An anonymously written Dec. 13 WorldNetDaily article begins this way:
As Democrats continue to resist President Trump’s insistence on $5 billion in funding for a border wall – posing the threat of a government shutdown – a Republican congressman asserted that more than 10 terrorists and 40 criminals try to enter the United States every day across the southern border.
Rep. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., said in an interview Thursday with MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that “the border is all about national security.”
Asked by host Willie Geist the source of his figures, Marshall cited the Department of Homeland Security.
WND did not fact-check this claim -- but it should have, because it's not accurate.
As an actual news outlet reported, 10 people a day are stopped from entering the country because they are on a terrorist watch list, not necessarily because they are terorrists -- even conservatives have complained about rampant inaccuracies on the list. Further, that number covers all points of entry to the nation, including international airports, seaports and land crossings, not just the southern border.
By contrast, the headline promoting the article in WND's front-page carousel manages to be accurate because it's vaguely written.
Read more here: https://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/article223062350.html#storylink=cpy
Anita Hill Redux: MRC Can't Stop Bashing Christine Blasey Ford Topic: Media Research Center
It looks like the Media Research Center's war on Christine Blasey Ford for making sexual misconduct allegations against Brett Kavanaugh is being set up to be as long-lasting as its waragainstAnita Hill for making similar allegations against Clarence Thomas.
The MRC's Matt Philbin spends a Dec. 12 post ranting about Ford making an introduction video for Rachel Denhollander, the gymnast who was first to accuse Larry Nasser of sexually assaulting hundreds of other young gymnasts, for a Sports Illustrated award, with a sub-rant about how liberal Sports Illustrated is:
The honor is well deserved. So why cheapen it with politics? And including Christine Blasey Ford is political. Her videotaped introduction wasn’t itself noteworthy. But linking her to Denhollander and Nasser’s other victims is.
Ford’s turn in the spotlight in September, a last-minute play to stop the confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, lacked just about everything the case against Nasser had; you know: details, witnesses, credibility.
SI is a reliable progressive organ, and including Ford helps foster the myth that she was a credible, self-sacrificing victim of Kavanaugh and Republicans and male-dominated yada yada yada. Denhollander and other women who suffered abuse from Larry Nasser and eventually made him pay deserve thanks and respect. They don’t deserve Christine Blasey Ford.
Given that Ford has continued to receive death threats after her testimony against Kavanaugh, has had to move several times and has had to hire private security to protect her family -- something Philbin conveniently doesn't mention -- it seems that Ford has sacrificed a lot.
Perhaps Philbin is OK with the continued threats against her. It's part of the MRC playbook, after all.
CNS Touts Heisman Winner's Love of God -- Then Attacks Reporter Who Exposed His Homophobic Tweets Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com loves to give space to athletes who offer praise to God for their accomplishments (though it was less than happy about the coach who praised God after his team beat Notre Dame). So it was no surprise to see Michael Morris' Dec. 10 blog post on Heisman Trophy winner Kyler Murray:
Oklahoma Sooners quarterback Kyler Murray became the 84th Heisman Memorial Trophy winner on Saturday, Dec. 8, 2018, an award that is presented annually by the Heisman Trophy Trust to college football’s most outstanding player. During his acceptance speech on ESPN, Murray acknowledged that “there’s a Higher Power looking down on me; He enables me to do all things.”
“Man, this is crazy,” Kyler Murray stated, beginning his Heisman Trophy acceptance speech. “I’ve worked my whole life to fulfill my goals, but at the same time, I know there’s a higher power looking down on me; he enables me to do all things. And for that, I’m grateful for the many blessings God has blessed me with.”
The day before, however, USA Today reported that Murray had made several homophobic tweets when he was a teenager, which resurfaced after he won the Heisman.
So, a few hours later, Morris dashed off another post that noted the controversy -- then took a swipe at Scott Gleeson, the USA Today reporter who first highlighted the tweets. Morris copied-and-pasted what Gleeson wrote about himself on his USA Today profile page, seemingly todocument the part in which he wrote, "My enterprise and human interest work on the LGBT movement in sports made me an APSE award finalist in 2016 and a USBWA award winner in 2017," and perhaps his "embarassing addiction to boyband music."
That seems entirely unnecessary. But that seems to be CNS' style these days.
MRC Laments TV Show No Longer 'Conservative' Because It Made A Trump Joke Topic: Media Research Center
Amelia Hamilton begins her Dec. 10 Media Research Center post by lamenting: "The Ranch is back on Netflix with the second half of season six and, while we used to be able to count on them to represent conservatives in the 'flyover' states, they just couldn't resist getting in a dig at President Trump this time around."
Hamilton vouched for show's alleged conservative bona fides: "The Ranch centers around the Bennett family, trying to make a go of a family ranching business in Colorado. In previous seasons, along with comments peppered in about a love of Reagan and dislike of CNN, they've given the conservative prospective on oil and gas drilling, how protesters forget the real-life consequences of their actions, and everything in between." Indeed, Hamilton has previouslytouted the show doing those very things.
