MRC Frets Over Musk's Moves On Twitter, Still Fluffs Him Anyway Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has a history of ignoring bad news about Elon Musk and Twitter, but if it must be addressed, their goal is to find a way to dismiss it. And so it was with the swift emergence of Threads as a Twitter competitor. Autumn Johnson was dismissive of Threads in a July 6 post, largely because it is trying to do something about hate and misinformation:
Meta’s new “text-based conversation app” seeks to challenge Elon Musk’s Twitter in the next battle in the war between the Big Tech social media platforms.
The new app, Threads, debuted Wednesday appearing on Apple’s App Store. The app will link to Instagram, Meta’s photo-sharing app. “Whether you’re a creator or a casual poster, Threads offers a new, separate space for real-time updates and public conversations. We are working toward making Threads compatible with the open, interoperable social networks that we believe can shape the future of the internet,” reads the Meta announcement blog.
“First tech titan owners challenged each other to a real-life, MMA-style brawl,” said MRC Free Speech America Director Michael Morris, “but now it appears that battle has returned to the digital octagon. In one corner, we have the Twitter owner who purchased the platform and appears to be pushing Silicon Valley toward free speech in what he called the ‘digital town square.’ And in the other corner, we have the Meta owner who once promoted the notion of free speech at Georgetown University but continues to wield a massive censorship hammer to crush user speech online. Musk should continue leaning into free speech to provide an alternative to censorship, and since Zuckerberg seems so keen on copying Musk’s moves, he should make a move to his previous pro-free speech ways.”
Johnson acknowledged that Musk made missteps that opened up the opportunity for Threads, but she also made sure to attack the competition (and dishonestly framing Musk's refusal to stop hate and misinformation on Twitter as being "pro-free speech")
The new Meta app is looking to capitalize on rival Twitter’s conversation-based design and potentially win over new users, especially since some of Musk’s recent pro-free speech changes at Twitter have appeared to enrage some on the left. Recent quota limitations for nonsubscribers, a temporary block on unregistered users and an upcoming TweetDeck paywall have also seemingly opened the way for Thread’s launch.
But Threads’ reputation is already under fire as a data security hazard, as TechCrunch has labeled the new app a “privacy nightmare.”
When Musk decided to change the name of Twitter to X for no apparent reason other than he always wanted to run a company named X, Johnson expressed concern on a July 25 post:
Elon Musk purchased Twitter under the auspice of maintaining free speech in a global town square, but amid news of a company rebrand, could the platform’s other anti-free speech policies and questionable leadership appointments taint Musk’s initial vision?
“It’s an exceptionally rare thing – in life or in business – that you get a second chance to make another big impression,” Yaccarino tweeted. “Twitter made one massive impression and changed the way we communicate. Now, X will go further, transforming the global town square.”
Although Musk himself has called for a pause in artificial intelligence development, according to Yaccarino, the new Twitter brand will be powered by it.
Johnson then huffed about "recent anti-free speech policy developments under Musk" that purportedly "paint a bleaker picture of his commitment to his original pro-free speech vision":
For example, Musk pushed forward with the troubling Twitter Community Notes, which are a crowdsourced alternative to professional fact-checking. And while some on the right appear to like the results better, the warning labels are still a form of censorship, albeit by a different name.
In November of last year, Musk described the social media platform’s speech policy as “freedom of speech, not reach,” implying some would be censored for certain views vaguely described as “hate speech.”
“New Twitter policy is freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach,” he tweeted at the time. “Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted & demonetized, so no ads or other revenue to Twitter. You won’t find the tweet unless you specifically seek it out, which is no different from rest of Internet.”
It should be noted that Musk’s comments seem to mirror views expressed by [Twitter founder Jack] Dorsey.
We've noted how the MRC loved Community Notes when liberals were fact-checked under it, but decided it was "censorship" when conservatives were targeted.
Despite all the fretting, the MRC continued to default to Musk-fluffing. A July 20 post complained that one of the MRC's most hated reporters pointed out how Musk's Twitter is paying far-right influencers:
The Washington Post cry-bully Taylor Lorenz did not hold back her extreme leftist complaining about Twitter’s new influencer payment program paying conservatives as well as liberals, and Twitter users did not hold back their criticism of her.
In a hysterically biased article published July 13, Lorenz lamented that “the first beneficiaries” of Twitter’s payment program “appear to be high-profile far-right influencers.” Lorenz further claimed, without evidence, that Twitter was “bribing” users to stay on the platform. Lorenz’s hissy fit came as many prominent Twitter users began to publicize their earnings. Lorenz’s article attempted to mislead its readers by completely ignoring the leftist Twitter users who also received payments from the social media giant. It wasn’t long, however, before she got caught.
Prominent Twitter users, including leftist journalists Ed and Brian Krassenstein, took to Twitter to call out Lorenz’s complaints as detailed in The Post article. “This article was very bad reporting on behalf of the Washington Post and Taylor Lorenz, and that's coming from someone who normally likes the WaPo,” said Ed Krassenstein, known for his tirades against Republicans, on July 14. Brian Krassenstein echoed his brother’s remarks, saying, “You might be reading the Washington Post article by Taylor Lorenz and be thinking, ‘But Brian Krassenstein made $24k from Elon and he's not far right’. All I can say is... I work out”.
Twitter owner and CTO Elon Musk had a short but sweet reaction to Lorenz’s piece on Twitter. “Liar Lorenz,” he tweeted in reply to the article’s headline. Twitter user End Wokeness also responded to Lorenz’s tantrum, tweeting: “Looks like we triggered Taylor Lorenz.”
Schau failed to mention that one of the far-right influencers cited by Lorenz as a beneficiary of Musk's largesse is Andrew Tate, recently arrested on rape and human trafficking charges.
P.J. Gladnick parroted the MRC's dishonest framing of content moderation of falsehoods and misinformation as "censorship" in a July 21 post:
It's not hard to figure out what is keeping USA Today "domestic security correspondent: Josh Meyer awake at night. The gnawing fear that a lack of censorship could lead to disinformation being spread during the 2024 election. This is reflected in his sprawling 2,618-word USA Today article on Wednesday, "Amid Elon Musk's Twitter changes, why 2024 presidential election threats now pose bigger risk."
Their shortened version of the headline: "The 2024 election on Twitter: Are Elon Musk's changes posing a danger?"
What is the danger? "Misinformation," according to nebulous unnamed "lawmakers and regulators, former Twitter executives, national security officials and other analysts."
[...]
Of course, "misinformation" and "disinformation" often means just information that liberals and their media stenographers want to keep from the public. A two-sided exchange of information is "divisive."
The biggest throbbing example of this is the Hunter Biden laptop that was labeled as "disinformation" by 51 former intelligence officials which was used as justification to censor the New York Post story on this topic in the middle of the 2020 election. And yet despite this example of how censorship was used as a form of election interference, Meyer makes it clear that he wants to continue this odious process.
As we've pointed out, there was no reason to take the Hunter laptop story at face value given the partisan forces promoting it -- including the Rupert Murdoch-owned pro-Trump New York Post, which failed to offer any independent verification of the laptop that might have alleviated such concerns.
How Has WND's Brown Been Hating LGBT People Lately? Topic: WorldNetDaily
Michael Brown continued to cheer right-wing anti-LGBT hate and backlash against Pride Month activities in hia June 21 WorldNetDaily column:
In case you haven't noticed, this year's "Pride Month" is different than Pride Months in the past. As I recently noted, more and more Americans – from all walks of life – are saying, "Enough is enough." This is what many of us have predicted for years, recognizing that the very success of the gay revolution would lead to its undoing.
