Parker Gets Heathered Again Topic: Media Research Center
Conservative columnist Kathleen Parker has been a previous target of heathering by the folks at the Media Research Center for not strictly adhering to right-wing ideology. They're not done withher yet.
A Nov. 19 column by Brent Bozell rips her writing for the National Review, baselessly claiming that Parker criticized Sarah Palin in order to get on TV:
Another victim of the alleged decline of civility at NR was columnist Kathleen Parker, who we’re told received 11,000 nasty e-mails, “one of which lamented that her mother did not abort her.” Were NR readers upset with Parker, who spent the autumn months building a career in commentary on MSNBC by beating Palin like a pinata at a grade-school birthday party? You betchum.
What [New York Times reporter Tim] Arango did not document was the “erudition” in Parker’s salvos against Palin. She first earned brickbats with sentences like "If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself." Then when people criticized her, she penned a column comparing her conservative critics to Soviet thugs: “Anyone who dares express an opinion that runs counter to the party line will be silenced. That doesn't sound American to me, but Stalin would approve.” Parker also wrote a column suggesting McCain picked Palin because he was dazzled and/or aroused by her beauty, and compared the ticket to Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.
By making a big deal out of Parker's deviation from the "party line" -- where it is verboten to say anything bad about Palin -- Bozell is proving Parker right.
P.J. Gladnick picked up the thread in a Nov. 19 NewsBusters post:
Suddenly popular Kathleen Parker is continuing on her new shtick: pretending to be conservative while bashing conservatives. Her latest effort in this gig is this Washington Post column titled, "Giving Up on God." As you can see, it resembles the fake "advice" that liberals often give to Republicans but in this case it is coming from somebody supposedly conservative. So let us now watch Parker with her latest bid to remain popular with the Georgetown party set[.]
[...]
Yes, sacrilege will earn you plaudits from your newfound liberal friends but don't expect to continue fooling people into thinking that you are conservative. That ship sailed weeks ago.
[...]
Does anybody else out there picture Parker giggling to herself as she thinks up the latest snarky shots to earn her brownie points from her liberal audience?
[...]
The liberals are sure to show you the door if you ever write like an authentic conservative again.
Who appointed Gladnick -- or anyone else at the MRC -- to be the arbiter of who is an "authentic conservative"?
John Ziegler's Newest Project (And His Potty Mouth) Topic: The ConWeb
We've previouslyreported on John Ziegler's film purporting to prove that the ABC miniseries "The Path to 9/11" is being censored by "the left," and its false claim that the miniseries told the "real history" of events leading up to 9/11.
It appears that Ziegler is embarking on a new project: portraying Obama supporters as uninformed idiots. Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight.com detailed how a Zogby poll commissioned by Ziegler contains misleading statements and is, for all intents and purposes, a push poll. Ziegler didn't take too kindly to the criticism -- "I should not have expected much from the followers of a false Messiah virtually installed by an adoring media" -- and demanded an interview with Silver.
Which Silver did. He then posted the transcript of it, which shows Ziegler to be a foul-mouthed thug. Not to mention discrediting his own "documentary" with his hostile anti-Obama bias.
Brennan Still Falsely Claiming Earth Is Cooling Topic: Newsmax
In his Nov. 19 Newsmax column, Phil Brennan once again insists that "global temperature rises peaked around 1998 — and the world has been cooling ever since."
As we've repeatedlydetailed when Brennan has made this claim, while 1998 is the warmest year on record, overall global temperatures continued have continued to rise in the ensuing decade.
Farah's Obama Amnesia Turning Into Hate-Driven Brain Rot Topic: WorldNetDaily
Joseph Farah writes in his Nov. 19 WorldNetDaily column:
Next time you move to another state and need a new driver's license, try this: Refuse to produce the birth certificate or any other personal information required by the department of motor vehicles. Just explain that a facsimile of the required document is posted on your website and give the clerk the domain name.
Tell them: "I'm following the example of President-elect Barack Obama. If he didn't need to produce a birth certificate to establish his eligibility to be president of the United States, why would you require me to produce one to get a lousy driver's license?"
See if it flies.
Uh, Mr. Farah? Obama has produced a birth certificate. Your own employees have found it to be authentic. Your own employees have also found that lawsuits claiming that Obama wasn't born in the United States "rel[y] on discredited claims."