But, Hamilton sighs, the show has been failing to exploit every possible opportunity to bash liberals:
In the meantime, they've added a new character in his place. Rather than the idiot/slacker character we had in Rooster, they've given us Luke (Dax Shepard), a veteran with PTSD and a disillusionment with military life. While they do manage to convey somewhat the mess that is the VA system, they never take the natural opportunity for Beau to make one of his classic comments about how this would apply to government-run, single-payer healthcare in general. That's a fairly big omission, and it was obvious.
There were still the usual cracks about Reagan (for), lazy Democrats (against), and CNN (fake news), but this season was significantly less in touch with its audience. One of the running themes of the show was a love of Cracker Barrel, something that a lot of middle Americans can relate to. This year, Beau's girlfriend Joanne (Kathy Baker) is fired after years of waiting tables there because a cute millennial named Sunshine comes along. Are we in middle America going to accept this slight on the character of Cracker Barrel? I think not.
Finally, Hamilton gets to her real area of concern: A joke in which one character says to another, "You could be president. I mean, you gotta fuck a couple porn stars, but we'll get you there." She then huffed: "How hard do you suppose they tried to fit that joke in somewhere- anywhere- in this latest release? It was just shoehorned in there, like they wrote the dialogue around trying to make a ham-fisted joke."
Hamilton concluded by complaining that that show much "get their act back together ... because they're set to lose a whole lot of viewers if they stay on this road. Don't build a show to speak to a particular audience and then insult that audience."
Just one Trump joke on a show, and the MRC thinks it might as well be having Jane Fonda on.
WND's Farah Questions Apostles' Creed, Now That Trump Refused To Recite It Topic: WorldNetDaily
Apparently, not reciting the Apostles' Creed is now the cool thing for WorldNetDaily's Trump acolytes to do since the president refused to do so during George H.W. Bush's funeral. Columnist Michael Brown served up a dismissive "ask me if I care" regarding Trump's non-recitation; now WND editor Joseph Farah is similarly weighing in.
Farah's Dec. 13 column outlined what he thinks are the problems with the creed, which has been around in one for or another for, oh, a couple thousand years:
The Gospel of John opens stating that Jesus is the maker all things, including heaven and earth. The creed says the Father. Since they are One, it may not be a contradiction. But, just saying …
Did Jesus actually descend into hell? Where do we find this in Scripture? We don’t – so many modern versions of the creed have changed the affirmation to “descended to the dead.” But is this unchallengeable on the basis of Scripture? There are certainly other interpretations of 1 Peter 3:18-20 than the idea that Jesus “descended into hell” or “descended to the dead.” Should this be a doctrine all believers must accept?
How about the holy Catholic Church? That has fallen out of many versions over the years, sometimes just dropping the capital C in Catholic to a lower case.
The Communion of Saints raises questions of clarity. For Catholics, this suggests prayers to and with the dead are acceptable. But this contradicts strong biblical prohibitions against necromancy.
Farah then huffed:
I’m not suggesting to you that these were matters being considered by Trump during Bush’s memorial service. Maybe he didn’t have his reading glasses on. Should anyone publicly read a liturgical document simply for the purposes of public show? Did any of these investigators think about asking the president or a member of his communications team why he didn’t recite the creed? Would a lip synch have made them happy?
Well, Farah has been pretty happy so far with Trump's religious lip-syncing given that Trump has displayed zero evidence he believes any of the stuff he's spouting to suck up to evangelicals like Farah.
I’m with Michael Brown on the whole sordid issue. It doesn’t bother me one bit that President Trump didn’t recite the Apostles’ Creed. Nor would it bother me if any other Christian or non-Christian, evangelical or non-evangelical, president or non-president, recited it.
Would it matter to any of Trump’s critics if any other human being on the planet demurred from reading it? You and I both know the answer. So, what are we really talking about here?
We're talking about how evangelicals sold out moral standards they would have applied (and did apply) to Democratic presidents because they have a Republican president who sucks up to them. What are you talking about, Joe?
MRC Can't Quite Square Its Anti-Facebook Narrative With Facebook's Attacks on Soros Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center is still pretending that Facebook's attempts to attack George Soros by siccing a right-wing opposition research firm after him in order to discredit critics of the company doesn't undercut its long-running narrative that Facebook is hostile to conservatives.
A Dec. 6 piece by Alexander Hall touted how Facebook's board of directors found the oppo-research operation to be "entirely appropriate." Hall echoed earlier MRC complaints that New York Times reports about right-wing influence on Facebook were something of a hit job, emphasizing that the Times is "liberal":
Until recently, conservatives have viewed Facebook as the enforcer of the censorius left, which isn’t wrong. But after recent revelations from liberal New York Times investigative pieces, the left has openly criticized Facebook for enabling conservatives.
The Times broke the story about Facebook looking into Soros and hiring a firm to research him in mid-November. Later stories indicated Sandberg’s role in that research following Soros’ condemnation of Facebook (and Google) as a “menace” at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland in January 2018. Facebook hired Definers Public Affairs to provide some research, but the firm’s connection to the GOP riled the left. The agency specializes in providing opposition research for political campaigns.
