Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center cheered how WNBA star Brittney Griner was rotting in a Russian prison on trumped-up drug charges, smearing her as a black non-heterosexual who purportedly doesn't love America anough, and then was bitter when she was released in a prisoner swap (while censoring the actual criminal history of their preferred release fandidate, Paul Whelan). Nicholas Fondacaro spent a Dec. 22 post complaining that another American imprisoned in Russia on dubious charges didn't get the same attention as Griner:
When it comes to Americans being detained and held hostage in Russia, many have focused on the case of anti-American WNBA star Brittney Griner being swapped for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, while U.S. Marine Paul Whelan got left behind. But as ABC’s Good Morning America revealed on Thursday, there was another: Sarah Krivanek, who was arrested two months before Griner but was left to “rot” by the Biden administration and assaulted by a male inmate while in prison.
Krivanek was released the same day as Griner, and Fondacaro huffed that "there was no reception for Krivanek nor evidence the Biden administration helped out." But even he was forced to admit that "Krivanek wasn’t bitter with Griner for getting released in a prisoner swap."
Fondacaro not only failed to offer evidence to substantiate his claim that Griner is "anti-American," his whining about this is hypocritical to the max: This post is the only reference to Krivanek in the NewsBusters database, showing that she was "forgotten" by the MRC as well.
Jay Maxson -- the MRC's point man (or woman) in hating Griner -- spewed even more hate at her in a Jan. 3 post:
The legend of Brittney Griner grows. Now she’s “the face of global unrest” and Arizonan of the Year, according to the left-stream Phoenix newspaper, The Arizona Republic. That award went to the late, great American hero Pat Tillman in 2004, but the standards for this honor have weakened substantially since then.
“Today we name Brittney Griner ‘Arizonan of the Year’ because no other Arizona newsmaker in 2022 captured the public eye as intensely as she did,” wrote the Arizona Republic’s editorial board. “Nor has anyone’s story in this state aroused the kind of fear and foreboding that hers had for nearly 300 days.”
She broke the law on foreign soil. She was in the public eye only because of her modest fame -- and perhaps because she checked lefty identity boxes.
When a sports writer pointed out how right-wingers (like Maxson) smeared Griner for not standing for the national anthem as a protest against police brutality, Maxson sneered that "Griner was just another lemming following the crowd," further whining that she is "a hero of the Black Lives Matter movement that shook down corporate America and professional sports two years ago, ruining the sports experience for untold numbers of Americans."
Maxson also attacked President Biden,claiming that he "let the Russians keep a real hero, Marine Paul Whelan, locked up so that a woke athlete could play basketball." Yes, Maxson thinks a man who received a bad-conduct discharge from the Marines following a court martial for attempted larceny, false statements and dereliction of duty, among other things, is a "real hero."
Maxon concluded with more hate:
Arizona criminal of the year would have been a more appropriate “honor” for the woman for whom President Joe Biden gave up the Merchant of Death – Viktor Bout – in a late-year prisoner swap.
How about cannabis smuggler of the year? This one applies, too.
Griner checks all the boxes for fawning left-stream media: she’s black, lesbian, woke and despises American ideals.
[...]
Griner isn’t anywhere near the heroic stuff of Pat Tillman, and it’s true that she hasn’t asked for awards like this one. Her story is another example of media idiocy in the U.S. Tillman was a true American hero, and he must be turning over in his grave regarding The Republic’s farce.
Maxson is simply parroting the hate of his (or her) fellow right-wingers desperate for any excuse to attack a woman of color who's not heterosexual and who won't also peddle their partisan narratives. Who's the real lemming here?