As I wrote in 2015 (which I called the year of "pushback"), "the gay revolution will continue to overplay its hand. As those who were once bullied now bully others, this will produce an increasing backlash. … And as gay activists win more and more battles in the courts and the society, that will actually work against them, as their goals will continue to become more and more extreme."
This has been self-evident for years. Or do you really think that a caring and sane society can tolerate more and more stories like this? "California woman, 18, sues doctors for removing her breasts when she was just THIRTEEN because she thought she was trans after seeing influencers online."
That's why today, in 2023, even editorials on totally secular websites can speak with sympathy of the growing "pushback against the perceived extreme expressions of gender fluidity."
And, of course, he denied that his anti-LGBT hate is hate:
Note that word "pushback," repeated time after time. The righteous opposition is rising.
And while there are surely some mean-spirited, even hateful people involved in this pushback (they should be called out and rebuked), those that I know and work with are motivated by love – love for God and love for neighbor. They are convinced that there must be an about face for the good of the society.
Brown went on to cite "relevant, recent news" of anti-LGBT hate, many of which came from right-wing webites (not that he bothered to identify them as such).And once again, he played his compassion schtick even as he insulted LGBT people:
I'm aware, of course, that the vast majority of LGBTQ+ identified readers will be either grieved or irate or shocked at the contents of this article. Even more will they be either grieved or irate or shocked by my attitude, as I'm quite pleased to see the shifts that I have highlighted here.
In their eyes (your eyes?), this is as hateful as it gets, an open and unashamed display of homophobia and transphobia, an unapologetic demonstration of the bigotry produced by fundamentalist religious beliefs.
Yes, I get it, and I understand your fear that I am celebrating the potential unraveling of what you have worked so hard to achieve over the last 50 years.
The problem, of course, is that LGBTQ+ activists declared war on religion 50 years ago.
The problem is that their coming out of the closet necessitated putting us in the closet.
The problem is that they targeted our children with ceaseless indoctrination, from pre-school to the university and from social media to TV and movies.
The problem is that the goalposts continued to move, and no recognition of "rights" was sufficient until the rights of those they opposed were removed.
The problem is that the trajectory of LGBTQ+ activism inevitably leads to queer critical theory which denies the existence of human nature.
The problem is that the fringe elements of the community became celebrities.
The problem is that we will not stand by idly when our own kids or grandkids have been chemically castrated or genitally mutilated.
No way, no how.
That's why I will continue to push back against what I truly believe is a destructive agenda for our society. At the same time, I will work against hatred and bigotry, seeking equal protection under the law for all and cultivating a climate of grace and mercy rather than anger and hatred.
Of course, Brown does not "get it" -- he's still pretending to "work against hatred and bigotry" even as he portrays LGBT people as deserving of hatred and bigotry because they are "destructive" and enthusiastically cheering every time that happens.
Brown spent his June 26 column being outraged that a German pastor argued that "God is queer":
Talk about a picture of an apostate church. Talk about a vivid illustration of blasphemy and spiritual blindness. Talk about shouting to the nation, "We are the blind leading the blind! Come follow us into the ditch!"
[...]
Talk about calling evil good and good evil. Talk about trying to take the speck out of your brother's eye while you have a plank in your own (see Matthew 7:1-5). Talk about deep self-deception.
And do these leaders really think that the main problem most people had with Caesar's message was his denouncing of racism? Hardly. It was the blasphemous pronouncement that provoked most of the ire.
[...]
No wonder hundreds of thousands of people are leaving these churches every year. No wonder hundreds of church doors are closing and countless church buildings are being sold.
He concluded by being mad that Christian churches aren't sufficiently hating LGBT people:
True Christians want to hear the Word of God. They want to worship Jesus. They want to encounter God.
Consequently, where the Word is being preached (as God's Word, not as some ancient religious document that is similar to other ancient religious texts), when Jesus is being exalted, when people are meeting with God, true Christians, along with non-believing seekers, will come.
In contrast, if they wanted more of this world's philosophy, they would simply stay home.
The truth be told, if this annual state church conference wanted to be accurate with its theme, with one voice they should have shouted out, "Now is the time to proclaim what has been obvious for decades. We are an apostate church!"
May God give courage to the believing remnant. May He pour out a massive spirit of repentance on this very influential (and very lost) country. May the true church of Germany, in all its varied forms and expressions, arise.
In his June 28 column, Brown obsessed over pride parades being overly sexual for his tastes (which is to day, having any sexual content at all):
In my 2011 book "A Queer Thing Happened to America," I devoted a whole chapter to the subject of "Diversity or Perversity," noting the degree to which an overt, often perverse sexual agenda was attached to gay pride events and gay activism. And it was defended under the rubric of "diversity."
Today, with more and more June "Pride" events being marked by open displays of nudity and sexual perversion, we must ask the question again: Why are these events marked by such displays? Could you imagine seeing such displays at any other ethnic or national pride event? Surely not.
To be sure, many who identify as LGBTQ object to these displays, claiming it is bringing out the worst, kinkiest elements of their communities.
But this, again, begs the question of why they are so prevalent at LGBTQ+ events. And why do so many parents bring their children to these events, not trying to hide these innocent eyes from beholding such trash? And why do plenty of LGBTQ+ voices actually defend such public displays, even in the sight of little children?
He followed that with a anti-LGBT column "originally written in 2013 but rejected for publication by the local press. I think you will find it quite relevant today, if not even chilling in its warnings."
Brown took another one of his occasional stabs at self-awareness of his anti-LGBT hate in his June 30 column:
When it comes to the contentious cultural issues of the day such as abortion and LGBTQ issues, I have no question at all that these are sinful in God's sight. At the same time, I recognize that I could be missing some of the reasons that professing Christians could defend such practices and lifestyles. Not all of them are raging sinners, full of blasphemy and guilt.
Some of them sincerely believe that they are standing for what is right and just, believing that they are acting in compassion and kindness out of love for God and people.
And so, rather than pass them like ships in the night, we should understand what makes them tick, searching our own hearts for blindness and ignorance as well.
Brown concluded: "We might have more blind spots than we care to admit." But he seems to make too much money and get too much attention by keeping the LGBT blind spot that fuels his hate to actually want to do anything about it.
MRC Mad That N. Korean Defector's Fabrications Are Being Called Out Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Clay Waters comoplained in a June 25 post:
It takes gall to go after a North Korean defector, and on the front page of the New York Times, no less. The paper’s staff writer Charles Homans’ odd choice of target appeared in the Friday edition under the rather tasteless headline, “Yeonmi Park, a North Korean Dissident, Defects to the American Right.”
Although the Times has in the past been notably soft on North Korea’s Communist dictatorship, one could hardly imagine the paper straining so hard to cast doubt on a defector who suffered greatly under the regime, just for the crime of supporting conservative policy and comparing the American left to the dictatorship she escaped.
Waters went on to whine that "The Times can’t forgive her for turning on the intolerant American left" and that "Homans ran into overtime nit-picking Park’s story.\," adding: "It seems only escapees from left-wing regimes have to endure this doubt about how bad things really were."
As we noted the last time the MRC hyped Park, questions about her story have been made for years -- something Park made easy to check by having a record of telling markedly different stories about her life on South Korean TV. But even as he listed some of those inconsistencies, Waters made no effort to rebut them -- he simply complains that they werepointed out, which gave him a chance to baselessly frame it as a political attack.
A few weeks later, the Washingon Post published an article pointing out even more inconsistencies in Park's stories, offering further evidence that she seems to be telling stories that cater to the preconceived notions of right-wing audiences. Interestingly, both Waters and the rest of the MRC were completely silent about it -- perhaps a concession that they know they can't defend her.
