WND Not Finding Humor in Equire Satire Piece Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily is absolutely livid about a Esquire parody blog post claiming that WND is pulling Jerome Corsi's anti-Obama birther book "Where's the Birth Certificate?" out of stores.
A May 18 WND article assailed the blog post as "a completely fabricated news story" that is prompting editor Joseph Farah to descend even further into conspiracy mode by blaming the Obama White House for it:
WND founder and CEO Joseph Farah confirmed he never spoke to Esquire. "Never uttered these words or anything remotely resembling them to anyone. It is a complete fabrication."
He said, "The book is selling briskly. I am 100 percent behind it. This has all the earmarkings of a White House dirty trick – but, of course, only the Nixon administration was capable of dirty tricks like that, according to our watchdog media."
[...]
Farah said the Esquire attack is "a prima facie example of libel and attempt at restraint of trade."
"This is an astonishingly reckless report by a company that has demonstrated its total disregard for the truth," said Farah. "I don't know who Esquire's anonymous sources are, but I can only guess that their address is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue."
Farah surmised Esquire will claim the article is parody, but he points out that news organizations around the world were contacting him within minutes of its posting on the Internet, with some of them in doubt as to the veracity of the report.
The article includes fictional quotes from Farah and Corsi – neither of whom ever spoke to Esquire or were asked for comment.
"We are exploring our legal options right now," said Farah. "There is no question of damages from this irresponsible attack. This book was released yesterday. Our author is in day two of a media tour. This report is playing havoc with a bestselling book – and there is little question that is the intent."
Of course, WND doesn't really have many legal options here. The Esquire post was tagged as "humor," and it clearly went beyond the bounds of absurdity by claiming Corsi also wrote a book on "the Great 'Moon Landing' Cover-Up" and its so-called undercover "source at WND" as a foul-mouthed lout. (We assume that the only WND employee permitted to engaged in foul-mouthed tirades is Farah himself.)
Esquire has since appended an editor's note to the blog post:
We committed satire this morning to point out the problems with selling and marketing a book that has had its core premise and reason to exist gutted by the news cycle, several weeks in advance of publication. Are its author and publisher chastened? Well, no. They double down, and accuse the President of the United States of perpetrating a fraud on the world by having released a forged birth certificate. Not because this claim is in any way based on reality, but to hold their terribly gullible audience captive to their lies, and to sell books. This is despicable, and deserves only ridicule. That's why we committed satire in the matter of the Corsi book. Hell, even the president has a sense of humor about it all.
WND has suffered from a longtime inability to distinguish satire from reality. In 2005, it treated as fact an April Fool's Day post on a Hollywood gossip site that CBS "was rushing into production a TV movie about the Terri Schiavo case," and then-columnist Doug Powers even rushed into print his outrage in a WND column. WND issued a vague mea culpa a few days later, and Powers' column disappeared without a trace.
Corsi Pesters Elderly Woman About Her Dead Daughter Topic: WorldNetDaily
As we've noted, WorldNetDaily is going all in on the idea that the long-form birth certificate President Obama released is a fake. To that end, Jerome Corsi is now pestering elderly women.
Corsi peddles his latest conspiracy theory in a May 17 WND article: that the birth certificate number Obama currently holds was originally assigned to an infant named Virginia Sunahara, who was born the same day as Obama but died a day later. As Corsi writes, "Is it possible that if Obama's birth records were forged, the perpetrator used Virginia Sunahara's birth certificate number, knowing the girl was long dead and the family was unlikely to know or complain?"
Corsi even pestered the infant's now-elderly mother for a copy of the birth certificate:
WND contacted Virginia's mother Clara, 83, who is living in Wahiawa on Oahu.
Clara told WND by telephone she did not have Virginia's birth certificate and she was not interested in applying to the Hawaii Department of Health to see what birth records might be on file regarding her daughter.
Remember, Corsi is reopening old wounds by pestering this elderly woman about her long-dead daughter for the sole purpose of a political hit job on the president. Given Corsi's and WND's demonstratedhatred of the president, there's no need to pretend this is about anything else.
NewsBusters Attacks CNN Anchor For Declaring He's Gay Topic: NewsBusters
NewsBusters is reacting to CNN anchor Don Lemon admission that he's gay pretty much the way you'd expect -- portraying it as a bad thing that merely confirms bashing him as biased.
