MRC Still Defending Chappelle's Anti-Trans Humor
Topic: Media Research Center

As it did with Ricky Gervais and J.K. Rowling, the Media Research Cented flip-flopped from hate to love with Dave Chappelle when he decided to traffic in transphobia, defending every unfunny bit of trans-bashing that came out of his mouth -- and it has continued to do so in 2022. In a Jan. 3 post, Matt Philbin got mad because comedian Patton Oswalt apologized for hanging out with Chappelle:

Patton Oswalt wants you to know he holds all the correct opinions. Really. No, Oswalt personally hasn’t cancelled his old friend Dave Chappelle (“Sssss, Booo!”), but it’s because he’s pretty sure Chappelle can continue “evolving” to the higher plane where Oswalt and other enlightened lefties dwell in beatific complacency.

At Chapelle’s invitation, Oswalt recently appeared at the former’s show, doing an impromptu standup set. But then he posted to Instagram pics of the two backstage. Bad move.

See, several months ago, Chapelle ran afoul of the Transgender Industrial Complex by publicly saying sensible things about biology. He agreed with “Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists” (TERFs) about women having lady parts. 

There was, as you’d expect, BIG drama, and Chappelle is persona non grata to the better sort of woke activists. Worse, the comic refused to debase himself and apologize. In fact, he was rather defiant.

So Oswalt’s picture was not well received. Think of Stalinists reacting to a junior Politburo member showing off a chummy snapshot with Leon Trotsky.

Oswalt is no Chappelle (and he’s no Patton either) so he immediately issued a craven apology that managed to patronize the trans movement while demeaning his pal Dave.

Yes, spewing hate at transgender people equals "saying sensible things about biology" in Philbin's hateful little world.

In a Feb. 26 post, Christian Toto cheered that Netflix, which aired Chappelle's earlier transphobic special, continued to stand by him in "a direct blow to Cancel Culture, Inc."

When Chappelle was attacked on stage by a man allegedly triggered by his anti-transgender "jokes," the MRC did a round of pearl-clutching. Elise Ehrhard fretted in a May 5 post that the alleged assailant "had a "connection" with the transgender community" and huffed, "The transgender movement has been particularly aggressive in attacking anyone who questions their gender narrative, as everyone from J.K. Rowling to Jordan Peterson can attest." Perhaps transgender people wouldn't be so angry if people like Ehrhard didn't dismiss their existence as people by insisting they merely have a "gender narrative."

Toto returned for a May 7 post whining that Chappelle was attacked for merely telling jokes and that other comedians might not be able to tell bad transphobic "jokes":

The left and journalists alike have pounded Dave Chappelle for telling the wrong kind of jokes. The furor didn’t start with The Closer, the comedian’s most recent Netflix special, but it picked up sizable momentum following its Oct. 5, 2021 release.

Long story short: Chappelle yukked about the trans community in ways said community, and its “allies,” didn’t like.

Did we just see the natural results of that ensuing rage?

[...]

Comedians already self censor for fear of offending the woke mob. Desus & Mero, the Showtime power duo, admitted just that even though they align almost perfectly with the progressive narrative.

Others do so out of fear, and understandably so. A Chappelle or Bill Burr can survive if they never told another joke again, in theory, given their ample income. A blue-collar comic can’t say the same.

Now, comedians have to worry about more than Cancel Culture. What if the wrong joke upsets the wrong comedy club patron, and he or she decides to rush the stage in response?

It may be wiser to avoid jokes that push boundaries than put oneself at risk.

Once again, the comedy world has suffered a sizable blow.

Yes, unfunny jokes that punch down at people would indeed "push boundaries." But Toto never expalined how any of Chappelle's transphobic jokes are actually funny, nor did he reprint any of those alleged jokes to justify their humor. Also, the MRC doesn't give the "they're only jokes" defense to folks who make fun of their feilow right-wingers -- witness its archives of outrage at Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers.

Earlier this month, Chappelle quietly drooped a special on Netflix that wasn't actually a comedy special but, rather, a speech he gave at high school alma mater which was going to name its theater after him but thought better of it after the transphobia controversy; he spent a good part of it ranting about his critics and insisting they missed the "artistic nuance" of his anti-trans humor and denounced the students who fought against naming the theater after him "instruments of oppression." Needless to say, the MRC loved it.Wallace White cheered in a July 8 post:

No one runs liberals up a wall with comedy quite like Dave Chappelle has in his widely acclaimed Netflix specials The Closer and Sticks and Stones. After lots of leftist backlash from previous shows, he once again stands his ground against PC culture in a surprise release on Netflix titled Dave Chappelle: What’s in a Name? according to The Daily Beast July 7.

This new 40-minute “speech” is a follow-up to his rejection of an offer from Duke Ellington School for the Arts, his alma mater, to put his name on the theater after he had a contentious Q&A session with the schools students, who accused him of being a “bigot” and “childish,” in addition to hurling accusatory statements like “Your comedy kills.” His new special is in the theater at the school where the Q&A happened, and features serious critique with his trademark stand-up skills mixed in.

[...]

He sums up his attitude to speech policing, saying “The more you say I can’t say something, the more urgent it is for me to say it. It has nothing to do with what you’re saying I can’t say. It has everything to do with my right and my freedom of artistic expression.”

Right on the money.

He calls on the kids at the Q&A to be self-aware about whether their words were genuine conclusions they came to themselves, or if they were parroting propaganda fed to them. He says, “I know those kids didn’t come up with those words. I’ve heard those words before,“ and “These kids didn’t understand that they were instruments of oppression.”

A bunch of high school kids were simply being megaphones of liberal talking points instead of thinking for themselves. Dave Chappelle wants them to realize that, and teach them the value of freedom and how it can be used for good, like in his case, a good laugh.

Like Toto, White didn't explain how any of Chappelle's transphobia is actually funny. But he "runs liberals up a wall," and owning the libs (or pretending you are while just spewing hate) is all that matters to the MRC.

Dubious Doc Jane Orient Whines About Vaccine Mandates
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Jane Orient reminds us of the anti-vaxxer nature -- not just of COVID vaccines but of all of them -- in her June 27 WorldNetDaily column ranting that people should be exempted from getting vaccines for any reason or no reason at all:

An exemption is something people get from military service or jury duty – a civil obligation that serves the common good, that is, the good of everyone.

Everyone benefits when the country is secure from a hostile invasion and from having a guaranteed right to trial by jury. Not everyone is fit to serve, and some have more important obligations, or conscientious objections. Therefore, we allow for exemptions even though people have a civic duty to participate in essential functions if they can.

But for medical treatments, the person prescribing the treatment must get permission. Operating on a person, injecting him, or even touching him without permission is assault and battery, except when there is a life-threatening emergency or an imminent danger to others. One does not need an exemption to forgo a medical treatment. One simply declines to get it.

Except with mandated vaccines.

Even if theoretically allowed, vaccine exemptions may be impossible to obtain. In some schools or enterprises, virtually all medical exemptions are denied. The person may have to present documentation of an almost fatal reaction to previously receiving a component of the vaccine. Many doctors refuse to help because of realistic fear of being delicensed if they support "too many" or "inappropriate" exemptions.

It may be easier to get a religious exemption, but one may have to prove the validity or sincerity of one's faith. Who has the legitimate authority to judge that?

Because there's basically no legitmiate faith that credibly opposes vaccines? She continued:

This situation is backwards. For a prescription drug or for many lab tests, you must have a physician's order. The doctor is legally obliged to have a patient-physician relationship with you and to be responsible for side effects or for following up on test results. But who is ordering your COVID jab or your COVID test? Is that person qualified to be your doctor? Even if he is, you are under no obligation to follow your physician's advice, and patients frequently don't.