Joseph Farah started his July 5 WorldNetDaily column lamenting the current state of the news business:
What's become of the news business is a catastrophe. That includes newspapers and online sources of news.
At WND, back in the heyday of online news, we expected to be a giant piece of the coming media revolution. Well, we lasted a long time. We're in our 26th year of publication. Most of my life has been consumed by this occupation. I won't say that we've made a lot of money. But we're surviving – barely.
What happened? Why is there so little actual news left? Why has the news business become a news desert for most Americans?
The answer is simple: "Fake news" replaced real news. It's a real tragedy.
Farah then served up his own counterfactual defintion of "real news" -- right-wing websites -- and bashed non-right-wing media as being where "fake news" is found:
We often think of "fake news" as that presented on television. Ever since Fox News canceled Tucker Carlson, it effectively joined the "dark side." It joined "fake news." Now, only a few start-ups, such as OAN and Real America's Voice survive outside the establishment bubble. Thank God for them. But the real story of "fake news" is that it's everywhere, in every form of media. Real news, you have to "divine." It's harder to find than hen's teeth.
What's left of real news? When WND arrived on the scene 26 years ago, it stood alone. Since then a few others have materialized – Daily Caller, Breitbart, Gateway Pundit, Daily Wire, Just the News, Revolver and a few others. How many people get their news from these or a handful of others?
America is starved for real news – on television or anywhere. America has become a "news desert."
What about newspapers? They have been going out of business since before the internet came along.
So, who has joined the "fake news" cabal in the last quarter century? Everybody! The Associated Press? It's "fake news." Virtually every news source that's served by the Associated Press is in the tank for that "fake news." If Donald Trump coined the term, ask him who isn't "fake news."
Of course, Farah is the one who's spreading fake news. WND has been a veritablefountoffakenews for years. Meanwhile, Gateway Pundit is currently being sued by two Georgia election workers for falsely claiming they were committing election fraud. Then Farah himself spread fake news:
It's practically incomparable what happened to my industry. It's a disgrace. A few years ago, we were winning. And then what happened?
There was Drudge. I don't think he was in any way overrated. Matt Drudge was a real person. He doesn't work for the Drudge Report any more. I'm not even sure if he's still alive. But we needed the Drudge Report back in the day. That was the glue that held us together.
But something truly evil happened when Joe Biden was SELECTED. I don't mean elected. I know the difference. He was CHOSEN, not by the majority of Americans in 2020, but by a distinct minority. That's the day that America stopped being America, stopped being a shining city on a hill. Think of how the "fake news" insisted that everyone accepted Biden the pretender – or suffer the consequences.
To be valid, you had to drink the Kool-Aid. You had to accept that elections are never corrupt. Remember?
No legitimate evidence that Donald Trump won the 2020 election has been provided by Farah or anyone else. He followed that with more whining that Google stopped doing business with WND:
That's how Google took over. They became the arbiter of online news. Instantly, they became the enforcer on elections. We at WND got the following notice – unlike anyone had seen before:
"We do not allow content that: makes claims that are demonstrably false and could significantly undermine participation or trust in an electoral or democratic process."
Read each word in context.
Google dropped a huge nuclear bomb on WND by permanently demonetizing us. What possessed them to do it after so many years?
When Google demonetized WND, the world's second-wealthiest company finally told us what they believed in. They believed in (s)elections – like Joe Biden did. For that they throttled our traffic, advertising revenue and search accessibility. In other words, Google tried to drive us completely out of business.
In addition, Google scolded: "We do not allow content that: incites hatred against, promotes discrimination of, or disparages an individual or group on the basis of their race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, age, nationality, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or other characteristic that is associated with systemic discrimination or marginalization." They put it in WRITING!
And last but not least, there was one more thing Google was not allowing: "We do not allow content that: promotes harmful health claims, or relates to a current, major health crisis and contradicts authoritative scientific consensus."
Farah offered no eviddence to contradict Google's assessment of WND. As we've pointed out, Google has every right not to do business with a company whose content makes Google look bad. (Farah also failed to mention that Google called WND's content "unreliable" -- you know, fake news.)
Farah conclulded by whining: "When did the tough and crazy times in America begin? They followed Joe Biden's immaculate election – lest anyone dare not 'trust in an electoral or democratic process.'" Farah did not explain why he is so determined to spread fake news about the integrity of the electoral process.
MRC's DeSantis Defense Brigade Watch, Poem Ban Edition Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's DeSantis Defense Brigade got to help out promote the MRC's enthusiasm for library book bans and restrictions. Curtis Houck complained in a May 24 post:
Tuesday’s CBS Mornings did its part to join into the liberal media’s latest piece of fake news about Florida meant to impale conservative policies and Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL) by insisting a poem from far-left poet laureate Amanda Gorman was “bann[ed]” from a Florida school.
With a chyron reading “Florida Book Banning Controversy” (and one in a tease having read “Amanda Gorman’s Poem Banned”), featured co-host Vladimir Duthiers began:
Let’s begin with the ongoing controversy over book banning in schools, this time involving Amanda Gorman, the first national youth poet laureate. A grade school in South Florida restricted access to Gorman’s acclaimed poem, The Hill We Climb after one parent filed a complaint.
Adding the poem was written for “President Biden’s inauguration in 2021,” he then queued up an excerpt from Gorman talking about the need to “repair” America from its “past” and “victory” will be based in a “promise.”
[...]
Only after he added that Gorman said “she was ‘gutted’” by the supposed ban did CBS have Duthier reveal how a ban couldn’t be any further from the truth: “The school district says, no literature has been banned or removed, but it determined that The Hill We Climb is better suited for middle school students and was shelved in the middle school section of the media center.”
Houck also complained that Duthiers repeated "spin from the far-left, pro-LGBTQ group the Florida Freedom to Read Project that framed the parent who raised concerns as a kook," but he failed to refute the group's claims that the parent ludicrously attacked the poem as being filed with "hate message" and falsely claimed it was written by Oprah Winfrey. It has since been revealed that the parent never bothered to read the full poem, she's so far-right that she has attended Proud Boys rallies and promoted the virulently anti-Semitic "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" online.
Despite all that, the MRC continued to defend restrictions on the poem, now claiming it was done for "vocabulary" reasons, even though that was not in the parent's complaint. It was Alex Christy's turn to grouse in a May 27 post:
The latest bit of fake news to come out of Florida was that teenager Amanda Gorman’s 2020 Inauguration poem was banned from a school library when the reality was it was moved to the middle school section for “vocabulary” reasons. Not that MSNBC Deadline: White House host Nicolle Wallace cared. She teamed up with twice failed Georgia Democratic gubernatorial nominee and election denier Stacey Abrams and PoliticsNation host Al Sharpton on Friday to decry the fact that Republicans have not denounced a story that doesn’t exist.
During their conversation, Wallace mourned to Abrams, “But to take a poet and a poem that should be held up across partisan lines and demonize the piece itself and the creator of it, I mean understand from reporting this week it was one parent that complained, but I have not seen one Republican defend Amanda Gorman or her poem.”
[...]
It is true there was a single parent that wanted the poem removed completely, but clearly that request went nowhere so talk of “tyrants” is hyperbolic. Nevertheless, Sharpton responded, “what happens is that we lose a sense of what we are really living through and evolving from and going through. You cannot deal with fruits without dealing with the roots that it came from.”
If Wallace wants to have a conversation on the vocabulary levels of elementary versus middle school students, she can, but that would be rather boring and wouldn’t allow her to demand Republicans denounce Republican-passed legislation.