A May 16 post by Matt Hadro howls that "Lemon has a history of pro-gay bias at CNN, featuring soft interviews of pro-gay figures and hinting that Christian churches preach the same hateful message against homosexuality that the fringe Westboro Baptist Church promotes – 'God hates fags.'" Hadro's main issue, it seems, is that Lemon treated gays with respect, not scorn; among the examples of so-called "pro-gay bias" he offers is that Lemon asked former Army Lt. Dan Choi, who was expelled from the military after his homosexuality became public, "Was it worth the prize [sic] for speaking out?"
The next day, Hadro took umbrage at Lemon for committing the henious crime of asking that people treat gays with respect:
CNN anchor Don Lemon grabbed headlines over the weekend with his Twitter announcement that he is gay. On Monday his co-workers provided plenty of time for him on two separate shows to share his story and his own views on the gay-rights issue, and showered him with support. As if that wasn't enough, he asked them in turn to do the same for others "who choose to come out."
"I really appreciate all the support, and I hope you continue to support not only me, but other people who choose to come out," Lemon told afternoon Newsroom host Brooke Baldwin.
Again, Hadro complained that "Lemon has himself provided a podium for gay rights activists to makes themselves heard, though he claims objectivity on the issue."
CNS Hides Oil Ties of 'Expert' Who Opposes Repealing Oil Tax Break Topic: CNSNews.com
A May 17 CNSNews.com article by Matt Cover carries the headline "Democratic Leaders Mislead on Gas Prices, Oil Taxes, Says Energy Expert." The "expert" in question is Institute for Energy Research senior vice president Dan Kish, who told Cover that "eliminating tax write-offs for oil companies will not have any effect on gas prices."
Unmentioned by Cover: Kish's organization is aa conservative think tank funded by the oil and energy industries.
According to ExxonSecrets, ExxonMobil has given $307,000 to the Institute for Energy Research since 1998. It has also received funding from other petroleum-related entities, including Koch Industries and KBR.
Cover began his article with the flat assertion that "Democratic leaders in both the House and Senate continue to make misleading statements about the effect their plans to raise taxes on oil companies would have on gas prices." At no point does Cover describe the political ideology of Kish or his group.
Kinsolving Stoops to Lazily Insulting White House Press Secretary Topic: WorldNetDaily
If you're presenting yourself as a reporter in the White House briefing room and have routinely complained that the White House press secretary won't call on you, it seems that one of the last things you would do is devote a column to making him look bad.
But that's what Les Kinsolving does in his May 17 WorldNetDaily column. As an attack piece on Jay Carney, though, it's an exceptionally lazy one; all Kinsolving does is quote at length other attacks on Carney, and the only original writing Kinsolving contributes is introducing them. He can't even be bothered to attack Carney in his own words.
Kinsolving is also too lazy to explain why he's serving as a conduit for attacking Carney. Aswe'vedetailed, Carney rarely calls on Kinsolving during White House press briefings, which results in WND repeatedly complaining that Carney didn't answer questions that Kinsolving didn't ask.
Is such whining and lazy attacking the behavior of a reporter who should be taken seriously as a journalist? We're pretty sure it's not.
WND's Massie: Obama's Parents Were Venomous Snakes Topic: WorldNetDaily
Mychal Massie spews more Obama-hate in his May 17 WorldNetDaily column:
I don't blame Obama for being a corrupt, dishonest, congenital liar – looking at his gene pool and the associations he gravitated toward, it can be argued that little more can be expected of him. He is the spawn of elapids, so what else could he be? I blame the people who voted for him. They believed his poorly told lies and his vacuous promises have resulted in the epitome of the Feast of Barmecide.
But Massie's not done spewing. He adds that "many blacks did, do and will support [Obama] because of his melanin content, even though he's not black – he's Kenyan and communist."
Massie's gonna need a bigger thesaurus to come up with new ways to spread his sleazy smears and express his Obama derangement.
NewsBusters Dubiously Defends Ron Paul Topic: NewsBusters
Ron Paul has gained some unusual defenders in the form of NewsBusters, which typically sticks more toward doctrinaire conservatism than Paul's libertarian leanings. And, being NewsBusters, their defense of Paul is not quite honest.
