MRC Tries To Undermine Justice By Baselessly Claiming DOJ Is Not Independent Topic: Media Research Center
As part of itsvociferousdefense of Donald Trump over his (second) indictment, the Media Research Center wants you to think he's being targeted by a politically motivated Justice Department. Tim Graham pushed this take in a June 12 post:
The PBS Friday night journalist roundtable show Washington Week sounded like State-Run TV as guest host Laura Barron-Lopez touted the “revealing and damning” Trump indictment by Biden’s Justice Department. It was the only topic for the half-hour. She methodically repeated the White House spin as her own take:
LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ, GUEST HOST: And the Justice Department has been extremely careful to show how independent they are. This is a special counsel investigation, which even adds other level of independence from the Justice Department. The Justice Department is saying, we`re not talking to the White House about this. What has President Biden said so far?
Keep in mind that one way Biden can prevent public comment on the Justice Department is by avoiding the press, and the press can avoid the entire question of the Department’s independence by treating the idea as blatantly obvious, beyond question as LBL does here.
When a commentator pointed out that, like Biden, Donald Trump repeated agitated for his DOJ to go after his political enemies, Graham huffed:
President Obama also had a habit of claiming "we learned it from you guys" on scandal matters. Everyone should factor in a very different media under Trump, constantly suggesting every Trump attorney general was extremely partisan and in Trump's back pocket. They protect and repeat Biden. They savaged Trump. So media behavior affects White House behavior.
Note that Graham doesn't even bother to argue Trump's DOJ was independent -- he knows it wasn't -- so he played Obama (yes, Obama) whataboutism to distract from that.
Jeffrey Lord's June 17 column took a similar tack in whining about a New York Times piece highlighting Trump's promise to sic the DOJ on Biden should he be re-elected president, complaining that the "central thesis" of the article "s that the Department of Justice has 'independence'":
On the one hand, there is the Times this last week with its fairy tale claiming the Department of Justice is “independent.” This the same week that, for the first time in American history, the DOJ has just indicted an American president who not so coincidentally happens to be running against the president they work for.
Yet there is no acknowledgement by the Times of what any sentient observer is aware, as amazingly was the Washington Post a handful of days after Donald Trump was inaugurated in 2017. Which is to say the Justice Department that is prosecuting Trump is filled to overflowing with left-wing career bureaucrats who are on record as hating Trump. Who, per the Post in 2017, were going out of their way to resist him when he became president. Contrary to the Times fairy tale, the DOJ is decidedly not “independent.” It is a cesspool of a bureaucracy corrupted by left-wing employees.
But now there’s a problem for the media and their Democrat allies. Having weaponized and defended the Justice Department to try and intimidate and silence Trump, they have launched a growing movement from Republicans to massively reform the federal government, including cutting the DOJ down to size.
Lor did not explain why he assumes any legal critic of Trump is a"left-winger," or why that legal criticism of Trump has no merit if it comes from someone like that.
Neither Graham nor Lord offered evidence that Biden's DOJ is not independent beyond it indicting Trump. But isn't the DOJ supposed to indict criminals? Why do they think Trump should be held to a different standard of justice because he's a Republican?
Donohue went on to gush further over Spero's political activism:
As an Orthodox rabbi, Aryeh took great umbrage when a gay rabbi who claimed to be Orthodox held a same-sex ceremony in 2011.
Aryeh was one of 100 distinguished Orthodox rabbis to register his objections.
Ever the activist, in 2019 Aryeh led a sit-in at Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s office.
He did so in response to Pelosi’s warm embrace of anti-Jewish Democrats, Reps. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich.
Donohue concluded: "A man like Aryeh doesn’t come around too often. It was my pleasure to have known him." Donohue certainly likes people to exploit their faith as a politcial cudgel.
WND's LaBarbera Spent Pride Month Spewing Anti-LGBT Hate Topic: WorldNetDaily
As a WorldNetDaily reporter, Peter LaBarbera has been doing WND-like things, from portraying a murderer as a victim to shilling for Tucker Carlson to being an apologist for the violent Proud Boys to promoting the presidential campaign of anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorist Robert Kennedy Jr. But at his core, LaBarbera is a homophobe -- he founded the virulently anti-LGBTQ Americans for Truth About Homosexuality -- and anti-LGBTQ is a big part of his WND work. (As we've noted, LaBarbera is likely working for WND because hating people through AFTAH is no longer as lucrative as it was, though it's unclear how much money he might be making from WND given its own financial issues.) Here are some recent examples of that content:
An April 19 article demanded the release of the alleged manifesto of Audrey Hale, " the 'trans'-identified mass-murderer of three children and three adults at a Nashville Christian elementary school."
A May 8 article whined that "transsexual 'chest reconstruction' surgeries – radical procedures performed on healthy bodies and designed to make gender-confused people feel and look more like their opposite-sex 'gender identity' –" were paid for by insurance.
A May 17 article hyped claims by Christopher Rufo issuing a transphobic attack on a children's hospital. LaBarbera called Rufo a "respected researcher," even though his actual history is one of making false and misleading accusations.
A May 26 article repeated false claims that Target was marketing tuck-friendly swimwear to children and that a designer of LGBT-related items for Target is allied with Satan. That was followed by a June 1 article touting a decline in Target's stock price due to the manufactured controversy.
As Pride Month arrived in June, LaBarbera ramped up the anti-LGBT hate. He devoted twoarticles to attacking "anti-Christian gay activist" Harvey Milk after the Navy veteran was highlighted by the military, calling him "a promiscuous homosexual who had a sexual taste for young men" -- and, thus, seeming to try and justify his 1978 murder. That was followed by a June 10 article raging that the military no longer hates LGBT people as much as he does:
The United States Air Force is celebrating LGBT "pride month" with a serviceman 'saluting' the activist homosexual-bisexual-transgender-"queer" "rainbow" flag.
The Air Force published a tweet Wednesday reading: "June is #PrideMonth! The Department of the Air Force proudly recognizes and celebrates generations of LGBTQI+ service members and their contributions to our #AirForce & #SpaceForce."
Tweeted Mike Garcia: "As an AF veteran, this is pathetic & embarrassing. You should focus on winning wars & not social or political issues. Disgusting."
[...]