That's the closest Hall gets to broching the subject of the MRC's narrative being undermined.
Hall is even more conflicted in a Dec. 13 post, railing against "biased liberal fact-checkers" leaving Facebook over the Soros attacks:
When Facebook first hired fact checkers to combat “fake news” on its platform, conservatives around the world were right to be concerned. But in light of recent revelations that Facebook funded anti-Soros research, biased liberal fact-checkers themselves are calling it quits.
According to The Guardian, “Journalists working as fact-checkers for Facebook have pushed to end a controversial media partnership with the social network, saying the company has ignored their concerns and failed to use their expertise to combat misinformation.”
Liberal billionaire George Soros publicly condemned the platform at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland in January 2018, as a “menace” to society for failing to account for the “consequences of their actions.” Facebook then paid for opposition research to investigate Soros and his connections. When the Times revealed this in a hit piece, liberals around the media started to condemn Facebook for engaging in what they considered to be a “hateful conspiracy theory.”
Fact checkers, like former Snopes managing editor Brooke Binkowski, claim that their work for Facebook was mere “crisis campaign PR” in order to make the company look good.
Hall offers no evidence that Snopes or any of the other fact-checkers Facebook hired are "biased liberals" or, as he later claims "extremely biased."
Corinne Weaver fretted in a Dec. 18 post about how The number of Facebook’s enemies on the left is growing" and was concerned that "A coalition of 31 left-wing groups, including the controversial Southern Poverty Law Center and at least 10 groups that have received funding from liberal billionaire George Soros, wrote" to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and asked for his resignation over censorship issues and permitting "bigotry and hatred towards vulnerable communities and civil rights organizations."
Isn't that the same argument the MRC has been making? Of course, unlike anyone on the left until very recently, MRC chief Brent Bozell got to chat with Zuckerberg over alleged bias against conservatives, and it and other conservative activists have harassed Facebook to the extent that it capitulated to its conservative-bias narrative.
But Weaver doesn't mention any of that. Instead, she continued to lament the "left-wing groups" going after Facebook.
A day later, Bozell was outraged that Facebook would even talk to liberals about bias and ranted that the company should care only about conservative gripes:
So Facebook has met with radical left-wing so-called “civil rights” organizations and is bending over backward to make changes they want. Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg even declared that the “audit is deeply important to me, and it’s one of my top priorities for 2019.”
This is amazing. Mainstream conservative organizations, supported by ten times as many people as these radicals — which is to say, tens of millions of existing or potential Facebook customers — have been demanding the same seat at the table and have been given lip service and nothing more. In fact, in response conservatives are being systematically censored.
For Facebook to continue this nonsense about being impartial and unbiased, and just a "marketplace of information" is offensive.For once and for all, Facebook: Put up or shut up.
Anything less from Facebook when it responds to criticism about anti-conservative bias will be completely unacceptable.
[...]
Conservatives expect equal treatment, equal access and equal participation in an effort by Facebook to moderate content, oversee appeals and build new products. Anything less will never be accepted or tolerated by us.
Bozell was silent about Facebook's previous capitulation to the demands from himself and other conservative activists. He also didn't mention how Facebook echoed another right-wing narrative by doing oppo research on Soros -- which his employees have heartily endorsed -- and how that undercuts his narrative of Facebook as a liberal monolith.
Bozell also doesn't eplain why, if Facebook is such a hostile environment for conservatives, the MRC doesn't just quit Facebook and organize its fellow conservatives to bring their prestige to another social media platform. But then, as we'veseen when the MRC complained about the deplatforming for extremist content of other social-media alternataives it refused to support, it's easier for Bozell and Co. to complain about Facebook on Facebook, even though the MRC has never faced any content-censorship issues with Facebook -- again, undercutting Bozell's censorship narrative.
WND Finds A New Anti-Vaxxer Narrative to Embrace Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily has longbeenanti-vaccine (unless, of course, it can falsely blame disease outbreaks due to lack of vaccination on Muslims). It's found that anti-vaxxer mojo again in an anonymously written Dec. 6 article:
Controversy over vaccines has been ongoing for years, with critics pointing to many injuries and deaths.
In 2013, government watchdog Judicial Watch sued the federal government to obtain data related to injuries caused by a popular HPV vaccine the government has recommended for girls and boys as young as 11 despite thousands of cases of seizures, paralysis, blindness, pancreatitis, speech problems, short-term memory loss, Guillain-Barré syndrome and even death.
Now, a Las Vegas man is suffering severe complications from a flu shot.
KSNV reported that within a day and a half of getting the shot, Shane Morgan lost his vision and the ability to walk.
This is an actual case, but WND obfuscates about how low the actual danger is. It states only that "medical experts say one can get GBS by getting the flu" without mentioning the actual numbers -- which, according to the Centers for Disease Control, is just one to two cases per one million doses of the vaccine.
WND then jumps straight into conspiracy mode:
The giants of the medical industry and their government supporters insist that vaccines are necessary, and that only a tiny fraction of a percentage develop complications. But WND columnist Barry Farber is one of many voices citing evidence of a vaccine connection to autism.