A May 14 post by Noel Sheppard cheers Paul for making MSNBC's Chris Matthews "look rather silly" for asking about the public accomodation provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Sheppard twice asserts that Paul's son, Rand Paul, gave an "honest libertarian answer" to the question last fall, after which "the media pounced on him as a racist," but he never describes what that "honest libertarian answer" actually was -- which is that Rand Paul said he opposed forcing any business to serve anyone they don't want to serve.
Rather than explicitly explain the position of both Pauls, Sheppard rants that "MSNBC's goal is to make every Republican presidential candidate look racist" and attacked Matthews as an "Obama-loving sycophant."
The next day, Sheppard again came to Paul's defense, claiming that "the George Soros-funded organization Think Progress falsely accused Congressman Ron Paul (R-Tx.) of comparing Social Security and Medicare to slavery." In fact, Think Progress stated that Paul "claimed that letting Social Security and similar programs to move forward is just like permitting slavery" -- which, as the transcript of Paul's appearance shows, is exactly what Paul did by noting that courts have upheld the constitutionality of Social Security as they did slavery. But Sheppard was too invested in his straw man to change course now:
Anyone with even a room temperature intelligence quotient would understand that Paul's point was a court in 1937 finding Social Security constitutional doesn't necessarily mean that's the case.
There have been many laws that were upheld by one set of Supreme Court justices only to be overturned by another years later. Slavery of course was one of them.
With this in mind, Paul was by no means equating Social Security and Medicare to slavery. He was instead saying that in his view, the Supreme Court finding in 1937 was wrong, and used slavery as an example of when the Court was similarly so.
Sheppard isn't the only Paul defender at NewsBusters. Matt Hadro complained that CNN aired a clip of Conan O'Brien "mocking Paul's presidential bid." Hadro huffed:
Perhaps if CNN thought Paul to be such a "fringe" candidate as to merit mockery, they could have provided some comic relief before the 2008 election at the expense of left-wing "fringe" candidate Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio). Instead, they granted Kucinich plenty of air-time to express his proposal to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney.
Hadro might want to look into the comedy segments that end Fox News' "Special Report," many of which tilt pro-conservative or anti-liberal. And we don't recall Hadro complaining when Kucinich was all over Fox News suggesting that President Obama's approval of military action in Libya was an impeachable offense.
Victoria Jackson Swallows Ex-Terrorist's Dubious Story Topic: WorldNetDaily
Victoria Jackson devotes her May 12 WorldNetDaily column to regurgitating the story of self-proclaimed ex-terrorist-turn-Christian activist Kamal Saleem, a confederate of self-proclaimed ex-terrorist-turn-Christian activist Walid Shoebat. Like Shoebat, Saleem's story has had questions raised that Jackson shows no interest in checking out.
Jackson bizarrely writes of Saleem, "He is underground because Muslims that leave Islam are killed." Unless you count visits to colleges and even the Air Force Academy to rail against Islam on behalf of right-wing Christian organizations as operating "underground," not so much.
As the New York Times points out, Saleem’s account of how, as a child, he infiltrated Israel to plant bombs via a network of tunnels underneath the Golan Heights has never been verified by experts. Saleem has also claimed to be descended from the grand wazir of Islam, which one expert described as a "nonsensical term."
Even more nonsensical is Jackson's suggestion that she transcribed her column's lengthy excerpt of Saleem's testimony by hand on a notepad while "sitting in my hot Florida driveway, in my car with the engine idling, the air conditioner on and my cell phone plugged into the cigarette lighter hole." That's highly unlikely, even if Jackson was known more these days for taking notes than doing handstands.
Trump Not Running For President; Newsmax Hardest Hit Topic: Newsmax
James Hirsen's heart is breaking.
In a May 16 Newsmax post, Hirsen mulls over Donald Trump's presidential ambitions, as he is prone to do along with the rest of Newsmax. After quoting an NBC executive saying that the "Celebrity Apprentice" franchise could carry on without Trump, Hirsen added, "Based on the current crop of potential GOP candidates, let’s hope so."