Who gave officials or employers or pharmacies an exemption from getting a physician's order?

Orient's longtime anti-vaxxer activism shows she cares more about politics than medicine, which would seem to be a disqualifer for her to be a legitimate medical doctor.  Yet she continued to whine:

We no longer treat persons with Hansen's disease (leprosy) like lepers. (Fortunately, it is now curable and not very contagious.) We do, however, treat incompletely vaccinated children like lepers, excluding them from school or social activities. Unlike HIV disease or untreated Hansen's disease, the "vaccine preventable" childhood diseases are contagious for only a few days in a child's entire life, and most are usually mild. You cannot get measles or other disease from a child who does not currently have it. After recovery, the child has better immunity than a vaccinated child.

We draft unwilling persons into vaccination for the "common good" – to protect the hypothetical immunocompromised child who can't be vaccinated, just in case there's a disease outbreak, and that child might get infected by an unvaccinated child rather than by a vaccinated person whose immunity wore off. Instead of shielding the vulnerable, we force everyone to take the risk of a serious or even fatal adverse reaction to something they believe offers them no compensating benefit. An unvaccinated but healthy person is not an imminent danger.

Government has exempted itself from the Constitution, and physicians have exempted themselves from the Oath of Hippocrates.

It's time for citizens and patients to deny these self-conferred exemptions and to assert their right to grant or withhold permission for medical treatment, according to their own values and risk-benefit assessment.

Just one problem with that: People who are being scared into doing their own "research" on vaccines by anti-vaxxers like Orient tend to fall into rabbit holes of misinformation. There's no reason for a layperson to have to figure out the complexities of science and medicine , and there's no reason not to trust a credible medical professional regarding vaccines, which have been repeatedly proven safe.

Orient simply wants to perpetuate misinformation to keep her misinformation organziation -- the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons -- alive, largely because it pays her well to spread misinformation about vaccines. That's a conflict of interest -- not to mention dangerous medicine.

P.S. Orient's reference to leprosy is highly ironic since the journal her AAPS publishes is notorious for a discredited article by a non-physician blaming illegal immigrants for an explosion of diseases, partiularly leprosy. The author had claimed there were 7,000 new cases of leprosy in the U.S. in a three-year period; in fact, that number occurred over 30 years. Orient has yet to correct the article, despite the falsehood having been exposed 15 years ago when it was repeated by then-CNN host Lou Dobbs.

50 Years On, MRC Is Still Whining About Watergate
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center has a bit of a complex -- still! 50 years after the fact! -- about the Watergate scandal, which it now slots into its victimhood narrative in portraying Richard Nixon as a victim of the media; meanwhile, Tim Graham displayed a soft spot for unrepentant criminal G. Gordon Liddy. So as the 50 anniversary of the Watergate break-in that triggerred the scandal was noted, the MRC made sure to complain. Alex Christy complained in a June 15 post that Woodward and Bernstein talked about it on TV:

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein joined CBS The Late Show host Stephen Colbert on Tuesday to reminiscence for four segments about the fall of Richard Nixon during Watergate and assuage Colbert’s fears about the future of democracy by citing their roles in that process.

The first two segments were full of comparisons between Nixon and Donald Trump as well as lamenting that today’s Republicans did not stand up to Trump in the way they did under Nixon. Naturally, the trio ignored the precedent Democrats set during the Clinton impeachment, but Colbert was still concerned about the future of democracy. In the third segment, he asked Woodward, “We're in another moment of great peril, as you say in your book Peril. What is your feeling about the future of this experiment we call American democracy?”

Two days later, Aidan Moorehouse complained that Bernstein opined about Donald Trump's Capitol insurrection:

To say Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward have an ax to grind against Donald Trump would be the understatement of the century. If any more proof was needed, Bernstein made the outrageous claim on CNN’s Friday morning New Day that Donald Trump’s actions in the leadup to and during January 6 were worse than Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy.

[...]

Just think about this comparison for a minute. Bernstein is seriously comparing Donald Trump’s — admittedly legally dubious — efforts to prevent the electoral college results from being certified and to be sent back to the states for recertification with the aim of remaining in office, to the unilateral secession of eleven states with the primary aim of preserving the institution of slavery.

Following Bernstein’s logic, what that would make Trump supporters? Are they also engaged in sedition by the very act of supporting the man politically? 

If Moorehouse can't work up anyoutrage over Trump's attempted overthrow of a government and interference in the election than tepidly calling it "admittedly legally dubious" -- and his employer is attacking attempts to hold the insurrectionists and those who enabled them accountable as a political witch hunt -- then, yes, there is something a bit sedition-y about that.If the MRC is afraid to abandon Trump out of fear of losing political power, then that's a bit sedition-y as well.

Graham returned to whine about a Watergate special in a June 19 post:

On Friday’s CBS Mornings,Watergate: High Crimes in the White House.They tied it into the new anti-Trump hearings. Co-host Tony Dokoupil began: “As the January 6 hearings continue in Washington, the Watergate story continues to echo today offering potential lessons about the current political landscape.”

Yes, the lesson is that CBS News is still using the guise of “news” to promote Democrats and punish Republicans. They brought in Lesley Stahl, who started 50 years ago at CBS News, to connect the Watergate hearings to the January 6 hearings:

[...]

No one on the CBS set is going to suggest that no, the Senate Watergate Committee was assembled by letting the Republican minority choose its committee members, unlike the Pelosi-handpicked Republicans on the January 6 panel.

And Graham is certainly notgoing to remind people that the Republican minority did have the chance to appoint committee members but House minority leader Kevin McCarthy threw a fit and took his ball and went home rather than have to choose members who didn't support the insurrecction. (Also, note that Graham dismissed the special as "ponderous" despite not having actually watched it.)

After the folks on CBS noted that Nixon was a moderate, Graham whined: "But CBS and the rest of the liberal media found the supposed mountain top of their profession by forcing moderate Nixon to resign. To this day, they don’t quite understand why half the country doesn’t find them to be objective or 'mainstream' in their journalistic pursuits." Graham didn't mention that Nixon was caught red-handed coordinating the Watergate cover-up -- or that a "moderate" Republican like Nixon would be hounded out of the Republican Party today... and that he and the MRC would lead that harassment campaign.

The MRC has been engaging in Watergate revisionism for years;  for instance, a 2005 item, insisted that Watergate was actually about "how to take down a Republican President for political gain and personal profit."

CNS Unemployment Coverage Distortion Watch
Topic: CNSNews.com

As we've noted, when the employment numbers are too good for President Biden, CNSNews.com shifts focus to cherry-picked numbers that can be made to look not as good. That was the case for June's numbers , when 372,000 new jobs were added. The main article by Susan Jones buried that under the confusing headline "BLS: Labor Force Participation, -0.1%; Not in Labor Force, +510,000; Employed, -315,000":

The Federal Reserve raised interest rates three-quarters of a point on June 15, and Chairman Jerome Powell said another rate hike may happen this month.

But so far, the labor market remains strong, despite some softening last month in labor force participation, the number of employed Americans, and the number of people not in the labor force.

Non-farm payrolls added 372,000 jobs in June, well above the consensus estimate of around 268,000 and about even with the 384,000 jobs (revised) added in May, the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday.

Notable job growth last month occurred in professional and business services, leisure and hospitality, and health care.

The number of employed Americans interrupted its previous upward march, settling at 158,111,000 in June, down 315,000 from the May number.

