown out the Duggar scandal by putting words in the mouth of a columnist he dislikes so he can bash her for -- well, anything, really, to change the subject.

The MRC ought to be above such dishonest tactics. Apparently, it's not.

MRC Rides Stephanopoulos Controversy To Boost Anti-Hillary Book
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center has been getting a lot of mileage out of the revelation that ABC's George Stephanopoulos donated $75,000 to the Clinton Foundation; one fundraising email declared Stephanopoulos "corrupt" while begging for money. As Paul Waldman at the Washington Post pointed out, Stephanopoulos' conflict of interest plays into conservatives' anti-media agenda, and that "From now through next November, conservatives will claim that every story that reflects poorly on Hillary Clinton is just accurate reporting, while every story that reflects well on her (or poorly on Republicans) demonstrates the media’s pernicious liberal pro-Clinton bias."

To do all that, of course, the MRC has to studiously ignore all the times that Fox News personalities advocated for causes they had personal or financial connections to, as well as all the conservatives who have donated to the Clinton Foundation, like Newsmax's Christopher Ruddy.

The MRC's anti-Stephanopoulos propaganda campaign extends to its "news"division, where a a May 15 article by Susan Jones quotes Peter Schweizer, author of an anti-Hillary attack book, wanting a do-over on his interview with Stephanopoulos. Jones claimed that during the interview, "Stephanopoulos repeatedly questioned the accuracy of 'Clinton Cash,' insisted that there was no evidence of criminality on the part of the Clintons, and suggested that Schweizer was conducting a partisan attack."

But as we noted, Schweizer admitted during his interview with Stephanopoulos that he had no evidence to back up the allegations in his book.

Jones doesn't mention that the accuracy of Schweizer's book has been justifiably question because it does, in fact, contain numerous errors -- more than 20, according to one count. The fact that several of those inaccurate claims have been corrected or deleted in an e-book version would seem to be an admission of guilt on that count.

Further, Schweizer is on record as apparently lying about his purported bipartisanship. After Schweizer claimed that he was working on something about the finances of Jeb Bush, his publisher denied that any book by Schweizer about Bush similar to "Clinton Cash" was in the offing. Further, the think tank Schweizer runs, the Government Accountability Institute, has funding ties with the Koch brothers and right-wing billionaire Robert Mercer, who you might remember as the sugar daddy financing the increasingly quixotic campaigns by Oregon right-winger Art Robinson for Peter DeFazio's congressional seat (the other main booster of which has been WorldNetDaily managing editor David Kupelian). 

So, yeah, Schweizer is an inaccurate reporter driven by partisanship. But the MRC doesn't want you to know that.

The MRC's 'Affirmative Action' Hypocrisy
Topic: Media Research Center

Last week, the Media Research Center's Ken Shepherd got all huffy when MSNBC pundit Michelle Bernard "savaged newly-announced GOP presidential aspirant Dr. Ben Carson tonight by alleging his success is all owed to 'affirmative action.'"

Fast forward to this week, when Fox News guest Angela McGlowan asserted that Michelle Obama owed her entry into Princeton and her job at a prestigious law firm to "affirmative action." 

The reaction from Shepherd and the MRC? Crickets.

If Shepherd and the MRC want to be taken seriously as an actual media watchdog, they might want to try being offended at all baseless attacks on blacks instead of just the ones on conservatives.

Tim Graham Transgender Freakout Watch
Topic: Media Research Center

Now that we know Tim Graham writes Brent Bozell's syndicated columns, it's easy to see what's been presented as Bozell's opinions are really Graham's.

That's abundantly clear in Graham and Bozell's May 1 column. When it starts "The last year could be described as The Year of Transgender Propaganda," you know it's straight from Graham, who has a lengthy history of transgender freakouts. And freak out he does:

The Hollywood and news media push on the latest frontier of "gender fluidity" demonstrates the libertine left's absolute arrogance that the LGBT revolution is an unstoppable juggernaut.

Time placed Laverne Cox on a "Transgender Tipping Point" cover last June, and the aggressive culture tipping took off. Amazon created a series around a retiree and father of three deciding he was a woman in "Transparent," and won Golden Globes. Fox's "Glee" had their female football coach grow a beard and be celebrated by a "historic" 200-member transgender choir.

