Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has a weird complex over first lady Jill Biden, hating for acting like a first lady instead of whatever Melania Trump did (which the MRC, of course, aggressively defended). MRC executive Tim Graham in particular seems to have developed a case of Jill Biden Derangement Syndrome -- a weird affliction because Graham may be the only person in whom she has engendered that kind of irrational rage.
Last October, Graham melted down over a "softball" TV interview Biden did: "There were no difficult questions about how Attorney General Merrick Garland wants to investigate angry parents who attend school board meetings (as the National School Boards Association compares them to domestic terrorists)." Of course, Graham's depiction is a lie, but nobody has ever accused Graham of being a stickler to facts that are inconvenient to his right-wing narratives. Graham spent another October post lashing out at a different "largely softball interview" with Biden and how "the liberal anchor gushed over how 'real' and 'approachable' the First Lady was." (Two words that are rarely associated with Melania Trump, by the way.)
Graham used a December post to grumble that a newspaper wouldn't use the TV celebrity brand "Dr. Oz" to describe Mehmet Oz in its coverage of his Pennsylvania Senate campaign, though "many papers rush to honor 'Dr. Jill Biden,' who has a Ph.D., but isn't a physician."
In a Jan. 17 post, Graham complained that an Associated Press article didn't trash her like he would: "AP should stand for Associated Publicists when they write on Democrat first ladies. ... There’s no space here to write anything negative or critical, like how Jill Biden was expected to lead an effort to reunite separated illegal-immigrant families, but then she wasn’t." He concluded bhy huffing: "AP's journalism reads more like a marketing ploy. Or a charity run to assist the Democrats." Says a guy who receives a six-figure salary to help run a charity that assists Republicans.
In his March 2 column, Graham comes weirdly close to sounding like Vyvyan ranting about Felicity Kendal by complaining that people are too bloody nice to Jill Biden (bolding in original):
On February 27, CNN anchor Pamela Brown (whose father John Brown served as the Democrat [sic] governor of Kentucky) robotically read a Twitter thread from Jill Biden. She introduced it like this: “First Lady Jill Biden addressed the anxiety so many of us are feeling about the ongoing war in Ukraine and the uncertainty of the future.” She can speak for “so many of us,” if she’s talking about CNN’s audience full of Democrats.
Then Brown spent nearly a minute and a half reading 198 florid First Lady words (duplicated on screen) about how parents and teachers and military families are coping, and where to find mental-health resources, and how “Joe and I continue to pray for the brave and proud people of Ukraine.” CNN White House reporter Kate Bennett also had a brief article about this on CNN.com.
The Russians are bombing Ukraine, and CNN wants you to feel grateful that we have the Bidens in the White House to help us cope with the disturbing results of the president’s geopolitical fecklessness.
[...]
There they go again, that “so many people” are cheered and charmed by Jill Biden. The apples in the “Facts First” commercials have been replaced with the image of CNN planting Valentine’s hearts on the White House lawn.
He went on to complain about the existence of coverage about Melania Trump's weird decision to get into the scammy-seeming NFT market, which didn't exactly work out the way she hoped, as if such an obvious grifter move wasn't newsworthy.
Graham should really get that Jill Biden Derangement Syndrome treated before it metastasizes throughout the entire MRC the way Obama Derangement Syndrome has. If he gets studs embedded into his forehead, it's time to really worry.
