MRC Wrongly Attacks Reporter Who Accurately Noted How Conservatives Downplayed Coronavirus Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Alex Christy complained in a March 9 post:
Washington Post reporter (and PBS Washington Week host) Robert Costa joined MSNBC Live guest host Kasie Hunt on Monday to talk about the coronavirus. After mentioning that two Republican members of Congress, Sen. Ted Cruz and Rep. Paul Gosar are self-quarantining out of an abundance of caution after someone at CPAC tested positive for the virus. Costa claimed that only now are conservatives taking the threat of COVID-19 seriously.
[...]
Costa replied by first talking by repeating a claim that was debunked over a week ago, "It's a fluid situation because it was just a few weeks ago that at the CPAC conference you had many conservatives calling this entire coronavirus situation a hoax."
He claimed that only, "Now that has the virus has hit some attendees in terms of their -- them being affected by the person there who had it, you have conservatives and Republicans talking about this in a new way." The White House task force on the matter was created on January 29, back when MSNBC was still obsessed with impeachment. and a month before CPAC.
Despite Christy's headline assertion that Costa "wrongly" claimed conservatives discounted the coronavirus until someone at CPAC tested positive, he never actually proves Costa wrong; the creation of a White HOuse task force is not a reflection of conservatives as a whole.
For actual evidence of conservative downplaying coronavirus, we need go no further than the MRC's "news" division, CNSNews.com. Here are a few CNS items from late February and early March that aimed to downplay the effects of coronavirus:
Additionally, CNS downplayed its severity by accusing Democrats of wanting to "open the spending spigot" to fight it and gave space to right-wing radio host Mark Levin to rant that Democrats and the media just want to "attack, blame, and politicize."
Oh, and CNS never did a story on the CPAC participants who were exposed to coronavirus, even though the MRC had a presence there and, thus, had employees who were potentially exposed.
It's a new year, so there are new opportunities for CNSNews.com to relentlessly plug its favorite right-wing radio host (with whom it may or may not have a cross-promotion deal with), Mark Levin.
After finishing out 2019 unusually slow -- thus denying Levin a third straight year of more than 100 articles about him -- CNS picked up the page in January and February:
That's 13 articles in the first two months of 2020.
While we're here, let's address CNS parent Media Research Center leader Brent Bozell's dopey comment -- linked above since he made it on Levin's radio show -- about public radio stations vs. Levin affiliates:
“Why one needs to have three NPR stations in Washington, DC; four in New York City, six in Seattle – and the list goes on and on. Why not just have one station in each city?
“But, then, it hits me. Wait a minute: this is National Public Radio – why don’t we have only one station for national public radio, not one thousand.
“And, I thought, well look, if you’re going to have a thousand NPR stations, I think we need to have one thousand Mark Levin stations.
For all his attacks on public radio, Bozell clearly doesn't understand how it works. NPR is not a monolithic national network with a 24-hour format that all its stations must air; in fact it owns no radio stations at all. All are locally owned, most are owned by college and universities and the rest by community based boards or public TV operations. As NPR further explained:
Each Member Station determines its own format and schedule. In creating their broadcast schedule, Member Stations have several options. They may choose to select from NPR programs such as Morning Edition, All Things Considered or Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!; pick up programs distributed by other public radio producers, stations or networks; and/or create their own local programming. Stations create their schedules based on the interests and needs of their local audience. Some stations focus on news and information while others follow a music format – with programming ranging from classical, to jazz, to AAA or world music.
Let's look at the formats of the NPR affiliates in the Washington, D.C., area (Bozell claims there are three; NPR lists two). One station appears to run a large selection of NPR-provided news and talk content, while the other is very heavy on classical music and related original programming and appears to air little NPR-generated content.
Bozell's other claim that there should be "only one station for national public radio" is even more ridiculous; the average FM radio station has a broadcast radius of 40 miles, so one station can't cover the entire country. Apparently Bozell thinks radio is like cable TV.
Bozell made sure to make Levin look like a victim by omitting the fact that Levin's show airs on approximately 400 radio stations across the U.S., so he has nothing to complain about. Further, all of NPR's affiliates are nonprofit stations, which have different FCC license requirements than the commercial radio stations on which Levin's show airs.
MRC Stealth-Edits Post After Trump Signs On To Idea It Had Called 'INSANE' Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Joseph Vazquez wrote a March 17 post with the blaring headline "FREE MONEY? CNBC Boosts Romney’s INSANE Coronavirus Plan to Give EVERY American $1,000" that began: "CNBC apparently had no problem treating Sen. Mitt Romney’s (R-UT) insane coronavirus plan to give “every” American $1,000 as a rational idea."
But shortly thereafter, the word "INSANE" disappeared from both the headline and first paragraph:
What happened? Well, around the time Vazquez's post went up on NewsBusters, Presient Trump and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin effectively endorsed Romney's idea by stating during that day's coronavirus brief that they were considering issuing such payments to Americans to provide immediate relief to those affected by the coronavirus crisis.With that endorsement, Romney's plan ceased being "insane."
There's also the fact that the MRC, as a pro-Trumppropagandaoutlet, cannot be seen as criticizing anything Trump has endorsed.