The cherry on this vomit is Bruce Jenner.

Yep, it seems Graham thinks the existence of transgender people in the media is nothing but vomit.

Graham whines about the "the mainstream-the-fringe media" but has to admit that the Jenner interview on ABC drew 17 million intervies. He whines further that no anti-transgender views have been allowed to counter Jenner.

Graham concludes by lamenting "the decline and fall of our culture and our common sense." Then again, Graham thinks any mention of transgenders in the media is equivalent to "vomit," so he's not exactly an avatar of common sense himself. Or basic humanity, for that matter.

MRC Defends Tony Perkins, CNS Gives His Lie A Pass
Topic: Media Research Center

Media Research Center chief Brent Bozell signed onto a letter with other conservative leaders attacking CBS' Bob Schieffer interview with Family Research Council head Tony Perkins, so it's all over MRC sites.

The letter, issued under something called the Conservative Action Project, rants that Schieffer issued "an assault against Judeo-Christian people of faith" by making simple statements of fact: that he was "inundated" with request to disinvite Perkins because he doesn't "speak for Christians," and noting that the Southern Poverty Law Center has listed the FRC as a "hate group" because of its anti-gay stance.

The letter then attacks the SPLC by bringing up Floyd Corkins, the man who attempted to shoot up the FRC headquarters, because the "homicidal SPLC supporter" Corkins said he found his target on the SPLC website. It claims the SPLC is "discredited" and "disgraced" but offers no evidence it has provided any false information or that it ever expressed any support for Corkins' crime.

That attack is irrelevant to the issue at hand. We doubt that conservatives like Bozell consider Operation Rescue to be "discredited" because Operation Rescue supporter Scott Roeder had contact with members of the group and later went on to murder abortion doctor George Tiller.

The MRC and NewsBusters sites reprint an MRC press release, but CNSNews.com serves up an unbylined "news" article on the letter that is also press release-like, but also takes a stab at looking like journalism with statements like this:

Schieffer also accused Perkins of saying that justices who ruled in favor of gay marriage should be impeached, an accusation Perkins denied.

“I didn't say anything about impeachment of the judges. What I said was that they're not the final say on this issue,” Perkins corrected him.

But Perkins' "correction" is a lie. As Right Wing Watch points out, Perkins appeared last week on the radio show of Iowa conservative Jan Mickelson, who ranted that Congress should attempt to strip the Supreme Court of its jurisdiction on marriage and “impeach [their] sorry keisters,” to which Perkins responded: “I don’t disagree with you, I think you are absolutely right.”

So, yes, Perkins did endorse the idea of impeaching SCOTUS justices who voted to legalize same-sex marriage nationwide. It's a little inconvenient while the MRC and other conservatives are defending Perkins, so it will go down the memory hole.

Annals of Random Coverage Comparisons At The MRC
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center loves to compare coverage of its favorite hobby horses to other random things. The apex (or new low, if you prefer) of this randomness came in an April 24 MRC item by Dan Gainor headlined "Priorities: Networks Cover First Dog Bo 28 Times More Than Armenian Genocide." Yes, he really does go there:

The horrific mass murder has been mentioned in just four network stories since Jan. 20, 2009, when Obama took office. But all three networks found ample time to discuss other important Armenian issues – an Armenian company making a chocolate bar 18 feet long by 9 feet wide; Armenian brandy and Armenian Lula Kebabs.

All three networks also made room for other filler stories, such as the White House dog. Reporters spent story after story, oohing and aahing over the presidential pet, the Portuguese Water Dog Bo. Bo has been featured in at least 112 stories and briefs during the Obama presidency, 28 times more than the Armenian genocide.

[...]

Journalists on ABC, CBS and NBC had no problem finding time to talk about the important things – such as first dog Bo. Bo was everywhere on the networks – at least 112 times. That’s 28 more times than any mention of a genocide that killed 1.5 million people.

