Topic: Media Research Center
As with "far left," there's another word the Media Research Center loves to overuse to the point of meaninglessness in attacking and dismissing its critics: "unhinged."
Here's an incomplete list of people and things the MRC has called "unhinged" during the first four months of 2017:
- Any critic of conservative Bret Stephens' New York Times column effectively denying the idea of human-caused climate change
- Chelsea Handler
- Democratic Party chairman Tom Perez
- Journalists whom MRC chief Brent Bozell posits are committed to the "absolute destruction" of Donald Trump
- "Climate alarmists"
- Director Joss Whedon
- "Grey's Anatomy"
- Journalist Michael Hiltzik
- CNN's Jim Acosta
- CNN commentator Angela Rye
- Again, journalists who, according to Bozell, are plotting to destroy Trump's presidency
- The entire Democratic Party
- ABC's Martha Raddatz
- People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
- Writer Jessica Valenti
- "Liberal opponents" of Trump's climate change policies
- Fareed Zakaria
- Dan Rather
- David Letterman
- Alex Jones
- "Unhinged hardcore leftists enraged over Trump 24/7"
- Judd Apatow
- Shia LeBeouf
- Fox News' Shepard Smith
- New York Times columnist David Brooks
- Commentator Katrina vanden Heuvel
- The members of "The View"
- Newsweek writer Nina Burleigh
- The Economist newspaper
- Politico columnist Roger Simon
- Paul Krugman
- Joss Whedon (again)
- Rosie O'Donnell
As with "far left," some people and things may actually be "unhinged" -- we will concur on Alex Jones -- but most of them aren't. The MRC is trying to delegitimize any criticism it doesn't agree with, mostly regarding Trump, by depicting it as fringe whatever its actual merits.
The funny thing: In the midst of all this smearing of anyone who dares issue a criticism of Trump as "unhinged," the MRC itself was complaining when anyone else used the word. In February, it huffed that some in the media "breathlessly hurled one sensational adjective after another" to describe Trump's strange February press conference, one of which was -- wait for it -- "unhinged." Trump syocphant Jeffrey Lord then grumbled in a Feb. 18 MRC column that "Words like 'unhinged' [were] a particular favorite to describe the event."
If the MRC is just going to engage in increasingly meaningless name-calling, why listen to anything it has to say?