The MRC did not disclosed to readers that the post was edited, despite the fact it regularlyattacksothermediaoutlets for "stealth editing" items. The word "insane" remains in the item's URL, however.
Terry Jeffrey Trump Deficit Blame Avoidance Watch Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com editor in chief Terry Jeffrey has longabandoned his self-declared deficit-hawk position by refusing to single out President Trump by name for his role in expanding federal deficits. He couldn't even be bothered to complain about a massive spending bill he would have certainly squawked about if a Democrat was president.
In a Feb. 12 article, Jeffrey did his monthly piece on how "The federal government set records for both the amount of taxes it collected and the amount of money it spent in the first four months of fiscal 2020 (October through January)." As usual, the words "Trump" and "Republican" are absent, and Jeffrey threw in his favorite stock photo impage of Trump and Nancy Pelosi, as if Pelosi bore equal blame for the situation even though she controls only one-half of Congress and none of he Executive Branch.
Jeffrey repeated the pattern in a March 11 article: rewriting the first paragraph to add February, no mention of Trump or Republicans, another misleading stock photo of Trump and Pelosi.
It's almost as if Jeffrey is afraid to admit that these growing federal deficits he so vociferously loathed when Barack Obama was president are occurring under a Republican, since doing so would run counter to his "news" operation's even more vociferous pro-Trump editorial agenda.
NEW ARTICLE -- CNS On Impeachment, Part 3: Ridiculousness Topic: CNSNews.com
More bias! More copy-and-paste boilerplate! The most ridiculous defenses of Trump presented with a straight face! CNSNews.com knows how to protect its favorite president. Read more >>
MRC Mad That GOP Congressman's Clown Move Was Called A 'Clown Move' Topic: Media Research Center
Kathleen Krumhansl comlained in a March 6 MRC Latino post that an CNN en Español anchor described Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz's stunt of wearing a gas mask on the House floor a "clown move":
As COVID-19 continues to spread, so do the insidious comments by the likes of CNN En Español anchor Juan Carlos Lopez, who turned a report on the correct preventive measures to take against the virus into an opportunity to call U.S. Rep Matt Gaetz a clown for wearing a gas mask to work.
Take a look at this video from Directo USA´s March 5, 2020 edition, featuring Surgeon General Jerome Adams as he addressed The Latino Coalition:
[...]
Two things stand: First, that instead of passing on the valuable information offered by the Surgeon General, CNN En Espanõl opted to mock a Republican congressman who evidently believed he was doing the right thing, that is preventing the spread of the virus hyped by the media trying to blame Trump for its spread.
Second, anchor Juan Carlos Lopez snarkily exemplifies the liberal media’s pettiness. In this case, CNN En Español deliberately displays their political agenda- in direct conflict with the safety and wellbeing of the very public they serve.
Krumhansl is apparently giving Gaetz a pass for his gas-mask stunt because she thinks he "evidently believed he was doing the right thing" by mocking the media's purported overhype of coronavirus concerns. But subsequent events have made it clear that the media was correct in warning of the danger of coronavirus and that mocking it was, indeed, a clown move.
The clownish nature of Gaetz's stunt was further borne out by the fact that just a few days later, a person living in his congressional district died from coronavirus, and shortly after that Gaetz himself went into self-quarantine after possibly being exposed to coronavirus at CPAC, a prominent conservative gathering.
Don't expect Krumhansl to update her post or admit that events have shown that Gaetz really was a clown for doing this.
WND Columnist Misleads To Defend Pence Topic: WorldNetDaily
Jerry Newcombe complained in his March 3 WorldNetDaily column:
After President Trump named Vice President Pence last week to lead the nation's battle against the coronavirus, many in the media decried the choice because supposedly Mike Pence "doesn't believe in science." How could he? He's a Christian. So the logic goes.
They mock along the lines of: Maybe he just wants to pray the virus away.
Late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel quipped, "Why is Mike Pence in charge? What is his plan to stop the virus, abstinence?"
Writing for mediaite.com (Feb. 26), Reed Richardson noted, "President Donald Trump's decision to task Mike Pence with heading up the federal government's coronavirus response triggered an immediate backlash as critics noted the vice president's record of doubting scientific evidence and his role in exacerbating an HIV outbreak in Indiana while he was governor."
Richardson argues that Pence allegedly did a poor job in quelling the HIV outbreak in Indiana because for two days, he canceled a needle-exchange program, and supposedly during those two days, the HIV "infection rates exploded." After praying about it, Pence relented. An explosion of new cases in just two days?
Newcombe is lying -- that's not what the Mediaite article said. This is what it said:
Trump said Pence has “a certain talent for this” and specifically cited the “Indiana model” in the Wednesday evening press conference where he named his VP to run the coronavirus response. But as this extensive New York Times report detailed in 2016, the staunch conservative Pence’s health policies helped ignite a massive public health crisis in his state when he shut down a needle exchange program that had severely curtailed the spread of HIV. Virus infection rates exploded, and Pence — two days after he said he would pray on the matter — relented and reinstated the program.