Bo was apparently more important. The networks focused on him doing just about everything. Bo during the Christmas holidays. Bo not joining the presidential family in Hawaii. Bo being taken to Petco by First Lady Michelle Obama. Bo barked when the first lady spoke and was worth $1,600 according to financial disclosure forms.

ABC showed viewers an image of Bo with bunny ears on for Easter 2012. On Aug. 20, 2013, then-White House correspondent Peter Alexander told Today viewers that Bo had company. “Move over Bo, there's a new dog in town, Sunny. And for her inaugural play date, the White House released its own music video. A pair of presidential pets frolicking on the South Lawn, that'll get tails wagging.”

At Christmas, more than a year later, White House correspondent Kristen Welker told about how the White House was decorated, adding, “There are even robotic versions of Sunny and Bo, the first family’s dogs.”

Americans learned enough about the first dog to fill several books. But barely enough about a horrendous genocide to fill a page in one of the worst chapters in human history.

Gainor seems to have missed the fact that the Armenian genocide occurred a century ago and, thus, is not "news." The debate over whether to call it a genocide is also not news -- it's been going on for decades.

Gainor should perhaps study the definition of "news" and get back to us on whether he thinks his genocide-Bo coverage comparison is still legitimate.

MRC Buries Schweizer's Political Bias, Lack of Evidence
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center's Jeffrey Meyer uses an April 26 NewsBusters post to complain about an interview ABC's George Stephanopoulos did with anti-Clinton book author Peter Schweizer. Meyer complained that Stephanopoulos cited "Democratic attacks against the author" and "quote[d] a 'independent government ethics expert' but didn’t mention he was a beneficiary of far-left billionaire George Soros."

Despite all that labeling, at no point does Meyer identify Schweizer as a conservative, though he obliquely referenced it by noting that Stephanopoulos highlighted Schweizer's "partisan interest" in attacking the Clintons.

Meyer further complained that "Stephanopoulos never appeared interested in the actual substance of Schweizer’s book, which alleges the Clinton Foundation took in millions of dollars in donations in exchange for potential influence with the U.S. government and instead acted as a Clinton defender." But he ignored the fact that Schweizer admitted during the interview that he has no "direct evidence" to back up his book's claims -- which would seem to indicate a decided lack of substance.

Meyer knows Schweizer admitted that -- it's in the transcript accompanying his post -- but he failed to highlight it in his item.

Meyer clearly doesn't like the fact that a conservative who made specious claims was called out on them.

Today in Tim Graham: An Old Anti-Clinton Attack, And An Aborted Insult
Topic: Media Research Center

In an April 22 NewsBusters post, Tim Graham claims it's "trash talk" for Michael Tomasky to claim that the Clintons "aren't corrupt" simply because they've been the target of decades of partisan-driven investigations and have never been indicted:

Tomasky is obediently employing the Clinton tactic of lowering the scandal bar to a lack of indictment equals moral probity. He’s also suggesting that a lack of indictment somehow proves Hillary was never a “congenital liar.” This is the woman who denied they was any evidence of her husband's sex with Monica Lewinsky and shamed the media into covering the real sexual offender: the “vast right-wing conspiracy.” 

Where have we heard this argument from Graham before? Oh, yes -- we remember now.

Back in 2007, we wrote an article on Graham and Brent Bozell's attack book on Hillary Clinton,  pointing out that the bill of particulars they were peddling regarding her alleged corruption lacked context and mentions of exculpatory evidence, not to mention the fact that after all of those investigations in the 1990s, the Clintons were never indicted on corruption charges. Graham didn't take that well, writing a post containing a very familiar complaint:

In his article, Krepel is playing the same old Not a Crook card to exonerate his heroine. We said Ray found her testimony to be factually false. He notes that Ray declined to prosecute, citing "insufficient evidence." The Clintons and their Arkansas toadies like Krepel athletically raise the bar, implying that the Clintons didn’t lie unless they were indicted for it.

[...]

Our book isn’t claiming Hillary should be behind bars. Our book is claiming that the media cannot be relied upon to investigate the Clintons with any vigor, especially the television networks.