But the number of unemployed Americans -- those without a job who have actively looked for work in the prior 4 weeks and are currently available for work -- has steadily declined during Biden's presidency, reaching a Biden-era low of 5,912,000 in June.

Jones remained obsessed with claiming how much better things were under Donald Trump: "The participation rate was 61.4 percent when Joe Biden took office as the pandemic raged. Today's number, 62.2 percent, is still below the Trump-era high of 63.4 percent in February 2020, just before COVID shut things down."

That was joined by the usual sidebar from editor Terry Jeffrey on government employement, and he found a negative number to cheer:

The number of people working for the federal government declined by 13,000 in June, dropping from 2,866,000 in May to 2,853,000,according to the employment report released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Overall government employment in the United States declined by only 9,000 from May to June as local governments added workers.

He also seemed happy that the number of government workers is less than it was under Trump: "In February 2020, there were 22,879,000 working for government in the United States—compared to the 22,215,000 working for government in June 2022.

MRC Hyped Colbert Staffers' Arrest -- But Censored Charges Being Dropped
Topic: Media Research Center

When several staffers for CBS' "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert" were arrested in June inside a congressional office building, the Media Research Center cranked up the hype machine. In the first post on the incident on June 18, Tim Graham immediately leapt to Capitol riot comparisons:

Fox News reported on Friday night the U.S. Capitol Police arrested a group of staffers with CBS's The Late Show With Stephen Colbert and were charged with unlawful entry after they allegedly illegally entered a House Office Building on Thursday night.

[...]

Remember that people who merely entered the Capitol on January 6 were charged with "parading" or "entering a restricted building" and some have served several weeks in jail.

Graham failed to mention the obvious fact that the Colbert staffers weren't part of a violent mob egged on by a president who refused to face reality that was aiming to overthrow the government and murder the vice president. Nevertheless, Graham whined in a separate tweet that "'CBS Saturday Morning' waited 20 minutes before noting Colbert staffers were arrested at the Capitol."

Scott Whitlock fleshed out Graham's tweet in a June 20 post complaining that CBS wasn't sufficiently covering this huge news story:

Seven staffers of far-left Late Show host Stephen Colbert were arrested last week at the Capitol for unlawful entry as they likely attempted to harass Republicans. Since the news broke late on Friday, an embarrassed CBS has allowed just 65 seconds total. All of it on CBS Saturday Morning. The network didn’t return to the incident over the weekend or on Monday. 

CBS Morning hosts Gayle King, Tony Dokoupil and Nate Burleson love to play clips of Colbert, but they allowed no recap on Monday. ABC allowed similarly skimpy coverage. Just 25 seconds on Saturday’s Good Morning America. NBC has ignored it. 

On CBS Saturday Morning, co-host Michelle Miller tried to soften the blow by making jokes, noting that one of the detained was Robert Smiegel, the man behind Triumph the Insult Comic [Dog]:

[...]

You can guess that Colbert will find some way to explain this all away. The vile host has compared Republicans to Nazis and suggested that half of the GOP agree with the mass shooting in Buffalo.

You can also guess that the MRC would throw a fit when Colbert did that. And that's exactly what Graham did in a June 21 post:

On Monday's Late Show, CBS host Stephen Colbert addressed the arrest of seven staffers filming after-hours in the Longworth House Office Building in his opening monologue. He made light of how they were committing "first-degree puppetry" and then blamed the sensitivity of the Capitol Police on "Putin's puppet" for causing the January 6 riots. 

Colbert explained that after two full days of filming in congressional office buildings, "After they’d finished their interviews, [my staffers] were doing some last-minute puppetry and jokey make-em-ups in a hallway, when Triumph and my folks were approached and detained by Capitol Police." He didn't address Fox News reporting his team had been "escorted out of the Jan. 6 committee hearing earlier in the day because they did not have proper press credentials."

But he did mock Fox News this way: "The Capitol Police are much more cautious than they were, say, 18 months ago, and for a very good reason. If you don't know what that reason is, I know what news network you watch." The crowd laughed and roared.

Because they know that Fox News, like the MRC, is desperately trying to pretend the Capitol riot hearings aren't news?

Graham then huffed that it was "moral preening" for Colbert to call out people like him for likening his staffers' arrest to the Capitol riot, as Colbert pointed out that "drawing any equivalence between rioters storming our Capitol to prevent the counting of electoral ballots and a cigar-chomping toy dog, is a shameful and grotesque insult to the memory of everyone who died, and obscenely trivializes the service and the courage the Capitol Police showed on that terrible day." Graham put that part in boldface, so you know he was feeling quite seen by that.

Later that day, Kevin Tober devoted a post to Fox News stenography: "Less than twenty-four hours since pseudo comedian Stephen Colbert attempted to make light of his staff breaking into the United States Capitol building in a hypocritical attempt to film a 'comedy' skit attacking Republicans for the January 6 riots, Fox News host Tucker Carlson slammed Colbert for his hypocrisy."

All of that moral preening from the MRC, however, went for naught: On July 18, it was reported that all charges against the Colbert staffers were being dropped. It turns out they didn't forcibly break into the building, as the MRC suggested, but were let in by a congressional aide, which was legal; the only problem was that the aide didn't accompany the staffers during the entirety of their visit, which is required. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia said in a statement that "We do not believe it is probable that the Office would be able to obtain and sustain convictions on these charges."

You will not be surprised that no post by Graham or his underlings reporting on this development appears at NewsBusters. Nor was there anything at the MRC's "news" operation, CNSNews.com. The only mention we could find on any MRC website was a July 19 MRCTV post by Brtittany Hughes, who whined: "While a number of January 6 'insurrectionists' are still in D.C. jail awaiting trial, all charges have been dropped against a group of Hollywood leftists who were caught in June hanging out inside the U.S. Capitol after being told to leave." Like Graham, Hughes refused to acknowledge there is a difference between not having proper press credentials and being part of an insurrectionist mob.

WND's Moore Falsely Reports On Yet Another Vaccine Study To Fearmonger About It
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Art Moore, WorldNetDaily's chief COVID misinformer, particularly loves to misinform about COVID-related studies  that can be twisted to pushWND's anti-vaccine agenda. He did it again in a June 21 article, under the screaming headline "Study: COVID vax INCREASES risk of infection":

A new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that two doses of the mRNA vaccines increased the risk of COVID-19 infection during the omicron wave.

And researchers further confirmed that those infected without having been vaccinated for COVID-19 acquired natural immunity from infection, the Epoch Times reported.

he study, published June 15, examined the omicron wave in Qatar from about December 2021 to February 2022. It compared vaccination rates and immunity among more than 100,000 omicron infected and non-infected individuals.

The results support a recent study from Israel finding natural immunity waned much more slowly than immunity from vaccination.

The new Qatar study found unvaccinated people with prior infection had a 46.1 and 50 percent immunity against the two subvariants of the omicron variant. But those with no previous infection who received two doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccine had negative immunity against both subvariants, meaning their risk of contracting COVID-19 was higher than an average person.