The article very clearly states that HIV infection rates "exploded" after he shut down a needle exchange program -- and before Pence took his two-day prayer sabbatical to decided to reinstate it. But the situation was actually worse: As researchers reported in Politico, victims could not easily learn their HIV status because Pence supported budget cuts to a Planned Parenthood clinic that happened to be the only HIV testing provider in the area, the state took more than a month to inform local officials about an HIV surge, and it was not until a month after that that Pence finally approved a needle exchange -- which he then undermined by signing a bill that increased punishment for people carrying needles and made possession of a syringe wiht intent to commit an offense a felony. A preventable HIV outbreak was mismanaged, researchers concluded.
The rest of Newcombe's column was dedicated to defending Pence against the "canard that Christians are somehow anti-science," insisting that "The founder of every major branch of science was a Bible-believing Christian of one stripe or another."
MRC Politicizes Coronavirus With Its Attack Narrative Of Accusing Others Of 'Politicizing' It Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has accused the media of politicizing the coronavirus outbreak for so long, it can now be credibly accused of politicizing the outbreak itself by pushing the "politicizing" narrative -- after all, the only reason the narrative exists is to protect its beloved President Trump, since it doesn't want you to believe there's no evidence that he downplayed the signfigance of the outbreak until he could no longer do so.
Let's take a look at how the MRC has pushed this narrative:
The MSM's line o' the day is that coronavirus should not be politicized. But liberal media partisans like Chuck Todd just can't help themselves. -- Mark Finkelstein, Feb. 27
CNN has clearly made a conscious decision to politicize the coronavirus story to trash the Trump administration and claim it's starkly opposed to "science." -- Alex Christy, Feb. 28
During national emergencies such as natural disasters or outbreaks of disease, the news media can serve as a valuable source of information for the public. Yet when it came to their coverage of the coronavirus on Thursday, CNN largely put their Trump-bashing agenda ahead of that important role. ... It’s bad enough when Democrats and Republicans politicize national emergencies, but for the self-ordained Facts First Network to do the same is nothing short of outrageous. This isn’t what journalists are supposed to do during a national health crisis. -- Bill D'Agostino, Feb. 28
In an interview with Vice President Mike Pence, aired during Sunday’s Meet the Press, NBC host Chuck Todd grew extremely irate and combative when addressing how President Trump’s allies were calling out his colleagues on the left for politicizing the coronavirus (COVID-19). After demanding Pence show him evidence of their politicization, Todd refused to hear more than one example and tried to make the pushback from the right the problem. -- Nicholas Fondacaro, March 1
In reality, what Trump dismissed as a hoax were efforts by Democrats and liberal media to politicize the global health crisis. -- Kyle Drennen, March 2
Put a check mark on the PBS NewsHour for politicizing the coronavirus. -- Tim Graham, March 2
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, respected economist turned classless Democratic hack, demonstrated his unseemly willingness to politicize crises, in his Tuesday column “Paranoid Politics Goes Viral.” The text box: “When everything is a liberal media conspiracy.” -- Clay Waters, March 5
What Trump has called a hoax is the attempt by Democrats to politicize the disease. [MSNBC's Joy] Reid unwittingly gave a good example of the phenomenon with her scaremongering this morning. -- Mark Finkelstein, March 7
While hacks in the liberal media were quick to claim no one on their side was politicizing the spread of the deadly coronavirus (COVID-19), NBC political director Chuck Todd spent a part of Sunday’s Meet the Press musing about how the virus could be President Trump’s version of the Iran Hostage Crisis, where President Jimmy Carter showed such poor leadership the public voted in President Ronald Reagan. -- Nicholas Fondacaro, March 8
Despite the media’s empty words insisting they are not politicizing the coronavirus, they keep doing just that. -- Kristine Marsh, March 9
[Nicolle] Wallace again politicized the health scare, by commending the novel virus for “shaking the confidence” of the president’s base for the upcoming election[.] -- Kristine Marsh, March 10
While many in the media have feigned outrage at the notion they are politicizing this pandemic, [comedian Pete] Dominick admitted proudly that they are, because Trump "doesn't care about us" or "science." -- Kristine Marsh, March 11
Eager to join the rest of the media in politicizing the coronavirus, on Monday’s CBS Late Show, liberal host Stephen Colbert sought to use the disease to attack President Trump. -- Aiden Jackson, March 11
Shortly after The View co-host Whoopi Goldberg insisted that the media wasn’t politicizing the coronavirus on Wednesday’s show, her co-host, Joy Behar did just that, predicting that the virus would keep Trump from getting re-elected. Kristine Marsh, March 11
Seemingly daily, CBS Evening News includes a segment railing against the response of the Trump administration and boosting Democratic politicization of the virus.-- Nicholas Fondacaro, March 11
The unhinged media is still politicizing the spread of COVID-19, and pointing fingers at President Trump after he addressed the nation last night. -- Kristine March, March 12
Is the Coronavirus Donald Trump’s Hurricane Katrina? Is it his Iran hostage crisis? If you thought journalists hadn’t politicized this health crisis enough, get ready for another example. -- Alex Christy, March 12
[Peter] Wehner is careful to warn liberals not to politicize coronavirus outbreak as a weapon to attack Trump...before then absurdly going on to use coronavirus as a political weapon to attack Trump. -- P.J. Gladnick, March 14
CNN on Sunday continued the network’s efforts to politicize the coronavirus and blame Donald Trump. -- Scott Whitlock, March 16
On Tuesday, ABC’s White House correspondent Jon Karl attempted to scold President Trump for having “lashed out” at Democrats who were politicizing coronavirus. Trump shut down the line of questioning by pointing out he has to “respond” since liberal politicians “have the media on their side.” ... Missing from Karl’s question was any acknowledgment of how Democrats have worked to politicize the pandemic response. -- Kyle Drennen, March 17
And the MRC gets real mad when that narrative gets turned on them. In a Feb. 28 post, Kyle Drennen complained that an MSNBC anchor was "attacking Fox News. Why? Because the competing cable channel was calling out attempts in the press to blame the Trump administration for the spread of the disease." Hehuffed in response: "Missing from the Fox-bashing segment was any mention of how 'irresponsible' the liberal media have been in their own effort to 'politicize' coronavirus." In other words, the same whataboutism we've come to expect from the MRC.
