MRC Attacks Journalist For Writing About Kavanaugh -- But Loved Her A Few Months Ago When She Targeted A Democrat
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center was in the kill-the-messenger phase of the Brett Kavanaugh story when Geoffrey Dickens wrote a Sept. 26 post complaining about the "hit piece" co-written by the New Yorker's Jane Mayer about Kavanaugh's drunken college years replete with allegations of sexual misbehavior. Dickens huffed that "a look at her past demonstrates why her work should be taken with biggest grains of salt as she has become a go-to author for partisan attack stories," adding that her Kavanaugh story is "just the latest in a long list of hit pieces against conservatives."

But Dickens makes sure to leave off the list one prominent story that discredits his conspiracy theory -- and one that the MRC itself touted.

As Mayer herself reminds people like Dickens who reflexively accuse her of anti-conservative bias, she co-wrote in May with Ronan Farrow (who co-wrote the Kavanaugh piece with her) an article detailing sexual misconduct by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, which caused him to resign a mere three hours after its publication.

Since Schneiderman was a Democrat who targeted President Trump's shady business dealings, the MRC loved that story:

• Tim Graham touted "The New Yorker revelations of Schneiderman’s allegedly violent behavior toward girlfriends."
• Kyle Drennen noted an MSNBC appearance by "Jane Mayer, who actually co-authored the article that revealed Scheiderman’s alleged abusive behavior toward women which led to his resignation."
• Tom Blumer highlighted "Jane Mayer's and Ronan Farrow's bombshell New Yorker piece" that "succinctly summarized the horrors" of Schneiderman. Another Blumer piece relayed how "Now-former New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's serial and often violent mistreatment of women chronicled on Monday at The New Yorker."

Other MRC pieces referenced the Schneiderman scandal without mentioning Mayer of the New Yorker.

Nevertheless, the MRC has it in for Mayer, mostly due to its longtime obsession with Anita Hill. As Dickens writes: "Mayer first enjoyed the liberal limelight when she (along with co-author Jill Abramson) released her anti-Clarence Thomas book in 1994. The book Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas was such a hit with the left, Mayer and company were rewarded with Showtime turning it into a 1999 movie." Dickens offers no evidence that "Strange Justice" was "anti-Clarence Thomas"; perhaps he's confusing being pro-truth for being anti-conservative.

The fact that the MRC loved Mayer just a few months ago but hates her now solely on the basis of who she writes about goes a long way to explaining the partisan shallowness that guides the MRC and why its "media research" shouldn't be trusted.

WND's Kavanaugh Accuser Derangement Syndrome, Part 2
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Where were you when you were 17? What were you doing, among your friends, and alone?

Did you ever do anything – anything – you’re embarrassed about, sorry for, anything you would never want to be indicative of your character now?

Are you a sinless, living saint? Or, looking back honestly, did you ever – in your middle or late teens – do anything that, if it were revealed today, might cause others to think less of you?

Or do you, like 99 percent of the rest of us who have never claimed to be perfect, consider that the teen years have always been rife with errors in judgment, rash experimentation and exploration, mistakes and fumbling and outright wrongdoing – most of which disappear with maturity?

[...]

I’m furious, I admit it. I see this pack of wolves, this lynch mob of puritanical liberal Democrats, desperately afraid that a conservative, good and proven man may be confirmed to the Supreme Court – some of whom are guilty of similar and worse actions than what Judge Kavanaugh is falsely accused of – milling around with stones ready to heave, with no proof whatever of their accusations.

Don’t agree with me? Argue with famed attorney Alan Dershowitz: “There’s no evidence whatsoever, even under her story (account) of attempted rape.”

My wife, Shirley, and I raised four beautiful daughters – right in the middle of Hollywood and Beverly Hills, in public and private schools, pretty and intelligent and desirable girls. I was a pretty protective dad (I had once been a boy, a normal boy), and I saw to it that my girls knew and understood what the “games” were and that there would be, for example, no single dates till they were 16. And we stuck to it.

The bottom line there is that all four daughters married fine Christian young men and came to their marriage partners as virgins. I’ve never talked publicly about this – but I now want people to understand the parental role in keeping their kids chaste and moral.

And I’ll go this far: If one of my girls had an experience like the one professor Ford has described, I’d have been angry of course and wanted to confront the young man personally – but I would also have asked my daughter why she was in an unchaperoned “house party” where something like that could likely happen. In our case, it couldn’t have happened, because my daughter wouldn’t have been there.

-- Pat Boone, Sept. 25 WorldNetDaily column

I believe Christine Blasey Ford grew up thinking she’d been hit on and abused. I originally thought Brett Kavanaugh did indeed commit teenage horseplay beyond an acceptable limit. The strength of his denial is merely one element that convinces me he’s innocent. A stronger element is the “disparity of passion.”

In any dispute that deadlocks into a “he-said-she-said,” it pays to compare the passion which each party displays in the act of denial. Here we have her account fuzzy and his non-existent. He actually denies even being at the party or knowing anything about it.

And now we see Kavanaugh willing to release his own straps and walk out of brain surgery to clear his name, while Dr. Ford vacillates like an animated cartoon, beginning with zero desire to reveal her identity. Why did she change her mind? I’ll get there soon.

The “killer” element that draws me irrevocably into Kavanaugh’s corner is what I’ll call the utter absence of “Phase Two.” In virtually every single example of a male fallen from grace because of sexually predatory behavior, Phase Two is as certain and as strident as a brass marching band.

