Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's unhinged rage against transgender people has unsurprisingly continued since we last checked, and it ramped up as Pride Month approached. Curtis Houck huffed in a May 30 post that a transgender person was on his TV:
On Tuesday, CBS Mornings gave three teases and a lengthy second-hour interview to “model and trans rights activist” Geena Rocero on the heels of Rocero’s memoir Horse Barbie that celebrated their decision to become transgender at 14 years old and how being trans in the United States is “nightmarish.”
Socialist co-host Tony Dokoupil boasted in the first tease: “We will speak with model and trans rights activist, Geena Rocero, who’s telling her powerful life story in a brand new memoir.” In the second, he said Rocero was secretly transgender “for nearly 10 years.”
Dokoupil later said “we’re very excited about our next guest” as Rocero’s an “award-winning producer, model, and transgender rights advocate” who “immigrated to the U.S. from the Philippines” as a teenager, but “[f]or nine years, she kept her transgender identity a secret, however, not even her modeling agent knew she had been assigned male at birth” until a 2014 TED talk.
Rocero insisted in the TED Talk that “I was assigned boy at birth, based on the appearance of my genitalia,” but Rocero knew by age five that “I’m a girl” and thus “knew...how to self-identify.”
CBS played all this as normal and uncontroversial, further bolstering their support for transgenderism and grooming children to play fast and loose with their gender and pronouns.
Houck also sneered that "Rocero [was] kvetching in eye-rolling fashion about 'attacks on...trans youth' as the 'most vulnerable' group of people 'in our country.'" Apparently Houck is quite comfortable with violent attacks on transgender people.Also, as we've noted, Houck's irrelevant tarring of Dokoupil as a "socialist" is based solely on his having done a single news report on income inequality three years ago.
Tim Graham kicked off Pride Month whining with a June 1 post whining about a newspaper article on transgender teens: "The most "woke" corporations are often media companies. USA Today started out "Pride Month" with some Pride-a-ganda at the top of the front page. The headline was all infomercial." The headline included the quote "But most of all, I'm human." How is that an "informercial"?Graham also complainiend that it was pointed out that right-wingers like him are targeting transgender people, huffing, "Conservatives oppose their 'existence' -- as in, they want them eliminated?" Graham didn't deny the accuracy of the statement or explain what his final solution for transgender people is.
Graham went on to rant that right-wing anti-transgender hate was not included in a different USA Today article that highlighted right-wing anti-trans legislation:
As you should suspect, there was not one discouraging or critical word anywhere in this piece from conservatives. Instead, readers are lectured that groups are need to "replace misinformed opinions." Does that sound like journalism that's objective? Or does "bothsidesism" need to be "replaced" in public speech?
The the article really need someone like Graham spewing transphobic hate and apparently denying that transgender people are human?
Ana Schau raged at the "trans agenda" and put "rights" for LGBTQ people in scare quotes -- as if she thinks they don't deserve any rights at all -- in a June 2 post:
Erica Hill, anchor of CNN This Morning, chose to celebrate “Pride Month” on Friday morning by “raising the alarm” regarding trans and LGBTQ “rights” alongside Montana State Representative Zooey Zephyr (D), who also happened to be transgender. Hill went so far as to falsely suggest they were “no facts out there” to support the notion that the trans agenda was being targeted at kids.
Hill and co-host, Rahel Solomon, engaged Zephyr in what was essentially a whining match over “the harassment” that the LGBTQ community had received from “restrictions” in recent legislation and “backlash” at companies, such as Kohl’s, that were trying to be “allies” to the LGBTQ community by “selling Pride merchandise.”
Schau played the social contagion card, accusing transgener people of "coming after children":
Hill also made a ludicrously false claim that “there are no facts” that trans people were “coming after children,” among other claims:
[...]
This claim was patently absurd because, as the Daily Wire aptly points out, trans and LGBTQ activists do target children—and they’re proud of it too. In a TedTalk on the matter of LGBTQ subjects in children’s media three years ago, LGBTQ rights activist, author, and creator of the series “Queer Stuff for Kids” Lindsey Amer says that “talking to kids about gay stuff is actually crucial” to their development. Amer, who also identifies as “non-binary,” claims that “exposure to diversity is an important part” of a child’s development.
One article from The New York Times and another from EducationWeek indicated that, according to studies, the number of transgender youth has shot up in recent years. Other articles from CNN indicate the importance of children transitioning early to be “consistent,” and& the heightened number of “gender-diverse” high schoolers.
It seems that, rather than not “coming after children” and “trying to change things,” these are the exact goals of that community.
Schau didn't texplain why children must instead be taught to be ashamed of who they are and be taught that LGBTQ people must be hated and feared.