A few hours after Hirsen wrote that, however, Trump announced that he would not seek the presidential nomination, and in a way that contradicts the way Newsmax's Ronald Kessler claimed he would.
Remember, it took three tries for Kessler to nail down his "exclusive" that Trump would announce on the May 22 season finale of "Celebrity Apprentice" a date that would announce his decision on running, and that "sources close to the real estate titan tell me that at that press conference Trump will be announcing his candidacy for the presidency." The first part of that went bust the other day, when an NBC executive pointed out the "Celebrity Apprentice" finale was taped months ago.
The actual Trump announcement got only a "Newsmax Wires" article -- surprising given the great lengths Newsmax has gone to promote Trump's presidential ambitions, led by the fawning coverage of Kessler.
Hirsen, meanwhile, speculating that continuing "Celebrity Apprentice" was more important to Trump than the presidency and weirdly blaming NBC for it: "It looks like NBC played hardball with the Donald. The mogul must have been acutely aware of the Ashton Kutcher hire by CBS to neatly slip into the Charlie Sheen role in the “Two and a Half Men” sitcom. penned a post after Trump's big announcement. Could it be that becoming the new Sheen would have been too much for the Donald to bear?"
Having their Trump dreams dashed, it seems, was too much for Hirsen and Newsmax to bear.
MRC's Double Standard on Media Types Advising Presidents Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's grumblings over CNN's Fareed Zakaria apparently advising President Obama on foreign policy has escalated into a full-fledged freakout.
MRC chief Brent Bozell issued a statement asserting that Zakaria "must recuse himself immediately from covering foreign policy that affects the United States," claiming that "must recuse himself immediately from covering foreign policy that affects the United States." Bozell added:
For decades, the liberal media have repeatedly condemned conservatives in the media who communicated privately with Republican presidents. They furiously attacked George Will in 1980 when he advised candidate Ronald Reagan, and trounced on Roger Ailes when he sent President Bush a note about the new war on terror in the wake of September 11th. Neither of them was a reporter.
But neither is Zakaria. He is a host on CNN and a columnist, not a reporter. And Ailes is more than "not a reporter"; he's the head of a news network.
The MRC's Geoffrey Dickens, meanwhile, penned a NewsBusters post headlined, "CNN's Double Standard: Okay When One of Ours Advises the President, Bad When Fox Does It!"He cited a 2002 MRC CyberAlert whining about how CNN supposedly "throughout an entire broadcast day expressed outrage at Ailes' action."
Dickens is ignoring his employer's double standard: At no point in that 2002 CyberAlert did the MRC criticize Ailes' actions. In fact, it defended what Ailes wrote as "pretty conventional advice at a time when all Americans were 'standing shoulder-to-shoulder' with the President, as Nancy Pelosi might say."
If the MRC couldn't be moved to criticize Ailes, it has no credibility to criticize Zakaria.
WND's Klayman: Liberal Jews 'Insensitive To Their Heritage,' Forget Holocaust Topic: WorldNetDaily
At the recent White House Correspondents Dinner in Washington, D.C., which is the equivalent of D.C.'s Academy Awards celebration – only for "less beautiful" people – President Barack Hussein Obama celebrated his roughly two years in office. The crowd of 3,000-plus, filled mostly with leftist journalists and TV and radio commentators, as well as Hollywood types, fawned over Obama, encouraging him to pursue a heightened push for his promised leftist-socialist agenda. In this regard, Seth Meyers, the primo star of "Saturday Night Live" and the master of ceremonies of the event, tried to humorously tweak the president by saying he would be even more electable in 2012 if he stood fast to the "change vision" as enunciated during Obama's successful 2008 presidential campaign.
Seth Meyers is a liberal Jew. But his call for Obama to pursue an even stronger "change agenda" had to also mean by definition that Obama should pursue even stronger anti-Israel, pro-Muslim policies – which have been a centerpiece of the Obama presidency. While it is regrettable if not tragic that many liberal Jews are insensitive to their heritage and all to easily forget the lessons of the Holocaust, Meyers' advice to Obama was in the process of taking on even greater significance, if not irony, since plans were then in operation to kill the world's leading anti-Jew hater, Osama bin Laden. But our "fearless leader" saw the death of OBL as less of an effort to mete out justice for the thousands killed on 9/11 and elsewhere by al-Qaida than a milestone in his push to further Muslim interests worldwide, as well as advance has own prospects for re-election in 2012.
