Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center started off the week in full Ivanka Trump defense mode:
Nicholas Fondacaro complained that media outlets "hype[d]" -- read: reported on -- Ivanka getting booed during an appearance in Germany, further whining: They had the option to simply note the heckling and move on to what else she said about women in business. But they chose to hyper-focus on the most sensational and inconsequential moment."
Dawn Slusher grumbled about an Ivanka joke on the new TV show "Great News," huffing that "the left" would never do such a thing about Chelsea Clinton. "So much for children of presidents being off-limits," Slusher added, apparently unaware that Chelsea never worked in the White House as a senior presidential adviser to anyone, let alone her mother.
But when Fox News' Jesse Watters made the creepy comment that Ivanka was in Germany, "I really liked how she was speaking into that microphone," the MRC couldn't be moved to express any outrage. Indeed, it tok the MRC nearly two full days to respond -- and it sought to distract from the incident.
In an April 27 post, Kristine Marsh declared Watters' comment to be "offhanded" and "innocuous" and blamed the media for covering it:
That offhanded comment has thrown the media in a tailspin of ridiculous accusations of oral sex innuendo, riding on the heels of O’Reilly’s departure from the network.For example last night on CNN, host Don Lemon hosted a whole panel segment on the throw-away comment as if it were an actually newsworthy controversy.
[...]
Watters explained shortly afterwards that the comment was about how Ivanka’s cadence reminded the panel of how smooth jazz radio hosts crooned, and was in no way a blow-job joke, as the media has spun it.
It’s no surprise that CNN would want to continue the Fox News sex scandal storyline as long as they can after O’Reilly and Ailes ousting. But to read something sexual in Watters’ comment is just plain grasping at straws.
Marsh offers no reason why we should take Watters' denial of malicious sexual intent in his Ivanka comment at face value -- and she also didn't mention the hand gesture he made while saying it. (Nor did Marsh feel the need to embed a video clip of Watters' comment so we could judge for ourselves.)
Instead, Marsh rants about "faux-outrage from the left" and offered "small sampling of actually misogynistic comments made on-air by liberal tv hosts about Ivanka Trump" and others. Marsh labels a couple clips "incest joke about Trump and Ivanka," failing to mention that Donald Trump's own comments about his daughter invited such a response.
It seems that the MRC's Fox News-shaped blind spot is current coalescing into the shape of Jesse Watters. Is the guarantee of talking-head time on Fox worth all this hypocrisy?
