Topic: NewsBusters
It's not often you see the Media Research Center defending the right for someone to delcare himself "horny" -- especially since MRC honcho Brent Bozell just wrote a column criticizing the mocking of "purity rings and abstain[ing] from sex until marriage" -- but that's just what the MRC is doing.
During the MRC's Gala and DisHonors Awards, Samuel "Joe the Plumber" Wurtzelbacher "accepted" the "award" given to Chris Matthews by saying, "God, all this love and everything in the room - I'm horny." But reports on that, the MRC insists, were taking Wurtzelbacher's remark out of context. Ken Shepherd writes:
Granted, while it may have been a bit crass of a punchline, the remark came in the context of a night filled with many a ribald double entendre about the near-orgasmic delight the media has over President Obama.
Wurzelbacher's off-the-cuff comments were not scripted and he insisted that he is generally a very "serious" person, adding "that's about all the jokes I got, really" after joking that if the "[mainstream media] loved me anymore, I'd be in jail right now."
Of course, Akers didn't make note of those comments, instead saying he "mumbled a few other things about being the 'token redneck' and the media loving him, and then sat back down in a sea of conservative luminaries."
Brent Baker adds, regarding Keith Olbermann's singling out of the remark:
Of course, Olbermann preferred his homosexual innuendo to any context. Wurzelbacher was on stage to accept, standing in for ABC's Bill Weir, “The Obamagasm Award.” Weir won for ruminating over how “even the seagulls must have been awed by the blanket of humanity” at Obama's inauguration. Before that award, Olbermann's colleague, Chris Matthews, earned the “The Media Messiah Award” for boasting Obama gave him a “thrill going up my leg.” So Wurzelbacher's quip came after six nominee videos (three in each category) of journalists oozing over Obama.
So, really, aside from Matthews' remark, it was conservatives and MRC staffers who instigated the sexual metaphors, not Olbermann or anyone else. Thus, it should be no surprise that Wurtzelbacher felt comfortable enough in such an atmosphere to make his remark. The MRC is just upset that it's being reported at all.
On a related subject, Baker offers an incredibly lame retort to Olbermann's criticism of Brit Hume, who received the MRC's William F. Buckley Jr. Award for Media Excellence and thanked it "for the tremendous amount of material that the Media Research Center provided me for so many years when I was anchoring Special Report. I don't know what we would have done without them." Baker writes:
As if Olbermann doesn't graze a “buffet of daily talking points” from an “ultra-liberal media site.” The headline over a post earlier in the day on Media Matters' “County Fair” blog: “Accepting Buckley award, Fox's Hume thanked Media Research Center 'for the tremendous amount of material' they 'provided me for so many years when I was anchoring Special Report.'” Unlike Olbermann, however, Hume almost always credited the MRC so viewers were informed of his source.
But how many of those citingsfully described the MRC and a right-wing activist organization? Given Fox News' longtime refusal to identify the MRC's ideology when its representatives appear on the channel, we suspect very few, if any.
Further, Hume and Fox News portrayed him and his "Special Report" as a straight news show, which MSNBC has never really done with Olbermann's "Countdown."
