Slanties 2017: Time to Make the Slantie Chimichangas

It's time to honor (as it were) the worst ConWeb reporting and craziest ConWeb opinions of the year, with the bonus opportunity for a literal ConWeb deadpool.

By Terry Krepel
Posted 1/12/2017

	Related articles on ConWebWatch: 2004 Slanties 2005 Slanties 2006 Slanties 2007 Slanties 2008 Slanties 2009 Slanties 2010 Slanties 2011 Slanties 2012 Slanties 2013 Slanties 2014 Slanties 2015 Slanties 2016 Slanties

And one other thing failed to change: The ConWeb did to journalism (and media criticism) what Limp Bizkit did to music in the late '90s. Which means it's time for the 14th annual Slantie Awards, ConWebWatch's celebration of said behavior.

Time to document the atrocities -- er, hand out some hardware.

* * *

The first award is for the most egregious example of bias in "news" coverage. The nominees are:

WND's birther bashfulness -- WorldNetDaily, the leaders of the Obama birther movement, suddenly forgot that when Ted Cruz ran for president. By the narrow standard WND imposed upon Obama to be a "natural born citizen" -- two citizen parents, born in the U.S. -- Cruz was even more ineligible than Obama purportedly was, but WND aggressively refused to impose its Obama birther standard on Cruz. WND editor even endorsed Cruz while pointedly ignoring his eligibility issues. And when Donald Trump grudgingly conceded that Obama was "born in the United States, period," chief birther obsessive Jerome Corsi couldn't change the subject fast enough. It was only when Trump was safely elected president that WND felt comfortable enough to go full birther again.

WND's failed quest for credibility and profitability -- Having seen its journalistic credibility hit rock bottom with its pathological quest to destroy President Obama, WND started taking a few stabs at rebuilding. First, it declared itself to be "The largest Christian website in the world." Then it hired a couple reporters from the Washington Times with something akin to actual journalistic experience; they both lasted only about a year at WND before leaving. WND quickly went from begging for political ads (which would seem to run counter to being "The largest Christian website in the world.") to begging for money, with editor Joseph Farah sending out a letter directly begging readers for cash, which may be linked to its apparent lack of understanding of how the economy works. Running a bunch of fake news -- even as it was denouncing "fake news" by others -- didn't help its credibility-rebuilding efforts either, nor did Jerome Corsi teaming with ultra-sleazy Trump operative Roger Stone to hurl mud at Hillary Clinton.

Pro-Trump stenography at CNS -- Media Research Center chief Brent Bozell may have started out the presidential campaign hating Trump, but after Trump won the nomination Bozell, along with the rest of his MRC empire, was quick to abandon his principles and climb aboard the Trump train (with, it seems, a little help from a rich MRC megadonor). Bozell's "news" division CNSNews.com went all in for Trump as well, which resulted in CNS reporters serving as stenographers for Trump and his supporters while obsessively covering the contents of the leaked Clinton campaign emails. The chief stenographer at CNS was morning managing editor Susan Jones, who also found time to insert snide, anti-Obama comments into her "news" reporting.

And the winner is ... CNS' pro-Trump stenography. This is the second year in a row we've given stenography at CNS the top award -- which should tell you all you need to know about what passes for "news" at the Media Research Center's "news" operation.

* * *

The next award is the LoBaido Award for the silliest statement made by a writer for a conservative news Web site (named after Anthony LoBaido, who wrote a post-9/11 column for WorldNetDaily that was so unhinged -- he blamed the attacks on America's immorality since "all that is evil in the world can be found in New York" and, for good measure, called Hillary Clinton "openly Marxist, treasonous and abortion-mongering, occultic" -- that WND eventually pulled it from its site). Here are this year's finalists:

I want Obama to linger around like the stain on American history he has been – so he can have his nose rubbed in the success of a true leader, the way some used to rub a dog’s nose in its feces to teach it the error of its ways when house-breaking it.

-- Mychal Massie, Dec. 26 WorldNetDaily column

I detest sycophants. I don’t even like fans. I don’t worship people. I love my children and my husband, but I don’t idolize any of them. I have never been star-struck meeting a Hollywood A-lister or even Charles Krauthammer or Phil Robertson!

I am ethnically Jewish, so traditions are sacred to me. I serve a living Savior, Jesus Christ, and I celebrate His birthday every day, and especially at Christmas time. I don’t care if it’s the “right day.” I got over legalism a long time ago, too.

All of that is why I hesitate to say what I want to say in this column: Thank you for restoring Christmas, President-elect Donald Trump.

-- Gina Loudon, Dec. 25 WND column

In April 2008, as a snot-nosed senator from Illinois, of questionable lineage, whose claim to fame was that he had been a community extortionist (albeit he called it community activist), Obama was only marginally less insulting to the American people.