Phase One is the initial accusation by the victim, fingering the guilty male. Every case I can think of offers the same drumbeat. While the early stirrings of denial and repeated accusations fill the air, along comes Phase Two.

After a few days a second woman joins the accusation. Then four more abused women come forward. The chorus expands, but the music remains the same. Harvey Weinstein, Les Moonves, Bill Cosby, Al Franken – I can’t think of an exception. But not so with Kavanaugh!

Even now that a “second accuser” has surfaced, I still think the strongest argument that can be made on Brett Kavanaugh’s behalf is how long it’s taken to drum up such a feeble and highly suspect imitation of a genuine Phase Two! And how that second accusation finds it necessary to try to up the ante by alleging acts that are even more abhorrent (and even less credible).

-- Barry Farber, Sept. 25 WND column

It was a mistake to pander to Kavanaugh’s accusers by extending the deadline and begging them to show up to tell their coached narratives in the most damaging way liberals can imagine. No court of law allows a witness to completely take over the scheduling as Kavanaugh’s opponents have.

Kavanaugh would have been confirmed by now if the Senate had simply called the vote. Never-Trump Republicans and even a few Democrats would have fallen in line and voted the right way, or gone down in history as a mob who hangs an innocent man.

But like the failure of a superior army to advance to win a battle, the dilly-dallying by the Republican leadership has led to disarray and lost opportunity. The delay allowed the politically motivated opponents of Kavanaugh to practice and embellish, divide and conquer.

Some hope that vigorous cross-examination of Kavanaugh’s accusers will prove to the world that Kavanaugh has the stellar character that all who know him describe. There are, of course, good questions about political motivation and the orchestration of this smear that should be asked.

But relatively few Americans will watch the hearing, contrary to what the senators may think, and Abraham Lincoln-style moments on cross-examination are rare. The more that a witness is coached, the less likely a breakthrough at the hearing.

Instead, the vast majority of Americans will see only the headlines and selective sound bites, as spun by a media determined to sink Kavanaugh. The testimony itself is immune from defamation lawsuits, and news outlets will repeat the false accusations without including the cross-examination.

This is fake news in its worst form. Sexually explicit allegations are politically deadly, no matter how false and implausible they are, and the GOP-controlled Senate errs in giving the other side a platform.

-- Andy Schlafly, Sept. 25 WND column

The hearings in the Clarence Thomas confirmation have still left a cloud over his reputation. The accusations against him by Anita Hill did not hold water. She followed him around from job to job, although he was supposedly guilty of “a prolonged campaign of sexual harassment,” to quote the Time magazine cover story (Oct. 1, 2018).

Tragically, Time implies that Anita Hill was right – even though her testimony did not hold up under scrutiny – and, by implication, one should perhaps infer that Kavanaugh’s accuser is right too.

[...]

A new poll shows support from the American people for Kavanaugh slipping. Well, how could it not when the media keep picking up on any alleged accusation, even without corroboration? The media have been half the problem in this whole saga. All they do is report the negative stuff, but the ultimate question is: Is it true?

Somebody might say, “Well, where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” The same thing happened to Jesus. (Every other human falls short of Him, but it’s instructive to see how He was treated.) When He was on trial, the Roman prefect asked of His guilt or innocence, and His accusers said, “If He were not guilty, we would not have brought Him to you.” The only perfect human being who ever lived was being described as guilty. We know how that turned out.

-- Jerry Newcombe, Sept. 25 WND column

So as I watched Thursday’s hearing intently, I was struck by Kavanaugh’s coming of age. Never before in his privileged and sheltered life, had this legal caterpillar, now through adversity and vicious smears, been forced to crawl out of his cocoon into the mean real world, after a 53-year lifetime of being walled off from combat at street level.

While I questioned the wisdom of Kavanaugh having gratuitously conceded that professor Ford likely was sexually assaulted but by someone else, which is akin to being a little bit pregnant as it goes halfway to confirm the victim’s credibility, I was also struck by his having uncontrollably broken down in tears during particularly emotional parts of his testimony. Kavanaugh was almost like a young school boy who was caught by the principal and about to be suspended for his misdeeds. Ironically though, while not helping with his credibility, this not only evoked more of my sympathy, but also reaffirmed that the jurist had never really before in his privileged and sheltered life experienced real adversity.

And, I thought that in the end, if Kavanaugh is confirmed as the next Supreme Court justice – and for better or worse at this late point I hope that he is, lest the Dems get to effectively water down the president’s pick down the road – at least he had been tempered under fire to appreciate what many in our society have lived: not an easy life. This experience will make him a better Supreme Court justice, as he is now hopefully more aware of those Americans who were not born with a silver spoon in their mouths and did not have the “privilege” of going to Georgetown Preparatory and Yale, where cavorting around stupidly drunk was seen as an uber he-man and elitist “rite de passage”!

-- Larry Klayman, Sept. 28 WND column

Kavanaugh is being called a predator – but I believe it’s high time for the gloves to come off and call these women, these accusers, what they really are. In fact they are the predators, not Judge Kavanaugh.

And if this stunt these false accusers are attempting to collectively pull off was not their idea, then they should be called something else, and deservedly so. That something else is prostitute, and the politicians, the media and leftist special-interest gangs are the pimps.

None of these women have a shred of even circumstantial evidence to support their outrageous claims. In fact, the only one who has presented any evidence at all is Brett Kavanaugh, by way of his calendars and signed statements from a multitude of character witnesses.

