MRC Thinks Partisan Fox News Anchor Is 'Respected' Topic: Media Research Center
It's a sad sign of the right-wing media bubble the Media Research Center lives in that it considers every Fox News anchor (who isn't named Shepard Smith, that is) to be an unchallenged paragon of fairness and accuracy.
We saw that again in a Sept. 26 MRC post by Nicholas Fondacaro, who was upset that NBC's Chuck Todd pointed out that Suypreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh's softball interview with Fox News' Martha MacCallum called into question his professed desire to be neutral and impartial, adding, "It was jarring to see him not even sit in front with the Fox News journalist, but with one of the opinion show hosts." Fondacaro huffed in response that this was "a cheap shot at the respected Martha MacCallum."
Fondacaro never explained on what planet outside his right-wing bubble MacCallum is considered "respected." Indeed, a fiew days before her interview with Kavanaugh, MacCallum was openly advocating for him, complaining: "'Sickening' was the word I heard most often this weekend to describe what is happening. Innocent until proven guilty is how we do this in America." She also mouthed a Republican talking point on Kavanaugh by complaining, "Senate duty to advise and consent has become 'Search and Destroy.'" And her interview with Kavauaugh was such a softball endeavor that she ignored several crucial issues surrounding the allegations against him.
Indeed, MacCallum has a long history of using her presence on Fox News to advocate for conservative and Republican policies. Apparently, that bias is what makes her "respected" in Fondacaro's bubble.
WND's Kavanaugh Accuser Derangement Syndrome, Part 3 Topic: WorldNetDaily
Republicans bowed to pressure and postponed Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation vote while the FBI conducts allegations against him by Christine Blasey Ford.
In their quest for power, Democrats will destroy anyone who stands in their way, and most Republicans are too weak to stop them.
Democrats unleashed hell with false allegations of sexual misconduct against Brett Kavanaugh – a man with a stellar personal and professional track record.
Christine Blasey Ford, the California psychology professor who claims Kavanaugh had drunkenly attacked her when they were high school students in Maryland in the early 1980s, is clearly a disturbed individual, but her issues weren’t caused by Kavanaugh.
The allegations leveled against Kavanaugh are baseless. His accuser’s testimony was rehearsed and phony; it would never hold up in criminal court. In fact, at least three fact witnesses have refuted Ford’s charges.
[...]
The attack on Kavanaugh has nothing to do with male versus female – it’s a spiritual battle of good versus evil and right versus wrong. The Democrats are evil and they crave power. They’re willing to destroy any decent man or woman to attain it. We must see this battle for what it is and stop giving in to evil.
It’s about the God that one serves, and the Democrats are of their father the devil.
-- Jesse Lee Peterson, Sept. 30 WorldNetDaily column
Memory is a tricky thing, explains retired University of California Irvine Professor Richard McKenzie in the Wall Street Journal. “My colleague Elizabeth Loftus was able to ‘implant’ false memories” in many people, he wrote, “by showing them an official-looking poster of Disney characters, including Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny.”
Many of these people “later remembered meeting Bugs Bunny on a childhood trip to Disneyland. Some of them even reported that Bugs had touched them inappropriately.”
But this was impossible, he writes. “Bugs Bunny isn’t a Disney character.”
Ford, now a 51-year-old psychology professor, had no clear recollection of what happened one summer night 36 years ago until she sought out professional help to recover her memory.
[...]
These leftists are tearing down the statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, and demonizing old-fashioned defenders of American individual liberty such as Donald Trump and Brett Kavanaugh, the Boy-Scout-transformed-into-villain.
Kavanaugh believes we already live in “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” where language is politically correct, the media spews an unending “two minute hate” against everything American, and history is constantly rewritten to glorify leftist Big Brother.
History – our shared memory – is being reprogrammed to praise rejected Senator Jeff Flake (Rino-Arizona), who will soon-but-briefly receive his 30 pieces of silver from CNN or MSNBC for betraying voters in the Kavanaugh affair.
We haven’t said a lot about the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation to date, as we’re waiting to hear all sides. Yet one thing has been abundantly clear from the outset of this whole thing: the spirit behind “exposing” his past (or anyone else’s, for that matter) has been to simply destroy this man, not restore him.
As Christians, we cannot fall prey to that destructive spirit. Anytime sin is exposed (in Kavanaugh’s case it’s only an accusation), we are called by God to seek restoration – to provide a redemptive way forward by helping break sinful patterns in someone’s life, not to destroy them and leave them left bloody in a ditch.
[...]
In our opinion, BK’s defense before the Senate Judiciary Committee will go down as one of the best speeches in defense of liberty and justice for all in American history.
If you haven’t seen it watch it now. If you’ve seen it already, watch it again – and send it to friends.
Can you imagine if Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., had to endure the additional week of hell he unleashed on President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, last Friday?
Flake couldn’t even handle being cornered in an elevator by a woman claiming to be a sexual assault survivor. Yet, because he supposedly saw the light on how Kavanaugh’s confirmation process, in view of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s accusation of sexual assault, was “tearing the country apart,” within hours he reneged on his word to confirm Kavanaugh on the Senate floor. Instead, he voted him out of the committee, contingent upon a seventh FBI investigation, totally acquiescing to the Democratic scheme to delay Kavanaugh’s confirmation until after the midterm elections, at any cost.
Flake may have had great intentions, but unfortunately, despite his years in the swamp, he failed to learn a valuable lesson: You can’t make honorable deals with indecent people.
[...]
If Sen. Jeff Flake were honestly concerned about how the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings were “tearing the country apart,” his request to delay the confirmation yet again sure didn’t succeed in bringing the nation closer together. All he’s done is contribute to the smear campaign of a good man, a good citizen and a good friend and father who should be applauded not scorned.
There are women across the U.S who are incensed that a man they’ve been told is a sexual predator could end up with a seat on the nation’s highest court. The spreading hysteria is proof of how dangerous this is. Across print, electronic and social media, people are throwing around the word “rapist.” But Brett Kavanaugh has not been accused of rape by Christine Blasey Ford (or credibly accused by anyone else).
More importantly, Christine Blasey Ford has produced no evidence to support her accusations. An accusation without more is not evidence.