Moore's first mistake here was to trust the Epoch Times, the right-wing Falun Gong-run newspaper that is a firehose of COVID misinformation. The article Moore is cribbing from is behind a paywall, but we're not going to give the Epoch Times money or an email address to unlock it.it's clear that Moore did no fact-checking of the article before copying-and-pasting out of it to make his own, because what Moore wrote is wildly misleading. The key results as reported in the study are these:

The effectiveness of previous infection alone against symptomatic BA.2 infection was 46.1% (95% confidence interval [CI], 39.5 to 51.9). The effectiveness of vaccination with two doses of BNT162b2 and no previous infection was negligible (−1.1%; 95% CI, −7.1 to 4.6), but nearly all persons had received their second dose more than 6 months earlier. The effectiveness of three doses of BNT162b2 and no previous infection was 52.2% (95% CI, 48.1 to 55.9). The effectiveness of previous infection and two doses of BNT162b2 was 55.1% (95% CI, 50.9 to 58.9), and the effectiveness of previous infection and three doses of BNT162b2 was 77.3% (95% CI, 72.4 to 81.4). Previous infection alone, BNT162b2 vaccination alone, and hybrid immunity all showed strong effectiveness (>70%) against severe, critical, or fatal Covid-19 due to BA.2 infection. Similar results were observed in analyses of effectiveness against BA.1 infection and of vaccination with mRNA-1273.

BNT162b2 is the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID vaccine, mRNA-1273 is the Moderna vaccine.

Translation, which Moore didn't make clear at all: The risk of infection by Omicron variant BA.2 is effectively the same for someone who only got the initial two-vaccine series as someone who had gotten no vaccine or previous infection -- -1.1% is efffectively the same as zero, so it's deceitful for Moore to portray it as a significantly higher risk. This isn't surprising because Omicron has mutated to evade the protection of the original vaccines, which were best attuned to the original strain -- something Moore failed to explain to his readers; all the better to fearmonger about vaccines.

Moore also censored other results that don't fit into his anti-vaccine narrative. The results also stated that the highest rate of effectiveness against infection was for those who had a previous infection and were fully vaccinated. The study also stated that vaccination alone offered similar protection as prior infection and infection/vaccination against severe, critical, or fatal COVID due to BA.2, which Moore also censored.

Moore's article was published while WND was still begging for money to stay alive for a while longer. Do those who donated to WND's campaign really feel they're Being truthfully and accurately informed? Because the record says no.

Newsmax's Reagan Shows Some Gun Restraint In His Post-Massacre Rants
Topic: Newsmax

Newsmax columnist Michael Reagan spent a lot of time ranting after May's spate of mass shootings -- not about the prominent role guns played in them, of course, but about others talking about that role and other things that clash with right-wing narratives. When President Biden pointed out that the perpetrator of the Buffalo massacre, Reagan used his May 20 column to play whataboutism by hyping masscares committed by non-white people:

But as usual he was very selective when pointing out recent examples of racially motivated mass murders. No mention of the angry "Black supremacist" who plowed through a parade of white men, women and children at a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisc., last year, killing six and injuring 60.

No mention of the mentally troubled Black man — another racist "Black supremacist" who openly hated whites, Asians and even some Blacks —< who shot up a New York City subway train last month and injured 10 people.

 

No mention of another apparently mentally troubled Black man who’s accused of shooting but not killing three Korean women in a Dallas hair salon last week.

And you know the Bidens won’t be visiting the Geneva Presbyterian Church in Laguna Woods in Southern California to show their sympathy for the deadly shooting that happened there earlier this week.

The Asian shooter — an American citizen born in Taiwan — planned to kill many members of the congregation, who are Taiwanese, because he doesn’t think Taiwan should be independent of China.

Like the other shootings, that potential mass shooting, which was stopped when members of the church overpowered the shooter, did not fit the Biden-media narrative that the only kind of racism in America is white and that mass murderers come in only one color and one kind of politics.

The reaction to the Buffalo tragedy by Biden, the Democrats and the liberal media was the usual "We need more, more, still more gun laws."

But how about enforcing the d**n gun laws we’ve already got?

How about putting some teeth in so-called "Red Flag" laws?

After the Uvalde, Texas, school massacre, Reagan rushed to defend guns again in his May 28 column, invoking some of his earlier COVID insanity for good measure:

In his vile speech just after the Uvalde murders, Biden yelled, "Deer aren’t running through the forest with Kevlar vests on, for God’s sake."

Which is completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand, the Second Amendment isn’t a hunting amendment. It’s a freedom amendment.

Regardless of what they say, the assurances they give and the fake sincerity with which the announcement is made, we can’t trust the government when it comes to our basic God-given rights.

COVID-19 proved that.

Twitter pundit Peachy Keenan explained the situation in only 240 characters: "The trouble with 'common sense gun legislation' is that the people who turned '15 days to stop the spread' into 'get the vaccine or we take you off the organ transplant list' are the same ones who swear they don’t want to take all our guns."

And, yes, liberals were somehow to blame for this massacre:

What no one on the left wants to discuss is the cultural sickness discussed earlier that is currently plaguing America. A sickness the left has done much to create.

The Uvalde, Texas shooter, like the Parkland, Florida shooter, like the Sandy Hook, (in Newton Connecticut) shooter and so many more had no father in his life.

None of them had a positive male role model in their lives to teach them how to live.

What they did have was dope-smoking and a poisonous social media and online gaming culture producing violent results.

Instead of looking at the motivation of these murderers, the left focuses on the tool used.

Reagan didn't mention that the perpetrator would not have been able to murder so many children if he didn't have that gun. He did, sprurpsingly, diverge from right-wing dogma and appear to endorse red-flag laws in his June 4 column -- though, weirdly, of the do-it-yourself variety, not if the government is involved:

We also learned that the 18-year-old killer, as is so often the case, was known by his family, the authorities and his schoolmates to be a mentally unstable and scary gun nut, yet no one "red-flagged" him as a potential threat to himself or others.

And how many times have we heard stories about how the parents of future mass murderers continued to let them have access to guns even after it had become obvious to them that their children were dangerously disturbed?

What we’ve seen over and over again in these mass shootings is that everyone’s waiting for someone else to do the right things, but then no one does the right things.

[...]

No one expects Biden to know what he’s talking about when he talks about guns, and the dishonest major media are too much on the gun-control team to discuss other sensible, doable ways of preventing future school shootings.

Putting well-armed security guards in our schools is extremely important, obviously, but it is parents who are the first line of defense.

If you realize your kid is out of control and truly dangerous, take their guns away.

Give them to a neighbor. Lock them in a safe.

And please don’t wait for the government, the school principal or anyone else to red flag your child as a threat to themselves or others.

Do the right thing. Throw the red flag yourself.

Despite his own status as a right-wing celebrity prop for Reagan acolytes, he mocked Matthew McCouaughey for being one in speaking out against guns in his June 10 column -- while, again surprisingly, agreeing with much of what he said:

McConaughey got — and deserved — praise for much of what he said in the White House briefing room on Tuesday.

Sure, he was a celebrity prop being exploited by President Biden and House Democrats to sell their hysterical and unconstitutional gun control ideas to the American public.

But while McConaughey is definitely no closet conservative Republican, he owns and shoots guns and is not a stereotypical Hollywood liberal who wants to disarm every American citizen — except their own bodyguards, of course.

In a city full of Democrats exploiting the latest national tragedy for their own political gain, McConaughey came across as refreshingly reasonable, sensible and bipartisan on several gun-control issues.

Most Americans would agree with him that you should be 21 before you are allowed to buy an AR-15.

Most Americans would agree with him that there should be a cooling off period between the time you buy a handgun and the time you get it.

And most Americans would also favor his call for the increased use of “red flag” laws that allow authorities to take guns away from mentally disturbed persons who are a threat to themselves or the rest of us.

McConaughey’s rational approach to solving a highly contentious and seemingly unsolvable political issue reminded me of another movie actor I knew pretty well – Ronald Reagan.