Several people tweeted in response to the message that they will discourage their children from signing up to serve in this military, seemingly confirming widespread criticism that Biden's "woke" Pentagon policies are tied to sagging recruitment efforts.
LaBarbera did not explain why the military must spew hate at LGBT people the way he does.
A June 13 article regurgitated right-wing outrage over "the latest LGBT spectacle" in which "transsexual activists flashed their fake, opposite-sex chests at President Biden's official 'Pride celebration' on the White House south lawn Saturday." In fact, LaBarbera cited only one person "shaking his fake breasts in front of the White House," not the several he claimed there were. An editor's note at the top of the article proudly declared that it would misgender people: "Unlike most other media, WND does not use trans-activist pronouns that falsely describe people as the opposite of their true, biological sex."
LaBarbera used a June 14 article to complain that Fox News didn't hate LGBT as much in real life as it did on air:
Fox News, already reeling from its ejection of popular anchor Tucker Carlson, has come completely out of the closet, as it were, using its programming and on-air talent to celebrate LGBT "Pride Month" like never before.
The self-styled "fair and balanced" network, based in heavily gay-populated New York City, has long supported homosexual advocacy behind the scenes through its annual contributions to an LGBT "journalists association."
But in the last two years, Fox began celebrating "pride" in June in earnest by running pro-LGBT "puff-pieces" that are every bit as one-sided as those produced by left-leaning networks like CNN and ABC. Fox even ran an uncritical "Pride Month" feature story on "AIDS activist" Rev. Dr. Stephen Pieters, who espouses gay-positive "Christianity."
LaBarbera went on to complain that "One of the stunning aspects of Fox News' executives' now very public embrace of homosexual/transgender 'pride' is that it directly undermines some of the talking points of their own conservative talk-show hosts." He didn't explain why homophobia is a "brand" Fox News (and LaBarbera) should be proud of -- nor did he consider the possibility that its anti-LGBT schtick is all an act. He followed this with a June 17 article claiming to show how Fox News "is pushing a radical LGBT agenda on its employees."
A June 26 article by LaBarbera raged against pride parades in "heavily homosexual big cities" where, allegedly, there were "men exposing their genitalia, women baring their breasts, proud sadomasochists, and vulgar chants and outfits – all with children observing along the parade route." A July 29 article came to the defense of a pharmacist who refused to do his job:
Roscoe Rike, a woman identifying as a trans man, cussed out a pharmacy employee at an Oakland Walgreens store last week for refusing to dispense her cross-sex hormones. The pharmacist said it would violate his religious beliefs.
Rike then went on to condemn religious people as always having "the most [f---king] hate in their hearts."
The Daily Mail reported Monday: "Currently transitioning from female to male, Rike says he has been a customer at the store for years – picking up his HRT [hormone replacement therapy] medication to move along his conversion. ... That changed Monday when he was denied that medication by the pharmacist on staff, on the basis that giving him the pills would violate his religious beliefs."
LaBarbera didn't explain why it was OK for the pharmacist to use his religion as an excuse for denying someone medication they have been taking for years.
LaBarbera spent a June 30 article promoting a political attack on research he didn't like:
A new study finds that the mean age when people are diagnosed with "gender dysphoria" has plummeted from a median age of 28 in 2017 to 24 in 2021, and that girls experiencing severe gender confusion seek professional help at earlier ages compared to boys.
Conservatives aren't buying the lead academic's explanation for the proliferation of gender aberrance in children and the sex disparity: an average age of 11 for girls compared to 13 for boys, according to the study, authored by Ching-Fang Sun, a psychiatry resident physician at Virginia-Tech's Carilion Clinic, School of Medicine.
LaBarbera featured righrtwing activist Bethany Mandel asserting that being transgender is "a fad, driven by social media, that tells young people – particularly girls – that transgenderism is cool, far more common that it really is, and changing your gender is a snap." In fact, research has shown that the increased number of transgender people isn't being driven by social contagion -- something LaBarbera failed to mention.
Then again, biased and incomplete reporting is what WND hired LaBarbera to do.
NEW ARTICLE: The Tucker-Lovers At The MRC Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has long been a fierce defender of anything and everything Tucker Carlson says -- and that defense only grew after Fox News fired him. Read more >>
How Is The MRC Hating Transgender People These Days? Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's hatred of transgender people and all things transgender continued in an April 22 post by Clay Waters mocked a New York Times article that used respectful terms for transgender people. When the article referenced "In place of the 12-word phrase in bold above, insert 'males.'" He went on to rant about an NPR article that discussed gender-affirming care:
The phrase “gender-affirming care” just assumes the truth of the new “woke” gospel that one can be born in the wrong type of body, and that it is everyone else’s responsibility to agree that a biological man can change into a woman, and vice versa, by believing they can.
An April 24 post by chief transphobe Teirin-Rose Mandelburg raged about an incident in a Wisconsin high school in which teenage girls were allegedly exposed to a transgender girl in the shower. She quoted only right-wing activists to back up her account of the incident, censoring the fact that the school district called that account "ill-informed, inaccurate and incomplete." Neverntheless, she huffed: "Until public schools shape up, it’s unfortunately time to go private or ship out and homeschool. These aren’t educational institutions anymore. They're indoctrination and grooming facilities that care more about the alphabet mafia than teaching kids about the actual ABC’s."
Alex Christy spent an April 28 post complaining about someone questioned the need for a debate of whether transgender peopel should be allowed to exist:
As part of a Friday report on CNN This Morning on the “free speech debate” on college campuses, Elle Reeve wondered if debating transgenderism is like debating murder.
On the specific topic of a recent debate put on by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute between The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles and gay libertarian Brad Polumbo on “Should Transgenderism be Regulated by Law” at the University of Pittsburgh, Reeve asked Vice President of College Republicans at Pitt, Josh Minsky, “But would you have a panel where someone spoke about whether or not there should be legal murder?”
Conservatives would call abortion “legal murder,” but shortly before that question, writer and activist Charlotte Clymer told Reeve that debating transgenderism would be like debating whether or not to bring back segregation.
As for Minsky, he replied, “No, because murder is objectively wrong and you're killing someone, but I would not put that on the same spectrum.”