I have not – thank God – been the victim of rape. But I have been harassed. I’ve been groped. I have witnessed indecent exposure. I’ve been slammed up against a wall (for saying no) and suffered other legitimately lifelong sorrows at the hands of predatory, abusive and/or irresponsible men. So I’ve got my #MeToo bona fides.
But I am also an attorney, trained in the Anglo-American legal tradition. Our system is not perfect; it is protracted, expensive and often frustrating. But it is nevertheless one of the sturdiest legal systems in the history of human civilization.
The question is not whether we “believe” Christine Blasey Ford (and there are many gaps and inconsistencies in her testimony). The question is whether she has proof necessary to overcome the presumption of innocence that is the cornerstone of our system: evidence, witnesses or persons whom she contemporaneously told about the alleged assault.
[...]
We cannot punish one man for the sins of others who have wronged us. We cannot countenance the abolition of the presumption of innocence. Nor can we – even out of commiseration with the victim of an alleged assault – tell her that her accusation is enough to convict someone, whether in a court of law or in the court of public opinion.
This isn’t cruel. It isn’t heartless. And it certainly isn’t patriarchy. It’s self-preservation. Women have been hanged. Women have been lynched. Women have been falsely accused and have been the false accusers.
One of many cringe-making moments in Christine Blasey Ford’s protracted complaint before the Senate Judiciary Committee – and the country – was an affectation-dripping reference to her hippocampus.
“Indelible in the hippocampus” was the memory of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulting her, some 36 years back, asserted Ford in that scratchy, valley-girl voice of hers.
With that, the good “doctor” was making a false appeal to scientific authority. Ford had just planted a falsity in the nation’s collective consciousness. The accuser was demanding that the country believe her and her hippocampus.
All nonsense on stilts.
We want to believe that our minds record the events of our lives meticulously, and that buried in the permafrost of our brain, perfectly preserved, is the key to our woes.
Unfortunately, scientific research negates the notion that forgotten memories exist somewhere in the brain and can be accessed in pristine form.
Granted, we don’t know whether She Who Must Never Be Questioned recovered the Judge-Kavanaugh memory in therapy. That’s because, well, she must never be questioned.
[...]
Suffice it to say, that the memory recovery process is a therapeutic confidence trick that has wreaked havoc in thousands of lives.
Moreover, repression, the sagging concept that props up the recovered memory theory, is without any cogent scientific support. The 30-odd studies the recovery movement uses as proof for repression do not make the grade. These studies are retrospective memory studies that rely on self-reports with no independent, factual corroboration of information.
Sound familiar? Dr. Ford (and her hippocampus), anyone?
CNS' Chapman Defends Kavanaugh's Drunken Past: Obama Did It Too! Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com managing editor Michael W. Chapman doesn't even bother to put up a facade of fairness and balance. He has been especially biased in his"news" operation's coverage of the Brett Kavanaugh nomination, directing CNS' highly biased look at the women who accused Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct and personally flaking out over Jeff Flake forcing an FBI investigation of Kavanaugh.
In an Oct. 2 post, Chapman sounds even more like he'd rather be managing WorldNetDaily than CNS by going the Obama derangement route in order to handwave Kavanaugh's heavy drinking as a youth:
While liberals express outrage over the fact that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh drank beer -- reportedly sometimes to excess -- in high school and college, they and the leftist media have largely ignored the extensive partying of former President Barack Obama, who has confessed to heavy pot smoking and cocaine use in high school and college.
Given the drinking limits being set retroactively for Kavanaugh by his leftist critics and arguments therefrom that he is not suited for the high court, it is reasonable to conclude that Barack Obama's extensive illegal drug use would preclude him from a seat on the Supreme Court, or on any federal bench.
Chapman misses the salient facts that 1) Obama ran for president, not a judicial nomination, 2) Obama disclosed much of his history in his autobiography, whereas Kavanaugh's drunken past came to light only after Christine Blasey Ford came forward with allegation of a drunken Kavanaugh attempting to sexually assault her during their prep-school years, and 3) nobody has ever accused Obama of sexually assaulting women while under the influence, then or now.
Chapman effectively concedes that second point, spending the rest of his post copy-and-pasting out-of-context excerpts from Obama's "Dreams From My Father" and another biography of Obama with all the references to drugs and alcohol painstakingly bolded. He also added a couple images form a college-era photo shoot in which he was shot smoking a cigarette.
Chapman even took a page of the anti-Obama birther handbook and referenced the idea that Obama once used his stepfather's surname of Soetoro. But Chapman misspells it as "Sotero," and it's irrelevant in this context because Obama hasn't used it since age 10 (not that Obama-haters didn't try to claim otherwise by creating a bogus college ID with that surname).
Such lazy, reflexive liberal-bashing in the service of whataboutism to defend a conservative in trouble is an increasing part of what CNS under Chapman has become.
WND's Conspiracy Theory: Ford Hypotized Herself! Topic: WorldNetDaily
Leave it to conspiracy-obsessed WorldNetDaily to latch onto the loopiest conspiracy theory regarding Christine Blasey Ford's claim of a prep-school assault by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. And leave it WND to hide behind anonymity in promoting it, as this anonymously written Oct. 1 article does:
Some have wondered why therapist notes made when Christine Blasey Ford purportedly disclosed memories of Brett Kavanaugh allegedly assaulting her when both were teens were not released.
After all, she told Congress and the nation her story last Thursday in apparently convincing fashion, followed by Kavanaugh’s passionate rebuttal.
But there may be a reason for withholding the notes, reported the Gateway Pundit blog.
The therapy sessions may have used hypnosis, which would make any information derived from them inadmissible in court.
Her familiarity with the technique was confirmed in a 2008 research article on self-hypnosis in which she is listed as one of several authors. The article explains how it is used to “retrieve important memories” or “create artificial situations.”
Margot Cleveland, a lawyer and an adjunct professor at Notre Dame, drew attention to the paper in a tweet.
Cleveland defended herself from critics who argued the point of the research was to address depression and “processing difficult emotions.”
“She suffers from anxiety & PTSD-and using an ‘artificial situation’ to process increases risks of false memories as does hypnosis,” Cleveland explained.