Citing the new movie “Vaxxed: From Coverup to Catastrophe,” he said it’s “incontrovertible” that in the 1950s autism was almost unknown.
“There was a clinic in California with maybe half-a-dozen cases. Then along came one case of autism for every ten thousand children who’d undergone the MMR vaccine. Then came one such case out of every 250. The latest figure is one out of 50!”
Farber said “the proud defenders of Big Pharma and the CDC still refuse to yield a centimeter.”
“And that’s what interests so many of us non-doctors and non-scientists. There’s the pungent fragrance of ‘body-panic’ as more and more anguished parents and alarmed Americans ask what’s going on here,” he said.
“The CDC’s cooking of the books has befouled the air thousands of kitchens away. Dr. Andrew Wakefield, distinguished research gastroenterologist, had his license revoked for the high crime of suggesting the MMR vaccine needed more study! CDC internal whistleblower Dr. William Thompson has more and more frightened onlookers hopeful that truth will prevail. The MMR loyalists, however, defend it like the fanatical war-time Japanese defended their Emperor Hirohito. The cause of this skyrocketing surge in autism, Big Pharma and the CDC assure us, ‘cannot be vaccinations, must not be vaccinations, will not be vaccinations!'”
As we reported when Farber's column first appeared, Wakefield -- who made the "Vaxxed" film -- is a discredited doctor whose so-called research linking vaccines to autism was retracted and renounced by the medical journal that published it and who lost his license to practice medicine because he behaved unethically in conducting experiments.
WND goes on to continue to fearmonger about the HPV vaccine, bizarrely complaining that "The government also went out of its way to praise HPV vaccines for purportedly lowering the number of reported cases." Which, you know, is exactly what vaccines are supposed to do. Indeed, the introduction of HPV vaccines have lowered cervical cancer rates.
CNS Reframes Government Shutdown To Bolster Trump's Changing Rhetoric Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com, like a good, loyal conservative media outlet, was gearing up to blame a possible government shutdown centered around issues of border security on Democrats. A Dec. 11 blog post by Craig Millward, for instance, uncritically quotes Republican Rep. Steve Scalise -- appearing on Mark Levin's radio show, natch -- declaring that "if Chuck Schumer wants to shut down the government because he doesn’t want to secure America’s border, that’s a fight that he’s going to lose."
But that same day, President Trump destroyed that narrative by declaring he would take responsibility for any shutdown, as CNS' Melanie Arter wrote: "President Donald Trump on Tuesday threatened to shut down the federal government if he doesn’t get border security during a White House meeting with incoming House Speaker-Designate Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.)."
So CNS was force to rejigger its narrative to keep it from being overtaken by events. That seems to be how we got this Dec. 14 article by Emily Ward declaring that a government shutdown is not a big deal:
Seventy-five percent of the federal government is already funded through all of fiscal year 2019, according to the House Committee on Appropriations. That means a total government shutdown cannot happen.
[...]
While many news outlets are flashing ominous headlines warning of a “looming government shutdown,” the reality is that only some of the smaller departments would be affected in the event of a partial shutdown. The two biggest departments, Defense and HHS, are already funded.
Of the potentially affected agencies, only nonessential government personnel would be unable to come to work – such as research scientists. Essential personnel, or government employees whose work is necessary to ensure the safety and security of Americans, would still do their jobs.
As if to complete the synergystic circle, a Dec. 18 blog post by Ward touted how Levin "quoted from a news story on CNSNews.com" on his radio show about how "75 percent of the government is already funded, as reported by CNSNews.com." Ward didn't disclose that she wrote the story that Levin was referencing.
CNS' two major editorial mandates are to support Trump whatever he does and to promote Levin like he was paying it to do so (well over 100 articles so far this year). In this story, it's doing both.
WND Columnists Run to Kevin Hart's Defense (And Attack The Guy Who Plays Madea, For Some Reason) Topic: WorldNetDaily
The Media Research Center wasn't the only ConWeb outlet to be outraged that Kevin Hart had to give up his gig as Oscars host due to old homophobic jokes.
WorldNetDaily columnist Jesse Lee Peterson declared that the controversy was "proof that the Academy Awards have been hijacked by radical LGBTQ activists," adding, "Kevin Hart shouldn’t have apologized, but he is too weak to resist the pressure." Peterson then continued into his usual schtick, with the twist of ranting about black actors who have cross-dressed for a role:
Hollywood’s effort to emasculate black men on screen by casting them as weak, gay or transgender has been going on for decades. It seems like almost every major black man in Hollywood, has at one point in his career, put on a dress, wig and lipstick to portray women. Here are some eamples:
Will Smith played a gay con artist in the 1993 movie “Six Degrees of Separation.”
Ving Rhames played a drag queen in “Holiday Heart.” And in Quentin Tarantino’s sadistic “Pulp Fiction,” Rhames played a high-level crime figure who gets brutally sodomized.
Tyler Perry has made a fortune playing a woman in his “Madea” movies.