Christy didn't disclose that Knowles is a vicious transphobe. He was also annoyed that law professor Mary Ann Franks argued that conservatives want to shut down debate by censoring others:
And it’s really the coward's way of trying to deal with any argument. Your answer should be “here’s why my ideas are interesting and why they're important” not invoking some kind of quasi-constitutional gloss for what you have to say.
Conservatives have been making arguments, especially scientific ones, so Franks is simply wrong. It’s the left that cowardly seeks to avoid debate by simply appealing to emotions, but back in studio Reeve also ignored all the intellectual problems with transgenderism that conservatives have raised to say “I think it's important to notice that it's not, like, capital gains tax that is sparking protests, it’s some scientist with a theory about black holes. It's trans rights this year.”
[...]
It says a lot about the lack of confidence transgenderism's advocates have in their own ideas that they refuse to submit them to scrutiny.
Christy didn't explain why the existence of transgender people must constantly face "scrutiny."
The same day, Elise Ehrhard discussed an episode of "Law and Order" in which "an angry dad kills a doctor for giving his gender dysphoric child puberty blockers. The murdered doctor is married to a conservative congresswoman who is fighting the LGBTQUIA+ agenda. She was pleased that the episode showed "left-wing activists who have been threatening or violent, something rarely acknowledged on television," though less so that it also showed a drag queen character who argued that right-wing politicians "want to insert themselves into the private lives of every citizen in the country":
Public readings to children and publicly playing sports on a team of the opposite biological sex are not about "private lives," of course. Still, this episode is the first time I have seen Antifa mentioned in a network cop drama at all. It was a pleasant surprise to see the Antifa member portrayed as a jerk.
Ehrhard then criticized a school counselor character who discussed puberty blockers, citing a right-wing anti-transgender site to claim that the character's "erroneous claims about puberty blockers are never questioned and the harms are downplayed later at the trial.
On the stand, Debra testifies that she consented because she feared her child would commit suicide. The "suicide threat" to coerce parents into accepting Mengele-like "medicine" is a psychologically abusive tactic that the trans movement embraces.
Apparently, Ehrhard thinks that maliciously smearing doctors who help transgender people as akin to Nazis is somehow not a psychologically abusive tactic.
Christy returned for an April 29 post in which he defended allowing teen girls to get breast implants for not allowing gender-affirming care for transgender teens:
For Saturday’s installment of CNN This Morning Weekend, host Victor Blackwell welcomed Elana Redfield of UCLA Law’s Williams Institute to attack the “very ideological” GOP for not giving “gender-affirming care” to minors and President Biden from the left for his proposed sports-related Title IX changes.
Republicans were first up for condemnation as Blackwell was stumped by the fact that Republicans are willing to give female medical care to girls, but not boys, “At the top, I said these are states that are now banning gender-affirming care for trans minors, because many of these laws do not address gender-affirming care for cis-gender teenagers. If a parent wants to allow their 16-year-old to get breast implants, a cis-gender girl or their boy to get growth hormones, cis-gender boy, those things are not dealt with in legislation. Am I right this is focusing exclusively on, or primarily, I should say, on trans teens?”
Blackwell unwittingly stumbled upon a truth: allowing a teenage girl to get breast surgery to fix a birth defect, is gender-affirming care. Giving breast implants to a teenage boy, is gender un-affirming.
Dulce Sloan kicked off her week of temp hosting Comedy Central’s The Daily Show on Monday by welcoming season 15 winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race, Sasha Colby on to the program to claim there is a connection between opposition to drag shows and the murder of transgenders.
Sloan began by asking, “Now as women of color, especially, we always have to worry about representation, right? And I know you want to be an example of a happy trans person in the media. Why is that important to you?”
Colby responded by arguing the “media has been concerned with a lot of the time is telling the transition story, telling the trauma, telling the effect that it did on the family, but not showing why we go through all of that. And how happy-- being so adamant about making yourself feel comfortable in your own skin, that’s the whole reason why we do the transition. It isn't to hurt or harm or traumatize our families or anyone else. It is to be our true, happy selves and we are missing that a lot.”
The idea that the media won’t focus on Colby’s definition of happiness is absurd, but not nearly as absurd as the assertion that “There are so many happy, well-adjusted, loving trans people, but you only see us getting murdered and beaten.”
Before anybody could ask what on earth Colby was talking about, Sloan asked “Now you won Drag Race at a time where drag is being politicized for absolutely no reason. What do you think they are really trying to do?”
Ignoring all the viral videos of sexualized performances with children present, Colby reached for the typical liberal accusation that “It's always about these white men, kind of, trying to control people's bodies.”
It's telling that Christy referenced only random "viral videos" made "viral" by anti-transgender activists; he went on to whine that "The idea that people who don’t like drag shows are going around murdering people is outrageous and false." In fact, last December's massacre at a Colorado LGBTQ club occurred at the end of a drag show.
WND Columnist Melts Down Over Intersex People Topic: WorldNetDaily
Nicholas Waddy began his June 15 WorldNetDaily column by complaining that Irish people have stopped hating LGBT people as much as he does:
Recently, I visited Ireland, both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, and I came away very impressed by the friendliness of the people, the beauty of the landscape, and the prosperity and dynamism Ireland has achieved, despite a long history of poverty and relative isolation. I also found notable how omnipresent reminders are there of Ireland's struggle for independence. References to the 1798 and 1916 rebellions, for instance, are everywhere, as are memorials to the Irish who died in the struggle for self-rule.
When I got to Dublin, however, Ireland's capital and largest city, I was somewhat taken aback. Completely overshadowing displays of the Irish tricolor flag were displays of the pride flag – that is, the gay pride flag, as it used to be known. Given that June is pride month, that is not entirely surprising, especially when we consider that the White House was recently emblazoned with rainbow flags itself, but it was jarring when I compared my experience of Dublin with my travels in the rest of Ireland, where (with the notable exception of Unionist parts of Northern Ireland) the Irish and EU flags always got top billing. I chalk this up to Dublin's urban sophistication (some would call it dissipation), which, in big cities everywhere, seems to breed broader acceptance of, and even bellicose advocacy for, "alternative lifestyles." So be it.