As non-conspiratorial media outlets havenoted, Ford was one of 11 researchers credited on the research paper, the study is actually about treating depression using hypnosis to create hypothetical situations, and actual mentalists point out that you can't hypnotize yourself into believing a lie.
But WND never reported any of that, or that its main source, Gateway Pundit, has promoted other hoaxes about Ford. The conspiracy is apparently just too good to fact-check.
Conspiracy Theory: Newsmax's Hirsen Thinks Ford Is Trying To Profit From Kavanaugh Accusations Topic: Newsmax
Among the conspiracy theories peddled by the right against Christine Blasey Ford, who accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her during their prep-school years we can now add Newsmax columnist James Hirsen's claim, in his Oct. 1 column, that Ford is making her accusations in order to profit from crowdfunding:
In a September 2018 appearance on "CBS This Morning," a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee Kamala Harris, D-Calif., opined that Dr. Christine Blasey Ford had "nothing to gain" in stepping forward with allegations against Supreme Court Justice nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh.
A few days later in an appearance on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” member of the Senate Judiciary Committee Dick Durbin, D-Ill., stated in the form of a question to the host a similar opinion.
"What in the h*** did she have to gain by doing this?" Durbin queried.
History suggests that there are a host of significant gains that may indeed be awaiting Ford. One has already surfaced via a digital platform. It arrived in the form of "crowdfunding," i.e., the practice of financing a venture or cause by raising money from a large number of people utilizing specialized websites on the Internet.
Two crowdfunding accounts on the GoFundMe website, which were made on behalf of Ford, have raised approximately $740,000. For reasons unknown, at present the two GoFundMe accounts are no longer accepting donations.
[...]
George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley recently expressed concern that crowdfunding may be being used in a manner that enables legal testimony to be purchased.
"You can buy a witness effectively by funding them as long as they’re saying the type of thing that you want them to say," Turley cautioned.
The notion that money could potentially be used to purchase testimony from favorable witnesses poses a threat to a functioning legal system and the fundamental precepts of due process.
In the end, it is not merely about what an individual has to gain, but rather what our country and her people have to lose.
Needless to say, Hirsen offers no actual evidence to back up his speculative conspiracy theory.
MRC Normalizes Teen Drinking to Defend Kavanaugh Topic: Media Research Center
One of the ways the Media Research Center has defended Brett Kavanaugh through the Supreme Court nomination process is to insist that teenage drinking, even to the level allegedly consumed by Kavanaugh that was testified to and hinted at, is totally normal and not unhealthy at all -- and tried to parse Kavanaugh's words to claim he really didn't get that drunk or that he didn't mislead anyone about his youthful drinking.
In a Sept. 27 post, Nicholas Fondacaro highlighted how Kavanuagh addressed "an accusation that he would routinely get blackout drunk. As nearly any college student can tell you, there is a vast difference between getting really hammered and getting blackout drunk."
Another Sept. 27 post by Clay Waters claimed that Kavanaugh's reportedly heavy drinking during college is "an aspect of college life hardly unique to Kavanaugh."
A post by Bill D'Agostino complained that MSNBC hosts was "comparing his statements in a Fox News interview to a portion of his sworn testimony submitted to the Committee" regarding college era drinking, further huffing that the hosts did not "share how attending church and focusing on school work might have precluded him from consuming too much alcohol on weekends."
D'Agostino followed up by grousing that another MSNBC host "donned her armchair psychologist’s hat and claimed that his highly emotional delivery proved that he was an abusive drunk." That's a funny claim given how many MRC employees are armchairmind-readers.
Jay Maxson touted how Kavanaugh's college friend Chris Dudley, a former pro basketball player, "vouch[ed] for Kavanaugh's character" and that Kavanaugh "never blacked out," adding: "Did he get inebriated sometimes? Yes. Did I? Yes. Just like every other college kid in America."
Fondacaro repeated his parsing defense in a Sept. 30 post: "But Kavanaugh admitted to being a heavy drinker during his late-high school and college years in his testimony. The Judge only contended he never got 'blackout drunk'. That’s a big difference, ask nearly any college student. "
Fondacaro returned in an Oct. 3 post to defending Kavanaugh from claims that he had portrayed himself as a "choir boy" in his Senate testimony: "Kavanaugh admitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee that he drank a lot in his youth and he used to do stupid things."
Fondacaro once more insisted there's a "huge difference" between drinking a lot and blacking out in an Oct. 5 post:
In both the Judge’s interview with Fox News and his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, he admitted that he drank heavily in his youth and did stupid things. That is fact.
Kavanaugh’s contention was that he never got “blackout drunk,” a huge difference. And no matter how many of Kavanaugh’s former Yale classmates told CNN that he “lied” about drinking a lot, it doesn’t change the fact that he did admit it and he’s the only one that would know if he “blacked out.”
Of course, the whole point of being blackout drunk is that you don't remember it, which would make Kavanaugh an decidedly imperfect authority on whether he did so or how he behaved while under that condition. Fondacaro surely knows that.
CNS Flakes Out Over Sen. Flake's Push For FBI Kavanaugh Probe Topic: CNSNews.com
When Republican Sen. Jeff Flake successfully stalled the nomination process of Brett Kavanaugh by forcing a weeklong FBI investigation into him, the pro-Kavanaugh forces at CNSNews.com knew what they had to do: attack and mock Flake.
An Oct. 1 blog post by Craig Bannister promoted how right-wing pundit Ben Shapiro called Flake a "sucker" purportedly duped by Democrats into pushing for the investigation and ranted that Flake "collapsed" because "some protesters screamed at him in an elevator. I’m not kidding. At all."
This was followed a half-hour later by a blog post from managing editor Michael W. Chapman, who seized on Flake's statement that he would not have pressed for the investigation if he were running for re-election to engaged in a Heathering campaign to bashhim for failing to be sufficiently right-wing, grumbling that "Flake has been a staunch critic of President Donald Trump and compared him to the Soviet genocidal dictator Joseph Stalin" and adding: "While in Congress, Flake introduced legislation to provide a 'pathway to citizenship' for illegal aliens. He also voted to repeal the 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' Act. Flake supports abortion in the cases of rape, incest, or to protect the life of the mother."