Christy failed to mention the parent's record of hate and extremism or that vocabulary was not part of her complaint.
Christy returned for a June 1 post whining that DeSantis was busted for making a dubious claim about book bans in his state, laboring hard to reframe what he said to justify attacking the fact-checker:
After launching his presidential campaign on Twitter Spaces, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was condemned by PolitiFact for his assertion that Florida has not banned any books. That summary did not give DeSantis a rating for his claims, but on Wednesday PolitiFact returned to the claim and rated it “false.” Yet, the article itself suggests that a “false” rating is overzealous and is ultimately based on a straw man.
The exact quotation authors Matthew Crowley and Amy Sherman single out is "There's not been a single book banned in the state of Florida. You can go buy or you can use whatever book you want."
DeSantis was clearly talking about literal book bans, not whether this book or that book is available in a school library.
Crowley and Sherman then go onto provide more DeSantis quotes about age appropriate books in schools, “Parents have flagged books in schools that, for example, teach middle school kids how to use sex apps that provide graphic depictions of sex acts and sex toys for people as young as fifth grade.”
For the authors this means “DeSantis’ claim that no book has been banned in Florida goes too far. Florida districts have removed some books entirely while restricting others to certain grades or requiring students to get parental permission to see them.”
This isn’t a fact-check of the claim PolitiFact purports to be checking. DeSantis claimed that you can go out and buy any book your heart desires, which is true. Crowley and Sherman are checking a straw man.
[...]
Again, DeSantis was speaking very narrowly about a literal book ban, not just in the context of schools. Nevertheless, the authors then go on to cite the American Library Association’s definition that a ban is “the removal of a book based on a person of group’s objection” as authoritative and that “experts we spoke to” agree.
Houck returned to complain that Gorman was continued to allow to discuss how her poem was treated in Florida in a June 8 post:
Based on how the second hour of Wednesday’s CBS Mornings went, they showed they’re not interested in earning the trust of conservatives as they dedicate segments to far-left authors Amanda Gorman and Ibram X. Kendi to cry homophobia, transphobia, and racism over parents in Florida and other conservative locales wanting a role in the books and curriculum in the education system.
Co-host and Democratic donor Gayle King was ebullient with this hour of wokeness, gushing first over Gorman in a tease that she’d be speaking out after “her inaugural poem was restricted by a Florida school following a parent’s complaint,” another chapter in the “growing trend...of limiting access to books that deal with racism and other issues.”
In a second tease, King lamented Gorman’s work being “restricted,” adding the show would ask her “about the rise of book banning”. Gorman led off the second hour with King engaging in more disinformation, again referring to the rise in “banning books.”
Gorman’s case wasn’t any sort of ban, so all uses of “ban” in the segment were comical in nature given the book was assessed to be better tagged for middle schoolers and could be requested by students in the library’s media center.
Note Houck's wildly euphemistic framing of the treatment of Gorman's poem as having merely been "assessed to be better tagged." Houck also failed to mention the extremism of the parent who wanted the poem banned or that she never even read the poem, and he also failed to explain how, exactly, Gorman is "far-left."
Newsmax's Reagan Demands that Republican AGs Play Political Culture-War Games Topic: Newsmax
Attention red state voters!
If your attorney general ever says that he doesn’t think social issues or culture war fights are part of his job, find a new attorney general.
Your current officeholder needs to be fired.
Republican officeholders who are pacifists in the culture war are responsible for the dumpster fire that constitutes our current cultural scene.
Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., we’re looking at you.
The culture or political environment of the state and nation is what determines the parameters for corporate and personal behavior that is considered acceptable.
Our current parameters being: We live in Sodom with electricity.
The Washington Times brings us a story that demonstrates why the left is winning and we are losing:
"A coalition of 15 Democrat attorneys general told Target CEO Brian Cornell that pulling Pride products over safety concerns represents a setback for the 'march for social progress' and encouraged him to reach out to their offices for help with any anti-LGBTQ threats or harassment."
The letter came with signatures from attorneys general in Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington.
[...]
The letter isn’t a heartfelt gesture of support for a beleaguered corporation.
It’s an implied threat from the Rainbow Reich, which will be keeping an eye on Target in the future.
The next time a controversy erupts, is Target going to pay attention to its backward customers or to the legal authorities?
And this heavy-handed response is on behalf of a consonant group that we are constantly told is "marginalized."
Our question is: Why aren’t red state attorneys general doing the same?
[...]
Our nation is in a cultural fight to the finish.
Opting out is opting for total defeat.
Two can play at this game and the side defending decency and children has the advantage in the court of public opinion.
Defending the innocent deserves a full court press.
If your red state’s attorney general isn’t leading or part of this effort, you need apply pressure to him or her today or start working to find a new state attorney general.
WND's Lively Defends Being A Homophobe (While Claiming To Hate The Word) Topic: WorldNetDaily
Scott Lively's final entry in his series of anti-LGBTQ hate during Pride Month was a June 29 column headlined "How I bcame a 'homophobe.'" He started the column by rejecting the word "homophobe," denying at length that he's secretly gay, insisting that being gay is a psychological disorder and defending conversion therapy:
At the outset, let me apologize for the use of the slur "homophobe," which I contend is the rhetorical equivalent of "fag," and "bull dyke," and should as a matter of basic civility be excluded from public discourse. I use all three slurs today for illustration only.
As a second preliminary, let me admit that it is probably true in some few cases that people who strongly oppose the LGBT agenda do secretly struggle with same-sex attraction. I don't see anything wrong with that motive, and if it helps them resist those destructive urges, more power to them. That is not the case with me, although I'm often accused of it, my favorite example being one lady who insisted she could tell I was a homosexual because I have "kind-hearted eyes," bless her heart. I've always replied that I really don't care if my enemies think I am secretly "gay" – while also challenging them to be intellectually honest and admit that if I were "gay," that presumption should strengthen my case, not weaken it, in the same way that being a former drug addict and alcoholic (which I am) strengthens my arguments against substance abuse. But logic was never the strong suit of these types.
To be clear, by the mercy of God I have never experienced same-sex attraction, romantic or sexual. But as a former alcoholic and drug addict, I have always sympathized greatly with those who struggle with that sin/behavioral disorder, which is not "gay," but "SSAD." Indeed, in my observation, Same-Sex Attraction Disorder" is the toughest of all behavioral dysfunctions to cope with, for two reasons.
First, unlike most other addictions, the conduct one gets addicted to is not triggered by some external stimuli like pouring alcohol down your throat or pulling the arm of a slot machine, but the unavoidable prompting of one's internal sexual wiring. While it is technically true that all addiction is really about brain chemicals (what you actually get addicted to is stuff like endorphins), the external triggers also play an essential role. With sex addictions, you can't, like with whiskey, escape the temptations by simple abstinence and avoidance – you have to actively re-wire your sexual circuitry to re-orient your sexuality to match your physiology (which is hard, but not impossible) and to extinguish the harmful habits. That "re-wiring" can happen spontaneously through genuine lifestyle changes (most effective in the Christian spiritual context) or through "reparative therapy" such as one-on-one counseling and ex-gay groups equivalent to Alcoholics Anonymous. I know many ex-"gays" for whom these methods have been life-changing, and it is outrageous that the Marxists are trying to criminalize "gay" recovery all over the world. (To help counter that malign effort, support the life-affirming work of the Alliance for Therapeutic Choice and Scientific Integrity).
