People Love 'Barbie' Movie, So MRC (Mostly) Backed Off Bashing It For Being 'Woke' Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has had mixed feelings about the Barbie doll in recent months -- it whinedabout the existence of a transgender Barbie, but it praised the creation of a Down syndrome Barbie (and even gently criticized toxic right-wing influencer Steven Crowder for mocking it). So the new 'Barbie' movie was bound to result in the creation of manufactured outrage at the MRC. Christian Toto spent his July 15 column fearmongering that the movie might be (gasp!) "potentially woke," whatever that means:
Meanwhile, the actors are more than happy to push the film’s potentially woke elements, disinterested in how it could impact the movie’s bottom line.
Yet the film’s marketing machine isn’t promoting its feminist bona fides. The movie’s trailers focus on fashion, fun, giddy interactions and humor.
[...]
It’s not hard to read between the lines. Director/co-screenwriter Greta Gerwig often uses her work to explore gender issues, from “Lady Bird” to “Little Women.” The early previews suggest she did it again.
None of this shares if the movie is good, bad or indifferent. We’ll have to wait until July 21 to find out.
Yet the message discipline for “Barbie’s” marketing team has been nothing short of outstanding. Most potential movie goers won’t read the quotes from Ferrell, Gerwig or Nef. They’ll be too busy sharing the cute clips and frothy trailers on social media.
If “Barbie” is the first woke blockbuster, it’ll be partly thanks to a bait-and-switch press push.
When the ladies of "The View" made fun of the predictable right-wing panning of the film for not fitting its predetermined narratives, Nicholas fondacaro complained in a July 25 post:
In the montage of reactions, which included Fox News’s Rachel Campos-Duffy from July 3 (three weeks ago) and Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) (from last week), Daily Wire Shapiro’s reaction was the only one from after the movie was released. Out of his almost 43-minute-long review on Twitter, this was the 14 seconds they pulled out:
I find it upsetting when material that is based on children's IP and marketed to little girls actually ends up being angry feminist claptrap that alienates men from women, undermines basic human values, and promotes falsehood all at the same time.
“It's a movie!” moderator Whoopi Goldberg shouted. “It's a movie about a doll! I thought y'all would be happy! She doesn't have any genitalia, so there’s no sex involved. Ken has no genitalia, so he can't be doing -- It's a doll movie!”
[...]
It's worth noting that the show itself was also sponsored by a Barbie movie-themed commercial for Progressive insurance.
As more mocking of Shapiro's 43-minute meltdown over the film -- which included him setting fire to Barbie dolls while dressed as Ken in one scene from the movie -- poured in, Fondacaro used a July 27 post to feature Shapiro complaining about being mocked:
The joking aside, Shapiro said the most upsetting thing going on was “the insane gaslighting by people like Whoopi Goldberg” in terms of suddenly suggesting the movie was not important at all:
They play this dumbass game. It’s a really ridiculous clown-nose-on-clown-nose-off game: “Well, it’s so political, it’s so important, everyone should see it, it has such important things to say about the state of modern womanhood.” And then we’re like, “Yeah, what it has to say is garbage and stupid and wrong and bad for girls.” And they’re like, “It’s just a movie about a doll. It’s just a movie about a doll. Why are you so upset about a movie about a doll?”
I don’t know, why are you so upset that I’m upset about a movie about a doll?
“Because it’s not just a movie about a doll you idiots, obviously. You’re really liars. I mean, you know it’s not a movie about a doll only, it’s a movie about men and about women and about feminism and about the patriarchy. You know who would tell you that? Greta Gerwig, who made the damn thing,” he told them off.
Shapiro also trained his sights on The View’s faux conservative, Alyssa Farah Griffin, who attacked him for purportedly feeling emasculated by the movie, but he had a cold hard truth for her: what really was emasculating was her becoming “the designated conservative” her “pseudo friends dump on every single day and where you win points of favor and they pat you on the head and give you little Scooby treats if you say the right thing.”
He also made the expert point that they “spent a lot of [their] airtime on this. So, yeah. Obviously, it was important enough for you to comment on.”
Fondacaro didn't mention that Shapiro set Barbie dolls on fire during his original, mockworthy meltdown.