Yet still the accusers are to be blindly and faithfully believed. So say all the leftist liars and useful idiots.

And all this is being done for one reason – centralized government power and control. It is the left’s religion, and their holy sacrament is abortion.

-- Brent Smith, Sept. 28 WND column

I do not know whether Christine Blasey Ford or Brett Kavanaugh is telling the truth. But I do know this: Brett Kavanaugh’s impassioned speech, fighting for his life and his family and his reputation and his career, is a wake-up call to us all, especially if we are Christian conservatives. It is high time we stand up and fight.

Of course, I’m not talking about “fighting” in a worldly, destructive sense. I’m not talking about fighting with hate. Or with intimidation. Or with violence, God forbid.

Rather, it’s time we stir ourselves out of complacency and take a principled stand for what is right. It’s time we awaken from our spiritual stupor and get involved in the culture, from our children’s schools to the White House. It’s time that we speak up and speak out and declare Jesus boldly and without shame.

We are beyond the stage of being provoked. We are beyond the stage of being challenged. We are beyond the stage of being opposed. We are beyond the stage of being shamed. To remain silent today is inexcusable.

[...]

Put another way, what we saw in the Kavanaugh hearings is the tip of the iceberg in the battle for conservative moral values. And those who most vehemently oppose us don’t care about fighting fair. Or pursuing justice. Or following the truth.

If they can destroy you with lies, so be it. Whatever it takes to advance the cause.

And make no mistake about it. As Brett Kavanaugh just learned, this vicious attack will hit your children (and grandchildren) directly. And if we fail to speak and act and stand, we fail to protect those we love the most.

To repeat: To remain silent today is inexcusable.

The Kavanaugh hearings made that very clear. Bitingly clear. Strikingly clear. Screachingly clear. We have to be tone deaf not to hear it.

-- Michael Brown, Sept. 28 WND column

CNS' Wildly Biased Coverage of Kavanaugh, Accuser Testimony
Topic: CNSNews.com

We knew CNSNews.com's coverage of Senate testimony by Brett Kavanaugh and his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, was going to be biased -- after all, CNS' Media Research Center parent refuses to impose the standards it demands the rest of the media follow to its own "news" operation -- but even we were a bit surprised.

The reports on the opening statements set the tone. Susan Jones' article on Kavanaugh's opening statement carried the headline "Kavanaugh's Opening Statement: 'Last Minute Smears'; 'Grotesque and Obvious Character Assassination'" and played up Kavanaugh's denials. By contrast, Jones' article on Ford's opening statementcarried the soft-to-the-point-of-mocking headline "Kavanaugh's Accuser Says a Remodeling Project Triggered the Assault Discussion With Her Therapist" and obsessed over the remodeling incident.

CNS' coverage of Ford's testimony was similarly dismissive of her claims. Here are the headlines on those articles:

• Christine Blasey Ford Said 'Hello' to Mark Judge Just Weeks After Alleged Assault
• Kavanaugh Accuser on ‘Strongest Memory’ of Alleged Attack: ‘Indelible in the Hippocampus Is the Laughter’
• Grassley Corrects Ford: Committee Did Offer to Fly to Her; Ford Won’t Say if Lawyers Relayed Offer to Her

Surprisingly, in the Mark Judge article, Jones offered a rare disclosure that Judge "used to be a writer for CNSNews.com," though she failed to report that Ford's detail about seeing Judge at an area grocery store appears to be corroborated by Judge's book, in which he wrote that he spent part of a summer working at a grocery store.

This was followed the next day by two more attacks on Ford: "No One Has Come Forward to Back Up Ford, Not Even the Person Who Drove Her Home" and "Ford Recounts the 'Laughter' Several Times, the Fear for Her Life Only Once."

By contrast, CNS' coverage of Kavanaugh's testimony pushed his denials that anything took place and the idea that the hearing was taking place at all:

• Kavanaugh: ‘I Never Sexually Assaulted Dr. Ford or Anyone’
• Kavanaugh: ‘I Swear to God’ That None of the Sexual Abuse Allegations Are True
• Lindsey Graham: Kavanaugh Hearing ‘Most Despicable Thing That I Have Seen in Politics’

Surprisingly, CNS did concede in one article -- by the normally biased Susan Jones, of all people -- that Kavanaugh was "defensive" about his youthful drinking and that "some of the weakest moments of Judge Brett Kavanaugh's testimony on Thursday involved his responses to Democrats who pressed him on his drinking and whether he had blackouts or memory lapses as a result."

The MRC would be attacking any media outlet whose Kavanaugh coverage was as biased. But in-house "news" outlets get a pass.

WND Columnist Mocks Kavanaugh Accuser's Claims
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily columnist Patrice Lewis is responding to Catherine Blasey Ford's accusation of a prep-school sexual assault by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh by going the mockery route in her Sept. 28 column:

I had an affair with Brett Kavanaugh.

No, really I did. I can’t remember the time, the place or the circumstances – but I certainly had an affair with Kavanaugh. I’m a woman, so you have to believe everything I say.

It doesn’t matter that my memory is poor, my sources unverified, or that I never told a soul about my passionate involvement with Kavanaugh. I couldn’t possibly have an agenda when it comes to making public my affair. The fact is, I’m an über-leftist woman; therefore everything I say is true. Period, end of sentence, no debate allowed or you’re just a bully.