Jamie Foxx started out playing a female character in the ’90s comedy TV hit “In Living Color.”
Other notable black actors who had to dawn dresses include Chris Tucker and Wesley Snipes.
And actor Terry Crews testified in Congressduring the whole #Metoo hysteria that he was sexually assaulted by a Hollywood executive in front of his wife.
Hollywood and the Oscars are a vehicle to promote homosexuality, feminism and other deviant behaviors that make a mockery of masculinity and traditional family values.
It’s unfortunate that Kevin Hart apologized; but most black men today have been emasculated by their mothers and cannot stand firm for what is right.
Peterson is attacking Tyler Perry for his Madea character? Here's how the character is described: "Vindictive in nature, Madea gets even in a bad way. Additionally, Madea has a tendency to overreact and is willing to threaten to use deadly weapons, destroy property, use physical violence, take on the law, and use any and all means necessary to show up an offending party." Sounds like a character Peterson should be getting behind.
Despite getting headline billing, Hart is reference in only one paragraph of Carl Jackson's Dec. 10 column, complaining that he was "labeled a 'homophobe'" over the jokes. The rest of it is dedicated to an anti-gay rant about "the left's war on heterosexuality":
Can we stop pretending that heterosexual and homosexual relationships are equal? They’re not. And to say otherwise, doesn’t make you homophobic. It makes you logical. If a married couple had 12 kids but they constantly catered to the wants of one of their children, while ignoring the needs of the others, wouldn’t you say that child is spoiled?
According to a 2015 study that appeared in Gallup, titled “Americans Greatly Overestimate Percent Gay, Lesbian in U.S.” just 3.8 percent of the population identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. Anecdotally speaking, I believe the percentage is even lower given how many parents of teens I know whose kids have experimented with same-sex encounters, only to exclusively date the opposite sex later.
Recognizing and expressing the importance of heterosexual marriage doesn’t make you a bigot! It’s still possible to love, respect and appreciate the attributes of gay individuals, as well as recognize their contributions to society, without condoning their sexual lifestyle or giving them preferential treatment over straight couples.
It’s foolish to ignore the differences between gay and straight couples. The most obvious difference between the pairings is heterosexuals can produce babies. Gay couples cannot. Also, not only are the male and female bodies complementary to one another, but so are male and female traits. This explains why even amongst gay and lesbian couples, one partner assumes the male role.
[...]
There’s no real medical condition called “homophobia” that can be cured by medicine or counseling. In fact, it’s absurd and sick to suggest that anyone has a legitimate fear of gays. Along with gay activists themselves, most Americans want to keep government out of their bedrooms. Therefore, it’s safe to say the left’s use of the word “phobia,” when it’s associated with the gay community, has nothing to do with a recognizable fear. Instead, leftists use the term “homophobic” as a tactic to censor dissent and make themselves feel morally superior to the religious right. Additionally, they want dissenters to be forced into wholehearted approval of their lifestyle. So much for equal rights; they want submission.
If the militant activists in the LGBT community have their way, heterosexuality will be viewed as abnormal and a detriment of our society. Thus, for our survival and theirs, we mustn’t let them win their war on heterosexuality.
For a guy who claims "it’s absurd and sick to suggest that anyone has a legitimate fear of gays," Jackson certainly seems to have it.
MRC Fears New Film Will (Further) Demonize Anti-Gay Conversion Therapy Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has longclung to the belief that anti-gay conversion therapy is a good thing despite a lack of scientific evidence proving it. Now, following in the footsteps of WorldNetDaily, it's denouncing the new film "Boy Erased," based on the real-life experience of a teenager at a conversion facility.
In a Dec. 5 MRC post, Gabriel Hays complains that "[t]he media of course has been running cover for the film and at the same time subtly bashing Christian parents for even hinting that it may be wrong for kids to embrace homosexuality." Hays seems particularly put out by Garrard Conley, who wrote the book about his own experience that the movie is based on and whose interview on the NBC website Hays is attacking, called conversion therapy "diabolical" and "medically discredited":
Regardless of whether conversion therapy is harmful or not, it’s been evident that the media in particular would like meddling Christian parents to back off on promoting traditional sexual lifestyles, because in the eyes of their fine-tuned progressive world, that’s what is truly disgusting here.
Garrard’s memoir-turned-motion-picture details the author’s formative years during which the young gay man was forced by his parents to undergo the controversial practice. He told NBC that he just wanted to get his story of hardship out there, that it’s “incredibly important to get those around queer people to get to the most basic thought of ‘I think that gay conversion therapy is torture.’”
“Even if they are not there yet in terms of acceptance, I just don’t want people to get sent to conversion therapy.”
NBC mentioned that “talk therapy is the most commonly used therapy technique” though some extreme proponents of conversion therapy have employed “aversion treatments” such as “induced vomitings or electric shocks.”
Now of course, electric shock, vomiting, lobotomies aside (there are always overzealous weirdos) the fact that NBC is blasting talk therapy as akin to “torture,” is notable. If talk therapy is “torture,” does that mean parents merely talking to kids about their unique orientation is now harmful or abusive? From current society’s angle, is it now wrong for parent’s to make their kids uncomfortable about issues they don’t agree on?