Next up in meltdown mode was Tim Graham, who spent his Aug. 4 column complaining how his wife dragged him to the movie:
It’s not a movie I had any interest in seeing, whether it was a movie made for grade-school girls or a satirical sendup for the angry feminists.
But my wife wanted to see it, so off we went. It was the worst movie we’ve seen since “Elvis.” It’s a disjointed mess. Just like “Elvis,” we sat through it despite the temptation to skedaddle.
It’s like a series of bad “Saturday Night Live” sketches that are placed at the end of the show. Any movie that ends with a triumphant first visit to the gynecologist? Eminently skippable. “It’s like Pinocchio, with tampons” did not make the newspaper blurbs.
Mattel wanted to make a “Barbie” movie to sell more Barbies, but they couldn’t just make a cartoon for little girls. No, it had to make an ironic adult blockbuster mocking itself with a preposterously plastic indictment of the patriarchy. Christian Toto counted ten utterances of “patriarchy” in this movie -- and none of them made all the promotional material that inundated TV watchers. It snuck up on you at the cineplex.
It made me think of leftists like Todd Gitlin writing about capitalist “hegemony,” about how capitalism is so malignantly adaptable that it absorbs socialist critiques and somehow evades its own collapse. So the mega-corporation that makes Barbie dolls subjects the audience to a teenager yelling at Barbie: “You represent everything wrong with our culture! You destroyed the planet with your glorification of rampant consumerism, you fascist!”
Barbie is not a fascist. She’s a toy. But yes, she’s a flashy and colorful toy, with many accessories. If they made Maoist Barbie, she’d only come with one outfit and a little red book. Surely, the movie will lead to more Barbie-doll sales. Rampant consumerism still wins.
[...]
This feminist screed could have been worse. It could have ended with Barbie triumphantly getting an abortion. But that could represent one less little girl reaching for a Barbie doll.
Graham curiously failed to mention how his wife liked the movie -- which suggests that she did, in fact, like it. As many people did, given that it has seen more than $600 million in box office revenue in the U.S. alone. It's so popular and well-liked, in fact, that the MRC has basicallly given up on trying to attack it. In an Aug. 10 post on "Barbie" being banned in Kuwait, Tierin-Rose Mandelburg -- who is not afraid to spew hate and anything and everything -- voiced her surrender in a parenthetical paragraph that was the second paragraph of her post:
(Disclaimer: We aren’t here to bash the Barbie movie as we know some people loved it. Good for them. We are here to recognize the fact that the themes and characters in "Barbie" do not align with some religions.)
Nevertheless, she bashed the movie anyway, endorsing Kuwait's ban based on purported homosexuality in thte movie:
While the Barbie film isn’t entirely based on sexuality and gender, it does feature a gay actress, Kate McKinnon, and a transgender actor, Hari Nef. Not to mention, Gosling's performance of Ken paints him in a very feminist nature. Men acting in this way is controversial in Middle Eastern culture.
[...]
Ultimately, these Middle Eastern countries likely have bigger things to be worrying about, it's nice to see them stand their ground on what sorts of ideologies should and should not be accessible and promoted throughout their nations.
We knew Mandelburg couldn't keep her hate completely hidden.
WND Hypes 'Sound of Freedom' Movie, Censors QAnon Ties Topic: WorldNetDaily
Like the Media Research Center, WorldNetDaily loves the movie "Sound of Freedom" because it advances right-wing political narratives. Bob Unruh made that exact point in a July 10 article by pushing the bizarre conspiratorial claim that President Biden supports child trafficking:
The modern world has been unable, so far, to effectively rid itself of the scourge of child trafficking.
It's been especially noticeable in the United States in the last few years. WND reported the U.S. has become, under the leadership of Joe Biden, a de facto "middleman" in a massive "child trafficking" scheme.
That's according to a damning new report compiled by journalist and Gatestone Institute Senior Fellow Uzay Bulut.
But also like the MRC, WND wants you to think that only crazy people (and liberals) think that the film has some QAnon-adjacent shenanigans going on. Around the 10th paragraph of his article, Unruh finally got off the politicizing of child trafficking and got around to addressing the actual movie:
Now, a report in The Blaze reveals that legacy media, so befuddled by the facts, has become a critic of movie revealing the extent of the problem.