Reagan then went on to claim that his father would have supported such restrictions -- but he didn't mention that his fellow right-wingers and even the gun lobby oppose red-flag laws, and they also object to raising the age to buy an AR-15. So much for common-sense solutions.

NEW ARTICLE: Meet The Replacements
Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center went all in on insisting that the conspiratorial replacement theory -- peddled by Tucker Carlson and embraced by the racist perpetrator of the Buffalo massacre -- is totally true and isn't racist at all. Read more >>

MRC Sports Blogger Spews Anti-LGBT Hate During Pride Month
Topic: Media Research Center

We've highlighted the anti-LGBT hatred Media Research Center sports blogger John Simmons spewed earlier in the year. When Pride Month hit in June, Simmons ramped up the hate. He started things off on June 1 with a massive whine setting up the rest of the month for him:

It’s June 1st, which means that sports leagues across the nation can officially gush about celebrating Pride Month.

Predictably, the MLB and NHL have changed the logos on their social media pages to include all the colors of the LGBT flag (because no made-up community should be left behind).

Surprisingly, the NBA has yet to follow the MLB and NHL’s example. But what the NBA lacked in showing support for the LGBT community, the NFL made up for in spades.

Not wanting anyone to forget just how much they adore the gay agenda, the NFL posted this on all their social media platforms.

[...]

Prepare for more of this in the upcoming days, not just from sports leagues, but from countless businesses, celebrities, politicians, and others for the next 29 days.

Simmons never explained what this "gay agenda" is that he finds so offensive. On June 6, Simmons cheered that a group of baseball players were as hateful and homophobic as he is:

Because we are in the midst of Pride Month, it's unfortunately normal to see professional sports teams hold their annual Pride Nights. On Saturday, the Tampa Bay Rays had theirs, in which they included LGBT people in pregame events and handed out pride flags to the 19,000+ fans in attendance. In addition, the “TB” and sunburst logos on the Rays uniforms were rainbow-colored to show an added level of support.

However, several Rays pitchers decided not to participate in this gesture in order to stay true to their beliefs.

"So it's a hard decision…But when we put it on our bodies, I think a lot of guys decided that it's just a lifestyle that maybe -- not that they look down on anybody or think differently -- it's just that maybe we don't want to encourage it if we believe in Jesus, who's encouraged us to live a lifestyle that would abstain from that behavior,” Adam, the chosen spokesperson for this group of pitchers, said.

Notice how Adam worded this. He never said that he thinks he or his teammates are better than anyone in the LGBT community, because true and honest Christians would agree that everyone has “sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). But the truly remarkable part of his response was that he and his teammates unwaveringly commit to their faith in a culture and time where it is incredibly easy to forsake it so you do not face backlash.

Simmons tried to further justify the hate by quoting the Bible himself: "Romans 1:26-27 states that homosexuality is unnatural and sinful and should not be condoned in any way by followers of Christ. Wearing pride flags or pride logos does just that." Simmons didn't explain why LGBT people must have hate spewed upon them everywhere at all times, which is what he seems to be advocating.

The same day, Simmons had a separate meltdown:

Carolina Panthers fans will have quite the surprise on the sideline during the upcoming season.

The Panthers became the first NFL team to hire an openly transgender athlete to it’s cheerleading team. The TopCats announced that Justine Lindsay, a man masquerading as a woman, will be on the sidelines performing on Sundays starting in the fall.

Lindsay came out as transgender in March, but TopCats director Chandalae Lanouette said that her decision to bring Lindsay on board has nothing to do with that.

When Lindsay posted a picture of herself on Instagram with the caption "“Understand that we are all Gods children, that he is an awesome God from sun up to sun down. I live through him. Negative hate stay away," Simmons took served up all the negative hate he could muster and hurled more Bible verses:

It’s funny that Lindsay mentions he lives through God, because nowhere in Scripture do we see that God condones or approves of anyone that changes their gender. God created all people to either be male or female (Genesis 1:27) and any attempt to switch your gender based on how you feel is an act of rebellion against his created order. So Lindsay isn’t doing something that pleases God, and his attempt to get others to empathize with him and his actions further adds to the twisted nature of his actions.

It’s disgusting that the NFL just continues to make a fool of itself by doing stuff like this.

But spewing hate at somone just because they're different from you isn't eve more disgusting, John?

In a June 7 post, Simmons touted the notoriously homophobic (his denials to the contrary notwithstanding) Franklin Graham as supporting those Tampa Bay pitchers who petulantly refused to wear the LGBT jerseys, going on to huff: "If anyone is offended by the gracious, humble, and truthful response these men gave, then that is on them for having an immature and unhealthy response. What these men have done is praiseworthy, something Graham recognized and we should too." Of course, hate delivered in a "gracious" and "humble" manner is still hate, and Simmons is cool with that.

On June 23, Simmons lashed out at yet another sports league for not hating LGBT people as much as he does:

The National Hockey League (NHL) was the last bastion for non-woke sports entertainment in America, but now, even they have gone completely off the deep end.

With Pride Month celebrations being over in eight days - which can't come soon enough - the NHL is using its influence to make sure that everyone continues to make LGBT members feel “safe.”

In a graphic titled “How To Be An Ally,” the NHL listed several ways to support LGBT members in their fight to be loved and supported - which they already are, but apparently not enough.

It’s funny that the tweet mentions them as a “marginalized” people, when all of corporate America, hundreds of “Christian” churches and millions of citizens support them through all the ways the graphic says to support them.

Calls to action like this fall short and mean nothing because everyone knows that the LGBT community is widely supported. Plus, who would want to support a community that belittles you if you show even a hint of what they would deem as hatred and rejection?

July 1st can’t come soon enough.

Not the scare quotes around "Christian," as if you're not a real Christian if you don't viciously hate LGBT people the way he does.

While the mere thought that there might be someone, somewhere who doesn't hate LGBT people might make Simmons a little itchy, you'd think he wouldn't want Pride Month to ever end because it gives him so much hateful copy that the MRC presumably pays him well to write. His hate is his paycheck!

WND Columnist Pretends 'Jane Roe' Never Recanted Her Anti-Abortion Activism
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Jerry Newcombe spent his June 21 WorldNetDaily column criticing the group Jane's Revenge for alleged vandalism of "crisis pregnancy centers, then defended the group's alleged namesake:

And this damage is being done in the name of Jane Roe? As the record shows, Jane Roe's identity was revealed in 1987, and her name was Norma McCorvey. It turns out McCorvey had not been raped (as claimed in the case). She had gotten pregnant from her boyfriend, and she just wanted an abortion.

ACLU attorney Sarah Weddington lied to her as she assured McCorvey she could get an abortion. But what Weddington really wanted was McCorvey's participation in what became Roe v. Wade.

Then in the late 1990s, something amazing happened. Norma McCorvey made a profession of faith in Jesus Christ and came to oppose abortion. Thus, Roe came to agree with Wade. Henry Wade had been the District Attorney of Dallas County, and Roe v. Wade challenged Texas's pro-life law.

Norma McCorvey wrote her story in her 1997 book "Won By Love" (with co-author Gary Thomas). The subtitle of that book is "Jane Roe of Roe v. Wade Speaks Out for the Unborn as She Shares Her New Conviction for Life."

And now, in the name of Jane Roe, anarchists and Antifa-types are carrying out acts of vandalism and damage of pregnancy centers that simply exist to provide loving alternatives to abortion.