But what really set Waddy off, though,is that intersex [people are noew represented on the pride flag:
Who are the intersex? While definitions vary somewhat, they are essentially persons born with genetic or physical abnormalities that distinguish them from the vast majority of human beings, who, at birth, fall (neatly or problematically, depending on who you ask) into one of two sexes (or genders, again depending on who you ask): male and female. Put another way, the intersex are those who have at least some of the genetic or physical characteristics of both biological sexes. In ancient times – meaning, several months or years ago – we called such people "hermaphrodites." They now no longer like to be called that, although they sometimes use the terminology among themselves. Keep in mind, moreover, that instances of intersexuality or hermaphroditism that are pronounced enough to occasion medical notice, let alone treatment, are incredibly rare. By this definition, intersex births represent considerably less than one-tenth of 1% of the total.
Wow! So where does this leave us?
First, as the intersex/hermaphrodite progress pride flag diffuses steadily across the globe, and as more LGBT-friendly people adopt it, one thing is for sure: the aesthetic coherence and symbolic clarity of the original rainbow pride flag is being eroded. This phenomenon, though, is an accurate reflection of the audacious expansion of the gender/sex equality movement itself, as well as its burgeoning complexity and pervasiveness – which to some appear almost totalitarian in scope.
Waddy then returned to more garden-variety anti-LGBT hate:
Just recently, the vast majority of Americans opposed gay marriage. Two of them, in fact, were President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden. Today, by contrast, gay marriage is a non-issue, and in a recent poll, 89% of Americans 18-29 years of old support it. Likewise, it was not so long ago that Ireland was a deeply Catholic country in which homosexuality was illegal (such laws were only repealed in 1993). Now, the country's most venerable university flies the flag of intersexuality, while there's not an Irish flag to be seen (and certainly not a Christian one). How quickly things change!
Scoff if you wish, therefore, but Trinity College may be a glimpse of our collective future. Someday soon, you may find yourself walking down the street and, if your T-shirt doesn't feature a yellow field and a purple circle somewhere on its design, people will look at you as if you just clubbed a baby seal to a bloody pulp.
My advice? At a minimum, be kind to hermaphrodites, because they might just hold your future in their (ambiguously gendered?) hands.
Waddy didn't explain why he seems to think that intersex people should be ashamed of who they are.
Newsmax Plays Defense For Trump Again After Charges Added To Classified Docs Case Topic: Newsmax
As the indictments pile up against donald Trump, Newsmax is continuing to serve as the Trump Defense Network.
When new charges were added to Trump's (second) indictment over classified documents, Newsmax first responded with a July 28 wire article, followed by an article touting former Trump adviser Stephen Miller declaring that the added charges are "'further proof' of the Department of Justice's efforts to keep him from returning to the White House." There was also a wire article on Trump denying the charges.
Then came the usual promoting of folks defending Trump and attacking the special counsel who brought the case, Jack Smith:
Newsmax did slip in a bit of bad news for Trump, though -- a July 29 article by Eric Mack noted that "A federal judge appointed by former President Donald Trump has granted CNN's motion to dismiss a $475 million defamation case brought by the former president."
Craig Bannister Reprises Old, Dishonest Writing From News Operation In Blog Version Of CNS Topic: CNSNews.com
Because the Media Research Center got a pot of money some years ago "in memory of Dr. Keith C. Wold" -- a longtime MRC funder whose family members haveserved on the MRC's board of trustees -- to use for reporting on business and economics, the right-wing blog that currently passes for CNSNews.com is apparently stuck writing posts about that, albeit with the usual CNS mandate to downplay good economic news when it happens under a Democratic president. A July 7 post by Craig Bannister picked up the cherry-picking-bad-news strategy used by CNS writer Susan Jones, who lost her job when the MRC blew up CNS:
Led by continued growth in government, the unemployment rate fell 0.1 point to 3.6% in June – though, non-farm employment and wages recorded lackluster gains – according to seasonally-adjusted data released Friday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Compared to May, employment in the non-farm sector was up 209,000 jobs last month – falling far short of the monthly average increases for both the first six months (278,000) of this year and full-year 2022 (399,000).
Employment in government increased by 60,000 in June, as employment continued to trend up in state (+27,000) and local government (+32,000). Overall, government has added an average of 63,000 jobs per month thus far in 2023 – more than twice the average of 23,000 per month in 2022.
Faltering market conditions reduced more American workers to part-time status in June, as the number of persons employed part-time for economic reasons increased by 452,000 to 4.2 million, partially reflecting an increase in the number of persons whose hours were cut due to slack work or business conditions.
It wasn't a group of bullet points after the eighth paragraph of his post that Bannister got around to mentioning that more Americans were working.
A July 12 post by Bannister seemed disappointed that inflation is easing, if the headline is any indication: Despite Cost of Shelter, Inflation Eases Compared to Year-Ago, when 9.1% Increase Was Highest in More than 40 Years."
Bannister reprised another dishonest reporting trick in a July 21 post:
States with Republican governors dominate the lists of both the states with the lowest, and record-lowest, unemployment rates, according to statistics for June 2023 released Friday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
Out of the 10 states with the lowest unemployment rates last month, eight boast Republican governors, as Maryland (#5) and Maine (#8) were the only Democrat-led [sic] states to make the cut:
As we've noted when CNS did this previously, most of those Republican-led states tend to be sparsely populated compared to other states.
MRC's Coverage Count Of Trump vs. Biden Omitted Fox News Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center reacted to Donald Trump's (second) indictment on charges related to classified documents with general ranting, false Hillary Clinton whataboutism and hypocritical complaints about criticism of the judge. It has also complained that it was covered in the media at all and that right-wing narratives about President Biden were ignored. Geoffrey Dickens whined in a June 13 post:
On Thursday June 8, two massive political stories broke, but ONLY one of them got covered by the broadcast networks.
On June 8, former President Donald Trump was indicted by the Special Counsel in the classified documents case. That very same day it was reported that President Joe Biden had allegedly received $5 million dollars from an executive of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, the same company in which his son Hunter was involved.
Guess which one was exhaustively covered and which one was completely covered up by the networks?
Over four days (June 8-June 12) the Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) broadcast networks predictably crammed their evening, morning and Sunday roundtable shows with a total of 291 minutes of coverage dedicated to the Trump indictment.
But how much did the Biden/Burisma alleged bribery scheme receive?
Zero seconds.
The double-standard is breathtaking.