Hays further groused that the NBC interview "stressed Garrard’s standpoint that the therapy is 'pseudoscience' and a practice that’s been denounced by 'nearly every major professional health association,'" insisting that, by golly, even if we don't send them to camps that don't work, something's gotta be done about all these gay kids:
Yet when Garrard’s “real science” is presumably the same one that makes the case for the 64-plus gender identities, it makes it easy to see him as the pot calling the kettle black and that, at least for the liberal media, this is for the sake of political firepower against straight white Christian parents. And while it’s not healthy to send children to boot camp or stick them in the closet for weeks on account of their homosexual urges, we should be careful demonize parents into adopting a completely hands-off attitude when it comes to their kids.
Hays doesn't explain why "straight white Christian parents" must try to change the sexuality of their children, regardless of how much harm that it likely to cause. And his sneering reference to "64-plus gender identities" tells us that he's pretty eager for those forcible attempts to continue that go beyond "merely talking."
WND, CNS Lash Out At Christian Singer For Failing to Hate Gays Enough Topic: WorldNetDaily
Christian musician Lauren Daigle recently appeared on a Christian radio show and answered a question about whether she thought homosexuality is a sin by saying, "I can't honestly answer on that. In a sense, I have too many people that I love that they are homosexual. I don't know. I actually had a conversation with someone last night about it. I can't say one way or the other. I'm not God."
That didn't go over well with some of the more gay-hating ConWeb columnists.
WorldNetDaily's Michael Brown called Daigle's answer "very weak" and likened it to others who have expressed "compromised views on homosexual practice." Brown insisted his column was "not about Lauren" but about "our response" to her answer -- then argued that Daigle undergo a little Christian re-education:
Perhaps the first thing we should do is reach out to Lauren and say, “We’re thrilled with the success God is giving you, and your music has been a tremendous blessing to us. And we’re cheering you on when you have the opportunity to appear before the secular world. What a great open door!
“We’re also praying for you because we know the temptations and challenges you face are great, and we’d love to spend some time with you looking at the Scriptures together and helping you formulate solid answers to tough questions. Can we do that together?”
Brown did ultimately extend a little sympathy toward Daigle, though framed in re-education: "So, yes, I fully understand the disappointment in Lauren right now. But unless you’ve been in that situation yourself, you have no idea how you would perform. And even if she did fall short in her answer, now is not the time to condemn her. It’s the time to reach out to her, pray for her and make ourselves available to strengthen and equip her."
Over at CNSNews.com, John Stonestreet flip-flopped between feeling sympathy for Daigle for being put on the spot and lecturing about how Christians must reject gays:
Now let me say from the beginning here I understand how hard this high-pressure situation can be. For a young woman like Daigle with a skyrocketing career, calling homosexuality a sin in a public forum could mean closing a lot of doors and alienating a lot of fans. There’s a real cost that comes with taking a stand for the Christian view of sex and marriage. Deciding to pay that price in a split second with a microphone shoved in your face is something better-trained theologians and pastors have failed to do.
But this whole story reveals something else—the deep crisis of authority plaguing evangelicalism right now. First, we should be past the point of answering this question, because the Christian view of sex and marriage should be so clear and our commitment to it should be so well-known by now that there should be no longer any point in asking the question!
[...]
Neither the Bible nor nearly two millennia of Christian teaching are at any level ambiguous about homosexual behavior. Numerous passages in the Old and New Testaments condemn it, along with any sexual behavior outside of God’s good design for marriage between a man and a woman. No one in Christian history ever doubted this until about five minutes ago. There is no room for disagreement on the point.
For Daigle or any other Christian for that matter to publicly say, “I don’t know whether homosexuality is a sin” is like saying “I don’t know whether stealing or worshipping false gods are sins.”
Stonestreet concludees with a call to all to despise gays like a good Christian should: "What will you say when someone with the power to seriously damage your career asks you what you think about a culturally popular sin? For that matter, what will you say at Christmas dinner when that one relative—maybe a relative who identifies as gay—asks you the same question? There are no easy answers in that moment. But that doesn’t mean there are no right answers."
NEW ARTICLE: More Catholic Than The Pope Topic: CNSNews.com
The Catholic guys who run CNSNews.com are so uber-right-wing Catholic that they have the temerity to believe they can lecture Pope Francis about Catholicism. Read more >>
WND Columnists Double Down On Fearmongering About Filthy Immigrants (With Bonus Discredited Research) Topic: WorldNetDaily
As if responding to our post pointing her fearmongering about disease-ridden immigrants, dubous right-wing doctor Jane Orient doubled down in her Dec. 10 WorldNetDaily column, in which she actually suggests that migrants are spreading disease deliberately:
Epidemics can happen naturally or through neglect — or they could be caused deliberately. Biological warfare is probably the very worst weapon of mass destruction.