Just one problem: McCorvey recanted pretty much all of her anti-abortion activism before her death, saying that she did it for the money. As we documented, the ConWeb attacked the film in which McCorvey recanted her anti-abortion leanings and its director, claiming without evidence that she was being manipulated. Newcombe knows all this because he wrote a column bashing the film and calling on Operation Rescue's Cheryl Sullenger -- who was sentenced to three years in prison for plotting to blow up an abortion clinic in the 1980s -- to handwave McCorvey's more damaging claims.

Nevertherless, Newcombe called on another anti-abortion activist to vouch for McCorvey:

One man who knew McCorvey, who died in 2017, is Father Frank Pavone, the president of Priests for Life. He even baptized her and spent time sharing Scriptures and church teaching with her.

I asked him for a comment on the former "Jane Roe" since these groups are doing damage to try and disrupt pro-life work in her name.

Father Pavone told me: "As for Norma McCorvey, hers was a life of repentance, not of revenge. She wouldn't have needed to take 'revenge' on pro-life people anyway, because she was one of us. She would have abhorred the way the pro-abortion people are acting now. In fact, she didn't like them even when she was on their side. She thought they were arrogant and disrespectful of her."

Pavone was quoted as attacking the McCorvey film in a CNSNews.com column by Alveda King, insisting that the filmmakers took her out of context. Newcombe didn't mention that either.

It seems that Newcombe is trying to memory-hole the McCorvey film because she's much more valuable as an anti-abortion token, even in death. It's a somewhat slightly less bad take than the last one we noted.

Newsmax Hosts COVID Misinformer McCullough
Topic: Newsmax

WorldNetDaily isn't the only ConWeb outlet who has given an uncritical platform to COVID misinformer Peter McCullough. Jay Clemons uncritically wrote in a June 19 article:

Dr. Peter McCullough doesn't see the necessity in a COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 5 and under.

He also doesn't understand the government's supposed haste in touting such an "experimental" vaccine, given how the vast majority of children have proven to be resilient against the coronavirus.

"I think it was a mistake for the FDA to approve it," McCullough told Newsmaxhost Amanda Brilhante Sunday morning, while serving a guest on the "Wake Up America" program. "And clearly the CDC recommendation probably won't be followed by a lot of the parents."

McCullough, the chief medical adviser to the Truth For Health Foundation, has devoted much of the last two-plus years studying the coronavirus, and its effect on small children and infants.

"Children have a very mild syndrome [relative to COVID]. It's not like our senior citizens, who are at risk," says McCullough, while adding the coronavirus is "easily managed" by children, especially those who get "an early start on treatment."

As we've documented, the Truth for Health Foundation is filled with dubious "experts" who similarly spread COVID misinformation, and it's headed by Elizabeth Lee Vliet, a medical misinformer in her own right who is affiliated with the fringe-right Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. He (and Clemons) also hid the fact that more than 460 have died of COVID, and that the rate of hospialization for children has surged with the Omicron strain and its variants becoming the preeminent strain in the U.S. The vaccines also have a significant level of effectiveness in young children.

Rather than report any of these facts, Clemons and Brilhante let McCullough falsely fearmonger about the vaccine without being challenged on the issue:

"Parents should be wise" about companies or governmental agencies that over-promise on the vaccine's efficacy, said McCullough. "I think many parents will conclude, 'it's experimental, it's genetic code for the spiked protein that was devised in a lab in Wuhan, China.' This is just going too far."

McCullough was also allowed to engage in baseless speculation that the COVID virus was intentionally created, claiming that "We know that the spike protein looks like it was genetically modified to make the virus more infectious and more lethal." McCullough offered no evidence to back up that assertion. In reality, most legitimate scientists dispute the main right-wing conspiracy theory on the subject (which McCullough was hinting at), that the COVID virus was created in a Chinese lab.

CNS Continues To Blame Biden For High Gas Prices
Topic: CNSNews.com

CNSNews.com has been a reliable arm of the Republican Party, especially when it comes to promoting GOP talking points about gas and oil -- for instance, pushing the fiction that building the Keystone XL pipeline would lower U.S. prices now and uncritically quoting oil and gas lobbying organizations to attack Biden energy policies that are seen is not sufficiently friendly to gas and oil and pretending that right-wing activists are "climate experts."

It has also labored to push the GOP narrative that Biden's policies are solely to blame for high gas prices -- despite not identifying any specific Biden policy that it can directly link to a specific increase in prices. A Feb. 14 article by editor Terry Jeffrey played built by association in declaring that "Between January 2021 and January 2022--President Joe Biden’s first year in office--the price of unleaded gasoline increased 40.8 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics." Jeffrey did the same thing in a March 10 article stating that "The price of gasoline increased 38.0 percent from February 2021 to February 2022, which marked President Joe Biden’s first full year in office, according to the Consumer Price Index numbers released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Despite all this implicit blame, Jeffrey cited no Biden policy as responsible for that increase in either article -- just like his counterparts at CNS owner the Media Research Center failed to do.

Managing editor played politics with gas prices in California in a March 28 article (which followed up from a similar March 10 article):

Although some gas stations in Los Angeles are charging more than $7 for one gallon of regular gasoline, the national average (on March 28) for a gallon of regular is $4.246, according to AAA.

[...]

California, a state run by a Democrat-dominant [sic] legislature and a Democrat [sic] governor, has a gas excise tax of 51.1 cents per gallon. The tax is scheduled to increase to 53.9 cents per gallon in July.

When President Donald Trump left office in January 2021, the national average price of a gallon of gasoline (all grades, formulations) was $2.464, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Chapman censored the fact that one main reason gas is always higher in California is because the state uses a special blend of gas not used elsewhere that is designed to reduce pollution. (A couple months later, CNS columnist Hans Bader hyped wildly overpriced gas at a single price-gouging station in California.)

Craig Bannister served as stenographer for the oil industry in order to attack Biden in a March 31 article:

After President Joe Biden delivered a speech Thursday outlining his plan to reduce gas prices, energy groups called the plan short-sighted and said Biden’s speech was a desperate attempt to shift blame away from the administration.

“The American people deserve real solutions,” American Petroleum (API) President Mike Sommers said in a statement, criticizing Biden for releasing oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), rather than addressing the fundamental forces causing gas prices to skyrocket:

“There are many factors behind rising energy costs, from geopolitical volatility and supply chain constraints to policy uncertainty, and the American people deserve real solutions.

[...]

In a statement to CNSNews.com, Western Energy Alliance (WEA) President Kathleen Sgamma said that Biden’s speech is evidence that the administration is panicking because Americans realize the president’s policies are to blame for skyrocketing gas prices:

The same day, Melanie Arter complained about Biden in an article headlined "Biden’s Plan to Reduce Gas Prices Singles Out Oil Companies Who Don’t Ramp Up Oil Production."

Jeffrey returned for an April 12 article hyping that "The price of gasoline rose by 48.0 percent from March 2021 to March 2022, according to numbers released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics." He didn't mention Biden by name, but the implication was there in the accompanying photo of Biden shaking hands with Russia's Vladimir Putin.

A May 9 article by Chapman hyped a biased poll from Rasmussen Reports and the right-wing Heartland Institute claiming that "52% of voters want Congress and President Joe Biden to focus on expanded oil and gas drilling while only 34% want them to focus on battling climate change."

In a June 14 article, Bannister complained that "Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the sole reason that gas prices are up, President Joe Biden claimed Tuesday," adding that "As president, Biden has taken steps to thwart domestic oil production, such as canceling the Keystone XL pipeline and ending the sale of new oil leases" but not offering any evidence that any of those are to blame for gas price increases.