[...]

Obama’s commitment to deconstruct and abolish the traditions America was founded upon plus his wife’s “ghetto fabulous” abuse of usufruct have offended and insulted the citizenry the whole of his time in office.

-- Mychal Massie, Dec. 12 WND column

I am so glad we’re only 40 days away from saying a permanent good riddance to Barack Obama as impostor president.

-- Joseph Farah, Dec. 9 WND column

Now back to the outskirts of hell. America won’t enter the real thing until it elects Hillary Clinton as president. The personal corruption has only begun, enabled by lawlessness and a cadre of underlings devoted to the new queen, and completely unconcerned with any other part of their jobs. The Epsteins of the world, sanctioned by the United States government, will put the pedal to the metal to drive the weak and powerless into the ground and mow down the middle class on their way to doing it. With the power of a completely corrupt Clinton “Justice” Department, nothing will be beyond their reach.

If you vote for Hillary Clinton, you enable this. If you fail to vote for Donald Trump, you likewise enable the Clinton ascendancy back into the White House. This means you are exactly like Hillary: personally corrupt, unconcerned with your victims and willing to push everything aside to fulfill your own lusts. That’s how America moves from the sidelines and enters fully into hell.

-- Craige McMillan, Nov. 5 WND column

Halloween is coming, and there’s nothing spookier than the thought of Hillary Rodham Clinton becoming America’s president.

Red-blooded American males should worry if she becomes Jezebel-in-Chief. Hillary hates you and fears your “toxic masculinity” (the feminist slur for almost any expression of male strength and principle). Her agenda will threaten your livelihood, limit your freedom and faith, endanger your children and misinterpret your motives.

Hillary’s presidency will cast a spell over normal gender expression, the natural family and new human life. Her aura emits decay and rebellion, starting with her hatred of God the Father and Jesus Christ.

-- Linda Harvey, Oct. 25 WND column

The Hillary Clinton campaign says the hackers behind the leaked email evidence of their collusion with the major media are from Russia and linked to the Russian regime. If so, I want to publicly thank those Russian hackers and their leader, Russian President Vladimir Putin, for opening a window into the modern workings of the United States government-corporate-media establishment.

[...]

But the Russians, if they are responsible, have performed a public service. And until there is a thorough house-cleaning of those in the major media who have made a mockery of professional journalism, the American people will continue to lack confidence in their system.

-- Cliff Kincaid, Oct. 13 Accuracy in Media column

The media have it all wrong. The GOP establishment don’t get it. Trump isn’t a politician who has to abide by the rules. Trump is one big middle finger to all the people in power – to “business as usual.” He is our middle finger. He is our caveman. He is our savage. He is our animal.

So he doesn’t have to be well-mannered. Trump gets bonus points for being a savage. If he makes ladies in gowns faint … if he makes liberals vomit … if he makes crooked politicians tremble … then he’s our guy!

All of this bad stuff, all of these secretly recorded videos, they just make the story better. Trump isn’t a man; he is a folk hero. He’s Paul Bunyan. He’s the Loch Ness Monster. He’s Sir William Wallace, the hero warrior of “Braveheart.”

Yes, Trump’s an animal, a savage – but he’s our animal. He’s our savage. He’s a tough guy fighting viciously for us. And if he’s fighting “dirty”? Great. It’s about time we had someone on our side who brings a bazooka to a gun fight, instead of a knife.

-- Wayne Allyn Root, Oct. 10 WND column

Trump cannot make this point for us. Catholics have to convince their believe-as-you-please brethren, including their priests, of one salient fact: A vote for Tim and the Alinskyite Hillary is a vote for that “first radical,” the demonic fellow Alinsky so openly admired.

-- Jack Cashill, Oct. 5 WND column

The real issue is why, in this age of widespread acceptability of the gay and lesbian lifestyle, and as Hillary asks for the vote of gays, lesbians and transgender people, would she, by material omission, continue to appear to hide her sexual preference? Is she ashamed of it, and if so, is she worthy of claiming to be the champion of gays, lesbians and transgenders?

I do not endorse any candidate for elective office and never have. But gays, lesbians and transgenders have to wonder why Hillary would call Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump a “racist” against people of an alternative lifestyle, and then continue to lie about her own sexuality. For gays, lesbians and transgenders, this is an affront to them personally. This continued deceitful hypocrisy by Hillary has to call into question her own commitment to gay, lesbian and transgender rights.

-- Larry Klayman, Sept. 30 WND column

[Colin] Kaepernick is a special sort of treasonist, though, one whose hypocrisy is as boundless as our western frontier. Literally, a poster child for why this country is indisputably the land of opportunity, this spoiled punk still can’t conceal his contempt for a country that has given him everything. Where else in the world could a biracial orphan abandoned by his birth parents be embraced in the loving arms of white adoptive parents, get a top-notch education and enjoy the opportunity to earn millions of dollars because he has a modicum of athletic talent?