Actually, it's not a double standard at all. Trump's indictment is a real, substantial thing, while the internal FBI document released by a Republican senator for partisan reasons that purportedly claims that "Joe Biden had allegedly received $5 million dollars from an executive of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma" -- note his usage of "alleged" -- is based on information that is unverified. It's real, live news versus an unsupported claim.Nevertheless, the partisan Dickens asserted, "Make no mistake, the Burisma scandal story and its ties to Joe “ Big Guy” Biden has legs."
While Dickens touted how Fox News hyped the Burisma claim, he refused to do a coverage count of how Fox News covered those stories -- probably because it would have demonstrated the right-wing anti-Biden bias Fox News has.Instead, he ranted that "Clearly the broadcast networks will continue to obsessively cover Trump’s indictment but to be fair and balanced they would also cover Biden’s scandals — something they (as exposed by NewsBusters) have been reluctant to do." Needless to say, Dickens will never hold Fox News to the same standards he holds non-right-wing media.
Alex Christy served up his own contribution to the coverage-count narrative in a June 14 post:
Former President Donald Trump was arraigned on Tuesday on charges related to the retention of classified documents and CNN and MSNBC wanted to make sure you were aware of it.
A study of the two networks from 5 AM to midnight Eastern found that 5.21 percent of their non-commercial air time was devoted to this one issue. The two networks combined for 28 hours, 44 minutes, and 2 seconds of which 27 hours, 21 minutes, and 25 seconds was devoted to Trump or some aspect of the case.
As bad as those numbers are, they are much worse when looked at in an hourly breakdown. Starting in the 11 AM Eastern hour, 100 percent of CNN’s non-commercial time was spent on the case while MSNBC went exclusive at 10 AM.
The networks may defend themselves by saying the case is historic, but so is the ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensive, but the war in Ukraine received a measly 4 minutes and 9 seconds on Tuesday. Other news like the I-95 collapse in Philadelphia received 9 minutes and 39 seconds while White House Pride guests getting banned from the White House for going topless got nothing.
Like Dickens, Christy refused to conduct a coverage count of Fox News. Dickens served up a rehash of of his earlier post, but with updated numbers, on June 21.
Meanwhile, the MRC continued to run to Trump's defense in other ways as well:
A June 13 post by Ana Schau tried to suggest that having pro-Trump jurors for any Trump trial would be a good thing:
On Tuesday morning’s CNN News Central, anchor Rahel Solomon brought University of Miami professor of criminal law Scott Sundby on the show to discuss the selection process for “potential jurors” at the trial for former President Trump’s classified documents indictment. Despite Solomon’s disclaimer that the process was “not at the jury selection phase of any potential trial” yet, they engaged in a discussion of the importance of selecting jurors for the trial based on their “worldviews” and “where [they] get their news.”
[...]
Of course, it’s true that a person’s worldview will affect how they judge a case, but this should not be a limiter for specific people to be able to participate in any particular jury. In fact, our legal system was built specifically in an attempt to ensure a wide range of different kinds of people in the judgment process, in hopes of reaching a middle ground (and thus a more just judgment) among all of these opinions.
However, Solomon and Sundby continued their discussion of the selection of jurors by their worldview, this time branching off into a discussion on how specifically a person’s political leaning could affect their eligibility to be “a good potential juror.” He brought up an example of a juror in the Jean Carroll civil law suit against Trump who many felt should have been disqualified after it was learned turning the trial [sic] he reads “a right-wing blog.”
When one commentator insisted that jurors should "base your decision on the evidence," Schau retorted: "This would remove the possibility of a juror being able to judge a case on the whole of the truth of the matter that he knows, rather than just the information cited in the trial, which was bound to be biased when coming from both sides." In fact, juries are routinely instructed to base their decisions on the evidence.
WND's Lively Thinks 'Incels' Are Becoming Transgender Topic: WorldNetDaily
As with many things that do not fit his narrow and rigid right-wing ideology, Scott Lively has not enjoyed the idea that women should be treated as equals to men. So his June 15 WorldNetDaily column began with a rant against early feminist Betty Friedan, insisting that she "is responsible for weaponizing feminist grievances to poison women against home-based, family-centered lifestyles and transform them into aggressive workplace competitors with men, leveraging leftist power in the civil rights movement to achieve the cultural Marxist goal of "disintegration of … the monogamic and patriarchal family." He continued:
As a man who came of age in the 1970s I am a part of the first generation of males upon whom was imposed Friedan's feminist theory of social order by the American public-education cabal. We were the first to be indoctrinated in the false narrative that men and women are equal and interchangeable in all things, and that men's collective unfair past "oppression" of all women warranted new public policies and practices favoring the advancement of women in roles traditionally relegated to men. Men who declined to voluntarily defer or submit to women's leadership in this campaign were deemed "male chauvinist pigs," justifying anti-discrimination laws to punish those who stood in the way of "equality." I only broke free of that mindset when I became a Christian in my late 20s and started understanding God's plan for family.
[...]
Cut loose from its moorings in Judeo-Christian tradition, women's innate maternalism was manipulated by the elite Marxist puppet-masters away from a child-rearing orientation toward "protectiveness of the oppressed," most especially "gay" men, whose own agenda since the Stonewall Riots of 1969 has been absolute cultural supremacy. Thus, because of feminism, the civilization-killing LGBT agenda advanced steadily through legislation despite opposition by a consistent majority of men.
So now the Friedanian feminists have no one but themselves to blame. They let themselves become the ultimate useful idiots of the left, the "gullible women loaded down with sins, led away by various lusts" of 2 Timothy 3:6 – enslaved to the anti-family agenda of Marxist men.
Which somehow led to this claim:
Meanwhile, hardcore "Incel" misogynists, brimming with smoldering hate – the Frankenstein creations of feminism-perverted male-female social dysfunction – are "identifying" as women to vengefully invade and defile their most intimate spaces and institutions – backed by legislators and judges whose Marxist delusions and zealotry are even more deeply entrenched than that of the Friedanians. Female identity itself is being systematically erased to serve the new transgender cum transhumanist cause.
Given that the only thing incels might hate more then women is men who have transitioned to being a woman, we find it extremely hard to believe that incels are becoming transgender.
MRC Screeches At Disney+ Documentary For Not Hating LGBTQ People Topic: Media Research Center
Elise Ehrhard spent a June 5 post raging at Disney for airing a documentary that committed the offense of not viciously hating LGBTQ people the way she does:
Just when you think Disney can't sink any lower, "Pride Month" comes along and the House of Mouse finds ways to fall even furthe.