Susan Jones served up a June 22 complaint that Biden wants a gas tax holiday and the fact sheet the White House issued in support of one:

Notably, the fact sheet specifically mentions/blames "Putin" for gasoline price hikes four times, neglecting to mention that gasoline prices began rising as soon as Biden took office -- shutting down the Keystone Pipeline, canceling oil and gas leases, and pressing ahead with his green energy plans.

Again, no proof was offered to link any of those actions with any specific increase in gas prices.

CNS was also cranking out the usual stenographical attacks from Republican members of Congress:

• Sen. Cruz: High Gas Prices Are the 'Intended Effect' of Biden's Green Energy Agenda
• Scalise: ‘If Anybody's Going to Be Sued for Gouging, It Should Be the Gouger-in-Chief,’ Who Caused Record Gas Prices
• Sen. Rick Scott: Biden Is Doing Everything He Can to Make Gas Prices Go Up
• Rep. Kat Cammack: ‘Nancy Pelosi Hasn’t Filled Up a Gas Tank in 20 Years, Let Alone Joe Biden’
• Rep. Scalise: When It Comes to High Gas Prices, Pres. Biden Is ‘Throwing Spaghetti at the Walls, But Nobody Is Buying It’

These were all presented without criticism or allowing the White House to respond, let alone any fact-checking.

CNS' opinion side (well, the opinion side explicitly labeled as such) was  busy as well. For instance, a June 10 column by Gary Bauer ranted:

June 9, 2022 – a day that will live in infamy. That’s the day that the national average for gasoline officially broke $5.00 a gallon. And, yes, Joe Biden did that!

[...]

But here’s what you must understand and what you must help your friends and family members to understand: Your pain at the pump isn’t an accident. It’s all part of Joe Biden’s plan. 

High energy prices are the predictable, desired, and deliberate result of the Democrat jihad against the American energy industry. They are an essential element of their “climate change” agenda. But don't take my word for it. The left has been very open about it.

But like the other CNS writers, Bauer failed to explain how a specific Biden policy resulted in a specific increase in gas prices. And the role of Russia -- whose supply of oil Biden cut off after that country's invasion of Ukraine, causing prices to spike -- was completely censored.

MRC's Attempt To Discredit 1/6 Hearing Witness' Testimony Doesn't Age Well
Topic: Media Research Center

How devastating was former Mark Meadows aide Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony at the June 28 hearing of the House committee looking into the Capitol riot, particularly her account of Donald Trump lunging at the steering wheel of a presidential vehicle driven by a Secret Service officer when told he was being taken back to the White House instead of to the Capitol to egg on rioters? The Media Research Center -- which had been vociferously denying that the hearings even qualified as news in order to conform with mandated Republican narratives -- saw fit to attack Hutchinson. Kevin Tober led the attack:

On Tuesday, it was revealed that former President Trump had allegedly lunged at his Secret Service limo driver and attempted to grab the steering wheel on the morning of January 6, 2021, when he was told he wouldn’t be allowed to go to the Capitol after his speech at the White House Ellipse. 

This was made public by former top aide to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Cassidy Hutchinson during Tuesday’s congressional hearing into the January 6 Capitol riots. 

Predictably all three evening news broadcasts led with the allegations against former President Trump. Six minutes before the three networks went live, NBC’s chief White House correspondent Peter Alexander tweeted that both Secret Service agents involved “are prepared to testify under oath that neither man was assaulted and that Mr. Trump never lunged for the steering wheel.”

CBS Evening News anchor Norah O’Donnell and congressional correspondent Scott MacFarlane were quick to hype the now false allegations[.]

[...]

While ABC’s World News Tonight and NBC Nightly News both reported on the testimony given by Hutchinson but each noted that the Secret Service denies it and both agents are willing to testify under oath. 

On World News Tonight, chief justice correspondent Pierre Thomas reported that “a source close to the Secret Service just told me to expect that the Secret Service will push back against any allegation of an assault against an agent or President Trump reaching for the steering wheel.”

Note that Tober immediately labeled Hutchinson's testimony "false" despite having no evidence in hand to prove it. And doesn't the MRC repeatedly warn us about the "liberal media" citing anonymous sources -- no alleged Secret Service agent purportedly willing to testify against Hutchinson was identified by name -- as being self-serving and designed for ratings? Nevertheless, Tober self-satisfyingly ranted: "All three networks have spent the entire duration of the Pelosi-picked January 6 hearings hyping every allegation that it spewed. With the fact that none of these hearings allow for any cross-examination of witnesses, a blunder like this was only a matter of time."

Tober's post has not aged well, because as of this writing, the Secret Service agents who declared they would testify to the committee that Hutchinson was lying have yet to do so nearly a month later; instead, they have lawyered up and refused to testify and they have been identified as Trump loyalists and yes men.Meanwhile, other witnesses have corroborated key parts of Hutchinson's testimony.

A June 29 post by interns Wallace White and Michael Ippolito compiled right-wing tweets attacking Hutchinson, none of which prove her wrong. Curtis Houck did a time-count follow-up later in the day:

With the liberal media all-in on Tuesday’s January 6 Committee hearing featuring former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, it wasn’t a surprise Wednesday morning to see the “big three” networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC downplay the strong pushback from the Secret Service regarding Hutchinson’s tall tale that President Trump assaulted a Secret Service agent and tried to seize the steering wheel of his presidential SUV on January 6.

A NewsBusters analysis found that ABC’s Good Morning America (GMA), CBS Mornings, and NBC’s Today spent four minutes and 42 seconds on Hutchinson’s claim, but only two minutes and 33 seconds on the pushback from her colleagues and the Secret Service, including offers from the latter to have the agents involved testify under oath that none of that was true.

[...]

The liberal media have harped on the January 6 Committee and its members as harbingers of truth. But if they’re unwilling to firmly call out and push to correct the record on a claim that’s on rapidly thinning ice, it should serve as a reminder that they continue to suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS).

Yeah, that one's not aging well either.

Mark Finkelstein served up some serious whining in a July 2 post:

Never pass up an opportunity to plug your book—even when discussing what you consider to have been a grave national crisis!That would appear to be Mika Brzezinski's credo. On Wednesday's Morning Joe, Brzezinski managed to work the title of her book into her praise of Cassidy Hutchinson, the former Trump White House aide who testified before the House January 6 committee hearing on Tuesday.

The praise for the anti-Trump witness was extravagant. Joe Scarborough called it "some of the most compelling testimony on Capitol Hill since Watergate." Willie Geist touted "a White House aide became the conscience of the nation! She's a couple years out of college, and she was the adult in the room, surrounded by those ostensible adults and ostensible leaders of our country who stood by and let it happen."

Aside from a couple passing references, the MRC hasn't touched Hutchinson's testimony since. And it has offered nothing so far beyond passing references to new revelations that the Secret Service deleted text messages from its agents that day. Remember, the MRC's mission is to protect Trump and Republicans, not to do "media research," so don't expect them to correct the record.

CNS' Jones Defends The Honor Of Yachts (And Shills For The Oil Industry)
Topic: CNSNews.com

In case you were wondering who CNSNews.com's core audience really is, Susan Jones answered it in a June 21 article in which she defended the honor of yachts and the super-rich people who buy them as job creators:

President Joe Biden made another pitch to raise taxes on corporations and wealthy Americans on Monday, telling reporters gathered on a Delaware beach: "If you're going out and buying a yacht, it doesn't help the economy a whole lot."

People who buy yachts, of course, keep yacht-sellers and yacht builders in business. And the yacht owners need to hire crews to run their ships, so job-creation is also part of the yacht-buying experience.

