Topic: WorldNetDaily
Joseph Farah starts his Jan. 17 WorldNetDaily column recounting how he had to deal with drug-testing potential employees while "running daily newsrooms and newspapers in major markets," claiming that many potential hires flunked the drug test and that even after being told how long it takes for pot to clear out of one's system sufficiently to past a drug test, it seemed that "many" of them "would rather smoke pot than get the job they wanted."
This was all prelude for his malicious attack on CNN's Jim Acosta for daring to challenge Donald Trump at a press conference:
After watching CNN reporter Jim Acosta’s outrageously rude, obnoxious, arrogant, insufferable performance at President-elect Donald Trump’s first news conference, he should, at the very least, be required to pee in a cup before ever being allowed to set foot in the White House, the Capitol, the Supreme Court or, for that matter, in the driver’s seat of any motor vehicle with more than four cylinders.
Don’t you think?
His act was like a commercial for such a proposal – not to mention one for a psychiatric screening.
It seems Farah has forgotten the time one of his own reporters was even more rude and arrogant to a president.
In 1999, Paul Sperry -- a onetime WND reporter but at the time a reporter for the right-wing Investor's Business Daily, attended a social event at the White House at which President Clinton was to make a brief appearance. Despite the fact that it was a casual, off-the-record event, Sperry insisted on pigeonholing Clinton about various scandals right-wingers like himself were obsessed with. And he kept pressing the issue after Clinton declined to answer, not unlike Acosta tried to do with Trump.
But WND didn't call Sperry "outrageously rude, obnoxious, arrogant, insufferable." Quite the opposite -- a 2000 WND article in which Sperry spun his version of events touted how Sperry "challeng[ed]" Clinton "with tough questions about issues of concern to the American people." Sperry sneered that Clinton was "the most corrupt president in U.S. history" and chortled at how, during his questioning, "Clinton’s face turned a darker hue of red, almost the purplish color of raw hamburger meat that’s been left out on the counter." Sperry went on to complain: "Funny how the press corps suddenly stands on ceremony when a Democrat is in the White House" and grumbled that his press colleagues "seem more interested in currying favor with this White House and maintaining their good standing in the Washington cocktail class than ferreting out the truth for the American people and holding the president accountable for sending our national security to China in a handbasket."
Farah will never say that about any reporter who challenges Trump, as his malicious attack on Acosta demonstrates -- despite the fact there is arguably no real difference in the two incidents other than the political party in office.
(You might remember that Sperry launched a factually challenged attack on Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin during the presidential campaign last fall.)
Farah added that he doesn't have a problem with reporters using drugs at WND: "'Druggies' just don’t seem to have the desire to work here. I’ll let you decide for yourself why that is true." Well, some might consider the brand of right-wing Christianity Farah and his WND reporters espouse to be a sort of drug, since it seems to make them do things like launch malicious personal attacks on people with whom they disagree.