And now … hang on a second, it’s all coming back to me … did I say I had an affair with Kavanaugh? My bad. The truth is, I was nearly raped by Kavanaugh. I just remembered that part. It was at a party, one of dozens I attended in my youth. Of course, I was drinking and I don’t remember the time, date, year, location or circumstances of the most traumatic event in my life, but I’m positive Kavanaugh tried to rape me back around 1982 or so. Or maybe it was 1983. It’s true. I’m a woman, so you have to believe me.

[...]

There are other women coming out of the woodwork to support my claim that Kavanaugh is a sexual predator, and my claims have just as much merit as theirs. My memory is just as accurate as theirs. Above all, my motives are just as pure as theirs. Pure as the driven snow, folks. Really. Honestly. I’m a woman, so you have to believe me.

And because you have to believe me, you can’t pry into my political or personal beliefs. You can’t factor in my support for abortion as a taxpayer-funded right, which might be jeopardized if Kavanaugh gets on the Supreme Court. You can’t examine my social media posts where I say Donald Trump is a bleepity-bleeping bleeper bleep bleep. You can’t take into account that I’m a rabid feminist who think all men should shut up and sit down, as Mazie Hirono recommends.

[...]

Y’know, it’s kinda fun to go forward with these charges against Kavanaugh! It gets me all kinds of attention and lots of uplifting support from my fellow women. No matter what the outcome of Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court, I’m set for life. I can write books, get paid obscene amounts of money for speaking engagements, get a professorship at any university in the country, and be the darling of the progressive set for ruining the lives of Kavanaugh and his family. What’s not to love?

And if Kavanaugh gets dumped from consideration to the Supreme Court, I look forward to Trump’s next nominee so I can recall my sexual assault by him as well. All I’ll need is a poor memory, six days with a porn attorney, a leftist agenda, and I’ll be ready … right after I scrub my social media accounts and bleach my laptop.

So my deepest thanks to everyone who has helped kill the antiquated and patriarchal concepts of the rule of law and the presumption of innocence. We finally get to reap what we sowed.

Lewis also throws in: "Bill Clinton is a saint who would never mistreat a woman. Juanita Broaddrick was a liar. Oh wait, didn’t I just say women can’t lie? Um, forget I said that. We’ll just forget Broaddrick exists. Don’t believe her." Lewis seems to have forgotten that Broaddrick actually is a liar -- she either lied for the first 20 years after the alleged attack when she claimed it didn't happen and submitted a sworn statement to Ken Starr to that effect, or she's lying now. Lewis offers no guidance on which Broaddrick story to believe.

MRC Denounces Those Who Liken Trump, Conservatives to Nazis -- But Its Senior Fellow Attacked 'Demzis'
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center doesn't like it when someone in the media tries to liken President Trump or conservatives in general to Nazis. For instance:

• Kristine Marsh denounced a "ridiculous segment" on MSNBC in which panelists "claim[ed] Trump was behaving like a Nazi."
• Curtis Houck attacked a CNN segment that "subtly painted Tea Partiers as angry, irrational conspiracy theorists who ran around with signs depicting the President as the Joker or a Nazi."
• Ryan Foley grumbled that Fox News host Laura Ingraham was likened to a neo-Nazi over an anti-immigration rant despite "Ingraham making it perfectly clear that she did not intend for her comments to come off as racist."

That outrage, needless to say, does not extend to anyone who likens a non-conservative to Nazis -- indeed, it seems the MRC encourages such attacks. Case in point: An Aug. 6 column by MRC senior fellow Allen West, published at MRC "news" division CNSNews.com, is a rant about how ">much of what the venerable First Infantry Division stood against now seems to be penetrating our America." His first example: "Men who landed on Omaha Beach to fight against National Socialists (Nazis) now live in an America with avowed Democratic Socialists (Demzis)."

Also needless to say, West still has a job at the MRC. Hypocrisy at its finest.

WND Still Falsely Portraying Reconstruction of Arch As Symbol of Idolatry
Topic: WorldNetDaily

For the past few years, WorldNetDaily has been obsessing over reconstructions of ancient ruins destroyed by ISIS -- particularly the arch to the Temple of Palmyra, or the Temple of Baal as WND insists on calling it -- ludicrously portraying them as a return to paganism instead of the poke in the eye from historians to the artifacts' destroyers that they actually are.

An anonymously written Sept. 16 WND article goes the freakout route again complaining that the arch "will reappear in Washington, D.C." This time, though, WND admits in the second paragraph that "The original in the Middle East was destroyed by ISIS in October 2015, but it was re-created by the Institute for Digital Archaeology using 3-D printing technology."

But WND descends soon enough into its rote, ridiculous accusations of idolatry:

But the arch isn’t just a Roman ruin. It was originally an arch for the Temple of Baal, a pagan god repeatedly mentioned in the Old Testament. The rites of Baal were marked by child sacrifice and ritual prostitution.

[...]

Rabbi Yosef Berger, the rabbi of King David’s Tomb on Mount Zion, told BIN it’s a symbol of a resurgence of idolatry.

“The last time we saw this level of idolatry was when the Temple stood in Jerusalem. Now that we are close to the appearance of the Third Temple, idolatry is reappearing, even in popular culture among people who claim they are atheists,” he told the news organization.

The rabbi said it is no coincidence that the arch is becoming a centerpiece at gatherings of world leaders.