NewsBusters Misleads About George Will's Aid to Reagan Topic: NewsBusters
In an addendum to a May 13 NewsBusters post by Matt Hadro having a cow over Fareed Zakaria's disclosure that he has advised President Obama on foreign policy, Lachlan Markay complains that there's "a pretty notable double standard at work here in the rest of the news media's silence on Zakaria's conflict of interest." He writes:
Similarly, there was significant media backlash when it was revealed that columnist George Will had advised Ronald Reagan on debate tactics during the 1980 presidential campaign. As Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of the far-left Nation magazine, recalled, "a Los Angeles Times media critic called Will 'a political shill,' Chicago columnist Mike Rokyo called him a 'lapdog,' and the New York Daily News kicked him off their editorial pages (though it reinstated him too soon after)." (It should be noted that, contrary to vanden Heuvel's suggestion, Will's role in Reagan's campaign "was well known, and readers could take Will's views into account," as USA Today's Philip Meyer noted.)
In fact, it appears that Will did not disclose the full extent of his debate work for Reagan at the time. Here is what Wikipedia says about it:
Immediately after the debate, Will—not yet a member of the ABC News staff—appeared on ABC's Nightline. He was introduced by host Ted Koppel, who said "It's my understanding that you met for some time yesterday with Governor Reagan," and that Will "never made any secret of his affection" for the Republican candidate. Will did not explicitly disclose that he had assisted Reagan's debate preparation, or been present during it. He went on to praise Reagan, saying his "game plan worked well. I don't think he was very surprised."
Will did not disclose everything he needed to at the time, and even Will himself has admitted that "my participation in his debate preparation was as inappropriate as it was superfluous."
If Markay can show us where he or any Media Research Center employee criticized Will (or, for that matter, Fox News chief Roger Ailes for writing a letter to Karl Rove with post-9/11 political advice) for his unethical behavior, he would have a better case for whining about alleged conflicts of interest.
Libelous AIM Blogger Checks In Again Topic: Accuracy in Media
Accuracy in Media just can't get enough of a blogger who exposed it to legal jeopardy, it seems.
Even though Allie Duzett used an AIM blog to libelously smear Obama administration offical Kevin Jennings as a "pedophile," forcing AIM to delete the post and issue a retraction and quasi-apology, AIM keeps allowing her to blog there. And so we have her second blog post in the past month, this one lecturing on "Media Bias in Layout."
A side note: The picture accompanying Duzett's post is of three DC-area newspapers, the Washington Post (loathed by the likes of AIM for its purported liberal bias), the Express (a commuter-targeted paper published by the Postthat cares more about entertainment news than political bias), and the Washington Examiner (a right-leaning tabloid daily owned by right-wing billionaire Philip Anschutz). We suspect that Duzett is much more concerned about the bias in the Post-related products, even though the Examiner arguably is the more biased paper (and there's no mention at all of the similarly right-wing-biased Washington Times).
Barack Hussein Obama is a dishonest, untruthful, arrogant, narcissistic human being. I say that because he has conducted himself in ways that make it impossible to conclude anything else. And his suddenly providing a birth certificate, after ignoring requests to provide same for three years, makes him even more so.
His refusal to do so, in addition to his failed policies, has undermined the confidence of the nation in his leadership, including many in the military who must answer to him. It was also a clear example of his disregard for the propriety of the office he holds. A true leader would have understood that the office he holds is bigger than him, and that he serves at the pleasure of the American people. Had he understood those truths, for the good of the nation he would have ended the debate immediately.
Yes, let the joyous news be spread, the wicked old witch at last is dead! He may not have been an actual witch, but he was the wicked old man of the east. Our Navy SEALs have killed Osama. Finally Obama can take credit for something he didn't actually do himself. Wait, he's been doing that all along … never mind, business as usual.
-- Chrissy Satterfield, May 4 WorldNetDaily column
Some of you will remember Nikita Khrushchev at the United Nations, removing his shoe and pounding the heel on the table, while shouting, "We will bury you!" It's not hard these days to suggest this simply was a bad translation and that what the communist leader was threatening, was to "Barry Soetoro" us.