What the hell is wrong with you, Mr. Farah? Do you hate Obama that much that you are so willing to recklessly lie about him? Oh, wait -- we already know the answer to that.
UPDATE: Bob Unruh joins the list of WND amnesia victims.
Finkelstein Loves Eagleburger's Trashing of Dems, Silent on His Criticism of Palin Topic: NewsBusters
A Nov. 18 NewsBusters post by Mark Finkelstein praises former secretary of state Lawrence Eagleburger for trashing Democrats:
At 78, Larry Eagleburger hasn't lost his fastball. Since leaving government, he might actually have added some MPH. Appearing on MSNBC this afternoon, the former Secretary of State in George H.W.'s administration warmed up with some rough words for Barack Obama and Christopher Hitchens . . . then absolutely rubbished Bill Richardson.
Finkelstein concluded: "Ay caramba! Good thing Larry was going easy!"
Curiously, we could find no mention by Finkelstein or anyone else at NewsBusters of Eagleburger's assessment of Sarah Palin as a potential commander in chief:
Asked by the host whether Palin could step in during a time of crisis, Eagleburger reverted to sarcasm before leveling the harsh blow.
"It is a very good question," he said, pausing a few seconds, then adding with a chuckle: "I'm being facetious here. Look, of course not."
Eagleburger explained: "I don't think at the moment she is prepared to take over the reins of the presidency. I can name for you any number of other vice presidents who were not particularly up to it either. So the question, I think, is can she learn and would she be tough enough under the circumstances if she were asked to become president, heaven forbid that that ever takes place?
"Give her some time in the office and I think the answer would be, she will be [pause] adequate. I can't say that she would be a genius in the job. But I think she would be enough to get us through a four year... well I hope not... get us through whatever period of time was necessary. And I devoutly hope that it would never be tested."
Given the fact that he was ostensibly campaigning for John McCain at the time, Eagleburger found himself making a painful walk-back of his words in a Fox News appearance the next day:
"You are witnessing something quite unique: a man who is about to talk to you while he has his foot in his mouth," Eagleburger said when asked if his NPR quotes had been taken out of context.
"I made a serious mistake yesterday. I was quoted correctly," Eagleburger said. "I wasn't thinking when i said it -- in fact, I was discussing foreign policy, and this was in that context, and I was just plain stupid, and if I had given the flim-flam artist Barack Obama some success with this I am deeply apologetic."
WND Doesn't Give Credit Where It's Due Topic: WorldNetDaily
You know how WorldNetDaily likes to complain when other news organizations fail to adequately credit it for news it reports? WND does the same thing too.
A Nov. 18 WND article by Alyssa Farah reporting on William Ayers' regretting dedicating a book he wrote more than 30 years ago to Sirhan Sirhan, states that it came about "when asked about the dedication at a book signing," later linking to a video of Ayers being asked about it posted at Breitbart.com without stating its source.
In fact the video was shot for Eyeblast.tv, the video site of the Media Research Center, by Kerry Picket and right-wing radio blogger Brian Maloney, as Picket states in a Nov. 18 NewsBusters post.
If WND can't properly source its claims, why should anyone give credit to WND at all?
Tapscott Pushes Right-Wing Agenda Journalism at the Examiner Topic: Washington Examiner
The Washington Examiner has been piling up the right-wing hires of late, most recently Townhall.com's Mary Katherine Ham and NewsBusters' Matthew Sheffield. Is the paper heading in a rightward direction, where the editorial page already is under Mark Tapscott, late of the conservative Heritage Foundation? It would seem so.
Tapscott let the evil plan out of the bag a bit in an Oct. 29 blog post pondering where "the Right side of the Blogosphere goes post-election 2008":
The RightRoots must make a top priority of equiping vastly more of our sites with the reportorial and investigative skills required to dig up and present credible exposes, fact-based analyses and concrete news stories.
In short, we've complained about liberal media bias for decades, but now that the mainstream media is steadily being displaced by online media, many of us need to become ..... journalists, or capable of doing the online analogy of traditional journalism, particularly in its investigative phase.
To be sure, we've not been without some capacity in this regard. Right bloggers regularly break new stories and advance existing ones. But there are no Right blogs primarily devoted to gathering and breaking daily and investigative news in politics, public policy and related venues.