One scenario is to embed a suicide agent incubating a deadly disease in a mass of migrants. There are doubtlessly innocent persons infected with deadly diseases to which Americans have no immunity among thousands of migrants overwhelming our border – from Central America and many other places.
Orient accused doctors and others who call out her fearmongering of being in "denial," then rants about the migrant caravan approaching the U.S. from Central America:
Is concern about the caravan just “fearmongering”?
We don’t hear that term applied to those who say we must treat a child missing some mandated vaccines as a “Typhoid Mary” and bar him from schools or doctor’s offices – even though nobody ever caught a disease from a child that wasn’t infected with it. Rather, that’s the word for those who warn about tropical diseases, even if they are much more common and deadly than indigenous measles – or for those concerned about tattooed MS-13 gang members, rapists, jihadists, human traffickers and other criminals intent on harming Americans. Such people also infect, molest, assault, or murder people in their own countries and in the caravan.
Our nation faces real threats that produce genuine body counts from violence and disease. Instead of addressing those threats, we are supposed to worry about carbon dioxide, invisible dust particles and imperceptible phobias and isms. And not just worry, but shut down industries and shut out dissenters from public discourse.
A wall is indeed proposed – to confine the half of America that votes the “wrong” way and wants to protect American lives, liberties and property.
What we need is an outbreak of common sense.
Or, you know, a little less fearmongering from people who don't assumse that all foreigners are "tattooed MS-13 gang members, rapists, jihadists, human traffickers and other criminals intent on harming Americans."
(Also, the entire point of vaccinating children is to build up enough herd immunity to contain or even stop spread of a disease. But Orient and the fringe-right organization she runs, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, generally opposes mandatory vaccination efforts.)
Not to be outdone in the fearmongering-about-filthy-foreigners department, Ilana Mercer used her Dec. 12 WND column to complain that nobody appears to be interested in finding a"Patient Zero" in the current outbreak of acute flaccid myelitis. She added her own attack on the caravan: "In any event, along for the ride with the thousands of migrants poised to pour into the U.S. from Central America is a healthy array of microbes: measles, Chagas disease, hepatitis and much more. Diversity, baby."
Mercer then wrote:
First in the liberty community to decry the health hazards from the unfettered flow of migrants across the 1,940-mile-long border with Mexico was dazzling Randian scholar and patriot, Madeleine Pelner Cosman, Ph.D., Esq.
Coupled with her health-care policy expertise, Dr. Cosman was an avid outdoorsman and marksman who regularly volunteered to patrol the border with the San Diego County Sheriff’s agents.
In a 2005, Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons paper, “Illegal Aliens and American Medicine,” Cosman addressed the effects on the U.S. health system of the bleeding Southwestern border.
Yes, Mercer is referencing the very same paper -- published, as it so happens, under the journal editorship of one Jane Orient -- that has been discredited for falsely asserting that cases of leprosy in the U.S. have exploded because of immigration. As far as we know, Orient and the JAPS have yet to issue a correction despite the claim being debunked years ago, and the PDF of the paper to which Mercer links is similarly uncorrected.
Compounding fearmongering with bad research does not help the whole earmongering-about-filthy-foreigners thing.
At The MRC, Kevin Hart's Anti-Gay 'Thought Crimes' vs. Mika's 'Disgusting' Anti-Gay Remark Topic: Media Research Center
When comedian Kevin Hart lost his job as host of next year's Oscars when old homophobic jokes and Twitter posts resurfaced -- one of which called a critic a "FAT FAG" -- the Media Research Center's Jacob Comello was outraged ... for Hart, ranting that Hart had committed a "thought crime" in the eyes of liberal Hollywood allegedly eager to destroy his career:
For the Hollywood left, there is no forgiveness, let alone consistency. There is only a volatile mob mentality that, if dissented from, will get one’s career destroyed.
Kevin Hart, an African American comedian who has appeared in Scary Movie 3, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, and other comedies, announced on Tuesday that he had been selected to host the 2019 Academy Awards, according to Huffington Post. Almost immediately, opposition to the Academy’s decision came pouring in from left-leaning journalists, many of them LGBT types. The reason: people had discovered tweets the comedian made years ago which contained gay jokes.
[...]
[Buzzfeed writer David] Mack’s censure (“just imagine if this was any other marginalised group”) is rather interesting, considering the fact that Travon Free, a writer for Samantha Bee’s Full Frontal TBS show, faced a similar incident earlier this year when his old anti-Semitic tweets began to resurface. But for Free, there was hardly media hype at all: A< few articles on smaller media sites covered it, and TBS never issued an official condemnation.
So Mack may have a point in saying the media treats some minorities worse than others, but LGBT people certainly aren’t at the bottom of that totem pole.
Note that Comello wasn't outraged at all by Hart's homophobic content at all -- apparently because gays are no longer sufficiently discriminated against for him to be concerned about -- but only that he was being held accountable for it.\
By contrast, when a perceived enemy of the MRC makes an anti-gay remark, that person gets attacked as not just hateful but mentally deranged to boot. Scott Whitlock huffed in a Dec. 12 post:
The unhinged hosts of Morning Joe on Wednesday took it to a new level, sliming Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as unpatriotic and a “wannabe dictator’s butt boy.” The vulgar language was so bad that MSNBC producers tried to cut Mika Brzezinski’s audio, just missing her disgusting attack.