As we noted at the time, the MRC has done the very same thing we were accused of in portraying a lack of indictment as vindication; in 2005, MRC writer Brent Baker declared that Rove's non-indictment in the Valerie Plame leak case was a "vindication" for him and didn't question whether Rove still did unethical things that simply didn't rise to a prosecutable level.

It's also quite hypocritcal for Graham to sneer at Tomasky's supposed "trash talk" when he's perfectly willing to dish it out himself. Note the URL of Graham's post; it contains the word "dumbassky," which means that sneering insult of Tomasky was part of the original headline of the post.

By Graham's Clinton standard, he doesn't deserve a pass for not ultimately using it -- after all, it's in the permanent URL for all the world to still see.

The fact that Graham actually considered "dumbassky" as a headline for his Tomasky post shows his emotional immaturity and dogmatic need to attack anyone and everyone who doesn't conform to right-wing orthodoxy.

MRC Hides Link To Catholic Groups Who Signed On To Its Jihad Against Dan Savage
Topic: Media Research Center

One can almost admire how the Media Research Center cloaks its war on Dan Savage -- which, in fact, is a demand to censor all gay-oriented content on TV that doesn't conform to right-wing anti-gay dogma -- as an "education campaign."

But the deception doesn't end there. An April 21 MRC press release touts how "Catholic groups" have joined it in its "national campaign to educate the public" about Savage and the TV pilot based on his teenage years that ABC picked up.

But the MRC doesn't disclose its links to two of those groups. As we've documented, MRC chief Brent Bozell is on the board of advisors of the Catholic League and the Cardinal Newman Society, two of the groups listed in the press release.

Which means that the "Catholic groups" listed in the MRC  press release are not necessarily representative of all Catholicism -- just a right-wing slice of it.Indeed, Catholic League head Bill Donohue is so fringe that even his and Bozell's fellow conservatives are turning on him (something, by the way, you'll never see reported on any MRC website).

But Donohue's hateful and bigoted comments are just peachy with the MRC -- it's too busy trying to censor Dan Savage.

MRC Does Damage Control For Anti-Net Neutrality Group
Topic: Media Research Center

A right-wing activist group got caught doing something it shouldn't have, and it has fallen on the Media Research Center to do damage control.

Politico reported that "A number of messages to lawmakers purporting to be from average constituents who oppose the Obama administration’s net neutrality rules don’t appear to have come from people within their districts, according to the company that manages the technology for some House members." That group is American Commitment, led by Phil Kerpen, a former top aide at the Koch brothers-backed Americans for Prosperity. American Commitment boasted that it helped direct more than 1.6 million messages to members of Congress opposing net neutrality, but the company that manages the technology behind some lawmakers "contact me" pages it had “some concerns regarding the messages,” including the fact that “a vast majority of the emails do not appear to have a valid in-district address.”

Politico quoted Kerpen saying that that American Commitment hadn’t impersonated members’ constituents, but that other groups had borrowed the pre-written text available on his website. But that wasn't good enough for the MRC's Joseph Rossell, who claimed that Politico "smear[ed]" American Commitment because "it failed to point the finger anywhere else." And Rossell is ON IT:

Additional inquiry could have established that American Commitment was not responsible. In a letter obtained by MRC Business, a vendor retained by American Commitment admitted that it (the vendor) was responsible for the erroneous messages in question.

The letter to American Commitment read in part, “Regrettably, without your knowledge or consent, the language from your letters was incorrectly associated” with a separate campaign for a different, though unspecified, organization’s letters about the same issue. The vendor had verified the data used for American Commitment’s campaign, but technical errors connected incorrect information with constituents in the second campaign.

The vendor made it clear the mistakes were not intentional. The messages that the second campaign submitted “incorrectly or with incorrect or incomplete data was by no means intended to mislead any office or any person.” The vendor also said “the mistakes were technical in nature” and that they had “taken steps to prevent future errors in submission.”

Kerpen told MRC Business that he explained this to Politico after its article was published. He also told them that the messages could not have been from his group simply based on their delivery dates. He said Lockheed Martin’s analysis confirmed that members of Congress received the erroneous messages after the American Commitment campaign was over.