“This is like a child who builds a Lego tower that gets knocked down,” Rabbi Berger said. “After having it knocked down several times, he goes to build the Lego tower next to his mother so that she will stop it from being knocked down. An average person, Jew or non-Jew, has no tolerance for open idolatry. If someone built an altar to idolatry in the middle of a nice neighborhood, everyone would gather together to destroy it. The average person has no desire for idolatry. So the people who seek dark and unholy power build their symbols of idolatry next to powerful politicians, at these world power summits, so that normal people will not be able to challenge them.”

While WND did take the unusual step of admitting that ISIS destroyed the original arch, it once again failed to mention that the temple served as a Christian church during the Byzantine era. That would seem to be an important part of its history that WND is strangely choosing to ignore.

UPDATE: WND followed up with a Sept. 30 article that actually blamed the "craziness that enveloped Washington" surrounding the Brett Kavanaugh nomination on the arch replica's presence in Washington:

Some are asking the question of whether the craziness that enveloped Washington last week might be connected with Baal – kind of like a full moon.

Who made the decision? Why? Who knows? Maybe it’s just a coincidence – even though many observers of the Supreme Court nomination hearings that took all the oxygen out of the capital last week note that the entire process had to do with abortion.

Other are questioning whether the disposition of the Arch of Palmyra might bring a semblance of normality to D.C. today.

WND does not identify who these "observers" or "other[s]" are who are making this claim.

The article went on to rehash all the Baal stuff from previous arch freakouts and again failed to mention that at one time the temple served as a Christian church. It also cited anonymous, unsourced claims by "some on social media" criticizing the arch.

MRC Goes Into Conspiracy Mode Over Kavanaugh
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center has spent years attacking Hillary Clinton for saying that a "vast right-wing conspiracy" was out to destroy her husband's presidency in the 1990s. As recently as July, the MRC's Brent Bozell and Tim Graham mocked Clinton's claim as "ridiculous" (even though Bozell declared in 2001 that "Yes, Virginia, the vast right-wing conspiracy did exist all along!")

But Bozell and Graham have their own conspiracy to peddle now.

In their Sept. 25 column, unironically titled "The Vast Anti-Kavanaugh Conspiracy," the two rant at anyone who doesn't see the conspiracy they do against Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court nomination:

Washington Post media reporter Paul Farhi wrote a Sept. 25 article on liberal-media bias headlined "Kavanaugh Supporters See a Conspiracy Afoot." The Post painted this as a little crazy, like a UFO is involved. Can anyone imagine the idea of the Democrats and liberal reporters working hand in glove to torpedo a Republican nomination?

Maybe we can remember Supreme Court nominees Robert Bork and Douglas Ginsburg in 1987, John Tower in 1989 or Clarence Thomas in 1991. Maybe we can recall John Ashcroft being tarred as a racist in 2001. In these cases and many others, "objective" reporters lined up and repeated the Democrat talking points as "news" and often succeeded in wrecking nominations.

Farhi lined up the deniers. "We aren't colluding with anyone about anything, including the Kavanaugh nomination," said Martin Baron, executive editor of the Post. "The conspiracy theories are pure nonsense and completely false."

"Pure nonsense"? The Post quotes anonymous sources multiple times a day, so how would anyone be able to piece together and figure out the entire collusion experience? The Post claims on the front page every day that "Democracy Dies in Darkness," and it disdains "dark money" in political campaigns. But it loves "dark sources" spicing up its incessant attacks on the Trump administration.

[...]

No one should believe any of these collusion deniers. No media outlet perpetuating this Kavanaugh-crushing conspiracy is nonpartisan, or disinterested. They are on a witch hunt.

Funny how conspiracies become real for Bozell when they can be politically exploited.

Having thus received its marching orders from the top, the rest of Bozell's MRC started going conspiracy-crazy.

Kristine Marsh alluded to one in a Sept. 26 post complaining about an ABC segment asking teens about the Kavanaugh controversy. She added in a update that one of the teens interviews was "accused of planting a question to Hillary Clinton during a 2016 townhall." Marsh relayed the conspiracy theory wrong; actually, the teen was accused by right-wing media of being a "child actor" plant at the townhall because she once had a small role in a short film. In fact, she was the daughter of a local politician who got to take part, and Clinton had no knowledge of her question beforehand.

In a Sept. 27 post, Nicholas Fondacaro went full Bozell in sneering at a "thick-headed" columnist, Kirsten Powers, who "couldn’t understand how Kavanaugh could think there was a conspiracy against him. "Fondacaro howled:

Hmm, maybe he knew the radical Democrats were out to destroy him because nearly all of them announced they were opposing his nomination before ever meeting with them. Some, in fact, were opposing anyone President Trump nominated. That’s not to mention that there were New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and Hawaii’s Mazie Hirono who declared him guilty days before the hearing.

Or perhaps it was New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, who called Kavanaugh and his supporters evil. It could even have been the Democrats who pontificated that he was going to put the lives of millions at risk. Kavanaugh actually addressed this in his opening remarks, so for Powers to claim ignorance was just slimy.

Even as WorldNetDaily is becoming less WND-like due to its continued fight for survival, the MRC has decided to be even more WND-like by embracing political conspiracies it used to despise.