Kristine Marsh did much the same thing in a post the same day: "Despite a NewsBusters study showing Trump-bashing takes center stage on CNN's coronavirus reporting, CNN Newsroom host Brooke Baldwin and media reporter Oliver Darcy raged that Fox was putting the public in danger by sowing skepticism over their anti-Trump reporting on the coronavirus." That "study" would be the one where the MRC failed once again to show its work and refused to consider whether criticism of Trump was justified.
Deflecting these attacks was the narrative of the day on Feb. 28. Randy Hall took a shot in his post that day:
It’s easy to predict how Brian Stelter, host of the Sunday Reliable Sources program on CNN, will respond to any disagreements with President Trump and the anchors on the Fox News Channel. He simply dismisses anything they say as simply being wrong.
That was obviously the case on Friday, when the network’s chief media correspondent was a guest during a segment of the At This Hour program as hosted by Kate Bolduan. He dismissed the network's claims of the left weaponizing the virus against President Trump, “reprehensible” and an attempt “to make this all about Trump and politics when that’s really not the arena this is being fought in.”
Like the others, Hall never actually explains why any criticism of Trump is "politicizing" the issue but Fox News' blatantly partisan attacks on the media for criticizing Trump is not.
Finally, also on the same day, Tim Graham gave space to a lengthy Rush Limbaugh rant denying that his conspiracy theory that the coronavirus was created to destroy Trump was "politicizing" the issue.
Pro-Trump rah-rah was the order of the day for CNSNews.com's reporting on February's employment numbers. Susan Jones' lead article carried the headline "Near Record Employment: 159,759,000 Working in U.S.A.," and Jones was in full gushing mode:
Forty-five thousand more people were employed in February than in January, bringing the total number employed -- 158,759,000-- to the second highest level in the nation's history.
The only time more people have been working in the United States was in December 2019, when there were 158,803,000 employed.
The number of employed has broken 25 records so far in the Trump presidency.
This was joined by the usual sidebars: Craig Bannister cheering a record number of Hispanics employed and editor in chief Terry Jeffrey touting how manufacturing jobs "have now increased by 519,000 since President Donald Trump took office."
This was joined, however, by a March 6 op-ed by Kay Hymowitz of the right-wing Manhattan Institute weirdly complaining that women are too well educated and make too much money to settle for a typical man, thus leading to "family decline":
Women have made enormous inroads in education and the labor market over the past few decades. They are now the majority of college graduates and are more likely than men to have earned a postgraduate degree.
The story for men, particularly low skilled men, is one of decline. Alarming numbers of male prime aged workers are simply MIA from the labor force. This gender gap goes a long way toward explaining family decline among the less educated. Women continue to want to marry men who earn at least as much as they do.
Women without a college degree and minority women are increasingly finding that impossible, forcing them to choose between single motherhood or abstaining from having children altogether.
Hymowitz seems to be implicitly blaming women for this situation; in her congressional testimony to which she links as support for this article, she called for "a re-affirmation of the importance of fathers and male contributions to the household" and complained that "Society has come to accept single motherhood; in fact, it is the norm in many disadvantaged communities," which she claimed "has had unintended effect of telling boys and men that their contributions to family life and the household economy are of no great consequence."
More Bad 'Media Research' From The MRC Topic: Media Research Center
Remember: The mission of the Media Research Center these day is to protect President Trump from media criticism. Another example of that is this bit of "media research" in a Feb. 28 post by Bill D'Agostino:
During national emergencies such as natural disasters or outbreaks of disease, the news media can serve as a valuable source of information for the public. Yet when it came to their coverage of the coronavirus on Thursday, CNN largely put their Trump-bashing agenda ahead of that important role.
MRC analysts identified 44 guest interviews on CNN between 6:00 am and 11:59 pm EST on February 27, 2020. Out of 136 questions that hosts asked about the epidemic, 82 (60%) invited guests – even medical specialists – to criticize the Trump administration’s handling of the epidemic. Questions asked of CNN-affiliated reporters and analysts were not included in this total.
Hosts often pressured guests who were reluctant to attack the administration.
[...]
It’s bad enough when Democrats and Republicans politicize national emergencies, but for the self-ordained Facts First Network to do the same is nothing short of outrageous. This isn’t what journalists are supposed to do during a national health crisis. How bad must the epidemic get for CNN to stop taking what even Democrats network have called “cheap shots?”