The report said "leftist media outlets" have taken to slamming the new "Sound of Freedom Movie," and making claims that the anti-child trafficking project is a "QAnon fantasy."
The movie is based on the true story of a federal agent who is confronted with the facts of child trafficking, and leaves his job to work to save children.
It was written and directed by Mexican director Alejandro Monteverde and produced by Mexican producer Eduardo Verástegui. The movie features "The Passion of the Christ" star Jim Caviezel and Academy Award winner Mira Sorvino.
The movie, on a $14.5 million budget, is outperforming Disney's highly promoted "Indiana Jones" movie.
The report said, "Rolling Stone published an article with title: ''Sound Of Freedom' Is a Superhero Movie for Dads With Brainworms.' The sub-headline reads: 'The QAnon-tinged thriller about child-trafficking is designed to appeal to the conscience of a conspiracy-addled boomer.'"
The writer of that piece claims the movie is "fomenting moral panic" with its "exaggerations."
But Unruh refused to explain exactly why the film is considered QAnon-adjacent; a key component of the QAnon conspiracy is the utterly baseless claim that, as summarized by NPR, "an international cabal of elites is abusing and killing children to extract a substance called adrenochrome." Also, Caviezel has become a QAnon adherent and has promoted the whole "adrenochroming" wackiness, and Tim Ballard, the federal agent whose story the film is based on, won't distance himself from QAnon.
But conspiracy theories have always been more important than facts at WND, and it has previously touted Caviezel's ranting before. An anonymously written 21 article hyped how "Actor Jim Caviezel, whose brand new 'Sound of Freedom' move is just arriving on scene, is warning Americans about the dangers of the subject of the film: Human trafficking. Of small children," adding that "he implicated "U.S. agencies" in the child sex trafficking industry."
WND also parroted the MRC in attacking a critic of the film. A July 17 article by Peter LaBarbera claimed that "Among the left-leaning critics attacking the surprise hit film 'Sound of Freedom,' about a man who quits his Department of Homeland Security job hunting pedophiles to rescue sex-trafficked children in Colombia, is a man who represented a group that is leading efforts to recast pedophiles as 'Minor Attracted Persons,' or MAPs." He went on to tout Caviezel plugging the film:
Though cynical leftist ideologues like Berlastky claim "Sound of Freedom"-type "narratives do little to help victims," that is precisely what SOF star Caviezel is hoping to do with the movie. In a special message to theater-goers shown after the film's ending, he states: "'Sound of Freedom' is one of those films that can legitimately change this world, so we want to ignite a fire in audiences and open their eyes to the dark reality of millions of children that need our help. Let's make this film an historic event and the start of the end of child trafficking... ."
"Pre-order your tickets today and you can send the message that 'God's children are no longer for sale,'" he says, echoing the main theme of the Angel Studios production.
LaBarbera also complained:
Despite hopes that a movie about saving innocent children from sex-traffickers might unite a bitterly divided nation, left-wing activists are dwelling on its alleged links to extreme-right "Q-anon" conspiracies rather than joining conservatives and people of faith in celebrating its focus on solving the crisis of the horrific exploitation of children.
Like Unruh, LaBarbera failed to tell his readers that Caviezel is a QAnon adherent and that its subject won't distance himself from QAnon.
WND also published several articles, mostly from other sources, touting the film and Caviezel:
Unruh kept his own rah-rah campaign as well. A July 17 article uncritically repeated claims that theaters are "intentionally sabotaging" showings of the film. He touted the film's ticket sales in a July 24 article:
Most movies have a huge opening weekend. But then the attendance and income rapidly deteriorate.
That's why studios spend the big bucks on advertising and such, to get fans out for those first few days.
One film, however, is showing the ability to move against the trend.
A new report from Celluloid Junkie reveals that "Sound of Freedom," the stunning story of a former federal agent who turned his life's goals into helping those children who are being trafficked, is seeing surging attendance – weeks after its opening.
The movie from Angel Studios, where filmmakers use crowdfunding to create and distribute films, confirmed its third weekend total revenue was "a strong $20,140,647."
The figure is higher than its debut weekend.
"Angel Studios is projecting nearly $125 million total cumulative box office revenue through Sunday," the report said.