Second, unique in all behavioral science is the vehement, often violent resistance of SSAD sufferers to the assertion that recovery is possible and real hatred for those who pursue it. While there are some pale similarities to the phenomenon of active drunks mocking people who "go on the water wagon," and others who try to entice their recovering drinking buddies to come back to the bar, nothing in the world of recovery truly compares to the militarized anti-recovery industry of the LGBT movement, complete with relentless propaganda comparable to that of a nation at war and the persecution of dissenters at levels not seen since the Soviet Union. That is, of course, because they ARE, metaphorically, a "nation" at war – in reality just a vast army of useful idiots waging "sexual revolution" against Judeo-Christian civilization in service to Cultural Marxist elites (many of whom are afflicted with the same disorders). To encourage recovery is, literally, to undermine their military power.
Lively finally got back to the reason he hates LGBT people: he had relatives who were gay, and he claimed a friend took in an allegedly gay teen who molested their child. He particularly focused on his sister, who "had developed bipolar disorder, which I had come to recognize as extremely common among homosexuals," then made her story all about him:
Of all the evil they did to hurt me, the worst was the "murder" of my sister. She had fallen back into a platonic (emotionally) lesbian-lite lifestyle with a former partner dying of cancer who needed a companion. When the global news media falsely and maliciously accused me of masterminding the "Kill the Gays" bill in Uganda, Shelly had a mental health breakdown I assumed was related to that. When in a manic state she got violent at the VA hospital and was put in four-point restraints without water so long that she got blood clots in her lungs. There was a brief mad scramble supposedly to save her, in the midst of which she died of a heart attack. My Mom won a wrongful death lawsuit against the VA over that.
I believe but can't prove that Shelly was mistreated – even murdered – because leftist LGBTs or their allies hate me – many of whom reading this testimony even now will rejoice that I suffered this terrible loss.
As we documented at the time, Lively traveled to Uganda to help promote the passage of anti-gay laws there though he has claimed he didn't support death-penalty provisions.
Lively concluded by laughably framing his hate as love and likening himself to Jesus:
Yet, despite that belief, I don't hate the LGBTs like they hate me. I became a "homophobe" (long before Shelly's demise) to try to save them from the consequences of their sin and to save my country (and the world) from their mission to supplant Christianity with Marxism. (As Jesus said on the cross, "Forgive them Father, they know not what they do.")
Despite everything they've done to me, I truly love them with the love of Christ as much as they hate me for being like Him. If that's "homophobia" then, yes, I AM a "homophobe."
Lively offered no evidence that Jesus would support LGBT people in prison simply for being LGBT, like he helped Uganda to do.
NEW ARTICLE -- The MRC's Dirty War Against George Soros: 2023 Edition Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center spent a lot of time complaining that Soros spends money supporting the causes he likes -- you know, just like every other billionaire does (like the ones who prop up the MRC). Read more >>
MRC's DeSantis Defense Brigade Stayed Salty About Botched Launch Topic: Media Research Center
Having labored to defend Ron DeSantis from his botchedcampaign launch and an NAACP travel advisory for Florida (and even his alleged comedy chops), the Media Research Center's DeSantis Defense Brigade was kept plenty busy. The Brigade was kept busy throughout late May and early June:
Days after that botched launch, it was still salty about it. Clay Waters complained in a May 30 post:
As the only network morning show Tuesday to cover the 2024 campaign, ABC’s Good Morning America again did the bidding of parent company Disney by bashing Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL). Unsurprisingly, they continuing to fixate five days later on the bandwidth issues with his 2024 presidential campaign launch on Twitter, whined his interviews have been with conservative talk radio hots, and painted him as one of many top-line candidates.
[...]
Chief Washington correspondent and lucrative Trump author Jonathan Karl noted Tuesday marks the start of a four-day tour for DeSantis through the first three voting states (Iowa, New Hampshire, then South Carolina) before throwing jabs.
“The announcement was plagued with technical difficulties, but DeSantis — the DeSantis team claims that they raised more than $8 million just on the first day,” Karl whined, seeming to be one of the few still obsessed with the less-than-ideal launch and questioning the veracity of Team DeSantis’s fundraising claims.
Karl again poo-pooed DeSantis for not having “actually interacted with voters since he announced he was running for president last week” and, when it comes to interviews, he bemoaned the Florida governor did “a flurry of” them, but mostly “with conservative talk shows.”
One word for Karl and the liberal forlorn DeSantis won’t appear on their airwaves for what would be a trap: Cope.
Waters offered no evidence that ABC "did the bidding" of Disney by reporting on DeSantis. He came more aggressively to DeSantis' defense in a post the next day:
PBS reporter Lisa Desjardins gave Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis a chilly welcome to the 2024 presidential race on Wednesday, before his Twitter-hosted interview with Twitter owner Elon Musk.
Desjardins included positive details about the new candidate, standard practice when introducing new candidates. But she poisoned the paragraph with the unsubstantiated allegation that DeSantis oversaw “beatings and forced feedings of prisoners” while stationed at Guantanamo Bay, complete with a still of an article making the allegation:
[...]
Desjardins tapped into the lazy media smear of DeSantis sacrificing Floridians with irresponsible Covid policy in the name of business:
[...]
The voiceover was accompanied by two shots: a grim hospital scene cutting to two women dining alfresco, a huge margarita on the table between them -- as if people were dying in Florida just so people could go out and drink?
And “wave of deaths” compared to what? Florida did permit its residents to get back to their livelihoods quickly, yet three years later the state’s pandemic toll trails that of long-shuttered New York, even though then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo was praised for his authoritarian handling of Covid. Florida’s numbers look especially good when one considers the state’s disproportionately aged population.
In fact, Florida's COVID death rate is higher than that of New York and the 18th highest in the country.
Newsmax Continued To Crank Out Attack-And-Defend Articles After Trump's (Third) Indictment Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax covered the third indictment of Donald Trump with its usual barrage of defending Trump and attacking prosecutors. In the third day of coverage on Aug. 3, the pattern continued:
MRC Plays Whataboutism (Again) On Hunter Biden Coverage Topic: Media Research Center
One of the Media Research Center's biggestcomplaints amid news of Hunter Biden's plea deal was that Republicans were continually called out over their obsession with Hunter. Bill D'Agostino tried to put a whataboutism spin on that in a June 22 post:
After CNN earlier this week attempted to accuse one of its competitors of being “obsessed” with Hunter Biden, we thought we’d take a look at CNN’s own past fixation on the son of a President: Donald Trump Jr.
It’s not exactly news that the liberal cable network devoted far more air time to Trump Jr. than they have to Hunter Biden, but the numbers don’t tell the whole story.
During the Mueller investigation, Donald Trump Jr. was a hot topic on CNN: be it his phone calls, his emails, or his twitter exchanges, all of his communications were treated as self-evidently suspicious by the network’s curious hosts. By contrast, they were positively bored by anything relating to Hunter Biden.
D'Agostino failed to mention that, unlike Hunter, Don Jr. made himself a public figure by working alongside his father in the family business and vociferously defending him during his presidency and since. He continued:
In July of 2017, CNN ran numerous lengthy reports about Trump Jr.’s “bombshell emails” from June of the previous year. A few months later, when those emails had proven fruitless, CNN instead shifted to caring about his Twitter messages. In November of 2017, New Day host Chris Cuomo excitedly announced: “Trump Jr. released the Twitter messages. The timing of the exchanges is raising a lot of eyebrows!”
When those too turned up nothing of note, 2018 saw the “bombshell report about the original emails” back in the spotlight. Another dud.
Fast forward to 2019, and the network had begun hoping that perhaps Trump Jr.’s phone records might provide some proof of his father’s non-existent collusion efforts. On January 31 of that year, Congressional correspondent Manu Raju briefed viewers of The Lead about a handful of phone calls the then-President’s son had made to unlisted numbers. Yet again a thread was pulled, and again nothing unraveled.