If the vendor is at fault, why won't Kerpen or Rossell name it? Did Rossell ask Kerpen if that mystery vendor will be punished somehow?

One gets the feeling Rossell would not be as concerned about the purported "smearing" of American Commitment by Politico if it supported net neutrality.

MRC Promotes Misleading Claim About Redskins Name
Topic: Media Research Center

Last November, the Media Research Center's Dan Joseph interviewed M. Andre Billeaudeaux, author of a children's book purporting to explain how the Washington Redskins got their name. Billeaudeaux explained that the name was picked in 1933 (at the time, the team was located in Boston and called the Braves) in part to honor "Lone Star" Dietz, the Redskins coach at the time, and other Native Americans who played for the team. On April 8, Joseph posted an interview Billeaudeaux with the right-wing network One America News.

Just one problem: That's not quite true.

As the Washington Post detailed, team owner George Preston Marshall admitted another reason for changing the name. A 1933 Associated Press article quoted Marshall saying the motivation was not to honor Dietz but to differentiate itself from a baseball team also known as the Boston Braves.

In his interview, Joseph and Billeaudeaux gloss over the racism of Marshall -- under him, the Redskins were the last NFL team to integrate, and a foundation was created after his death thatincluded the provisio that no money should go toward “any purpose which supports or employs the principle of racial integration in any form.”

In neither interview is it mention that Billeaudeaux's book has been promoted at RedskinsFacts.com, a website operated by the Redskins in support of the team's name.

In both interviews, the unsubstantiated point is brought up that people who are complaining about the Redskins name being racist were not complaining about Andrew Jackson -- who famously persecuted Native Americans during his presidency -- being on the $20 bill. But a campaign begun earlier this year to replace Jackson with a woman drew howls of protest from the MRCwhen one of the proposed candidates was Margaret Sanger. NewsBusters blogger P.J. Gladnick whined that the campaign is being "headed by a former Hillary Clinton political operative."

So it appears the MRC is not eager to get rid of Jackson on the $20 bill either. But then, the MRC is fully on board in support of the Redskins name too.

MRC Unhappy With Attacks on GOP Presidential Candidate (Unless The MRC Makes Them)
Topic: Media Research Center

As you'd expect, the Media Research Center really doesn't like how Rand Paul has been treated in the media. An April 7 post by Geoffrey Dickens detailed "The Media’s Worst Attacks on the Kentucky Senator," and the next day Jeffrey Meyer complained that the media wouldn't label Paul a conservative despitte his high marks from the American Conservative Union.

But if the MRC itself bashes Paul or ignores his alleged conservative credentials, that's a different matter.

Indeed, the same day Dickens posted the "worst" attacks on Paul, the MRC-run CNSNews.com published its own attack on Paul:

One day before Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) formally announced his intention to run for president in 2016, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) criticized him for being "to the left of Barack Obama" on foreign policy.

[...]

"As to Rand Paul, I like Rand a lot," Sen. Graham told Fox News's Greta Van Susteren on Monday. "But at the end of the day, his foreign policy is to the left of Barack Obama."

Graham noted that Rand Paul was the only senator in September 2012 to vote against Graham's resolution saying that containment would not be the policy of the United States -- that the U.S. would not allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon. The resolution passed 90-1, with Paul providing the only no vote.

Oddly, the MRC did the same thing regarding Marco Rubio. Two days after Dickens compiled the "worst" attacks on Rubio, a CNS article by Susan Jones issued her own attack under the headline "Rubio Doesn't Rule Out Amnesty, Gay Marriage, or Military Action in Iran." Jones made sure readers knew that Rubio avdocates immigration reform -- the "amnesty" to which the headline misleadingly refers -- and thinks "it should be up to the states, not the federal government or the courts, to define marriage as they see fit."

Apparently, if Republican candidates are to be criticized, only the MRC is allowed to do it.

MRC's Bozell Doesn't Want Any Gay Content on TV
Topic: Media Research Center

For the past few weeks, the Media Research Center has been leading a campaign to get ABC to strangle before it happens -- to abort, if you will -- a planned show based on the early life of activist and sex advice columnist Dan Savage.