But, if yacht-buying doesn't help the economy, Biden does believe that lowering the price of insulin -- and buying expensive electric cars -- will help.

Talking down electric cars, however, harms a different CNS constituency: Tesla chief Elon Musk, whom it has cheered for his efforts to buy Twitter and touted his opinions on various and sundry sujbects.

But Jones wasn't done. When Biden pointed out that oil companies are sitting on 9.000 leases to drill on public lands and that they've "they’ve cut back on refining," Jones went into oil industry PR mode and copy-and-pasted talking points from the American Petroleum Institute offering "seven realities" that supposedly explain "what is happening in global energy markets and (provided) concrete and practicable solutions for addressing today’s high-price environment" -- none of which address the fact that oil companies are sitting on 9.000 leases to drill on public lands.

Jones uncritically repeated the API's narrative on refining -- which blamed "conversions to renewable fuel production" for decreases in refining capacity but then insisted that "ExxonMobil is expanding the capacity at its Beaumont, TX refinery and Valero at its Port Arthur, TX refinery for a combined total of 300,000 barrels per day" -- while ignoring the fact that U.S. refining capacity dropped more than 900,000 barrels per day just in the past two years, while worldwide refining capacity has dropped by 3.3 million barrels a day since 2020.

Jones did not give Biden or the White House an opportunity to respond to API's talking points. Then again, CNS loves shilling for the oil industry.

UPDATE: Jones ran to the oil industry's defense again in a June 22 article:

President Joe Biden is no fan of oil companies, and his sarcasm was on full display Tuesday, when a reporter asked the president about a letter the Chevron CEO wrote to Biden.

Michael Wirth, the Chevron's chairman of the Board and CEO, noted that "your Administration has largely sought to criticize, and at times vilify, our industry. These actions are not beneficial to meeting the challenges we face and are not what the American people deserve."

Asked for his reaction, Biden sneered: "He's mildly sensitive. I didn't know they'd get their feelings hurt that quickly.

When Biden again referenced the 9,000 leases on public lands the oil companies are sitting on, Jones again resorted to copy-and-paste PR From API:

Biden's stock response regarding the "9,000 leases" is misleading because it suggests that oil companies can just put a straw in the ground and suck up the oil waiting below.

First, not all leases are productive. And second, establishing a working oil well takes considerable time and bureaucratic effort.

According to the American Petroleum Institute:

"The (Biden) administration discouraged production of natural gas and oil starting with its first moments in power. On Day One, the President signed an executive order to impose a temporary moratorium on oil and gas leasing activity in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR); withdrew offshore areas in Arctic waters and the Bering Sea from oil and gas drilling; and revoked the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline.

"Days later, the administration acted to indefinitely pause all new oil and gas lease sales on federal lands and offshore waters, immediately restricting the industry’s opportunities to explore and invest in new areas.

"Even where the administration hasn’t blocked federal leases, it has been an unwilling partner, openly admitting the sales are not aligned with their policies."

Further, API notes that wells and leases -- those 9,000 leases -- "are not like faucets and spigots. It takes months for new wells to start producing and it can take more than five years for some fields to go from discovery to production, thanks in part to regulatory and legal hurdles along the way.”

Nowhere in that copy-and-paste PR did the API reveal what, exactly, they are doing will all of those 9,000 oil leases besides sitting on them. Hopefully the API is sending a little money Jones' way for being such a loyal stenographer (well, copy-and-paster).

MRC's Double Standard On Graphic Photos Of Dead Children
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center's Alex Christy loudly complained in a June 2 post about the idea that graphic images of the victims of gun massacres should be made public as a way to move people into doing something aboaut them:

On Thursday’s CNN Newsroom, host Ana Cabrera and pediatric trauma surgeon Dr. Chethan Sathya claimed the country needs “an Emmett Till moment” in order to do something about “these automatic weapons.”

The Till reference comes from an op-ed in the Washington Post from former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, which Cabrera read from, “in order for change to happen, we need an Emmett Till moment. Johnson writes in part this -- and I'm quoting here – ‘I lack the moral standing to tell a parent to accept and approve for the greater good the public display of photos of his or her dead child, nor do I suggest the release of any images in particular, but something graphic is required to awaken the public to the real horror of these repeated tragedies.’”

Till was brutally membered and dismembered in a racist attack while his body was left to sink in a river. Here, Johnson and CNN are talking about punishing innocent people for someone else’s crimes.

Cabrera then introduced Sathya and declared “This is such an important discussion” and asked “What do you think about what the secretary there wrote about this idea of people seeing with their own eyes what it looks like, a gunshot wound in a child? Do people need to see what you see?”

Sathya did agree, “One hundred percent. This has been something that we’ve been seeing as physicians, trauma surgeons for decades, right? You know, we are talking right now about mass shootings. We're talking about children being killed. This is something we see on a daily basis.”

Mark Finkelstein similarly whined in a post the next day:

Pro-abortion liberals rage against laws requiring ultrasounds before women can get an abortion. But whereas liberals oppose having people see living babies, many liberals are now clamoring to force people to view dead babies and children—the victims of mass shootings.

On Thursday's Nicolle Wallace Deadline: White House show on MSNBC, substitute host John Heilemann led the charge on the issue.

[...]

Heilemann's guest, Dave Cullen, a gun-control advocate and author, heartily agreed: "I think we desperately need some new, fresh tactics and creative thinking. And, I like this!"

So, should we look for gun-control extremists to call on MSNBC, CNN, and other liberal outlets to implement their ghoulish proposal, and begin displaying the bodies of children killed in mass shootings? 

Note: Heilemann isn't the first liberal TV host to promote the viewing of dead bodies to promote his cause. Back during the Iraq War, Walter Cronkite proposed showing the dead bodies of American soldiers in order to turn people against the war.

Finkelstein didn't that that right-wingers have pushed graphic images to be displayed in public -- those of abortions, as a ploy to gain sympathy for the anti-abortion cause. Indeed, one of Finkelstein and Christy's co-workers, Tierin-Rose Mandelburg, not only demanded that be done, she stuck graphic images in her April 20 post:

It’s Episode 34 of CensorTrack with TR. This week we talked about how Big Tech is hiding the truth about the biggest tragedy our world faces today — abortion.

A group of pro-life activists discoverd the remains of 110 babies, five of which may have been killed illegally, according to National Review. “The Five” children were found on March 25th and were suspected to be around the late second or early third trimester of pregnancy when they died. This is a story that needs to break the news cycle. The world needs to see these images and know about the true tragedy of abortion. But apparently, Big Tech doesn’t think so. 

A pro-life group called LifeNews tweeted out a picture of one of the five babies. The group told MRC in an email that they explicitly added a sensitive warning over their post to alert users that the content was sensitive in hopes of avoiding Twitter’s censorship. Unfortunately, Twitter disagreed. Twitter told LifeNews to delete the tweet, locked LifeNews out of its account and threatened a permanent ban. 

Why? Because it showed the truth of abortion?

LifeNews told the MRC, “That's what makes Twitter's decision to force us to remove the tweet and potentially ban our account even more absurd, as we followed their own policies to ensure that a sensitive image was marked sensitive before posting it. We didn't just post it willy nilly with no warning like thousands of images of porn and violence are posted on Twitter every day with no action taken against those accounts.” 

It's a pretty good bet that Mandelburg will never do an episode of "CensorTrack With TR" demanding that graphic photos of gun massacre victims be allowed on social media so that people can see "the truth" of gun violence. And she's never going call her fellow activists "ghouls" for obsessively trying to inject those photos into public spaces.