Eventually Bob Mueller concluded his investigation, having uncovered no proof that President Trump had conspired with Russians to steal an election. Years of investigative fervor, all for naught.
D'Agostino was curiously vague about those emails were about, aside from claiming it involved "non-existent collusion efforts." In fact, those email exhanges involved Don Jr.'s 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer who promised dirt on Hillary Clinton (who ultimately failed to deliver), so it's a bit strange to claim that evidence of possible collusion was "non-existent." He continued:
But when Hunter Biden began appearing in headlines about his potential role in a family corruption scandal, eyes quickly glazed over at CNN. Most of the network’s reporting on the current President’s son has come laced with lazy dismissals and assertions that “there is no evidence” that either Biden “did anything wrong.”
If we’re going to nitpick, claims of “no evidence” are most certainly false. There is plenty of evidence of potential wrongdoing — for example, Hunter’s own admission that he would not have landed landed his $50,000 per month gig on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma if not for his last name. That is, by definition, circumstantial evidence.
What the allegations against the President and his son lack are definitive proof.
Note that he undercuts himself by referencing "pottential wrongdoing" and not actual wrongdoing. But if all that alleged evidence doesn't result in actionable proof, don't look for D'Agostino to apply the same standard here by calling the obsession with Hunter by his employer and other Republicans a "hoax" and insisting the invesgation was filled with "years of investigative fervor, all for naught."
How Did WND's Lively Hate LGBT People During Pride Month? Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily columnist Scott Lively's Pride Month of anti-LGBT hate actually began a couple days earlier, with a May 29 column describing how, after a move to Springfield, Mass., to start a ministry, he "discovered an official 'Gay Pride' banner hanging from the lamppost in the same place and manner as the annual Christmas banners." He cheerfully added:
At 4:30 p.m. that very day a massive tornado touched down in Westfield (where Anne and I had lived the first couple of months after our arrival) and carved a 39 mile path of destruction through West Springfield, South Springfield and several towns eastward. It barely missed the Old First Church, but ripped through the rest of Court Square right where the offending banner had hung. The way I see it, God tore down that particular flag Himself.
He failed to mention that the tornado killed three people, so it seems Lively is happy that innocent people died just so that a rainbow banner could be removed from his vision -- they were just collateral damage to advance his hateful ideology, apparently.
In a related cheering of destruction, he referenced the tornado again in his May 31 column, then noted that he as he drove past a strip club called Scores, he repeated an "imprecatory prayer" against the club "and then asked God why He had never answered any of my imprecatory prayers against this and other targets." He added: "I received no immediate answer, but less than 24 hours later Scores was completely destroyed in a natural gas explosion – and I mean completely destroyed, as in Christ's prophecy about the Temple in Matthew 24:2, 'not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.'" He didn't mention that 18 people were injured in the blast; he probably thinks they deserved to be wounded and maimed.
Lively's first column of hate in Pride Month proper was on June 5, in which he tried to liken being transgender to transhumanism:
I have been alone in linking transhumanism directly to the LGBT movement, contending that the LGBT agenda represents not just a coalition of sexual dysfunctions but a chronology of stages in the deconstruction of God's created order (from the tips of the branches toward its roots), and that "transhumanism" represents a hidden "T" contained within "transgenderism" in the LGBT acronym.
Transgenderism is the penultimate stage of deconstruction of the civilization God made for us – erasing the human recognition that we are created male and female in His image (Genesis 1:27).
Transhumanism is the final stage – eliminating through genetic modification God's wall of separation between humans and animals as distinct "kinds" (Genesis 1:11-25). Transhumanists perceive themselves as wiping the earth clean of God's "mistakes," restoring the blank canvas of Genesis 1:6-10 and creating their own perfected utopia in which they are immortal.
This is not hyperbole but an actual plan currently being pursued by the World Economic Forum's Yuval Noah Harari (whom I have labeled the best candidate for the end-times False Prophet I've seen in my lifetime). Significantly, Harari is an admitted homosexual in a counterfeit "marriage" to another man.
Lively then tried to maliciously suggest that transgender people are pedophiles:
Sadly, with transgenderism also comes pedophilia, because the tactical framework for normalizing transgenderism is making gender self-determination for children a legally enforceable civil right. Assumed as fact in all their rhetoric and public policy arguments is a child's inalienable right to self-assess his or her "true" gender identity and to force society, especially parents, to honor it. But "children's rights" has always been the back door to the normalization of adult/child sex, "The repeal of all laws governing age of consent" being one of the last unachieved agenda items of the 1972 Gay Rights Platform (Section 2, Item 7). And in terms of defeating public opposition, it's a relatively small step from the right of a child to choose sexual mutilation to the right to choose their sexual partners of any age or type.
But, importantly, pedophilia is not the worst aspect of transgender normalization: the worst is the transhumanist worldview in which children who become cognitively divorced from the reality of the natural order regarding sexuality and physiology willingly become guinea-pigs in the Yuval Harari's nightmare of human cyborg experimentation because they no longer have any sense of authentic humanness.
Lively's June 9 column began with some self-aggrandizement of his anti-LGBT hate:
I am one of the last remaining front-line leaders of the pro-family movement that started during the Reagan Revolution in the 1980s and largely ended with the Obergefell v. Hodges "gay marriage" betrayal by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2015. For the next few years I thought the culture war was pretty much over and we'd lost everything, but then as the left repositioned its armies to begin normalizing transgender insanity, a new generation of conservatives arose and formed today's anti-groomer movement. Seeing a new glimmer of hope, I'd like to help them succeed where my generation failed, by offering some hard-won insights from a life on the battlefield.
He then smeared people who don't hate LGBT people as much as he does as "groomers":
This article addresses the second force and is inspired by this week's news of a revolt by Muslim and Christian parents against the forced LGBT indoctrination of their children by Montgomery County Maryland Public Schools. The spark that ignited that particular conflict is a new school policy that eliminates the long-standing right of parents to opt their children out of exposure to LGBT "grooming" resources that normalize homosexuality and transgenderism.
[...]
At the command level it is essential to identify and expose the Sheiks – the George Soros, shot-caller types (big and small) – which is sometimes harder said than done because they don't want public scrutiny. Infiltration of the opponents' organizations, James O'Keefe-style, may be the only way to find the big fish. I'm not a fan of so-called "gay conservatives" on the grounds that anyone who defends sexual-orientation theory as valid science and defines homosexual conduct as equivalent to heterosexual normalcy is part of the problem, not the solution (regardless of their position on other public policy issues). BUT for true conservatives who admit their same-sex inclinations are dysfunctional even if they can't yet overcome them, there is cultural redemption in secret-agent espionage against Marxist evil, using their past lives to establish credibility.
In the end, whether we're called pro-family or anti-groomer, our agenda is all about saving the children from homo-fascist tyranny, and we all should do whatever we can to serve that cause.
Lively spent his June 12 column being angry that the government won't hate LGBT people like he does:
In the same week Trump was indicted on blatantly bogus and political charges, bombshell new evidence of Joe Biden's glaring, pervasive and long-standing criminality earned not even the suggestion of an investigation. Instead of the FBI and CIA enforcing the law against their co-conspirator boss, both agencies changed the subject by highlighting their celebrations of "Pride Month."
[...]
We have Bill Clinton to thank for creating this particularly foul cesspool of the federal swamp. It was Clinton's Executive Order 12968 on Aug. 2, 1995, that ended the long-standing ban on top-secret security clearance for homosexuals – opening the floodgates for the LGBT takeover of U.S. Intelligence that then ensued.