Nowhere.

-- Jeff Roorda, Sept. 4 WND column

In this alternative reality scenario, Hillary Clinton would be a completely different story. Objective reality would probably represent her appearance as an amorphous, grayish-green entity with only occasional glimpses of her leering face and trendy designer apparel peeking through the goo. Festering boils, sores and other lesions would populate a shifting, gelatinous corpulence. Groups of diseased genitalia and excretory organs might form in random areas on her glistening skin, migrating across its surface and occasionally engaging each other in horrid fashion. Even to the non-religious person, her appearance would be truly evocative of a creature from hell, a vision to make even the late H.R. Giger cringe.

Clinton’s campaign speech would be a disturbing cacophony of insane squeals, gibbering laughter and profanities punctuated with her trademark shrill yammering. Audibly bursting abscesses and purulent excretions emanating from her would give rise to a stench of sufficient putridity to induce immediate vomiting in most individuals, thus it’s unlikely that many would dash off to cast votes for the slithering obscenity.

-- Erik Rush, Aug. 24 WND column

The responsibility for our nation’s suicide will not fall alone on all today’s university-indoctrinated youthful socialists, or the newly enfranchised immigrants and felons who overwhelmingly vote Democrat, or the various “minority groups” to which Hillary Clinton shamelessly panders in pursuit of their support.

No, the blame will fall squarely on all the righteous “Never-Trumpers,” on the “my-guy-didn’t-win-in-the primary-so-I’m-staying-home” Republican voters, on the “Yes-I-signed-the-pledge-but-I’m-breaking-it-cause-Trump-was-mean-to-my-wife/father/brother” GOP primary candidates, on the “I-serve-another-kingdom-not-of-this-world” and “I-care-only-about-the-gospel” Christians, on the “I-don’t-like-Trump-or-Hillary-so-I’m-voting-for-the-weird-pro-marijuana-Libertarian-guy” folks.

In other words, the blame will fall on good people whose pride, ego, resentment, emotions and self-righteousness tricked them into betraying their country, even their own children – all while believing they were standing strong on principle.

-- David Kupelian, Aug. 21 WND column

There’s nothing wrong with the media sharing [U.S. Olympic fencer] Ibtihaj [Muhammad]’s story. It’s a “first” worth reporting. But when the media spend 13 and a half minutes focusing almost exclusively on one competitor's Muslim faith, and only 8 seconds hinting at the gymnasts’ Judeo-Christian faith, it becomes an offensive discrepancy.

-- Alatheia Nielsen and Katie Yoder, Aug. 12 Media Research Center post

While Obama has experienced some of the negative aspects of the “black experience,” he never talks about the benefits of being black.

He should say, “If you are black and do well in school, you are much more likely to get a college scholarship than someone who is white. You are much more likely to get admitted to a college than a white guy with the same grades. You are much more likely to get a government grant to do a study or a loan to start a business than a white guy, and if you start a business, you are much more likely to get a government contract. All things being equal, as a racial minority, you are much more likely to be hired by a business over the guy who is lily white. Companies get credit for hiring a minority, any minority. They get no credit for hiring a white guy. So go out there and work hard in school. Achieve. Stop whining. The sky is the limit! You can even be president of the United States.”

Now that would be leadership, but a leader, sadly, Obama is not.

-- Jane Chastain, July 13 WND column

I believe that if Hillary Clinton is elected, America is done, the U.S. Constitution is toast, and she will finish what Obama began – the “fundamental transformation” of America into a godless, neo-Marxist Third World banana republic. We’ve had decades of the Clintons to establish beyond any reasonable doubt that this woman is not only the most corrupt elitist to ever seek the presidency, she’s an evil ideologue hell-bent on the abolition of individual liberties and religious freedom. While Great Britain just voted to reclaim its national sovereignty, a vote for Hillary Clinton is a vote to completely relinquish our own.

-- Matt Barber, June 24 WND column

In other words, there has been a novelty “blip” in the number of same-sex marriages. But in just one year, the novelty of same-sex marriage has worn off and the increase in the number of same-sex couples getting married has tapered off.

The Post notes also that the Gallup analysts predict that growth in same-sex marriages in the future will be a long-term, low-growth process because many supports of same-sex marriage are too young to marry now.

Of course, novelty fads appeal to the young. For example, from the 1920s through the mid-1950s communism was a popular movement among many naïve and young Americans. But as people mature, their naïveté usually diminishes or disappears. That is why communism never gained significant political influence in the United States. By the time young persons were old enough to vote, they saw the situation differently than they did when they were immature.