The MRC has misled in its campaign, claiming that ABC "plans to air" the Savage based show when it has only ordered a pilot episode and has not green-lighted the series. While the MRC claims it's only concerned about Savage's "unspeakably vile statements" -- which, by the way, have nothing to do with the content of the proposed ABC show, which is about a teenage boy coming out as gay -- its hidden agenda runs much deeper.

MRC chief Brent Bozell inadvertently revealed the engame in an April 9 Associated Press article:

Even without Savage's involvement, Bozell said his group would probably oppose the show.

"Would a show like this bother me?" he said. "Sure. It makes a political statement. Where is the market demand for this? You might even resign yourself that this is the way that it is, but when I heard it was Savage, I gasped in disbelief."

In other words, Bozell is opposed to the fact that gays would be depicted on TV -- that is, if they aren't being denigrated. Apparenlty, any gay person on TV is a "political statement," despite the fact that Bozell can't identify any actual politics in a sitcom pilot.

Bozell has had a lot of anti-gay freakouts over the years. For example, his reaction to CNN's Anderson Cooper coming out as gay was to sneer that Cooper can "give us his expert opinion on teabagging now," and he declared that gay characters on TV mean "indoctrination" of viewers and that the characters "never face any real opposition to the gay agenda."

Bozell should stop pretending his crusade isn't only about Savage.

The MRC's Foolish Fail
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center recently started a website called "Liberal Media Fools," which claims: "Inside the liberal media echo chamber is a fools’ school churning out pathetic, biased reporting disguised as journalism. It’s as if each media personality is in the running for the dumbest quote of the year!" adding that "the stupid is strong."

Well, yes, it is -- on this website. The first entry highlights MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell calling Barack Obama's book "Dreams From My Father" "the finest literary work ever authored by a President of the United States," sneering: "Move over Federalist Papers, the Monroe Doctrine, and the Gettysburg Address, because according to MSNBC’s O’Donnell, these historical works have been overshadowed by Barack Obama’s Dreams From My Father."

The MRC ignores the fact that none of those documents were intended as literature. The Federalist Papers are a series of essays written in support of ratification of the Constitution (and only one of the three writers became president). The Monroe Doctrine was an statement of U.S. foreign policy. The Gettysburg Address was a speech. While they may be shining examples of political expression and speechmaking, they are not literature. By contrast, Obama's book was not a political manifesto but, rather, an examination of race and his upbringing.

The MRC also forgets the fact that O'Donnell was not acting as a journalist when he said that; he was the host of an opinion show. IN other words, O'Donnell's statement was never "disguised as journalism," as the MRC claims.

What does it say about the quality of the list that the first one is such a mess?

Needless to say, there's no benign purpose behind the website; it's an email-harvesting operation with the promise of a copy of the MRC's latest compilation of "the most outrageous quotes in the liberal media."

So much fail in such a little website...

Tim Graham Transgender Freakout Watch
Topic: Media Research Center

Tim Graham is apparently the Media Research Center's designated person to freak out that anyone but straight white people get portrayed in the media, and he's particularly sensitive to transgenders not being treated negatively, as they apparently should be.

Graham's latest transgender freakout actually involves cross-dressing, not transgenderism, but Graham is still upset:

In their constant celebration of gender-bending, NPR still has time for old-fashioned transvestites. On the April 3 Morning Edition, their headline was “Longtime Couple Found That Clothes Didn't Make The Man.” The producer, Liyna Anwar, tweeted “He's a Vietnam vet who teaches electric power tech. He just does it all in a dress.”

[...]

Naturally, this is a story of violent disapproval and bigotry in need of relief from NPR and other compassionate media outlets.

[...]

This report was part of the “StoryCorps” project dedicated to preserving the stories of American lives. As NPR explained, "These conversations are archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, allowing participants to leave a legacy for future generations."

This narrative form cozily omits any questioning, especially critical questioning. That's simply not allowed when making America safe for "gender fluidity" is the morning subject.

Graham doesn't answer what purpose the "critical questioning" he seeks would fill, except to denigrate the subject -- which would seem to be the entire point as far as Graham is concerned.