Topic: NewsBusters
The MRC's efforts to downplay inflammatory statements by right-wing preachers continues apace: A March 24 NewsBusters post by Justin McCarthy states:
['The View" co-hosts Joy] Behar and Whoopi Goldberg justified Barack Obama’s connection to Jeremiah Wright by pointing to Bush’s association with Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson and their many controversial remarks. It could be a valid point if Falwell or Robertson were Bush’s pastor for 20 years. Neither of them ever were.
As we've noted, the MRC has been apologists for Falwell's history of statements -- as well as those made by John McCain endorsers John Hagee and Rod Parsley, calling them insignificant (when they mention them at all) compared to those made by Wright.
On a related front, a March 24 NewsBusters post by Seton Motley (reprinted at Human Events) accuses the media of engaging in a "Plan to Protect Obama" without noting the MRC's own Plan to Protect McCain by downplaying remarks by the pastors who have endorsed him. In fact, Motley doesn't mention Hagee, Parsley or any other right-wing pastor at all. And Tim Graham complained that, during an interview with Obama, CNN's Larry King "didn’t ask a single question about [Wright] until 32 minutes had elapsed on the show, and then devoted just 20 minutes to it." Which, of course, is 20 minutes more than Graham has spent on Hagee and Parsley.