Newsmax's Gizzi Promotes Kavanaugh Doppelganger Theory
Topic: Newsmax

Newsmax's John Gizzi, as befits a reporter for a conservative website, is doing what he can to support the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh. That means the questionable theory that Christine Blasey Ford, who accused Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her during their high school years, was actually assaulted by someone else. And he found someone to promote it. From Gizzi's Sept. 19 article:

An attorney who specializes in cases of sexual assault among college students told Newsmax she believes Professor Christine Blasey Ford did experience the assault of which she has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

However, Lynchburg, Virginia, attorney Margaret Valois, whose speciality is Title IX (the law guaranteeing equality between males and females) violations, also believes Ford's charge against Kavanaugh might easily be a case of mistaken identity. 

"I have no doubt [the assault] happened — something happened to her in 1980," Valois told us. "These are terrible situations and not unlike situations I deal with now among college students. But given all the testimony to Judge Kavanaugh's character as a young student and today, I have doubts that he was the one who assaulted her."

Thus, Valois concluded, Ford might well be naming the wrong person in pointing a finger at the former Bush White House official and U.S. Court of Appeals judge on the eve of the Senate Judiciary Committee's vote on his nomination to the Supreme Court.

"My gut says Professor Ford was assaulted when she was 15, but not by Kavanaugh," Valois said. "She made a claim and deserves to be heard," she said, adding she felt the hearings were "a good thing."

But Valois also pointed out she felt the statements of exemplary character – by people who are well-acquainted with Kavanaugh from his days at Georgetown Prep and Yale University to his stint in the White House – "certainly count for something."

A week later -- following Ford's Senate testimony about the attack and Kavanaugh's rebuttal, as well as conservative attorney Ed Whelan's attempt to push a similar doppelganger theory that went so horribly wrong that he was forced to take a leave of absence from his day job as the head of a conservative think tank -- Gizzi called on Valois once again to tout the theory anew:

Despite Dr. Christine Blasey Ford's testimony Thursday that she was "100 percent" certain it was Brett Kavanaugh who assaulted her when they were both in high school 35 years ago, attorney Margaret Valois — who specializes in sexual assault cases among college students— still believes Ford's charge against the Supreme Court nominee is dealing a case of mistaken identity.

"I don't think she can be certain that it was Judge Kavanaugh," said Valois, who first advanced the "mistaken identity" theory with Newsmax a week ago.

"How can she be certain if she cannot address the other circumstances with certainty—location, date, time, and the other people involved?" Valois told us.

Curiously, Gizzi made no mention of Whelan's doppelganger fiasco. Nor did he mention that Valois takes a decidedly right-wing approach to Title IX, filing a lawsuit against Tulane University for purportedly discriminating against men.

Mark Judge Worked For MRC Even Longer Than We Thought
Topic: Media Research Center

Earlier today, we documented the nearly complete failure of the Media Research Center to disclose that Mark Judge, the alleged witness to his prep-school drinking buddy and Supremen Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh's alleged sexual assault on Christine Blasey Ford, worked as a "blog reporter" for the MRC's "news" division, CNSNews.com, for a year and a half. But there's an even deeper Judge connection the MRC has been silent on.

A few months after departing CNS, Judge was back to write blog posts for the MRC's video-centric operation MRCTV. Judge wrote for MRCTV beginning in April 2017 , and his final post was on Sept. 13 of this year -- just a few days before Ford's accusations against Kavanaugh and citing Judge's involvement in the incident.

As Media Matters documented, a few of Judge's MRCTV posts reflect his history of bigotry and borderline misogyny. For instance, Judge mocked comedian Amy Schumer as "big-boned Barbie" in a May 2017 post.

Judge is also clearly not fond of the LGBT community. On July 24, he ranted about a Broadway play that he portrayed as "a lecture from transgenders" and speculated that there is no such thing as a "straight white playwright." Another Judge post positively reviewed a book he said claimed that "the modern transgender phenomenon and its defenders share a similar mentality to that which produced Nazi Germany."

Interestingly, while every other MRC operation has been loath to admit that Judge worked for it, two of the four MRCTV's posts referencing Judge in relation to Kavanaugh as of this writing (though not the two written in the past day) not only disclose that "Mark Judge is a freelance writer who has written pieces for MRCTV," they link to Judge's MRCTV archive. Did someone down the hall corral the MRCTV folks and remind them of the Judge omerta?

Meanwhile, the omerta continues at the rest of the MRC. A Sept. 27 MRC post by Kyle Drennen mentioned Judge in passing but not his work for the MRC. And a Sept. 27 CNS article by Susan Jones attempting to undercut Ford's veracity by highlighting her Senate testimony that she "said hello" to Judge at his job at a grocery store parentically noted that "For the record, Judge has written about his drunken/hungover high school years" but didn't disclose, parenthetically or otherwise, that Judge wrote for the MRC for more than three years.

WND Just Can't Stop Smearing Transgenders With Photos
Topic: WorldNetDaily

We've documented how WorldNetDaily smears transgenders by its selection of photos to illustrate its transgender-related stories -- either a photo it stole from the Associated Press of male legs in a dress and heels (that is actually from a 2012 "hairy legs on heels" race in Madrid, so the person in the photo is not even transgender) or a stubbled male face applying lipstick.

Well, WND is still engaging in this ridiculous, biased behavior. An Aug. 25 article by Bob Unruh ranting about the idea that anti-discrimination laws cover transgenders used the lipstick photo for its front-page tease:

A Sept. 21 WND article on a transgender woman who is seeking to expunge the crimes she committed as a male also used the image:

You'd think that with all the trouble WND has had stay afloat of late that it would have better things to do than promote anti-transgender discrimination with such stereotypical bias. Apparently not.