Chapman never explains the context of Flake's Stalin reference: that Trump's use of the term "enemy of the people" to attack media outlets that fail to be pro-Trump stenographers -- you know, like the website Chapman manages -- is an echo of language Stalin used against his enemies. Nor does Chapman dispute its accuracy.
Two hours after this, Chapman decided that he found it amusing that Flake "was born and raised in the small town of Snowflake, Arizona," featuring this trivia under the headline "Sen. Jeff Flake is a Native Born Snowflake." ("Snowflake," of course, is right-wing slang for a liberal who can't handle opposing views, though it appears that Chapman is the real snowflake here for his assault on Flake because the senator doesn't share his dogmatic right-wing ideology.) Chapman againgroused that Flake "once compared Trump to genocidal dictator Joseph Stalin" and repeated a poll claiming "only 18% of Arizonans approved of Sen. Flake's job performance."
Of course, CNS' two minutes hate -- in the form of three Flake-bashing blog posts in a two-and-a-half-hour span -- would seem to prove Flake right ... and put the onus on Chapman to explain why his "news" outlet is so willing to attack whomever Trump deems must be attacked.
Linda Harvey LGBT Derangement Watch Topic: WorldNetDaily
The priest or evangelical minister who claims an “LGBTQ” identity but pledges to remain celibate cannot be trusted to do so.
Can I repeat that? We cannot trust them. Such foolish tolerance should never be the policy in evangelical churches, and as we can now see, clinging to such identities should never have been allowed in the Catholic Church.
[...]
There should be no public recognition of and sensitivity to identities based on sin. And no faithful Christian church would ever imply to minors that “LGBTQ” identities are understandable, inborn, or acceptable.
Don’t get me wrong. During private counseling settings, ministers should always show great compassion for people with these temptations. But such discussion must be private for a whole host of reasons, one being that these desires are never to receive public dignity. An affirmation of any “right” to nurture and cherish sinful feelings is poison to the soul, and a cancer within ministry.
And people who make this confession, or confess to adulterous “struggles,” do not belong in ministry any more than a former shoplifter should run your retail store.
Why would any youth pastor smile indulgently over a teen’s desire to violate this verse: “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination ( Leviticus 18:22)”?
One could easily state the obvious: “You shall not as a minister encourage a child in an abomination.” Or else, prepare for a visit to the sea with a millstone around your neck (based on Christ’s stern warning in Matthew 18:6).
[...]
The Revoice “gay Christian” movement and the “Love Boldly” sponsors of the “Devoted” conference need to be intentionally blocked from access to congregations since they promote sin. The people involved should be challenged to repent publicly or leave ministry.
What are these con men (and women) thinking? This is Almighty God you are messing with. Noting that these folks are bumbling idiots would be an insult to bumbling idiots.
You are not heroes. You are frauds. Get over yourselves and repent.
God can redeem, yes. So let’s pray for that, but let’s still act with wisdom and faithfulness.
MRC Attacks Journalist For Writing About Kavanaugh -- But Loved Her A Few Months Ago When She Targeted A Democrat Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center was in the kill-the-messenger phase of the Brett Kavanaugh story when Geoffrey Dickens wrote a Sept. 26 post complaining about the "hit piece" co-written by the New Yorker's Jane Mayer about Kavanaugh's drunken college years replete with allegations of sexual misbehavior. Dickens huffed that "a look at her past demonstrates why her work should be taken with biggest grains of salt as she has become a go-to author for partisan attack stories," adding that her Kavanaugh story is "just the latest in a long list of hit pieces against conservatives."
But Dickens makes sure to leave off the list one prominent story that discredits his conspiracy theory -- and one that the MRC itself touted.
As Mayer herself reminds people like Dickens who reflexively accuse her of anti-conservative bias, she co-wrote in May with Ronan Farrow (who co-wrote the Kavanaugh piece with her) an article detailing sexual misconduct by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, which caused him to resign a mere three hours after its publication.
Since Schneiderman was a Democrat who targeted President Trump's shady business dealings, the MRC loved that story:
Tim Graham touted "The New Yorker revelations of Schneiderman’s allegedly violent behavior toward girlfriends."
Kyle Drennen noted an MSNBC appearance by "Jane Mayer, who actually co-authored the article that revealed Scheiderman’s alleged abusive behavior toward women which led to his resignation."
Tom Blumer highlighted "Jane Mayer's and Ronan Farrow's bombshell New Yorker piece" that "succinctly summarized the horrors" of Schneiderman. Another Blumer piece relayed how "Now-former New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's serial and often violent mistreatment of women chronicled on Monday at The New Yorker."
OtherMRCpieces referenced the Schneiderman scandal without mentioning Mayer of the New Yorker.
Nevertheless, the MRC has it in for Mayer, mostly due to its longtimeobsession with Anita Hill. As Dickens writes: "Mayer first enjoyed the liberal limelight when she (along with co-author Jill Abramson) released her anti-Clarence Thomas book in 1994. The book Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas was such a hit with the left, Mayer and company were rewarded with Showtime turning it into a 1999 movie." Dickens offers no evidence that "Strange Justice" was "anti-Clarence Thomas"; perhaps he's confusing being pro-truth for being anti-conservative.
The fact that the MRC loved Mayer just a few months ago but hates her now solely on the basis of who she writes about goes a long way to explaining the partisan shallowness that guides the MRC and why its "media research" shouldn't be trusted.
WND's Kavanaugh Accuser Derangement Syndrome, Part 2 Topic: WorldNetDaily
Where were you when you were 17? What were you doing, among your friends, and alone?
Did you ever do anything – anything – you’re embarrassed about, sorry for, anything you would never want to be indicative of your character now?
Are you a sinless, living saint? Or, looking back honestly, did you ever – in your middle or late teens – do anything that, if it were revealed today, might cause others to think less of you?
Or do you, like 99 percent of the rest of us who have never claimed to be perfect, consider that the teen years have always been rife with errors in judgment, rash experimentation and exploration, mistakes and fumbling and outright wrongdoing – most of which disappear with maturity?