[...]
Just last week,Brzezinski’s co-host and husband, Joe Scarborough, cited the need for civility in the wake of the death of George H.W. Bush: “You can have a contentious relationship with people professionally and still save your humanity the way George H.W. Bush did for people.... It's an example we all have to follow.”
Still save your humanity? Maybe the hosts at MSNBC should start by not calling the Secretary of State a “wannabe dictator’s butt boy.”
When Brzezinski apologized for the remark a couple days later, the MRC did what Comello complained about in his Hart post: deemed that her apology was insufficient. Mark Finkelstein complained:
When you apologize for using a term that you yourself call "vulgar, crass and offensive," wouldn't you include in your apology the person against whom you used it? Apparently not, if you're Mika Brzezinski, and the person you insulted is a prominent conservative.
Returning to Morning Joe today after a day off for "a family matter," Mika Brzezinski apologized for having on Wednesday's show called Secretary of State Mike Pompeo a "butt boy." NewsBusters editor Scott Whitlock reported the slur here. But whereas Brzezinski apologized "especially to the LGBT community" and to her colleagues, she didn't apologize . . . to Mike Pompeo.
[...]
This NewsBuster doesn't consider Brzezinski's words a firing offense. But if anything, Mika today compounded her mistake by failing to apologize to the person she insulted.
Weird how the MRC thinks anti-gay slurs are "disgusting" when someone on MSNBC says them but somehow noble enough to elevated to a "thought crime" when Kevin Hart says them.
Junk-News Purveyor Farah Complains About Junk News Topic: WorldNetDaily
Oh, the irony. WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah starts off his Dec. 6 column by declaring that "I like to think God created me to do journalism." He goes on to complain:
I’m seeing what’s happening in the world of journalism. With hundreds of thousands more bloggers and commentators, analysts and opinion-ators seemingly springing forth, does anyone even appreciate real journalism anymore?
Just look at how many days it took for a super-solid, weighty piece of investigative excellence like the Miami Herald series on that Jeffrey Epstein kiddie sex fiend to be read. It still hasn’t really caught fire with most Americans. Most are too busy falling for month-old click bait.
It’s not that there aren’t enough playing in the journalism world. It’s just that they are all desperately, wistfully seeking Google-Facebook approbation – and there’s not enough of it to go around.
For every story written and published somewhere on the internet, there are hundreds, possibly thousands, of other copycat stories written. There’s so much plagiarism, nobody notices anymore; nobody cares anymore.
There’s little discernment by news consumers about quality. And, how could there be? There’s just too much junk news out there – which may be a greater danger than fake news.
Ironic because WND has been one of the biggest purveyors of junk news (birtherism, SethRich) and fake news (ashockingly, depressinglylargeamount) on the Internet that also tries to masquerade as a real "news" organization.
Farah's irony continues:
Now consider this: Up until a few years ago, there was nothing I considered more meaningful and fun in my life than journalism – whether it was creating it or watching it. More recently, I have the feeling I am not seeing anything new, nothing I haven’t seen before, like there’s nothing new under the sun.
Must every story have a political agenda?
Are there no more good human-interest stories to be told anymore?
Is any news organization ever again going to devote the resources and time to a muckraking investigative series if it’s going to be here today and gone tomorrow?
See above for the fake and junk news WND published that apparently made Farah's life "meaningful." And isn't WND pretty darn close to being here today, gone tomorrow?
Farah concludees his column by outlining his definition of "a true believer when it comes to journalism," which includes: "It’s someone who personifies fairness, fearlessness, credibility, independence and indomitability of spirit," adding, "It’s not just individuals who believe in those things. It’s also institutions that believe."
Farah and WND arguably meet some of that. But the key part there is credibility -- and Farah and WND squandered that a long time ago.
An anonymously written Dec. 13 WorldNetDaily article begins this way:
It looks like the Media Research Center's 
CNSNews.com 
Amelia Hamilton begins her Dec. 10 Media Research Center 
Apparently, not reciting the Apostles' Creed is now the cool thing for WorldNetDaily's Trump acolytes to do since the president refused to do so during George H.W. Bush's funeral. Columnist 
The Media Research Center is 
WorldNetDaily has 
CNSNews.com, like a good, loyal conservative media outlet, was gearing up to blame a possible government shutdown centered around issues of border security on Democrats. A Dec. 11 
The 
The Media Research Center has 
Christian musician Lauren Daigle recently appeared on a Christian radio show and answered a question about whether she thought homosexuality is a sin by 
As if responding to 
When comedian Kevin Hart lost his job as host of next year's Oscars when old homophobic jokes and Twitter posts resurfaced -- one of which called a critic a "FAT FAG" -- the Media Research Center's Jacob Comello was outraged ... for Hart, 
Oh, the irony. WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah starts off his Dec. 6 