MRC Won't Tell You Kavanaugh's High School Drinking Buddy Used To Work For It
Topic: Media Research Center

References at the Media Research Center to Mark Judge, the prep-school classmate of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh who was reportedly in the room at the party where Christine Blasey Ford claims Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her. At the MRC's NewsBusters, almost all references to Judge are in passing or limited to mentions in transcripts, except for one article that attacked a "massive error" in a New York Times story about Judge. At the MRC's "news" division, CNSNews.com, Judge is similarly mentioned only in passing.

The MRC has almost completely hidden the fact that Judge used to be an employee. From mid-2015 to early 2017, Judge was a "blog reporter" for CNS. Access to Judge's archive has been blocked by CNS, but the Internet Archive lists his archive through January 2017 (he left shortly thereafter).

None of those NewsBusters items mention Judge's MRC employment. The only CNS article or column referencing Judge that discloses it is a Sept. 19 article by editor in chief Terry Jeffrey admitted that Judge "used to be a writer for CNSNews.com," albeit not until the 15th paragraph of his story.

Much of Judge's CNS blog work focused on entertainment, celebrities and pop culture as seen through CNS' right-wing mission -- which is to say, praising conserative values and mocking what are portrayed as liberal values. Typical was an item featuring author S.E. Hinton denying any gay subtext in her classic teen novel "The Outsiders."

We've documented how Judge gushed over Mel Gibson, touting his then-new film "Hacksaw Ridge" and helped him tease his plans for a sequel to his Christian film "The Passion of the Christ" while hiding Gibson's ugly past.

Since the MRC's playbook on Kavanaugh is to protect him and attack his accusers, you likely won't read much about at any MRC website about Judge's days as a heavy-drinking prep student, or of the fact that Judge's memoir of said days references a "Bart O'Kavanaugh" who passes out drunk and throws up in a car.

WND's Mercer Insists She Opposed Apartheid As She Touts An Intellectual Case For It
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Ilana Mercer -- the WorldNetDaily columnist who has a sweet spot for the apartheid era in her native South Africa -- insists in her Sept. 6 column that she "opposed apartheid" and concludes it by stating, "This is an historical account of how the Afrikaner intelligentsia viewed a policy against which the writer and her family fought. A writer need not agree with it to chronicle and analyze it."

The problem is that the rest of her column sure reads like a defense of apartheid.

Mercer declares her thesis at the outset:

Monomaniacal Westerners – they have one thing on their minds: it begins with an “R” – have come to think and speak of apartheid as a theory of white supremacy.

It was not.

The South African policy of “separate development,” as it was admittedly euphemized, was not a theory of racial supremacy, but a strategy for survival.

Mercer goes on to cite Hermann Giliomee, "author of the grand historical synthesis, 'The Afrikaners: Biography of a People,'" to boost her view that the genesis of apartheid was "overwhelming existential, rather than racial."She added: "Giliomee, a liberal historian who opposed apartheid (like this writer), contends that 'apartheid was not uniquely abhorrent and had much in common with Western colonialism and American segregation.' Another of the historian’s apparent heresies has it that 'attempts to depict the nationalist leaders as proto-fascists showed a poor understanding of both the Nazi and the Afrikaner nationalist movement.'"

Mercer similarly played whataboutism with Western racism in an earlier column.

Mercer doesn't mention there is a faction of Afrikaner nationalism that is very much Nazi-esque. When Mercer wrote about the 2010 murder of the leader of this faction, Eugene Terrblanche, she hid his history of extremism.

She went on to declare that "The Cape Town-Stellenbosch axis of the nationalist intelligentsia, which was the most influential lobby in Malan’s National Party (NP), almost without exception defended apartheid not as an expression of white superiority but on the grounds of its assumed capacity to reduce conflict by curtailing points of interracial contact." But South African news organization Independent Media published a 2003 review of Giliomee's book, stating that apartheid was accepted in most Afrikaner quarters as a racist policy:

But apartheid was giving the Nationalist rank and file what they wanted: white supremacy, segregated residential areas, train coaches, public toilets, post office counters, and beaches. And so it went on until the whole rotten edifice collapsed.

Giliomee acknowledges the devastating effects of apartheid legislation - the pass laws, race classification, group areas etc - on the lives of Africans, Indians and coloured people. 

Yet he does not explain how a kindly, civilised, church-going community such as the Afrikaners could contemplate with equanimity the appalling human suffering inflicted by these policies.

[...]

Afrikaner public opinion, as a whole, remained unmoved, their response one of callous indifference. Of course the same can be said of much of the English-speaking section who voted happily for the Nationalists at successive elections.

Mercer also writes: "In retrospect, it is easy for me to see the merits of Giliomee’s argument for 'the essential moderation of Afrikaner nationalism.' Anybody who lived, as I had lived, among Afrikaners during the apartheid era can testify that crime and communism were foremost on their minds."

But being able to make an intellectual case for apartheid in a "historical account" that ignores its inherent racism doesn't make apartheid any less racist. That makes Mercer's protestations that she actually fought apartheid at the time questionable at best.

MRC Senior Fellow Can't Stop Lying About Margaret Sanger
Topic: CNSNews.com

For a guy who's a "senior fellow" at the Media Research Center, Allen West is utterly uninterested in doing even the most basic research.