If we are to have decisive influence on the public policy agenda, we must wield a significant voice in shaping the daily media narrative about that agenda. That means being able to unnearth facts, figures and documents that break or advance important news stories.
In other words, it's time for the RightRoots to begin working to raise up a new generation of Right online reporters and editors who happen to publish on blogs and other sites devoted to doing what traditional print and broadcast outlets in the Mainstream Media have done for decades.
[...]
Also of interest here is the role of my present organization, The Washington Examiner and its web site, dcexaminer.com. We announced today that Matthew Sheffield is coming onboard to oversee a thorough-going redesign of the site that should make it one of the leading edge media sites bar none.
In other words, Tapscott is trying to position the Examiner as an outlet for right-wing information -- which would seem to undercut its basic mission as a source of local news and information for the greater Washington area.
Tapscott also touted organizations such as the National Journalism Center and the Phillips Foundation for their work in "training aspiring conservative journalists." But in doing so, Tapscott misunderstands the concept of modern journalism.
The term "conservative journalist" (like "liberal journalist") is something of any oxymoron: Once an ideology is placed before the journalistic mission, that mission ceases to exist as journalism. "Conservative journalism" is activism, not journalism. To see how this operates in a worst-case scenario, read WorldNetDaily.
In a comment, Tapscott adds:
You are right about MSM reporters, but they have perverted the practice of genuine journalism of the sort I am suggesting. I'm talking about doing journalism right, not as a tool of propaganda for any particular ideological view or candidates.
But by definition, conservative journalism -- which Tapscott indicates he wants to practice -- is a tool of propaganda for a particular ideological view.
So, as we've previously suspected, the Examiner is on its way to becoming the new Washington Times, at least if Tapscott has his way. Is that even necessary?
CNS to Auto Industry: Drop Dead Topic: CNSNews.com
It appears taht CNSNews.com wants to kill the U.S. auto industry just to punish its unionized employees.
A Nov. 18 article by Pete Winn quotes only opponents of a bailout, highlighting a claim by University of Michigan at Flint economist Mark J. Perry that it "costs over $73 per hour on average to employ a union auto worker."Winn quotes Perry as saying, "Is it right to tax the average worker making $28.50 to bailout workers whose labor cost is over $73 an hour?"
Winn fails to inform his readers that Perry has a right-leaning political agenda. he is a scholar with the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, which Winn eupemistically calls "a free-market foundation" later in the article. On his blog, Perry has called a teacher pension plan in Michigan public schools a "pyramid scheme," headlined one post "Socialized Medicine Can Kill You" and suggested that Barack Obama's proposed raising of the highest marginal income tax rate from 36% to 39.6% is like a Depression-era tax hike from 25% to 79%.
A Nov. 18 article by Josiah Ryan highlights the views of "Congressmen-elect who were visiting the Capitol for freshman orientation" who oppose a bailout, at least until it's set up in such as way that "company management and autoworker union members ought to make sacrifices in terms of pay and benefit cuts."
Dan Gainor's Nov. 18 CNS column is mpore explicit in his desire to kill the auto industry to spite the United Auto Workers:
[I]t has little to do with saving Detroit and a lot to do with helping out the Democratic Party’s political machine. The chief recipient of this deal isn’t the companies, it’s the union. A bailout of Detroit would secure that the Big Three continue to fail and pay exorbitant sums to thousands of union workers.
Mychal Massie slavers over Sarah Palin in his Nov. 18 WorldNetDaily column, padding her resume in the process:
She ended a multi-year stalemate over the financing and construction of a $40 billion cross-state pipeline that supplies cheaper natural gas to Alaskans and the lower 48 states. That single act alone did more to advance American energy independence than Biden, Obama or McCain can boast collectively. In her capacity as being responsible for the Alaskan National Guard, she authorized 521 missions that saved 200 lives.
Others offer a more reality-based view. Regarding the pipeline, the New York Times wrote:
Certainly she proved effective in attracting developers to a project that has eluded Alaska governors for three decades. But an examination of the pipeline project also found that Ms. Palin has overstated both the progress that has been made and the certainty of success.
[...]
Contributing to the project’s uncertainty is Ms. Palin’s antagonistic relationship with the major oil companies that control Alaska’s untapped gas reserves.