It's time to get real and admit that Obama is not just another ultra-liberal president cut in the mold of Bill Clinton. It's time to stop tiptoeing. It's time to say it: We have a Marxist in the White House! Say it out loud. Say it clearly. Say it with conviction: Marxist.
The major question of our time is: Will the bad guys win and build a new America where people will be prevented from creating wealth and where freedom will be virtually nonexistent, or will the good guys prevail and rebuild an America that is based on our founding principles, but with harsh safeguards put in place to prevent collectivism, in any form, from ever again gaining a foothold?
The United States is hanging onto the edge of a financial cliff by its economic fingernails. And Obama and the progressives in Congress know that all it will take to loosen that fingernail grip is to have more and more debt piled on top of it.
Obama's objective from Day 1 has been to punish those who are prosperous and transfer their wealth to those he deems to be the "exploited" class. As he has made it clear throughout his adult life, it's all about "fairness" to him. And he is so close to pushing the U.S. over the financial edge and into the abyss that he can taste it. He's come too far, too fast, to allow anyone slow him down now.
Which is why he will be the first president in U.S. history to spend 95 percent of his time during the remaining year and a half of his first term in office campaigning for his re-election. And he's smart to do it. The fundamental transformation of America has already occurred, but Obama needs another four years to cement it permanently into place.
In the event, Obama's well-known trust and confidence in the prowess and integrity of America's military forces proves correct. In the firefight that takes place between the U.S. team and bin Laden's defenders, he is slain. The victims of 9/11 are revenged. Justice is served. And even Rush Limbaugh thanks God for Obama.
If this were the synopsis for a movie, we might buy the ticket, opt for the requisite suspension of disbelief and enjoy the thrill ride that ensued. We might even sit still for a little casting against type that stretches the artistic prowess of the well-known actor in the leading role. But when dealing with actual events and people, a counterfactual performance may be "good acting," but it is also quite possibly deceptive action. In this instance, for example, Barack Obama is not known as someone who esteems the prowess and integrity of the U.S. military.
When Barack Obama told the nation about the killing of Osama bin Laden, he said, "I, me, we, our" some 72 times. When he spoke to the troops at Fort Campbell in the aftermath of that killing, he used those words at least 68 times.
You'd think he conceived the operation and carried it out all by himself!
[...]
No, you're not like the Wizard of Oz, creating a visual image of what you think a good president looks, sounds and acts like. But, you are a man who was elevated far above his level of accomplishment, skill and abilities after an election campaign that painted a picture people wanted to believe.
Unfortunately, it was a false picture. It was a picture of a dream, and dreams don't get elected president. People are elected and now, in your case, the truth is coming out.
I am not reluctant to assert that those occupying the White House are the most abhorrent and impertinent people ever to venture therein, and truly, we could not have more profaned The People's House if we had piled it from floor to ceiling with excrement. Perhaps I am less concerned with the potential for being labeled a racist for saying these things, but it isn't as though such action is bereft of blowback.
I have no problem with asserting that the birth certificate presented to the world by President Obama is obviously a forgery. I don't believe that it is "over the top" to appraise the SEIU as a criminal organization that ought to be outlawed, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka as a stereotypical thug, or our president's affiliation with these bodies as treason. Had Americans not allowed our legislature, judiciary and state houses to be incrementally peopled by craven elites and socialist operatives, the aforementioned unions would be outlawed, and people like Obama and Trumka would be relegated to bitching amongst one another in bars, coffee shops and penitentiaries.
Some might consider these as ad hominem attacks; I view them as mere observations.
Newsmax's Walsh Misleads on Crime in El Paso Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax's resident immigrant-hater, James Walsh, checks in again with a May 13 column denouncing President Obama's speech in El Paso, Texas, on immigration. Walsh asserted that "A drug cartel crime wave also is underway in El Paso, which ranks second only to southern Arizona in cases of drug and illegal alien smuggling and related murders."
In fact, as Media Matters details, El Paso was recently rated the safest large city in the country. And while its cross-border sister city, Ciudad Juárez, had more than 2,700 murders last year, El Paso had only one, in large part because the drug cartels don't bring their violence across the border.