A June 6 post by Craig Bannister, reprinted from the said right-wing blog that once was MRC "news" division CNSNews.com ranted that the Associated Press "doesn’t just aggressively promote transgender ideology, it even forbids calling it ideology." But he didn't explain how, exactly, it was an "ideology," preferring instead mindless repetition of right-wing terms like "liberal gender ideology."
A post the same day by Graham decided that because a New York Times podcast noted that activists wanted to bring transgender people into the mainstream, that means they started the "wars" over the issue, not right-wing transphobes desperate to keep such people marginalized:
The Left picked the "Rallying Cry" first. But the liberal media always want to warn its audience that the Republicans are always going too far -- even if their "anti-trans" positions are merely defensive. Let's not have boys compete in girls' sports. Let's not allow drastic life-changing "health care" for children that is not reversible.
[...]
The leftist media isn't really seeking to build trust with a mass audience. They have their eye on leftist Twitter and leftist advocacy groups. They're in no way the "mainstream media." As [right-wing media critic] Krakauer shows, the public is strongly against the Left on the "trans kid" issues, and the media is outside the mainstream. At least for now.
Note how Graham blames on this on a sinister and vaguely defined "Left," and that right-wing haters are merely being "defensive" -- though he never explains what, exactly, is the supposed threat to the world that not hating transgender people would bring.
Kevin Tober spent a June 7 post complaining that CNN's Dana Bash called out right-wing hypocrisy on parental rights by highlighting in an interview with Republican presidential candidate Mike Pence how his fellow right-wingerds are making gender-affirming treatment illegal in some states even with parental approval:
“I want to ask you about another issue related to this, and that is about what's going on in some legislatures,” Bash started off asking. “Some Republican-controlled states have banned transgender children from receiving gender-affirming care, even with the consent of their parents.”
“You talk a lot about parents' rights. You do it on the campaign trail,” Bash said in an attempt to make Pence look hypocritical. “So why do you believe it's the government's role to overrule what parents decide is best for their own children in this case?”
“I strongly support state legislation, including as we did in Indiana, that bans all gender transition chemical or surgical procedures for kids under the age of 18,” Pence responded.
Bash interjected to ask: “what if their parents support that?”
“There is a reason why you don't let kids get a tattoo before they're 18,” Pence correctly noted.
Attempting to be obnoxious and difficult, Bash huffed: “I don't think the government regulates tattoos.”
Pence immediately shut her down: “When you're talking about something that is absolutely transformational, and that we know from mental health experts more often than not has profound negative deleterious effects on people in the long-term."
[...]
Pence is far too kind to Bash in his answers. The proper response to her question is that it's not tolerant or helpful to children suffering from gender dysphoria to go agree with them that they are the opposite sex. They need proper psychological treatment to help them get through their issues.
Affirming a child who claims to be the opposite sex is no different than agreeing with an anorexic child when they tell you that they're fat.
Houck returned for a June 9 post declaring that you are "godless" if you don't hate transgender people like he does, though he cheered that right-wing transphobia is spreading:
The largely godless liberal media are in the tank for Pride Month, worshipping at the altar of the LGBTQ. On Thursday’s CBS Mornings, the crew teamed with an advocate for lesbians in IT (no, this wasn’t concocted by Babylon Bee) to lament trans voices aren’t being “center[ed]” in business and, more broadly, America’s “moving backwards” on LGBTQ “issues” due to a “backlash” from hateful, “anti-trans” mobs upset with Anheuser-Busch and Target.
Leane Pittsford of Lesbians Who Tech and Allies preceded the pity party by explaining her organization came about after seeing “it was a real struggle to get women, non-binary leaders to participate.”
Houck bizarrely potrayed this segment as "bullying" -- becuase it pointed out the haters, apparently.
Another June 9 post by Nicholas Fondacaro -- whose main job at the MRC is to hate-watch "the View" -- portraying co-host Whoopi Goldberg as crazed for standing in support of transgender rightws:
The most off-the-rails cast member was moderator Whoopi Goldberg, who would randomly spiral out of control in rage-fueled fits. “You are telling me that I don't know my family. You are telling me you know my kid. I’m telling you: you don't know my kid. You don’t know what I'm going through, you don’t know what I need, and you're not asking me,” she shrieked, condemning opposition to so-called “gender-affirming” surgeries that leave children mutilated and at risk for other health complications.
Addressing opponents directly, she accused them of “making them feel like they don't deserve to be here and that they don't deserve to live!” “This is on your hands! This is on your hands!” she screamed.
Goldberg’s tirade peaked as they went to a commercial break when she declared: “You are killing our children!”
Fondacaro didn't explain how right-wing transphobes supposedly know better about what's best for their children than their own parents.