Absent from D'Agostino's alleged analysis -- as it is from pretty much all MRC "studies" -- is a list of those 136 questions and how they were classified so readers can judge for themselves how "negative" or "cheap" they are. D'Agostino repeated only two questions in his post.
D'Agostino also appears to have failed to consider context -- that Trump does, in fact, deserve criticism of his administration's response to the outbreak. Perhaps that's because the apparebnly official policy at the MRC is that Trump does nothing wrong and all criticism of him is "liberal."
The MRC's "media research" is hard to take seriously when it's so utterly biased.
Gay-Hating WND Columnist Hates Trump's Gay Acting DNI Topic: WorldNetDaily
If there's one thing we can count on from Scott Lively, it's that he'll hate gay people regardless of the politics. That means while conservative media has mostly forgotten that Richard Grenell, President Trump's new acting director of national intelligence, is gay and that they forced his resignation from his spokesman job for Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign over said gayness, Lively has not.
Thus, Lively ranted in his Feb. 21 WorldNetDaily column:
There comes a time in the evolution of the progressive agenda when true conservatives should stop using the "slippery slope" argument because the place we've degenerated to should be condemned as is. That's our situation today where the hero we're rallying behind to fight the progressive agenda has embraced one of its most insidious and destructive tenets. I'm talking about President Trump's appointment of open and unrepentant homosexual Richard Grenell to the position of acting director of national intelligence.
The insidious and destructive tenet of progressivism I'm referencing is "Sexual Orientation Theory" – a fake science invented by progressive political strategists for the purpose of normalizing LGBT lifestyles and de-normalizing the natural family. It has even less legitimacy than "climate change science."
Frankly, if Richard Grenell kept his sexual proclivities to himself and told people to mind their own business about his private life, I'd be more inclined to consider the "merit based" arguments for his nomination (though at first glance his resume falls far short of qualifying him for this position). But the minute he went public about his homosexual domestic partnership, he became a Marxist change agent, his very presence in public life an argument that a homosexual "orientation" is equivalent to normal sexuality. (Who in American history has ever wanted that goal? It wasn't the conservatives!)
When Grenell did that, he crossed the line from expecting reasonable tolerance from our genuinely magnanimous live-and-let-life society to demanding public acceptance. And in taking that step he also implicitly endorsed the progressive strategy of celebrating his "out" lifestyle as social progress, forcibly integrating it into society, and punishing those who object.
[...]
Let me be clear. I'm not saying that a homosexual can't be a conservative. I've known many. What I'm saying is that openly declaring oneself homosexual instead of keeping one's sexual issues private is a Marxist tactic for forcing social change, and whoever does that from inside the conservative movement is a Trojan Horse – an espionage agent – carrying the progressive agenda behind enemy lines even if they don't intend to be. The mainstreaming of sexual sub-cultures is NOT "progress" to anyone but "progressives."
Richard Grenell is a Trojan Horse. President Trump should not trust him and neither should we Deplorables.
Lively doubled down in his Feb. 24 column, declaring that "I'm been about as strong a Trump supporter as you can find," but that Trump showed he doesn't hate gays to Lively's satisfaction by appointing Grenell:
HOWEVER, the one issue that calls everything else into question is President Trump's apparent spiritual blindness on the question of homosexuality. Now I've mostly given him a pass on this issue over the past three years, rationalizing that he's just being politically savvy in a dangerous area of public policy that is (not accidentally) extremely emotionally inflammatory to the youngest generations of public school graduates and the most passionate of the street activists of the left. He's also been working diligently to peel away voters from all the constituencies of the Democratic Party, including the "gays," and I'm actually glad to see that many self-identified homosexuals are now pro-Trump.
My argument is not that he is being politically strategic, but that he is doing it in a way that unnecessarily serves the very Marxist agenda he's trying to defeat.
President Trump could easily maneuver the LGBT minefield without endorsing homosexuality itself. But he is purposefully approving it. On Feb. 21, in the build-up to his upcoming rally in India, he praised "Bollywood," its film industry, for releasing its first movie promoting homosexuality, retweeting a tweet about the production with the word "Great!" What is the message to the world when the president of the United States – a self-proclaimed Christian – applauds a morally conservative nation for abandoning its principles to celebrate homosexuality? What kind of mentality justifies the normalization of homosexuality to an entire nation's children as a political tactic? I feel nauseous just thinking about it.
Is this a partial payoff to openly homosexual Richard Grenell for his willingness to be the president's hatchet-man in the house-cleaning of the intelligence agencies? If so, it's a devil's bargain he never should have entered into.
Meanwhile, Lively is upset that Trump hasn't read his attacks on Grenell. something something sodomy:
Of course, President Trump probably never saw my article, but he shouldn't have had to, since my arguments should have been no-brainer, intuitive deductions by anyone with a genuine biblical worldview in the Trump inner circle. A simple policy pivot from an emphasis on decriminalization to an emphasis on ending violence against homosexuals would have sent just as powerful a message without endorsing the regressive leftist view that discouragement of sodomy through public policy is a bad thing. Discouraging the public health and morals menace of sodomy through law was an unassailable conservative policy position less than a quarter century ago in our country! Now we're supposed to flip 180 degrees and embrace Obama doctrine instead?