[...]
I’m furious, I admit it. I see this pack of wolves, this lynch mob of puritanical liberal Democrats, desperately afraid that a conservative, good and proven man may be confirmed to the Supreme Court – some of whom are guilty of similar and worse actions than what Judge Kavanaugh is falsely accused of – milling around with stones ready to heave, with no proof whatever of their accusations.
Don’t agree with me? Argue with famed attorney Alan Dershowitz: “There’s no evidence whatsoever, even under her story (account) of attempted rape.”
My wife, Shirley, and I raised four beautiful daughters – right in the middle of Hollywood and Beverly Hills, in public and private schools, pretty and intelligent and desirable girls. I was a pretty protective dad (I had once been a boy, a normal boy), and I saw to it that my girls knew and understood what the “games” were and that there would be, for example, no single dates till they were 16. And we stuck to it.
The bottom line there is that all four daughters married fine Christian young men and came to their marriage partners as virgins. I’ve never talked publicly about this – but I now want people to understand the parental role in keeping their kids chaste and moral.
And I’ll go this far: If one of my girls had an experience like the one professor Ford has described, I’d have been angry of course and wanted to confront the young man personally – but I would also have asked my daughter why she was in an unchaperoned “house party” where something like that could likely happen. In our case, it couldn’t have happened, because my daughter wouldn’t have been there.
I believe Christine Blasey Ford grew up thinking she’d been hit on and abused. I originally thought Brett Kavanaugh did indeed commit teenage horseplay beyond an acceptable limit. The strength of his denial is merely one element that convinces me he’s innocent. A stronger element is the “disparity of passion.”
In any dispute that deadlocks into a “he-said-she-said,” it pays to compare the passion which each party displays in the act of denial. Here we have her account fuzzy and his non-existent. He actually denies even being at the party or knowing anything about it.
And now we see Kavanaugh willing to release his own straps and walk out of brain surgery to clear his name, while Dr. Ford vacillates like an animated cartoon, beginning with zero desire to reveal her identity. Why did she change her mind? I’ll get there soon.
The “killer” element that draws me irrevocably into Kavanaugh’s corner is what I’ll call the utter absence of “Phase Two.” In virtually every single example of a male fallen from grace because of sexually predatory behavior, Phase Two is as certain and as strident as a brass marching band.
Phase One is the initial accusation by the victim, fingering the guilty male. Every case I can think of offers the same drumbeat. While the early stirrings of denial and repeated accusations fill the air, along comes Phase Two.
After a few days a second woman joins the accusation. Then four more abused women come forward. The chorus expands, but the music remains the same. Harvey Weinstein, Les Moonves, Bill Cosby, Al Franken – I can’t think of an exception. But not so with Kavanaugh!
Even now that a “second accuser” has surfaced, I still think the strongest argument that can be made on Brett Kavanaugh’s behalf is how long it’s taken to drum up such a feeble and highly suspect imitation of a genuine Phase Two! And how that second accusation finds it necessary to try to up the ante by alleging acts that are even more abhorrent (and even less credible).
It was a mistake to pander to Kavanaugh’s accusers by extending the deadline and begging them to show up to tell their coached narratives in the most damaging way liberals can imagine. No court of law allows a witness to completely take over the scheduling as Kavanaugh’s opponents have.
Kavanaugh would have been confirmed by now if the Senate had simply called the vote. Never-Trump Republicans and even a few Democrats would have fallen in line and voted the right way, or gone down in history as a mob who hangs an innocent man.
But like the failure of a superior army to advance to win a battle, the dilly-dallying by the Republican leadership has led to disarray and lost opportunity. The delay allowed the politically motivated opponents of Kavanaugh to practice and embellish, divide and conquer.
Some hope that vigorous cross-examination of Kavanaugh’s accusers will prove to the world that Kavanaugh has the stellar character that all who know him describe. There are, of course, good questions about political motivation and the orchestration of this smear that should be asked.
But relatively few Americans will watch the hearing, contrary to what the senators may think, and Abraham Lincoln-style moments on cross-examination are rare. The more that a witness is coached, the less likely a breakthrough at the hearing.
Instead, the vast majority of Americans will see only the headlines and selective sound bites, as spun by a media determined to sink Kavanaugh. The testimony itself is immune from defamation lawsuits, and news outlets will repeat the false accusations without including the cross-examination.
This is fake news in its worst form. Sexually explicit allegations are politically deadly, no matter how false and implausible they are, and the GOP-controlled Senate errs in giving the other side a platform.
The hearings in the Clarence Thomas confirmation have still left a cloud over his reputation. The accusations against him by Anita Hill did not hold water. She followed him around from job to job, although he was supposedly guilty of “a prolonged campaign of sexual harassment,” to quote the Time magazine cover story (Oct. 1, 2018).
Tragically, Time implies that Anita Hill was right – even though her testimony did not hold up under scrutiny – and, by implication, one should perhaps infer that Kavanaugh’s accuser is right too.
[...]
A new poll shows support from the American people for Kavanaugh slipping. Well, how could it not when the media keep picking up on any alleged accusation, even without corroboration? The media have been half the problem in this whole saga. All they do is report the negative stuff, but the ultimate question is: Is it true?
Somebody might say, “Well, where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” The same thing happened to Jesus. (Every other human falls short of Him, but it’s instructive to see how He was treated.) When He was on trial, the Roman prefect asked of His guilt or innocence, and His accusers said, “If He were not guilty, we would not have brought Him to you.” The only perfect human being who ever lived was being described as guilty. We know how that turned out.
So as I watched Thursday’s hearing intently, I was struck by Kavanaugh’s coming of age. Never before in his privileged and sheltered life, had this legal caterpillar, now through adversity and vicious smears, been forced to crawl out of his cocoon into the mean real world, after a 53-year lifetime of being walled off from combat at street level.
While I questioned the wisdom of Kavanaugh having gratuitously conceded that professor Ford likely was sexually assaulted but by someone else, which is akin to being a little bit pregnant as it goes halfway to confirm the victim’s credibility, I was also struck by his having uncontrollably broken down in tears during particularly emotional parts of his testimony. Kavanaugh was almost like a young school boy who was caught by the principal and about to be suspended for his misdeeds. Ironically though, while not helping with his credibility, this not only evoked more of my sympathy, but also reaffirmed that the jurist had never really before in his privileged and sheltered life experienced real adversity.
