Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily has been an irrelevant website for a while now (witness WND's attempt to reposition itself as "the largest Christian website in the world"), and it was never more apparent in 2016. WND's Jerome Corsi got little traction with his Hillary smears, and WND itself was overshadowed by other operations willing to be more outrageous and much closer to Donald Trump -- namely, Breitbart News. Heck, even longtime WND writer Aaron Klein took his talents (and WND's Jerusalem bureau) to Breitbart.
Thus, we have the minor spectacle of WND editor Joseph Farah writing a Nov. 25 column titled "In defense of Steve Bannon and Breitbart.com." Farah ingratiates himself by proclaiming that he's "an old friend and colleague of the late Andrew Breitbart and a new media pioneer myself," then complains that "I can’t sit on the sidelines and watch as the real racists, the real purveyors of hate speech and the real anti-Semites have their way with courageous, independent voices – even if they have been, in some sense of the term, 'competitors.'"
The central point of Farah's column is complaining that a web advertising service, AppNexus, has decided to disassociate itself from Breitbart over its inflammatory content, and he serves up a vintage rant in response:
In America, thank God, we all have the inalienable right of free association.
You want to slop with the pigs, be my guest.
But, if you stand opposed to free speech, you won’t get my business either. Therefore, I’ll save AppNexus the trouble of blacklisting me and WND by proactively dissociating our company from any interest in its technology.
If you falsely label and smear freedom fighters like Bannon and Breitbart.com as advocates of hate, who needs you?
WND, if you'll remember, had to back off the race-baiting after Google AdSense, its main ad provider, threatened to cut it off. WND claimed it would capitulate rather than kick AdSense off its website by pulling AdSense spaces off its more race-baiting articles, though all it appears WND really did was make its race-baiting less overt. (Ad providers on the page serving up Farah's column include Google AdSense, Quantcast and Sizmek.)
Also, note that Farah provides no evidence that accusations of Bannon and Breitbart being "advocates of hate" are false. Meanwhile, there's plenty of evidence to support the claim.
Farah went on to rant: "By the way, Breitbart.com and WND.com are doing just fine without AppNexus and will continue to do so without the help of fascist, groupthink, corporate lackeys like them." Wasn't Farah begging for money from readers to keep WND afloat just a few months ago? That doesn't sound like an operation that's "doing just fine."
It appears that all Farah is doing here is trying to ride the coattails of another operation that does what it claims to do a lot better than it does.
