Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Vernonica Hays issuedwhat she thought was a sick burn in a May 20 post: "How relevant is Bette Midler? She’s got a hot take on one of the most controversial incidents … of 1992."
You know who else thinks Midler is so relevant that it devotes numerous posts to attacking her? The MRC. We've already documented how the MRC's "news" division, CNSNews.com, is completely obsessed with writing about her tweets -- 40 articles about her in 2020 alone -- but the MRC proper is no slouch in that department either.
Hays' post is the fifth this year the MRC has devoted to freaking out about Midler tweeting something it didn't like. On Jan. 6, Matt Phiblin groused that the "once-relevant actress and singer" criticized Donald Trump speaking at the MAGA rally that day; that would be the one that devolved into the Capitol riot, so maybe Midler was right on that one. On Feb. 18, Tierin-Rose Mandelburg huffed that Midler declared that harsh winter weather in Texas was God's judgment on conservatives, further huffing, "This storm is a natural occurrence and everyone knows that." (Her employer didn't know that, given that it tried to falsely blame effects of the winter storm on wind and solar energy.) This was followed a few days later by Gabriela Parieseau complaining that Midler said less-than-pleasant things about Rush Limbaugh upon his death (as part of the MRC's aggressive post-mortem defense of Limbaugh).
And on May 10, Gabriel Hays whined:
The Hollywood COVID cult just continues to reach new heights in its insanity. The latest debacle involves actress Bette Midler threatening the lives of kids with peanut allergies with a jar of peanut butter.Mmmhmm. It’s every bit of stupid and insane you thought it could be.
The leftist, who was saner during her gig as a cackling witch in Hocus Pocus than in real life, found a creative way to explain how she would punish parents and their kids for refusing to get them vaccinated if she could.
On May 9, Midler tweeted out a quote, which stated (tweet also available below), “If my kid can’t bring peanut butter to school then yours can’t bring the deathly plague. Vaccinate or I’m bringing the Jiffy.”
ON top of that, Midler was referenced in nine other MRC posts this year, typically in roundups of "liberal Hollywood" figures saying things that don't fit with the right-wing MRC narrative.
And in 2020, the tally was even bigger. The MRC featured Midler in two posts, but referenced her in a whopping 38 others, in posts with headlines like "#Privileged: A Billion Way$ Hollywood Lefties Hate Americans Who Want to Go Back to Work" and "The Death of #MeToo: 95 Celebs Who Smeared Kavanaugh are Silent on Biden."
Who says Midler is irrelevant? She's quite relevant to the MRC as a punching bag in service of its narrative of hating any Hollywood celebrity who not a nasty right-winger.