-- Lynn Wardle, June 23 CNSNews.com column

Barack Obama’s mother hated her own race; he hates whites and America. That’s why he’s allowing illegal immigrants and refugees to come into this country in droves.

If white Americans don’t take a stand, we’ll lose the country. Soon there won’t be enough whites to stop the chaos.

-- Jesse Lee Peterson, June 5 WND column

Brazil needs Emilio Medici, president from 1969-74 whose reign was called 'years of lead & torture' again.

-- Newsmax's John Gizzi, May 12 tweet

Tell me one policy difference between Lucifer and Hillary Clinton.

-- Joseph Farah, May 6 WND column

If wickedness could be bottled, it would be labeled transgender movement.

Nothing else showcases the turn of America from God, and the resulting biblically based judgments that befall nations that forget their Creator, than the current transgender fight, political response and cultural demise.

-- Cheryl Chumley, May 1 WND column

Instances of cross-dressing men invading women’s privacy illustrates how such obscene conduct threatens the survival instincts of girls and women – normal, real men know this and will protect women and girls at all cost. At this time, the rates of rape of college girls and women in “higher” education is shocking! It is just such mean-spirited men who eventually run major businesses, sports groups, banks, become entertainers and politicians, and demand that females receive all male sociopaths who “feel” they are women. Really?!

-- Judith Reisman, April 26 WND column

It bordered on hysterical (as in outrageously humorous) a couple of days ago when Obama reminded us once again of the “many contributions” Muslims have made to the rich history of our country. I defy anybody to name one significant contribution Muslims have made to this nation – with the qualifier that it is a positive contribution.

-- Erik Rush, March 30 WND column

Then in walks Donald Trump, the tall, blond and Nordic “warrior extraordinaire” who apparently has to resort to the tanning booth to keep from looking too white! He is the imposing, loud, profane, Viking warrior who is simultaneously a rich and powerful celebrity and a vicarious hope for the legions of struggling white guys out there.

-- Kent G. Bailey, Feb. 22 WND column

Mrs. Clinton must not be allowed to lay her hands on sacred pulpits while her fingers drip with the blood of unborn babies. Black Christians with large voting blocks in the North and the South must no longer do the bidding of a Democratic Party that opposes so much of what the Bible which they hold so dear teaches. If there is a firewall for Hillary, it is the fire of hell and believers must not jump into it with her.

-- E.W. Jackson, Feb. 21 WND column

Stalin used bullets and the gulag to eliminate his class enemies. Today’s executioners rely on Obamatrade, alcohol, drugs and suicide to do the job.

-- Curtis Ellis, Jan. 29 WND column

It is not too early, now that he is sweeping the electorate, to ask the not altogether unrealistic question: what exactly would a Trump government do, first? Imagine this creation narrative. In the Beginning ...

[...]

The country will be turned around in six days.

On the seventh day, as in the biblical Genesis story, after Trump bans late term abortion and defunds Planned Parenthood, the president and the nation will rest. The president will encourage all Americans, as is our tradition, to give thanks to God, ask for forgiveness, be generous and attend the religious institution (or none) of their choosing. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done (Genesis 2:3).

-- Theodore Roosevelt Malloch, Jan. 28 WND column

And the Slantie goes to ... Joseph Farah for saying, "Tell me one policy difference between Lucifer and Hillary Clinton." The flip side of the ConWeb's Trump sycophancy, as exemplified by CNS' award above, was the orgy of hatred against Hillary Clinton; several of the above quotes expressed her potential election in the most dire, apocalyptic terms and described her, as Farah so vividly did, as nothing short of the devil incarnate.

A close second was Gizzi's call for the return of Brazil's Emilio Medici, a repressive dictator whose reign was called the "years of lead & torture" for a reason.

* * *

Our final award is the Slantie Award for Career Achievement in Conservative Bias. This goes to a reporter or commentator with a consistent record of biased and slanted reports that fly in the face of time-honored journalistic practice, the truth and/or common sense.

This year's honoree is ... Cheryl Chumley, formerly of WorldNetDaily. Chumley was only at WND (which also published her two books) for a little over a year -- part of a talent raid (for lack of a better term) from the Washington Times that also netted Douglas Ernst, who similarly bailed on WND after about a year to go back to the Times -- but she fit in well in churning out biased articles and conspiracy theories, obsessing in particular over the bogus Jade Helm conspiracy and the idea that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was murdered.

Chumley is a freelancer now, with her own blog that she uses in part to tout her skills as an "experienced and inspirational public speaker" you can book. Her WND experience is buried far down in her bio, which suggests things may not have ended well there. Then again, given WND's precarious financial situation -- who has WND in the ConWeb deadpool? -- that may be for the best.