Why had that ban been U.S. policy in the first place? The common wisdom holds it was based exclusively on the fact that homosexuals were especially at risk of blackmail in an era when that lifestyle was (rightfully) discouraged by society. But the greater, less recognized reason was the affinity homosexuals have always had for political intrigue and espionage. That affinity alone wouldn't be so bad from the perspective of national intelligence agencies, but the corollary tendency of homosexuals to put self-interest and loyalty to each other above national interests made them an unacceptably bad risk.
Lively offered no evidence to support that claim.
We've already noted Lively's bizarre claim in his June 15 column that misogynistic "incels" are going transgender. In his June 19 column, he purported to offer "the authentic Jewish view of homosexuality" despite the fact that despite a Jewish and Catholic heritage, "I am neither Jewish nor Catholic" and "I do not claim a right to speak for the Jews of today." Yet he did so anyway, referencing his discredited book "The Pink Swastika," which purported to claim that "the Nazi Party is best understood as a neo-pagan, homosexual cult." He then huffed:
It is estimated that only about 10 to 20% of American Jews are conservative, so it is understandable that by the sheer force of numbers American Judaism is assumed to be fully supportive of so-called "gay pride" and the widespread normalization of LGBT deviance. One might be excused for thinking the same about Christianity if it were measured only by the so-called "mainstream" denominations. But as affirmed by the eminent rabbis cited above, the authenticity and therefore weight of one's religious opinions is based solely on their alignment with the sacred writings on which the religion is based.
Thus, the authentic Jewish (and Christian) view of homosexuality is that it is an abomination unequivocally condemned by God – and it matters not how many confused and arrogant people of either faith tradition, no matter how "credentialed" they may be, disagree with HIM.
Lively's June 23 column indulged his gay-Nazi fixation again, focusing on a claim that one of the neo-Nazis who infamously led a parade in Skokie, Ill., who was later convicted of pedophilia. He then outed himself as a partial Holocaust denier:
To be clear, I am a staunch defender of the truth of the Jewish Holocaust – which was the deadly fruit in Nazi Germany of the exact same eugenics movement that spawned the abortion industry in the U.S. (and today pushes “transhumanism” worldwide). But I am a vehement opponent of the Gay Holocaust Hoax, which is a gross exaggeration of the deplorable but relatively minor mistreatment of a small minority of German “gays.” Kevin Abrams and I wrote "The Pink Swastika" to debunk that fraud, but we couldn’t stop the more devious “gay” exploitation of the Jewish Holocaust through control of the museums.
Even today, the landing page of the US Holocaust Museum in D.C. (whose hugely influential first director was openly "gay" Klaus Mueller) features the Gay Holocaust lie.
Lively spent his June 26 column explaining that he hates gay marriage so much, he refuses to read the Supreme Court decision that made it legal:
I'm writing this letter in the early hours of June 26, the anniversary of the murder of marriage in America in the Kennedy majority's 5-4 SCOTUS ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) inventing a constitutional right to "gay marriage" by judicial fiat. You've heard of "fiat money" created from nothing? Well, the Obergefell ruling was "fiat morality."
In protest, I have never read the Obergefell decision because I hold it to be illegitimate on its face – not only because it's blatantly unconstitutional, but because two members of the Kennedy majority, Ginsberg and Kagan, grossly violated their ethical duty of impartiality in having performed same-sex "weddings" during the pendency of the case. Before that ruling was issued, I led a protest in front of the Supreme Court with a sign reading "Ginsberg and Kagan Don't Get to Choose – Biased Judges Must Recuse" (see below.) Their betrayal of judicial ethics was the most egregious in the court's history.
Obergefell v. Hodges is the coffin within which the institution of true, natural marriage has lain dead and decomposing since that day, draped, oh so appropriately, under a purple funeral shawl.
He then had another Tinky Winky meltdown:
Years ago the late Jerry Falwell was mercilessly mocked for asserting the true fact that a pop-culture toy called Tinky Winky (a character in the children's "Teletubbies" TV show) was designed to groom kids as LGBT allies/experimenters. Tinky Winky (a boy) was colored purple, sported the "gay" movement's inverted purple triangle on his head, and often carried a red purse. Unknown to most normal people, per Wikipedia: "Twink is gay slang for a gay man who is usually (but not always) in his late teens to 20s whose traits may include a slim to average physique, a youthful appearance that may belie an older age, having little or no body hair, flamboyancy and general physical attractiveness."
In other words, a "Twink" is an effeminate teen boy, just like its cartoonish derivative "Tinky Winky" (and the children who identified with him) were intended to become when they grew up. And isn't that exactly what happened to a large number of so-called "soy boys" of that generation? How many of those young men who grew up watching the child drag queen Tinky Winky cavort on television are the same ones now "transitioning" into fake women? Falwell was absolutely right that purple Tinky Winky was a tool of leftist social engineering, i.e, "grooming."
MRC's Hunter Biden Plea Deal Derangement, Day 3 And Beyond Topic: Media Research Center
As with the first two days, the Media Research Center spent a good part of its third day covering the Hunter Biden plea deal, June 23, complaining that the Republican obsession with Hunter was commented upon. It was Ana Schau's turn to complain first:
Wednesday morning’s CNN News Central featured a slew of guests to complain about the Republican response to the specifics of the Hunter Biden plea deal, and to present their own opinions on the deal as well. Anchors Kate Bolduan and Sara Sidner brought on CNN senior legal affairs correspondent Paula Reid, “It’s Complicated” podcast host Renato Mariotti, former federal prosecutor Shan Wu, and former U.S. attorney Michael Moore to rail about how “absolutely not true” Republicans were because they “paint the whole thing as a sham.”
Paula Reid’s complaint was that Republicans had “put a lot of energy and time into” discussing Hunter Biden’s legal issues, and that this was superfluous because the “Trump-appointed U.S. attorney” had “narrowed this case down” to several relatively insignificant charges. She emphasized how the plea deal for the tax misdemeanor charges was absolutely normal, but the gun charge itself was abnormal. She attributed this abnormality to how it was “uncommon to be prosecuted at a federal level for failing to disclose addiction on the form when you purchase a firearm.”
Yes, it may be abnormal to pursue such charges, but it’s also rather abnormal to have a case in which there is proof in the accused’s own words, both in an autobiographical book and on social media, that he was addicted to narcotics during the exact period of time in which he had purchased the gun. Reid may want to consider that.
NIcholas Fondacaro followed with the same complaint:
The morning after the broadcast networks seemingly moved on from Hunter Biden’s cushy plea deal with his father’s Department of Justice, NBC’s Today show revisited the story Thursday morning to decry Republicans’ attempts to hold Democrats accountable. They also huffed at Republicans for censuring Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff (CA) for using his former position on the House Intelligence Committee to push the Russia Collusion Hoax, a censure ABC and CBS ignored.
Leading into the report, Capitol Hill correspondent Ryan Nobles lamented that “Republican lawmakers are convinced there's still more dirt to dig up on the president's son” and that they were trying to ensure Hunter’s “legal woes” were “becoming a pestering political problem for his father.”
Intentionally ignoring the audio evidence and whistleblower reports showing that President Biden indeed talked with his son about his oversea business dealing, Nobles rhetorically scoffed at the GOP’s focus on the possible misdeeds of the Biden family:
The MRC got bored with the story after that. A May 24 item by Clay Waters, however, made sure to rehash all the talking points:
Hunter Biden, the controversial son of President Biden, announced he would pled guilty to two federal charges of tax fraud and a felony charge of gun possession last Tuesday, and that evening’s taxpayer-funded PBS News Hour proved itself eager to move along, dismissing Republican accusations of a cushy plea deal from his father’s Department of Justice, appealing to emotion by painting the President as a distraught father who deserves sympathy, not suspicion of possibly benefiting from his son’s sordid business undertakings in China and Ukraine, even suggesting Hunter's plea deal was "somewhat harsher" than usual.