In July, we caught West spreading long-discredited lies about Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger. In his Sept. 10 column at MRC "new" division CNSNews.com, he repeated those lies and added a couple more:

Then we have the amazing tale of two organizations, comparing the NRA with another organization, Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood was founded by a person that was a white supremacist, a racist, someone who referred to blacks as “weeds” and “undesirables.” Sounds a lot like “deplorables” doesn’t it? And yes, there is a correlation, since the person who referred to some Americans as deplorables is a recipient of the Margaret Sanger Award, the founder of Planned Parenthood.

Again: Sanger was not a "white supremacist" or a "racist." And as we've also documented, Sanger never called blacks "weeds." We've found no evidence that Sanger ever called blacks "undesirables" -- she did refer to "undesirables" in a speech, but it was in reference to the "breeding of defectives and insane" (a reflection of her belief at the time in eugenics) and no racial reference was made.

West also ranted that Sanger was "someone that wanted to exterminate – yes, strong words, but true – the black community." Again, not true.

West then huffed:

The first Roy Innis Memorial Award will go to an American black man, a former soldier, someone who stood up against the tyranny of being unarmed, Otis McDonald of Chicago. Yes, the same Otis McDonald for whom the Second Amendment case, McDonald v. City of Chicago, is named. And who was it that stood with Otis McDonald? It was not Planned Parenthood. It was the nation’s oldest civil rights organization, the National Rifle Association. Hmm, how many blacks have been awarded the Margaret Sanger Award?

Actually, among the four people who received the first Margaret Sanger Award in 1966 was a black man -- Martin Luther King Jr. The 2015 recipient, Dr. Willie Parker, is also a black man.

If the MRC's own "senior fellow" can't stop telling lies, and his employer can't be bothered to fact-check him, why trust anything his employer claims?

NEW ARTICLE: Another Month, Another WND Funding Crisis
Topic: WorldNetDaily
Joseph Farah spent his August begging for money "to make ends meet" at WorldNetDaily. He still won't talk about the fake, conspiracy-laden WND content that helped bring him and his website to that point. Read more >>

MRC Runs The Playbook Against Kavanaugh's Accusers
Topic: Media Research Center

Like its "news" division CNSNews.com, the Media Research Center proper is in heavy spin mode regarding the sexual misconduct allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

First order of business: minimize and dimiss the allegations. Gabriel Hays sniffed that it was "one paltry allegation of sexual assault" and whined that "Hollywood liberals have taken to social media to blast Kavanaugh for his alleged abusive past (if one unsubstantiated allegation can be called a past), because it’s the only thing they’ve got to delay his confirmation." When another claim of sexual misconduct surfaced, Hays declared it to be "flimsy," adding that "rabid lefties seek to annihilate his reputation and humanity before he’s found guilty of anything" -- apparently oblivious to the fact that he's a member of the brigade trying to destroy the reputation and humanity of Kavanaugh's accusers, in part by blithely dismissing their claims.

Next order of business: Beat up on Anita Hill (again). Nicholas Fondacaro asserted that one reporter "rewrote history and implied that Hill’s claims were credible," citing as evidence that, "according to polls done at the time, more people believed [Clarence] Thomas than Hill after the hearings were held." Gee, we weren't aware that public opinion polls were an accurate mesaure of one's credibility.

Geoffrey Dickens, meanwhile, complained that (while, yes, citing an opinion poll claiming more people bellieved Thomas than Hill) the media was using the same "playbook" against Thomas that it is purportedly using against Kavanaugh. It's more accurate to claim that the MRC is using the same playbook against Kavanaugh's accusers that it did against Hill.

(MRC boss Brent Bozell and underling Tim Graham have already denigrated Hill as "the Janet Cooke of sexual harassmsent.")

Third order of business: getting offended when anyone brings up the shameful history of sexual misconduct of Trump administration officials and conservatives in general when talking about Kavanaugh. Curtis Houck huffed that MSNBC host Katy Tur -- a longtime MRC target -- engaged in "skullduggery" that was "ghoulish at worst" in airing "a video mash-up comparing Kavanaugh to other men such as the late Roger Ailes, Corey Lewandowski, Roy Moore, and Rob Porter because they too were firmly defended by President Trump as they faced their own allegations of sexual impropriety." Houck also made sure to reference the first order of business by calling the claims against Kavanaugh "flimsy."

Fouirth order of business: equivocation. Ryan Foley touted how "Laura Ingraham pointed out the hypocrisy of Democrats, who 'howl for answers from Brett Kavanaugh in an opaque charge' while not 'asking the same of DNC co-chair Keith Ellison,' who faces credible abuse allegations from a former girlfriend." Foley didn't mention that Ellison, unlike Kavanaugh, is not upu for nomination to the Supreme Court, nor did he discuss the hypocrisy of himself and his employer obsessing over Ellison while downplaying the accusations against Kavanaugh.

Fondacaro combined a couple of the approaches in another post:

Despite the fact that the latest sexual misconduct allegation against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh was so full of holes it looked like Swiss cheese, CBS Evening News actually scoffed at the notion that the accusations against him were part of a smear campaign during their Monday broadcast.

The scoff was intoned as CBS chief Congressional correspondent Nancy Cordes was leading into her critical report. “In fact, they strongly reiterated their support for Kavanaugh today and suggested that these women might somehow be working together to smear the nominee,” she declared acting as though the Democrats weren’t the ones to dig up the newest accusation as has been reported.

Fondacaro didn't explain how he was able to read Cordes' mind to determine she "scoffed."

It's all in the MRC playbook, apparently.