On Friday, June 2, Disney+ premiered the National Geographic special Pride from Above. The 45-minute documentary took kids to LGBTQ Pride Parades across the globe.
In the opening minutes of the documentary, an elderly gay man told the audience that pride is "gay Christmas."
As the above video illustrated, this special highlighted more than just rainbows and glitter. It showcased parade route images of transgender double mastectomy scars, twerking, drag "nuns," and other inappropriate content for kids. It even zoomed in on a guy in a wheelchair with a sign that says, "I Get Horny Too."
Throughout the 45 minutes, a narrator waxed eloquent on the "joy" of queerness.
Pride from Above also made clear that the LGBTQUIA+ acronym is potentially endless. Kids are taught that there are myriad ways for them to join the gender madness.
Ehrhard then huffed that activists devised a term for transgender people that wasn't offensive:
National Geographic deliberately misled viewers about complex historical matters. For example, the phrase "two-spirit" was made up by LGBT activists in the 1990s. The activists wanted a word to replace the term used by European colonists for a type of Native American boy they called "berdache." Berdache is from an Arabic word for "kept boy." The word's pedophilic inference bothered the movement so "two-spirit" was born.
Ehrhard didn't explain why transgender people must be presumed to be pedophiles. Instead, she concluded with a tirade that raged at the "gender cult" (whatever that is; she doesn't explain) and demanding that everyone abandon Disney because it refuses to spew mindless hate at LGBTQ people (like she does):
Who cares about history, though, when you have an agenda to push? If "the pride of today has moved beyond LGBT," then vulnerable children and adolescents now have a host of ways to be inducted into the gender cult. This cult is led by adults far too eager to publicly get their kink on in front of minors.
For its part, Disney is also too happy to promote this confusion to children in their amusement parks and on their streaming service. The idyllic Disney of past decades is dead.
Cancel your Disney+ subscription. Avoid the Disney theme parks. Do not purchase tickets to new Disney movies. This company is now so far from its founder's vision that Walt must be rolling in his grave.
Ehrhard certainly doesn't care about reason or sanity -- she has an agenda she gets paid to push, and she will continue to do so until she can bully everyone else into hating LGBTQ people the way she gets paid to do.
NEW ARTICLE -- Michael Brown's Deceptive Anti-LGBTQ Attacks: The Early Years Topic: WorldNetDaily
The WorldNetDaily columnist loves to pretend he has compassion for LGBTQ people -- even as he continuously displays his hate and contempt for them. Read more >>
MRC Still Fluffing Musk, Insists That Anti-Semitism Isn't Hate Speech Topic: Media Research Center
The bad news continued to come for Elon Musk's Twitter:
Musk threatened to censor users who use the word "cisgender," inexplicably insisting that it's a "slur."
He tried to make Twitter less accessible by introducing new limits on tweet views for anyone who won't pay the billionaire $8 a month, and many ussers had problems accessing Twitter at all.
Twitter's attempt to mimic TikTok's "swipe up" feature is showing viewers graphic and conspiracy-theory-laden videos featuring gun violence, police brutality, physical altercations and vaccine misinformation.
The Media Research Center will tell its viewers about none of this, of course -- Musk's de facto PR operation would never do that. Instead, it was all about Musk-fluffing. A June 19 post by Gabriela Pariseau hyped an interview he did with an obscure podcaster in which he did his usual pontifications about "free speech." We suspect the podcaster lobbed only easy softballs as Musk. A June 28 tweet on the NewsBusters Twitter account obsequiously wished Musk a happy birthday.
Peter Kotara insisted that anti-Semitism and other hate on Twitter is not hate speech but "so-called hate speech" in a June 28 post raging that people want Musk to do something about it, starting with issuing a personal attack on the head of the Anti-Defamation League:
On Wednesday’s Morning Joe, ADL Vice President Yael Eisenstat joined MSNBC hosts Willie Geist and Jonathan Lemire to demand social media companies tighten the noose of political censorship online, cry about Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, and even call for the government to become involved in online censorship.
Eisenstat, a far left censorship proponent, appeared on the segment to push forward the thesis that so-called “hate speech” has been increasing online, and that social media companies needed to censor it, as well as that the government needed to pass legislation forcing them crack down on it if they won’t do so on their own.
[...]
So, who is Yael Eisenstat? Apart from being the Vice President of the ADL, a partisan organization dedicated to demonizing right-wingers and labeling them “anti-semites” based solely on their opposition to woke ideology, she was a former Facebook employee, CIA analyst, and National Security Adviser to then Vice President Joe Biden.
According to Influence Watch, Eisenstat “argued that speech she considers to be misinformation or hateful that does not violate any laws should still be subjected to censorship.” Here Eisenstat showed her true malevolent nature, that she wished to destroy any political speech she disagreed with by classifying it as “hate speech”.
Kotara didn't explain why anti-Semitism shouldn't be considered hate speech, nor did he cite any actual examples of Eisenstat "destroy any political speech she disagreed with by classifying it as 'hate speech'." He concluded by huffing:
This MSNBC propaganda segment highlighted the ever-expanding attempts by the left to use “hate speech” to silence dissent and centralize power under themselves both through governmental legislation and private corporations. Their real enemy was never hate; it was the First Amendment.
Again Kotara didn't explain why online hate should and must be allowed to spread unchecked.
Tim Graham used a July 8 post to complain that the Washington Post got an apparently fake account banned of an apparently nonexistent person who spouted views presented as,liberal, insisting the account was really brilliant satire:
Among the Twitter bot accounts that the liberal media hate most are the fake liberal bots who make liberals look like obnoxious idiots -- or who are a little too clumsy and inartful, and make liberals think it must be a conservative plot. It's like a version of banning The Babylon Bee because its satire hits too close to home.
Consider the case of "Erica Marsh," who tripped the liberal alarms with a June 29 tweet after the Supreme Court upended race-based admissions at Harvard. “Today’s Supreme Court decision is a direct attack on Black people. No Black person will be able to succeed in a merit-based system which is exactly why affirmative-action based programs were needed."
As Legal Insurrection noted, this caused a wave of outrage, particularly among black conservatives like Candace Owens, Bo Snerdley, Leo Terrell and others.