Host Geoff Bennett claimed that “the deal promises a potential end to Hunter Biden's ongoing legal saga. But the political drama is far from over."
Host Bennett ran a soundbite of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy complaining of “the two-tier system in America. If you are the president's leading political opponent, the DOJ tries to literally put you in jail and give you prison time. If you are the president's son, you get a sweetheart deal.”
Johnson tried to deny favoritism was shown to the president’s son, even suggesting Hunter was treated more harshly that he should have been.
Yep, even the complaints about the GOP's obsession with Hunter were repeated.
Newsmax's Morris Weighs In On Non-Trump Issues Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax's Dick Morris is a massive Trumpsycophant, but he will chime in on other political issues from time to time. In his June 15 column, he took the surprisingly sensible stance that Republicans shouldn't be trying to cut Social Security and Medicare because it will cost them votes:
The House Republican Study Committee (RSC) is hard at work figuring out how Republicans can lose the next election.
They are planning amendments to the government spending bills this year to privatize Medicare and to means test access to benefits now given as a matter of right.
They also call for as yet unspecified cuts in Social Security.
The Washington Times reports that the Study group proposes to means test Medicare.
[...]
But regardless of the merits of the issue, one thing is clear: cutting Medicare or Social Security is the one sure way for the Republicans to lose the election of 2024.
Even the report that the RSC is studying the idea is sure to make itself felt in Democratic negative ads during this entire cycle.
Winning elections is hard enough without handing the Democrats gratuitously a golden issue.
RSC, please cease and desist - now.
For his July 3 column, though, Morris was regurgitating right-wing talking points about purpored "censorship" of right-wing hate and misinformation:
In 2018, the Trump administration created CISA — the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency — to focus on protecting critical infrastructure and guarding against cybersecurity threats, largely from abroad.
But, under Biden, CISA has morphed into a different story, an ominousy dark tale of an agency that a House Committee calls "the nerve center of the federal government’s domestic surveillance and censorship operations on social media."
The House Weaponization subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, charges that CISA "facilitated the censorship of Americans directly and through third-party intermediaries during the Biden administration."
[...]
So as censorship spreads online and gets contracted out to private agencies, we now see that it is catalyzed, fueled, and enabled by a federal agency — CISA.
Biden used an agency created to protect America’s infrastructure to spy on us and to suppress the truth if it doesn’t comport with the official government line.
As George Orwell wrote in his book "1984," "Big Brother is Watching You."
In 2023.
Morris identified no specific information that CISA has supposedly "censored."
WND's Haynes Aims For Civil War Revisionism Topic: WorldNetDaily
Carole Hornsby Haynes loves spreadingmisinformation about education, but she also spreads historical misinformation as well. She spent her June 19 WorldNetDaily column playing the revisionism card about the Civil War. She started by complaining that the Juneteenth holiday is being described as a "national independence day" -- though it clearly was for the slaves freed under the Emancipation Proclamation -- then nitpicking dates involving it: "Juneteenth is a reference to June 19, 1865 when Union forces arrived in Galveston, Texas and informed the slaves of their freedom. Yet slavery did not legally end on June 19, 1865 but with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment on Dec. 6, 1865." Then came the historical revisionism:
Many Americans today believe the historical myth that the War Between the States was fought to abolish slavery. Clear thinkers have to ask: If the war was waged to end slavery, why was the Emancipation Proclamation issued a year and a half into the war? Since 90% of Southerners did not own slaves, why would hundreds of thousands of Confederate soldiers risk their lives to end slavery? Why did the Union army invade only those slave holding states that seceded from the Union but not those slave holding states that did not secede from the Union? Why did Lincoln send 75,000 volunteers to Fort Sumter to enforce the tariff in the South yet did not call for an invasion to free any slaves?
In reality, the war was fought, not over slavery, but whether the Southern states had the right to secede from the Union. The fact is that the North was just as intertwined with slavery as the South. The agrarian South had no ships. It was Northern ships that sailed out to buy African slaves from other black Africans – for settlement in both the North and South.
In fact, even the right-wing PragerU admits that slavery was the core issue behind the Civil War, with the secession documents of every Confederate state stating a desire to preserve slavery was a reason for leaving the Union. Haynes then played more date nitpicking:
Juneteenth, initially celebrated in Texas, is now is a federal holiday that celebrates nothing. The fact is that Dec. 6 conflicts with the Marxist agenda to keep the slavery propaganda at the forefront and suck in more government dependents.
She did not further explain exactly what relevance Dec. 6 has to any purported "Marxist agenda." Then she concuded with a huge whinefest:
American taxpayers are now on the hook for more than $600 million every year to give federal workers another paid holiday. Confederate hysteria will be stoked to rally national demonization of the Christian South, while obscuring the fact that slaves were held in Northern states that imported slaves and sold them to Southerners.
According to some estimates, 80 to 100 million Americans are descended from Confederate soldiers. With a population of approximately 330 million, 1 out of 4 of the U.S. population is genetically linked to the old Confederacy. Canceling all mention of the Confederacy effectively cancels the heritage of 25 percent of all Americans.
Destroying Confederate monuments, presumably because they evoked memories of slavery, was the Cultural Marxist justification to lay siege to America’s heritage with final annihilation of every vestige of our founding ideals and culture. With a second federal holiday for independence, it appears that July 4th is next on their cancel culture calendar.
It’s time for all Americans to rise up against the satanic fringe that displays a pathological hatred of all things Southern and Christian. Most importantly, we must return to calling July 4 Independence Day and educate Americans about its significance.
Lots to unpack here. Haynes' complaint that Northerners are really to blame for slavery falls flat because she also admitted that the slaves were "sold ... to Southerners." Those same Southerners had the choice not to buy slaves, and that would have gone a long way toward ending the practice; instead, again, they bought those slaves and cited the right to do so as a reason to secede from the Union.
Haynes also elides the main implication of the fact that "1 out of 4 of the U.S. population is genetically linked to the old Confederacy" -- that their ancestors were effectively traitors against their country and lost their war against it. That seems like a "heritage" that perhaps ought to be "canceled." And nobody's "canceling all mention of the Confederacy" -- they just want it made clear what the Confederacy really was, something Haynes clearly doesn't want to honestly discuss.
Haynes' suggestion that taking down Confederate statues means destroying "our founding ideals and culture" is laughable given the Confederacy, by seceding from the U.S., was all about rejecting the country's "founding ideals and culture." (Also, those statues were erected in no small part to help enforce white supremacy in the Jim Crow South.) And her reference to "the satanic fringe that displays a pathological hatred of all things Southern and Christian" is even more nonsensical; some Christians, especially in the South, invoked the Bible to justify slavery, which certainly seems more "satanic" than anything she's citing.
Finally, Haynes forgets that no slave was freed by the Declaration of Independence, making her insistence that July 4 is the true "Independence Day" something of a misnomer.
The Media Research Center has a history of ignoring bad news about Elon Musk and Twitter, but if it must be addressed, their goal is to find a way to dismiss it. And so it was with the swift emergence of Threads as a Twitter competitor. Autumn Johnson was dismissive of Threads in a July 6 post, largely because it is trying to do something about hate and misinformation:
Michael Brown 
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Scott Lively's final entry in his series of 
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Carole Hornsby Haynes loves 