Lively then complained that Vice President Mike Pence, as "the highest-ranking Christian in the Trump administration," is apparently not teaching Trump how to hate gays, and he doubts that Trump is even "saved" (despite the fact he has never claimed to be and certainly acts otherwise to the contrary):
Every Christian sins in matters of personal conduct, and we have a remedy from God for that called confession and repentance. In contrast, taking public policy positions that directly contradict the clear instructions of God is a spiritual problem of a much higher magnitude. Every Christian leader with access to the president and an opportunity to do so has a duty to speak that truth to him.
His endorsement of homosexuality even raises the question of whether Donald Trump is actually saved. There are lots of "religious leftists" running around saying they're Christians based on belief in a non-biblical Jesus who condones and even approves what the Bible condemns. I argue that one can't be saved by belief in a false Christ. Which Jesus does the president put his faith in?
Whatever God will get him elected, but Lively will likely never concede that.
You Need To Calm Down: MRC Can't Stop Bashing Taylor Swift Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center isweirdlyobsessed with bashing Taylor Swift for the sin of having opinions it doesn't agree with (and refusing to hate LGBT people as much as it thinks she should). Since Swift refuses to conform to the MRC's right-wing agenda, she remains an MRC target.
In November, P.J. Gladnick mocked Elizabeth Warren for taking Swift's side against her former record company regarding control of the music she recorded for it -- and, of course, mocked Swift herself for committing the offense of being a "multi-millionaire" who wants to have a say in how the music she helped create is being used:
Justice for Taylor Swift!
Yeah, now that's a cause that your average working American can get behind. And it is also a cause taken up by presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren which has resulted in widespread mockery. Okay, the mockery hasn't quite reached the levels inspired by the reaction to her hyping of a DNA test last year that revealed that Warren is maybe 1/1024 Native American but it is up there.
Warren tweeted her support for Swift in the multi-millionaire's contractual dispute with other millionaires that we should somehow care about as reported by Variety on Saturday in, "Elizabeth Warren Backs Taylor Swift in Big Machine Battle."
[...]
There is a lot more of that in reply to Elizabeth Warren on Twitter so break out the popcorn and take a look for yourselves because the entertainment value is much greater than listening to Taylor Swift singing (or whining).
Gladnick apparently doesn't think that having control over what you create is something your average working American can understand.
In January, Swift's chief MRC bully, Gabriel Hays, melted down over the singer receiving an award from pro-LGBT organization GLAAD through exhibiting the gay-bashing the MRC is known for in once again complaining there are too many gay people on TV:
Although Taylor is less of a hero, and more so just another spoiled celebrity being paraded out by special interest groups in order to condescend to people who are reluctant to join progressive causes. She’s a leftwing android more or less. She promotes all the boilerplate gay lobby crap and bashes Donald Trump supporters as scary racists.
Swift made her abrupt shift left in 2018, when she blasted then Senate-candidate Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) for her conservative campaign. Taylor claimed her record “appalls and terrifies me.” In April 2019, Swift donated $113,000 to the Tennessee Equality Project, a legal group aggressive in pushing LGBTQ legislation in the state.
[...]
Though really, she’s just another one of the left’s anti-intellectual, propaganda mouthpieces that helps GLAAD bully people into submission. GLAAD has used its influence to put an over-representation of LGBTQ folks in TV/film entertainment and has successfully sicced the media on companies with traditional family values via an obnoxious and dishonest victimhood strategy.
Hays returned in a Feb. 28 post to sneer at Swift's new music video (and the song it's for):
The far left reboot of Taylor Swift is continuing her work of alienating conservatives and most other normal folks from her fanbase. The singer unveiled her music video for her misogyny-crushing anthem “The Man,” featuring her play-acting as a man and doing all the things your typical toxic white male gets away with that women can’t.
Like smoking cigars while manspreading on subway cars, or behaving like an arrogant jerk on a yacht with models? Well if your info comes from a Swift music video, these are the problems with guys these days.
Swift’s video for “The Man” premiered online on February 27, and of course it was a slick, polished production. Swift’s got the best entertainment people working for her, and their politics are predictable. “The Man” is a cheap feminist anthem about double standards.
Her lyrics for the song’s chorus sum up her views on sexism. She sings, “I'm so sick of running as fast as I can. Wondering if I'd get there quicker if I was a man. And I'm so sick of them coming at me again, 'cause if I was a man then I'd be the man.” Yes, so sad, and her $300 million doesn’t put her about 99% of most men on earth, but we digress.
Of course the music video makes her points even dumber than they were in writing.
Hays then unironically wrote: "Swift must see her product as more of a joke, because it’s too cartoony to be a political statement. " We wonder if Hays sees his product as a joke, because it's too cartoonishly hateful to be taken as legitimate criticism.
CNS On Coronavirus: Reality Intrudes On The Trump-Fluffing Topic: CNSNews.com
We documented that CNSNews.com's first week of major coverage of the coronavirus crisis was largely dedicated to minimizing the threat and defending the Trump administration's response to it.