And, I thought that in the end, if Kavanaugh is confirmed as the next Supreme Court justice – and for better or worse at this late point I hope that he is, lest the Dems get to effectively water down the president’s pick down the road – at least he had been tempered under fire to appreciate what many in our society have lived: not an easy life. This experience will make him a better Supreme Court justice, as he is now hopefully more aware of those Americans who were not born with a silver spoon in their mouths and did not have the “privilege” of going to Georgetown Preparatory and Yale, where cavorting around stupidly drunk was seen as an uber he-man and elitist “rite de passage”!
Kavanaugh is being called a predator – but I believe it’s high time for the gloves to come off and call these women, these accusers, what they really are. In fact they are the predators, not Judge Kavanaugh.
And if this stunt these false accusers are attempting to collectively pull off was not their idea, then they should be called something else, and deservedly so. That something else is prostitute, and the politicians, the media and leftist special-interest gangs are the pimps.
None of these women have a shred of even circumstantial evidence to support their outrageous claims. In fact, the only one who has presented any evidence at all is Brett Kavanaugh, by way of his calendars and signed statements from a multitude of character witnesses.
Yet still the accusers are to be blindly and faithfully believed. So say all the leftist liars and useful idiots.
And all this is being done for one reason – centralized government power and control. It is the left’s religion, and their holy sacrament is abortion.
I do not know whether Christine Blasey Ford or Brett Kavanaugh is telling the truth. But I do know this: Brett Kavanaugh’s impassioned speech, fighting for his life and his family and his reputation and his career, is a wake-up call to us all, especially if we are Christian conservatives. It is high time we stand up and fight.
Of course, I’m not talking about “fighting” in a worldly, destructive sense. I’m not talking about fighting with hate. Or with intimidation. Or with violence, God forbid.
Rather, it’s time we stir ourselves out of complacency and take a principled stand for what is right. It’s time we awaken from our spiritual stupor and get involved in the culture, from our children’s schools to the White House. It’s time that we speak up and speak out and declare Jesus boldly and without shame.
We are beyond the stage of being provoked. We are beyond the stage of being challenged. We are beyond the stage of being opposed. We are beyond the stage of being shamed. To remain silent today is inexcusable.
[...]
Put another way, what we saw in the Kavanaugh hearings is the tip of the iceberg in the battle for conservative moral values. And those who most vehemently oppose us don’t care about fighting fair. Or pursuing justice. Or following the truth.
If they can destroy you with lies, so be it. Whatever it takes to advance the cause.
And make no mistake about it. As Brett Kavanaugh just learned, this vicious attack will hit your children (and grandchildren) directly. And if we fail to speak and act and stand, we fail to protect those we love the most.
To repeat: To remain silent today is inexcusable.
The Kavanaugh hearings made that very clear. Bitingly clear. Strikingly clear. Screachingly clear. We have to be tone deaf not to hear it.
CNS' Wildly Biased Coverage of Kavanaugh, Accuser Testimony Topic: CNSNews.com
We knew CNSNews.com's coverage of Senate testimony by Brett Kavanaugh and his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, was going to be biased -- after all, CNS' Media Research Center parent refuses to impose the standards it demands the rest of the media follow to its own "news" operation -- but even we were a bit surprised.
The reports on the opening statements set the tone. Susan Jones' article on Kavanaugh's opening statement carried the headline "Kavanaugh's Opening Statement: 'Last Minute Smears'; 'Grotesque and Obvious Character Assassination'" and played up Kavanaugh's denials. By contrast, Jones' article on Ford's opening statementcarried the soft-to-the-point-of-mocking headline "Kavanaugh's Accuser Says a Remodeling Project Triggered the Assault Discussion With Her Therapist" and obsessed over the remodeling incident.
CNS' coverage of Ford's testimony was similarly dismissive of her claims. Here are the headlines on those articles:
Surprisingly, in the Mark Judge article, Jones offered a rare disclosure that Judge "used to be a writer for CNSNews.com," though she failed to report that Ford's detail about seeing Judge at an area grocery store appears to be corroborated by Judge's book, in which he wrote that he spent part of a summer working at a grocery store.
Surprisingly, CNS did concede in one article -- by the normally biased Susan Jones, of all people -- that Kavanaugh was "defensive" about his youthful drinking and that "some of the weakest moments of Judge Brett Kavanaugh's testimony on Thursday involved his responses to Democrats who pressed him on his drinking and whether he had blackouts or memory lapses as a result."
The MRC would be attacking any media outlet whose Kavanaugh coverage was as biased. But in-house "news" outlets get a pass.
WorldNetDaily columnist Patrice Lewis is responding to Catherine Blasey Ford's accusation of a prep-school sexual assault by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh by going the mockery route in her Sept. 28 column:
I had an affair with Brett Kavanaugh.
No, really I did. I can’t remember the time, the place or the circumstances – but I certainly had an affair with Kavanaugh. I’m a woman, so you have to believe everything I say.
It doesn’t matter that my memory is poor, my sources unverified, or that I never told a soul about my passionate involvement with Kavanaugh. I couldn’t possibly have an agenda when it comes to making public my affair. The fact is, I’m an über-leftist woman; therefore everything I say is true. Period, end of sentence, no debate allowed or you’re just a bully.
And now … hang on a second, it’s all coming back to me … did I say I had an affair with Kavanaugh? My bad. The truth is, I was nearly raped by Kavanaugh. I just remembered that part. It was at a party, one of dozens I attended in my youth. Of course, I was drinking and I don’t remember the time, date, year, location or circumstances of the most traumatic event in my life, but I’m positive Kavanaugh tried to rape me back around 1982 or so. Or maybe it was 1983. It’s true. I’m a woman, so you have to believe me.
[...]
There are other women coming out of the woodwork to support my claim that Kavanaugh is a sexual predator, and my claims have just as much merit as theirs. My memory is just as accurate as theirs. Above all, my motives are just as pure as theirs. Pure as the driven snow, folks. Really. Honestly. I’m a woman, so you have to believe me.