Ms. Palin won the governor’s office in part by capitalizing on populist distaste for the political establishment’s coziness with Big Oil, and her pipeline strategy was intended to blunt its power over the process. Her willingness to take on the oil companies has allowed the McCain campaign to portray her as a scourge of special interests.
Now, though, she will need the industry’s cooperation if her plan is to succeed, and just this week, her office said she intended to reach out to the North Slope oil companies.
As Ms. Palin takes to the road to campaign with Mr. McCain, invoking the pipeline as a major victory, some Alaska lawmakers who initially endorsed her plan now believe it was a mistake. State Senator Bert Stedman, a Republican who is co-chairman of the finance committee, said that in its contract with the chosen developer, TransCanada, the state bargained away too much leverage with little guarantee of success.
“There is no requirement to lift one shovel of dirt or lay down one inch of steel,” he said.
The president commands National Guard troops whenever they're deployed in federal missions, such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. State governors only command the guardsmen in operations inside their states, traditionally in response to disasters like floods and fires.
According to Alaska National Guard spokeswoman, Kalei Brooks, in the two years of Palin's term, the National Guard has run 521 missions and saved 200 lives.
Major tasks, Brooks said, have been fighting wildfires and providing standby security during two meetings, including the International Whaling Commission (PDF) meeting in May 2007.
But even in state operations, Palin has a limited role. For big or unusual events, Palin authorizes the National Guard's actions, but for most run-of-the-mill work, Palin isn't involved at all.
Brooks explained that the National Guard works with other state security and emergency services, which each cover different geographical areas of the huge state. Each agency has a set of agreements that authorize them to respond automatically in an emergency, without needing the governor's specific authorization every time hunters get stranded in swamps, or Swedish tourists get stuck in the snow.
And while McCain spokesman Tucker Bound was correct when he told CNN that Palin, "makes the decision as to how to equip, how to command the National Guard in Alaska," the federal government, not the state, provides all of their equipment and material.
Conservative columnist Kathleen Parker gets the Heathers treatement again at NewsBusters, this time from Mark Finkelstein in a Nov. 17 post:
Before a few weeks ago, I don't recall seeing Kathleen Parker much on TV. But tuning into Andrea Mitchell's MSNBC show this afternoon, there she was. And when I got back from the gym and fired up my DVR of David Gregory's "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?" Yup, Parker redux.
Let's see. What might possibly explain Kathleen Parker's sudden popularity on MSNBC? You don't suppose it could conceivably have anything to do with her September column calling on Sarah Palin to step down from the GOP ticket, do you?
Me-yow! Failure to strictly adhere to conservative orthodoxy continues to have a price at NewsBusters.
In his Nov. 17 WorldNetDaily column, Michael Ackley copied-and-pasted a transcript that he claims is a "colloquy between PBS interviewer Charlie Rose and NBC talking head Tom Brokaw" about how much they don't know about Barack Obama. Ackley then adds: "Alas! This is not satire; it is not parody. I wish it were. The American media, which were able to find out everything about Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, couldn't find out much about Barack Obama."
In fact, this transcript was taken from Rush Limbaugh's radio show, who pulled the Brokaw and Rose quotes out of context and spliced them together to create a false picture of what the two were actually talking about. As Media Matters points out, Brokaw's statement that "there's a lot about [Obama] that we don't know" was in fact Brokaw attributing that view to "conservative commentators."
Ackley rather hilariously adds: "During the campaign, you could find the real Barack Obama only in the alternative (soon to be dominant) media, like WorldNet Daily." Well, yeah, if you mean by "the real Obama" WND's litany of lies -- not to mention Ackley's own false distortion.
And such brazen lying and sloppy journalism will make WND the "dominant media" how, Michael?
A Nov. 17 CNSNews.com article by Patrick Goodenough states that if Republican Norm Coleman, who has "built a reputation as a leading watchdog of the United Nations," loses his Minnesota Senate race against Democrat Al Franken, "it could deprive Washington of an outspoken and respected critic of U.N. corruption and abuses."