Since then, CNS' coverage has featured even more minimization and Trump defense:
CNS' Susan Jones (of course) even devoted an article to how Nancy Pelosi "pulled out a tissue and wiped her nose" during her weekly press conference at which she talked about coronavirus.
But as the week went on -- and the coronavirus threat became impossible to ignore or downplay -- CNS remembered it was supposed to report news and added a dose of reality to its coverage:
CNS even noted Fox News host Tucker Carlson's criticism of the Trump administration's failure to take the coronavirus crisis seriously. But it also gave space to Fox Business host Trish Regan's unhinged rant that coronavirus was "impeachment all over again."
Still, even the stories that initially present as balanced are full of pro-Trump bias. A March 12 article by Melanie Arter carries the benign headline "McCarthy on Coronavirus Legislation: ‘I Think We Can Get This Done in 24-48 Hours’," but it consists solely of Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy attacking Democratic proposals and failed to quote any Democratic response. And a March 10 article by Jones withthe headline "Rubio: 'There Could Be a Shortage of Critical Drugs in This County'" was actually a talking-point piece featuring the Republican senator pushing "the United States to take back the pharmaceutical production we 'gave away' to China."
The old CNS agenda staples continued: another attempt to make Joe Biden look goofy, in an anonymously written headlined "Joe Biden Advises Americans to Stop Hugging Each Other," and another rant from its favorite right-wing radio host, Mark Levin.Craig Bannister cheered capitalist profiteering in a March 13 post headlined "Enterprising Teen Sent Home, Gets Detention for Selling Squirts of Hand Sanitizer to Fellow Students."
CNS even touted writers trying to exploit the coronavirus outbreaks to advance their own agendas. Actor wife Sam Sorbo was given a column to rant that public education was a bad thing on par with coronavirus:
Caution is the better form of valor, and goodness knows we want our children to be safe, but we miss the bigger picture. Infecting the minds of our youth with what passes today for education but what clearly has morphed, over the years, into simple indoctrination, may have a worse effect than illness. There is, after all, the strong potential of recovery from illness, but the disease of liberalism — intolerance of the truth, and a reluctance to learn (all promoted in our government schools and institution of “higher learning”) — is much more threatening. It poisons its victims with dangerous assumptions about political correctness, unearned self-worth, and gender confusion, not to mention the academic confusion resultant from the coerced Common Core agenda.
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Parents who demand protection for their children from the infection of the body may realize they can simultaneously guard them from the degradation of thought rampant in our schools and colleges. Home education should figure among their options, as homes are deemed safest by health authorities. My book can help explain how easy it is to educate your child in a truly safe environment.
There is already a virus in your local schools, and its deadlier than the coronavirus.
Sorbo will never admit that homeschooling involves at least as much indoctrination as she claims public education does.
And homophobic CNS managing editor did an article promoting a fellow homophobe:
Bishop E.W. Jackson, a Marine, Harvard Law graduate, and great-grandson of Virginia slaves, said that promoting homosexual behavior is destructive and constitutes a "violent attack" on the family, especially in the black community, which faces many "family formation" problems including the absence of many real fathers.
He added that, though it will spark criticism, the gay movement is "the homovirus for the family." It is not like the physical coronavirus, he said, but it is damaging in a "spiritual and psychological" sense and is "the last thing you need in a community that is beset by gangs, and drugs, and violence, much of which can be traced back to the absence of fathers in the home."
The news may change, but not CNS' bias in covering it.
The MRC's LGBT 'Agenda' Freakout Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center generally hates LGBT people and thinks the fact that they're allowed to be on TV is evidence of some sort of "agenda." A couple recent posts fed that "agenda" obsession.
A Feb. 18 post by Lindsey Kornick complained about a documentary about LGBT representation on TV, denigrating them as "depraved" people engaged in "perversions":
Apple TV has truly hit the peak of progressiveness, and there’s no turning back. The five-part documentary series Visible: Out on Television spells out the true agenda behind LGBTQ representation on television. Namely, the idea that “television is at its best” when it’s being used as a tool for the gay community.
All five parts, which premiered on February 14, lay out the history of LGBTQ representation on television. It begins with the first reference to homosexuality in McCarthy hearings from 1957 and moves to the present day with every major TV event in between those times. The premiere episode “The Dark Ages” dives into this record with their agenda front and center, summing up all the details and posturing we'll be hearing for over five hours. That includes the notion that television is only "at its best" with several LGBTQ characters.
Considering the second episode is literally called “Television as a Tool,” it’s safe to say that the goal is clearly indoctrination and normalization of LGBTQ lifestyles. Even in the documentary, there’s no hiding that many forms of gay representation became excuses for “liberal diatribes” to millions of viewers. There is even special attention given to the gay activist groups such as Act Up and GLAAD, noting that “using TV and the media was the whole game.” Referencing these groups alone removes all doubts of this being anything but political.
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Seeing the scope of television move from simply placing gay characters on screen to openly celebrating every perverted thing they can do is jarring enough, but it gets worse. The show goes so far as to co-opt other characters from popular shows to simply act as gay representation for them. And here I thought liberals didn’t like appropriation.