On July 4, Drew Harwell of The Washington Post reported their inquiries to Twitter caused the "Erica Marsh" account to be suspended after her Supreme Court tweet was viewed more than 27 million times.
[...]
Harwell noted what he and the other liberals -- sorry, the "misinformation experts" were thinking: "For months, Marsh’s account had raised suspicions among online misinformation experts due to her lack of a real-world footprint and her devotion to attention-grabbing viewpoints one called “cartoonishly liberal.” For example, Harwell noted, last month she said she still wears “2 masks whenever I go out and support Ukraine.”
Most Twitter users -- at least the ones outside the censorious left -- find parody accounts amusing, but you want to know what is a parody account and what's not. You might wonder if @AOC is a parody, and not the AOC parody accounts. When Harwell turned back to his expert on "rage" and Twitter, did he consider that the left-wing side is also vulnerable to rage bait?
Funny, we don't recall Graham ever liking a tweet from The Onion. And Graham offered no examples of right-wing rage-bait to which liberals have been "vulnerable."
How Has WND's Brown Been Hating LGBT People Lately? Topic: WorldNetDaily
We're continuing to catch up on Michael Brown's animus toward LGBT people (which he wants you to believe is only against "activism") with his June 2 WorldNetDaily column, in which he again cheered right-wing anti-LGBT hate and again complained that the Los Angeles Dodgers honoreed the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence for their community service:
For many years I have been saying that LGBTQ+ activists will overplay their hand, resulting in a moral and cultural revolution in the opposite direction. The May 31 headline story on DrudgeReport, "War on Pride," with a "No" graphic to two men, says it all. The accompanying headlines read, "Anti-Target Rap Tops iTunes"; "Revolt on Chick-Fil-A"; "Bud Light Sales Down 30%"; "Gays Leaving Florida."
Drudge also could have added some of the backlash to the Los Angeles Dodgers celebrating the Catholic-mocking Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence to the list. This was yet another step too far.
The pushback is accelerating, and for good reason.
Of course, to those (or to you) who identify as LGBTQ+ (and to LGBTQ+ allies), all this is the latest manifestation of hatred and bigotry, and people like me are leading the homophobic, biphobic, transphobic charge. We are haters and bigots in your eyes, narrow-minded, uncaring, religious fundamentalists, moral hypocrites who are obsessed with people who do not conform to our norm.
Brown once again claimed against all evidence that his anti-LGBT hate isn't hate and is somehow noble becaiuse he is right and LGBT people are evil:
Yes, I get it. And yes, it grieves me that millions of Americans who get up in the morning and go to work and school and take care of their families – everyday people living normal lives – will feel hurt and personally attacked by the very pushback I celebrate. That gives me no joy or sense of triumph.
But that's the whole point.
It is not bigotry or hatred that drives me (and others of like mind). It is the incessant, unavoidable, ever-increasing attack on our most basic human values that drives us.
It is bombarding toddlers and young children with the idea that they could be a boy one day and a girl the next.
It is female students fearing to use their own school bathrooms because of the presence of boys who identify as girls.
It is males competing against females in athletic competitions and men wearing women's swimsuits in ads.
It is drag queens not only reading books to little children but shaking their hips (and worse) in their presence, even to the point of physical touching.
It is the chemical castration and genital mutilation of minors.
It is educators and school counselors undermining family values and going behind parents' backs.
It is forcing a radical agenda on those who disagree and penalizing them for their failure to comply.
It is celebrating extremist, deeply offensive groups like the anti-Catholic Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.
Brown then bizarrely insisted that homophobes like him are the real victims - then, even more bizarrely, likened the group to white supremacists:
But this is what you have to remember: They endured years of LGBTQ+ Pride nights without speaking out. They didn't rock the boat, even though they might have been personally offended. It was only when the activists went a step too far. That's when they spoke out.
[...]
Can you imagine the uproar if the Dodgers honored a group of white supremacists wearing blackface and called "The Brothers in the Hood"?
Or a group of Gentile anti-Semites wearing Hasidic Jewish garb and called "The Rabbis of the Foreskin"?
Or a group of gay-hating women dressed as effeminate men and called "The Swishers"?
Or a group of Islamophobes dressed as imams carrying AK-47s and called "Allah's Holy Messengers"?
These scenarios are so absurd as to be completely unimaginable. Yet, as the inevitable result of decades of LGBTQ+ activism, the Dodgers are celebrating and honoring nun-mocking, Catholic-despising drag queens.
For his June 5 column, Brownonce again tried (and failed) to explain that he attacks only "activism" and not people:
For almost 20 years now, I have been guided by this principle when it comes to LGBTQ people and issues: Reach out to the people with compassion; resist the agenda with courage. But how, exactly, is this done? And how does it play out in terms of the people we are called to reach and the agenda we are called to resist?
There are Christians who avoid the culture wars because they are too toxic, fearing that any involvement will only turn LGBTQ-identified people away from the faith. "Let's just love them like we love everyone else," they reason, "building relationships with them, not being offensive in our speech or conduct, and leading them to Jesus."
[...]
How can we love people in such a way that they recognize our love for them while we reject their personal perceptions and most fundamental values? And how can we love people in a genuine, Christlike way while openly opposing the things they fight for?
Many Christians still use the old adage of, "Love the sinner but hate the sin," thinking this is a good way of describing our attitude towards LGBTQ-identified people.
But, as many an ex-gay, ex-trans person has told me, they heard those words as, "You hate me." That's because, for them, being gay (or trans) was not something they did but who they were. (In the same way, I do not do heterosexual; I am heterosexual.)
On the other hand, in many cases, no matter how much we love people as people, unconditionally and with a genuine heart, if we do not affirm their expressed sexual orientation or gender identity, we will be considered hateful.
Brown went on to complain that a Twitter poll he conducted showed that "85% of those who identified as pro-LGBTQ believe that there is no way I can lovingly say, 'I believe homosexual practice is sinful' or 'I don't affirm transgender identity.'" He then claimed without evidence that "We fully understand the human issues involved, most all of us having friends or family members or colleagues who identify as LGBTQ.," though he went on to note that "A trans-identified relative of mine cut me off years ago because of my public stands on the relevant issues, despite my appeal to him to meet with me privately and tell me his story, just so I could better understand the pain he had lived with." Then, after declaring "compassion," he framed that in his certainty that he is right and LGBT people are wrong (if not evil):
As I have often said, we need hearts of compassion and backbones of steel.