While there is a definite record on Coleman's criticism of the U.N., Goodenough offers no evidence that Coleman's criticism is "respected." To the contrary, for instance, a January 2005 U.S. News & World Report article noting Coleman's criticism of the U.N.'s oil-for-food program in Iraq notes that "both admirers and detractors wonder whether Coleman's desire to get to the bottom of the U.N. allegations is just a vehicle to take him to the top," with one critic adding that "I think that his career shows that he is ambitious and opportunistic, that nothing is beyond the realm."
Goodenough, in fact, quotes nobody else in his article, let alone anyone supporting his claim that Coleman's U.N. criticism is "respected."
WND's Obama Birth Certificate Amnesia Reaches the Top Topic: WorldNetDaily
Add Joseph Farah to the list of WorldNetDaily employees who doesn't read the website he works for.
In his Nov. 17 column, Farah claims that "Obama's record of non-cooperation and secrecy" in the matter of his birth certificate "has now resulted in conspiracy theories that will plague him throughout his administration if he doesn't address them now with utter transparence. ... Count me among those who really want to see that birth certificate now."
Farah doesn't mention that his own website is among those promulgating those conspiracy theories -- despite the fact that his own website debunked them. Which, of course, he also doesn't mention.
As we've repeatedly detailed, WND determined in August that the birth certificate released by the Obama campaign is "authentic," and that the lawsuit filed by Philip Berg demanding that Obama prove his U.S. citizenship "relies on discredited claims." Farah continues a pattern of WND writers who fail to acknowledge this simple fact in writing about accusations regarding the birth certificate.
Farah goes on to state: "This is hardly a laughing matter. The longer this soap opera drags on, the more suspicions it will raise – the less credibility our electoral system will have, the more many people will believe the whole political system is rigged." Of course, that's exactly the perception Farah wants to prevail.
By clinging to this false conspiracy theory -- which his own website has debunked -- Farah shows himself to be a very dishonest journalist. But then, we already knew that.
Klein Still Playing Guilt-By-Association on Obama Topic: WorldNetDaily
It's clear that Aaron Klein's Obama-hate has not abated with the end of the campaign -- he's still playing guilt by association the way he did during the campaign.
A Nov. 16 article features an interview with Bernardine Dohrn, wife of "former Weathermen radical Bill Ayers." Klein actually appears to present Dohrn's views fairly, though the headline gets things wrong.The headline puts "Fear of Obama's ties to Ayers because of racism" quotes as if Dohrn said those exact words, but Klein quotes Dohrn saying no such thing. The subhead states, "Dohrn claims black man 'not knowable' to white people," but Dohrn never said that either; rather, Klein quotes Dohrn as saying that the idea that Obama was "not knowable to white people" was a tactic used by opponents of Obama -- like Klein, a leading promoter of Obama's purported ties to Ayers:
"You want to recognize here that the famous and much-talked-about Bradley Effect, the notion that white people cannot leave behind some of the trappings of white supremacy and racism that have been the ugly river beneath all U.S. discourse, is really important. I was struck when you were playing those tapes that the real coded message underneath those tapes that used Bill as a fear proxy is that you don't know who Barack Obama really is.
"There was some notion of him being unknowable, exotic, strange, foreign, deceitful. And, you know, strangely enough, we feel like if all they could come up with was that he knew us casually, the guy is pretty clean, is pretty extraordinary. He's been vetted and vetted and vetted, and there was nothing there to throw at him, except this question of maybe an African-American man is not knowable to white people. And it's worth – we don't – neither Bill or I think that we're in a post-racial world, but it is worth noting that that was rejected by almost all sectors of the population, including independent voters."
Given that Dohrn calls out Klein's anti-Obama tactics, it's surprising that Klein makes no effort to respond to her charges.
Another Nov. 16 article by Klein tries to tie the Communist Party to Obama by outlining what it was Obama to do -- despite the fact that he offers no evidence that any Obama policy is socialist.
To do that, Klein deceives on Obama's views. For instance, he writes of Obama's position on health care:
As an Illinois state senator, Obama publicly supported universal healthcare and previously expressed support for "single payer," although he later waffled. He also co-sponsored the Bernardin Amendment, which did not pass but which would have amended the Illinois State Constitution to add healthcare to the list of basic rights for residents.
At no point does Klein state the health care plan Obama promoted during his presidential campaign, which is not a single-payer plan and permits choice in plans.
That's dishonest. Sadly, such dishonesty is the kind of reporting we've come to expect from Klein and WND.