And because you have to believe me, you can’t pry into my political or personal beliefs. You can’t factor in my support for abortion as a taxpayer-funded right, which might be jeopardized if Kavanaugh gets on the Supreme Court. You can’t examine my social media posts where I say Donald Trump is a bleepity-bleeping bleeper bleep bleep. You can’t take into account that I’m a rabid feminist who think all men should shut up and sit down, as Mazie Hirono recommends.
[...]
Y’know, it’s kinda fun to go forward with these charges against Kavanaugh! It gets me all kinds of attention and lots of uplifting support from my fellow women. No matter what the outcome of Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court, I’m set for life. I can write books, get paid obscene amounts of money for speaking engagements, get a professorship at any university in the country, and be the darling of the progressive set for ruining the lives of Kavanaugh and his family. What’s not to love?
And if Kavanaugh gets dumped from consideration to the Supreme Court, I look forward to Trump’s next nominee so I can recall my sexual assault by him as well. All I’ll need is a poor memory, six days with a porn attorney, a leftist agenda, and I’ll be ready … right after I scrub my social media accounts and bleach my laptop.
So my deepest thanks to everyone who has helped kill the antiquated and patriarchal concepts of the rule of law and the presumption of innocence. We finally get to reap what we sowed.
Lewis also throws in: "Bill Clinton is a saint who would never mistreat a woman. Juanita Broaddrick was a liar. Oh wait, didn’t I just say women can’t lie? Um, forget I said that. We’ll just forget Broaddrick exists. Don’t believe her." Lewis seems to have forgotten that Broaddrick actually is a liar -- she either lied for the first 20 years after the alleged attack when she claimed it didn't happen and submitted a sworn statement to Ken Starr to that effect, or she's lying now. Lewis offers no guidance on which Broaddrick story to believe.
MRC Denounces Those Who Liken Trump, Conservatives to Nazis -- But Its Senior Fellow Attacked 'Demzis' Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center doesn't like it when someone in the media tries to liken President Trump or conservatives in general to Nazis. For instance:
Kristine Marsh denounced a "ridiculous segment" on MSNBC in which panelists "claim[ed] Trump was behaving like a Nazi."
Curtis Houck attacked a CNN segment that "subtly painted Tea Partiers as angry, irrational conspiracy theorists who ran around with signs depicting the President as the Joker or a Nazi."
Ryan Foley grumbled that Fox News host Laura Ingraham was likened to a neo-Nazi over an anti-immigration rant despite "Ingraham making it perfectly clear that she did not intend for her comments to come off as racist."
That outrage, needless to say, does not extend to anyone who likens a non-conservative to Nazis -- indeed, it seems the MRC encourages such attacks. Case in point: An Aug. 6 column by MRC senior fellow Allen West, published at MRC "news" division CNSNews.com, is a rant about how ">much of what the venerable First Infantry Division stood against now seems to be penetrating our America." His first example: "Men who landed on Omaha Beach to fight against National Socialists (Nazis) now live in an America with avowed Democratic Socialists (Demzis)."
Also needless to say, West still has a job at the MRC. Hypocrisy at its finest.
WND Still Falsely Portraying Reconstruction of Arch As Symbol of Idolatry Topic: WorldNetDaily
For the past few years, WorldNetDaily has been obsessingover reconstructions of ancient ruins destroyed by ISIS -- particularly the arch to the Temple of Palmyra, or the Temple of Baal as WND insists on calling it -- ludicrously portraying them as a return to paganism instead of the poke in the eye from historians to the artifacts' destroyers that they actually are.
An anonymously written Sept. 16 WND article goes the freakout route again complaining that the arch "will reappear in Washington, D.C." This time, though, WND admits in the second paragraph that "The original in the Middle East was destroyed by ISIS in October 2015, but it was re-created by the Institute for Digital Archaeology using 3-D printing technology."
But WND descends soon enough into its rote, ridiculous accusations of idolatry:
But the arch isn’t just a Roman ruin. It was originally an arch for the Temple of Baal, a pagan god repeatedly mentioned in the Old Testament. The rites of Baal were marked by child sacrifice and ritual prostitution.
[...]
Rabbi Yosef Berger, the rabbi of King David’s Tomb on Mount Zion, told BIN it’s a symbol of a resurgence of idolatry.
“The last time we saw this level of idolatry was when the Temple stood in Jerusalem. Now that we are close to the appearance of the Third Temple, idolatry is reappearing, even in popular culture among people who claim they are atheists,” he told the news organization.
The rabbi said it is no coincidence that the arch is becoming a centerpiece at gatherings of world leaders.
“This is like a child who builds a Lego tower that gets knocked down,” Rabbi Berger said. “After having it knocked down several times, he goes to build the Lego tower next to his mother so that she will stop it from being knocked down. An average person, Jew or non-Jew, has no tolerance for open idolatry. If someone built an altar to idolatry in the middle of a nice neighborhood, everyone would gather together to destroy it. The average person has no desire for idolatry. So the people who seek dark and unholy power build their symbols of idolatry next to powerful politicians, at these world power summits, so that normal people will not be able to challenge them.”
While WND did take the unusual step of admitting that ISIS destroyed the original arch, it once again failed to mention that the temple served as a Christian church during the Byzantine era. That would seem to be an important part of its history that WND is strangely choosing to ignore.
UPDATE: WND followed up with a Sept. 30 article that actually blamed the "craziness that enveloped Washington" surrounding the Brett Kavanaugh nomination on the arch replica's presence in Washington:
Some are asking the question of whether the craziness that enveloped Washington last week might be connected with Baal – kind of like a full moon.
Who made the decision? Why? Who knows? Maybe it’s just a coincidence – even though many observers of the Supreme Court nomination hearings that took all the oxygen out of the capital last week note that the entire process had to do with abortion.
Other are questioning whether the disposition of the Arch of Palmyra might bring a semblance of normality to D.C. today.
WND does not identify who these "observers" or "other[s]" are who are making this claim.
The article went on to rehash all the Baal stuff from previous arch freakouts and again failed to mention that at one time the temple served as a Christian church. It also cited anonymous, unsourced claims by "some on social media" criticizing the arch.