So, on the one hand, if you cut us, we should bleed love. On the other hand, we will not be moved.
This is the holy tension with which we live. May God give us the grace to reflect His heart and mind.
We've noted how Brown's June 7 column weighed in on the tiny meltdown over a crew member for the Chrtistian TV show "The Chosen" displaying a small pride flag, in which he insisted that anti-LGBT hate be treated as some kind of virtue. For his Jne 12 column, he was back to cheering that very anti-LGBT hate:
As I've stated elsewhere, these Americans didn't sign up for the increasingly radical cultural madness, for the assault on children, and for the stripping away of the rights of others. That's why so many are now pushing back against "Pride."
And it's not just the conservative, Bible believers. It's the average drinker of Budweiser beer. It's the average shopper at Target. It's the average parent with a kid in school.
They're not going for the blur-gender, omnigender, pregnant man, menstruating males, castrate-the-kids nonsense.
And they're not going for the constant, in your face exaltation of everything gay and trans and queer related. As Matt Walsh tweeted on May 30, "As you prepare for Pride Month, we must also remember to celebrate:
"Bisexual Health Awareness Month International Transgender Day of Visibility National LGBT Health Awareness Week National Transgender HIV Testing Day Non-Binary Parents Day Lesbian Visibility Day International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia, & Biphobia Harvey Milk Day Pansexual & Pan Romantic Awareness & Visibility Day Non-Binary Awareness Week International Drag Day LGBTQ History Month (not to be confused w/ Pride Month) International Lesbian Day National Coming Out Day National LGBT Center Awareness Day Asexual Awareness Week International Pronouns Day Transgender Parent Day Pansexual Pride Day Gay Uncles Day"
Did he miss any?
[...]
The camel has gotten its nose in the door of the tent, and everything else has followed in its wake. As a result, millions of Americans are saying, "This is too much."
They wanted to embrace common kindness. They ended up with cultural craziness.
The fact that Brown is approvingly quoting a vicious homobphobe like Walsh shows where his sympathies lie and where his claimed "compassion" does not. Indeed,he went on to embrace another hater:
As Joe Rogan said to his massive podcast audience, "So we're seeing that now where we never saw that before, where people are going 'Enough! Enough! Stop shoving this down everybody's throat.'"
Precisely so. (For those who do not know Rogan, he is not a born-again, Bible-waving Christian.)
He continued, "When I go to Target I don't want to see like [expletive] tuck pants, like they're designed to help you tuck your [expletive]. Hey, that's not normal, I don't want that right in front of everybody. It's weird."
He's right. It's weird. It's unnatural. It's harmful to suggest this for kids. And, from a business point of view, it's only relevant to a tiny percentage of the society. Why on earth make it front and center in your store unless you are driven by a radical social agenda?
And that's why this Pride Month is different than past Pride Months. Americans are coming to their senses. As I recently tweeted, what began for many as the embrace of common decency ("I treat my gay friends and coworkers with fairness and respect") has become a celebration of deviancy ("Long live the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence!").
The bottom line is that LGBTQ+ activists have basically said, "No matter how much ground you give us and no matter how much you embrace us, it is never enough. We will continue to push the envelope."
Millions of Americans have responded by saying, "Enough is enough."
Brown does not explain why his enthusiatic support for anti-LGBT hate shouildn't be assumed to apply to people and not "activism."
MRC's Graham Mad That Media Won't Inject Anti-LGBTQ Hate Into News Stories Topic: Media Research Center
In a June 17 post, the Media Research Center's Tim Graham insisted it was an "objectivity scandal" that there was a controversy over a Michigan TV station issuing a memo stating that its reporters "get both sides" of LGBTQ issues because "conservative viewers" didn't like that being covered at all:
Can you believe that? "We apologize for the misguided people who believe reporting on two sides of an issue, which shows disrespect for the marginalized LGBT community. Those aren't our values!"
[...]
Oh no! Someone expressed concern about the conservative viewers! This better be fixed! Someone dared to question the newsworthiness of drag brunches and burlesque troupes!
[...]
The people who preach "expansive and inclusive" journalism mean the exact opposite. WOOD-TV is now posting happy one-sided propaganda about "The evolution of gay pride in Michigan."
Graham doesn't explain what, exactly, the other side of "LGBTQ issues" he wants in every story on the subject. That's because it involves portraying non-heterosexual people as evil and unclean and are going to hell if they don't repent of their wicked ways. He also doesn't explain why saying nice things about LGBTQ people is "propaganda" and spewing hate at them is not -- or why "conservative viewers" are such snowflakes that they can't handle the fact they non-heterosexual people are human beings who deserve basic respect and that news about them be censored. It's also unlikely that Graham will demand that "both sides" be told on any news story on "Christian issues."
Graham also referenced the incident in his June 20 column, in which he whined that news coverage "shows 'respect for....some members of the [LGBTQ] community." Again, he didn't explain what level of anti-LGBTQ hate he demands be put in any news story about them.
Ultimately the two top news directors at the station were fired, along with two producers accused of leaking the memo to the public.
As part of its vociferous defense of Donald Trump over his (second) indictment, the Media Research Center wants you to think he's being targeted by a politically motivated Justice Department. Tim Graham pushed this take in a June 12 post:
Dishonest Catholic Bill Donohue reported the death of Rabbi Aryeh Spero in his June 26 
As a WorldNetDaily reporter, Peter LaBarbera has been doing WND-like things, from 
The Media Research Center's 
Nicholas Waddy began his June 15 WorldNetDaily 
As the indictments pile up against donald Trump, Newsmax is 
Because the Media Research Center got a pot of money some years ago "in memory of Dr. Keith C. Wold" -- a longtime MRC funder whose family members 
The Media Research Center reacted to Donald Trump's (second) indictment on charges related to classified documents with 
As with many things that do not fit his narrow and rigid right-wing ideology, Scott Lively has not enjoyed the idea that women should be treated as equals to men. So his June 15 WorldNetDaily 
Elise Ehrhard spent a June 5 
The bad news continued to come for Elon Musk's Twitter:
We're c
In a June 17 