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CNN calls Visible: Out on Television “a reminder how far both TV and society have come.” In a way, I agree. It shows us how far television has fallen to blatant propaganda and depraved activists. And it’ll never be far enough for the progressives.
MRC chief Brent Bozell, meanwhile, used a Feb. 20 post -- presented as "a side on the website The Rift" -- to deny he's a homophobe while he demands that the Disney Channel ban all LGBT characters:
There should not be more homosexual characters in animated Disney movies and there should not be fewer. There should be none.
Nor should there be anti-homosexual characters. Nor Catholics or anti-Catholics, nor Jewish people or anti-Semites, nor climate change proponents or climate change deniers. Any character’s identity and back story that doesn’t propel a simple children’s tale reflects the preoccupation of adults.
This debate is not about presenting characters that are homosexual. This is about presenting characters as homosexuals. This is about promoting the gay lifestyle. But why do either?
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Please, please: Don’t accuse me of being homophobic. That dog just won’t hunt. Most every adult watching Paul Lynde on Hollywood Squares, or David Hyde Pierce on Frasier, or Charles Nelson Reilly on Laugh-In knew the actor was gay… and no one cared. All were there as comedians who happened to be gay.
Victimology. I tire of it. I am a Roman Catholic. There are 51 million of us. We demand that Disney actively and only positively promote Catholic characters! 65% of Americans are Christians. Disney must have 65% of its characters portrayed as Christian role models!
Disney would never allow that. Disney won’t allow a single Catholic character in its animated films. I wonder if you can find a single Christian. That, you see, is the projection of an agenda.
So for Bozell, being gay is a "don't ask, don't tell" kind of thing? Because you know that if Lynde or Reilly had admitted on TV they were gay, he would be agitating to ban them from the airwaves.
Bozell then complained that Disney removed the "Siamese Cat Song" from its remake of "Lady and the Tramp" because of its perceived racism: "Did a single child anywhere on the face of Planet Earth ever listen to that song and find racist overtones? What about the song that followed, an Italian song about Italian food sung by two characters parodying Italians? Why is that still there? Out, out, OUT!"
Bozell conlcuded by huffing: "None of this has anything to do with entertaining kids and everything to do with indoctrinating them into leftwing ideology. Adding more LGBT characters to Disney movies just moves the company further from its purpose." Bozell's purpose, meanwhile, is to censor all traces of LGBT representation from the public airwaves, so his complaint about "indoctrinating" is wildly hypocritical -- and, yes, Brent, that's quite homophobic.
Majority Whip Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., is a pathetic hater whose greatest measurable achievement is serving 14 terms in Congress.
According to his Wikipedia page, his South Carolina congressional district includes nearly all of the mostly black precincts in and around Columbia and Charleston, as well as almost the entire rural region within South Carolina. In those areas he has successfully turned pimping hatred, skin color and an annual fish fry with white bread, into the viscous substance that lubricates his political flim-flam machine.
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Clyburn calls President Trump a racist, and scorns the unqualified success his agenda has been for all Americans on every quantifiable level, and specifically for black Americans.
But Clyburn steadfastly supports and defends Joe Biden whose 1994 crime bill many argue led to mass imprisonment of black people. Clyburn calls President Trump anti-black, but he stolidly defends Biden's comments at a New York fundraiser, when he boasted about working with segregationists. Clyburn defended him even as other black Democrats condemned Biden for his remarks.
Clyburn's claim that the massive economic gain by blacks under President Trump somehow compares to slavery is the Erebusic rhetoric of a loser.
Some years ago during a BBC interview, Oprah Winfrey said, "Older white people who were born, bred, and marinated in prejudice and racism should die if racism is to disappear." Winfrey was inexcusably wrong to say that. It's not old white people who need to die; it's people like James Clyburn who must disappear, never to be heard from again, if the inculcating of blacks with pernicious acrimony is to end.
The Media Research Center's Alex Christy complained in a March 9 post:
It's a new year, so there are new opportunities for CNSNews.com to relentlessly plug its favorite right-wing radio host (with whom it may or may not have a cross-promotion deal with), Mark Levin.
CNSNews.com editor in chief Terry Jeffrey has 
Kathleen Krumhansl comlained in a March 6 MRC Latino 
Jerry Newcombe complained in his March 3 WorldNetDaily 
The Media Research Center has accused the media of politicizing the coronavirus outbreak for so long, it can now be credibly accused of politicizing the outbreak itself by pushing the "politicizing" narrative -- after all, the only reason the narrative exists is to protect its beloved President Trump, since it doesn't want you to believe there's no evidence that he downplayed the signfigance of the outbreak until he could no longer do so. 
Pro-Trump rah-rah was the order of the day for CNSNews.com's reporting on February's employment numbers. Susan Jones' 
Remember: The mission of the Media Research Center these day is to protect President Trump from media criticism. Another example of that is this bit of "media research" in a Feb. 28 
If there's one thing we can count on from 
The Media Research Center 
We 
The Media Research Center generally hates LGBT people and thinks the fact that they're allowed to be on TV is evidence of some sort of "agenda." A couple recent posts fed that "agenda" obsession.
Majority Whip Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., is a pathetic hater whose greatest measurable achievement is serving 14 terms in Congress.