MRC Goes Into Conspiracy Mode Over Kavanaugh Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has spent years attacking Hillary Clinton for saying that a "vast right-wing conspiracy" was out to destroy her husband's presidency in the 1990s. As recently as July, the MRC's Brent Bozell and Tim Graham mocked Clinton's claim as "ridiculous" (even though Bozell declared in 2001 that "Yes, Virginia, the vast right-wing conspiracy did exist all along!")
But Bozell and Graham have their own conspiracy to peddle now.
In their Sept. 25 column, unironically titled "The Vast Anti-Kavanaugh Conspiracy," the two rant at anyone who doesn't see the conspiracy they do against Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court nomination:
Washington Post media reporter Paul Farhi wrote a Sept. 25 article on liberal-media bias headlined "Kavanaugh Supporters See a Conspiracy Afoot." The Post painted this as a little crazy, like a UFO is involved. Can anyone imagine the idea of the Democrats and liberal reporters working hand in glove to torpedo a Republican nomination?
Maybe we can remember Supreme Court nominees Robert Bork and Douglas Ginsburg in 1987, John Tower in 1989 or Clarence Thomas in 1991. Maybe we can recall John Ashcroft being tarred as a racist in 2001. In these cases and many others, "objective" reporters lined up and repeated the Democrat talking points as "news" and often succeeded in wrecking nominations.
Farhi lined up the deniers. "We aren't colluding with anyone about anything, including the Kavanaugh nomination," said Martin Baron, executive editor of the Post. "The conspiracy theories are pure nonsense and completely false."
"Pure nonsense"? The Post quotes anonymous sources multiple times a day, so how would anyone be able to piece together and figure out the entire collusion experience? The Post claims on the front page every day that "Democracy Dies in Darkness," and it disdains "dark money" in political campaigns. But it loves "dark sources" spicing up its incessant attacks on the Trump administration.
[...]
No one should believe any of these collusion deniers. No media outlet perpetuating this Kavanaugh-crushing conspiracy is nonpartisan, or disinterested. They are on a witch hunt.
Funny how conspiracies become real for Bozell when they can be politically exploited.
Having thus received its marching orders from the top, the rest of Bozell's MRC started going conspiracy-crazy.
Kristine Marsh alluded to one in a Sept. 26 post complaining about an ABC segment asking teens about the Kavanaugh controversy. She added in a update that one of the teens interviews was "accused of planting a question to Hillary Clinton during a 2016 townhall." Marsh relayed the conspiracy theory wrong; actually, the teen was accused by right-wing media of being a "child actor" plant at the townhall because she once had a small role in a short film. In fact, she was the daughter of a local politician who got to take part, and Clinton had no knowledge of her question beforehand.
In a Sept. 27 post, Nicholas Fondacaro went full Bozell in sneering at a "thick-headed" columnist, Kirsten Powers, who "couldn’t understand how Kavanaugh could think there was a conspiracy against him. "Fondacaro howled:
Hmm, maybe he knew the radical Democrats were out to destroy him because nearly all of them announced they were opposing his nomination before ever meeting with them. Some, in fact, were opposing anyone President Trump nominated. That’s not to mention that there were New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and Hawaii’s Mazie Hirono who declared him guilty days before the hearing.
Or perhaps it was New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, who called Kavanaugh and his supporters evil. It could even have been the Democrats who pontificated that he was going to put the lives of millions at risk. Kavanaugh actually addressed this in his opening remarks, so for Powers to claim ignorance was just slimy.
Even as WorldNetDaily is becoming less WND-like due to its continued fight for survival, the MRC has decided to be even more WND-like by embracing political conspiracies it used to despise.
It's a sad sign of the right-wing media bubble the Media Research Center lives in that it considers every Fox News anchor (who isn't named Shepard Smith, that is) to be an unchallenged paragon of fairness and accuracy.
Republicans bowed to pressure and postponed Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation vote while the FBI conducts allegations against him by Christine Blasey Ford.
CNSNews.com managing editor Michael W. Chapman doesn't even bother to put up a facade of fairness and balance. He has been especially biased in his"news" operation's coverage of the Brett Kavanaugh nomination, directing CNS' 
Leave it to conspiracy-obsessed WorldNetDaily to latch onto the loopiest conspiracy theory regarding Christine Blasey Ford's claim of a prep-school assault by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. And leave it WND to hide behind anonymity in promoting it, as this anonymously written Oct. 1 
Among the conspiracy theories peddled by the right against Christine Blasey Ford, who accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her during their prep-school years we can now add Newsmax columnist James Hirsen's claim, in his Oct. 1 
One of the ways the Media Research Center has defended Brett Kavanaugh through the Supreme Court nomination process is to insist that teenage drinking, even to the level allegedly consumed by Kavanaugh that was testified to and hinted at, is totally normal and not unhealthy at all -- and tried to parse Kavanaugh's words to claim he really didn't get that drunk or that he didn't mislead anyone about his youthful drinking.
When Republican Sen. Jeff Flake successfully stalled the nomination process of Brett Kavanaugh by forcing a weeklong FBI investigation into him, the pro-Kavanaugh forces at CNSNews.com knew what they had to do: attack and mock Flake.
The priest or evangelical minister who claims an “LGBTQ” identity but pledges to remain celibate cannot be trusted to do so.
The Media Research Center was in the kill-the-messenger phase of the Brett Kavanaugh story when Geoffrey Dickens wrote a Sept. 26 
Where were you when you were 17? What were you doing, among your friends, and alone?
We knew CNSNews.com's coverage of Senate testimony by Brett Kavanaugh and his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, was 
WorldNetDaily columnist Patrice Lewis is responding to Catherine Blasey Ford's accusation of a prep-school sexual assault by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh by going the mockery route in her Sept. 28 
The Media Research Center doesn't like it when someone in the media tries to liken President Trump or conservatives in general to Nazis. For instance:
For the past few years, WorldNetDaily has been 
The Media Research Center has spent years attacking Hillary Clinton for saying that a "vast right-wing conspiracy" was out to destroy her husband's presidency in the 1990s. As recently 