But Unruh censored the fact that the film's promoters are using a "pay it forward" strategy, in which people buy tickets for others to claim. As much as 20 percent of the film's box office take may be coming from "pay it forward," artificially inflating those box numbers, and there's little evidence to show that people actually claimed those tickets and watched the film.
MRC Drag Queen Freakout, Navy Edition Topic: Media Research Center
The Navy apparently hired a drag queen as a recruitment tool, and the dragphobes at the Media Reserach Center unsurprisingly didn't take it well. Kevin Tober raged over it in a May 3 post that also gushed how his ideological fellow travelers at Fox News noted the story:
If you were wondering why our nation's enemies like Russia and China no longer fear us, this is a major reason why. Instead of focusing on building the strongest, and most deadly fighting force possible, the U.S. Navy under President Joe Biden hired a degenerate drag queen to assist in recruiting new Gen-Z members to join the Navy. The Navy claimed this strategy is designed to show off the Navy's diversity, but that is the last thing any of our branches of the military should be focused on.
While Fox News Channel's Special Report covered this latest example of our military's descent into insanity, all three evening news broadcasts ignored this story in favor of stories like false smears of former Fox News host Tucker Carlson (ABC), and the news that Jamie Foxx broke his silence after being hospitalized (CBS and NBC).
Fox News Channel's correspondent Mark Meredith reported that the recent TikTok video "featuring a Navy sailor and drag queen who goes by the stage name Harpy Daniels are raising questions about the Navy's recruitment methods."
[...]
They never explained how a drag queen could possibly attract anyone who would be mentally or physically qualified to serve in the Navy. But that's not the point. The left's woke agenda spreads like cancer and eats away at everything it touches.
God help America if we are ever forced into armed conflict with China or Russia. No amount of drag queen TikTok videos will save us.
Tober didn't explain how his rage-filled screed qualified as "media research," nor did he prove his assertions that anyone who like drag is insufficiently manly enough to be in the Navy.
Curtis Houck followed up with a May 5 post that parroted more right-wing rage on the issue from a "friend":
Our friend, Newsmax host, and former Navy SEAL Carl Higbie opened his Thursday show Carl Higbie Frontline with a scathing takedown over the U.S. Navy’s shoveling of “woke trash” by bringing in a sailor/drag queen in an effort to boost what’s been a dismal stretch of recruitment, saying “the military is not a village people social experiment” and joking it’ll certainly comfort “the next American hostage in Djibouti...that they’re sending RuPaul and not a SEAL team.”
Higbie’s brief cold open before the opening credits said it all: “Well, the back-to-back World War champs now have a drag queen as their spokesman.”
He wondered whether “our military leaders are, like, bored, stupid, or actually trying to destroy the ranks, but this little drag queen stunt the Navy is pulling is in a long list of bad ideas” and even worse than their vaccine mandates.
The fact that Higbie thinks vaccinating our troops is a "bad idea" would seem to disqualify him as a credible critic of the miltary.
In other anti-drag hate at the MRC, Tim Graham spent a May 22 post whining that the Associated Press referenced "far-right" Republicans (but not explaining why "far-right" is inaccurate) while it allegedly "does NOT feel this way about extremist local governments when they're on the Left," sounding "happily promotional" in reporting on the establishment of a "drag laureate" in San Francisco. He went on to huff that "Conservatives were not quoted anywhere in this piece" and that right-wing anti-drag attacks were referenced.
In a June 6 post, Alex Christy complained that opposition to drag queens in a Christmas parade was noted:
PBS NewsHour White House Correspondent Laura Barron-Lopez took a field trip down to Taylor, Texas, for Monday’s show to report on “the frontline of the war on LGBTQ rights” and how allegedly certain people are “challenging their very existence.” At the same time Barron-Lopez condemned a group of pastors for not wanting drag queens at their Christmas parade.
When seeking to answer the question why Taylor is such a hot spot of controversy, Barron-Lopez reported that “Some Taylor residents point to a single event when they describe the divisions here, the town Christmas parade, which has come down this street for decades. That, they say, is what put Taylor on the frontline of the war on LGBTQ rights. In 2021, for the first time, the line of Christmas floats on Main Street, including one from Taylor Pride, which carried drag queens. One of the performers was Felicia Enspire.”
[...]
Yes, PBS is trying to make a big controversy over Christian ministers not wanting drag queens at the parade that they organize.
Christy also complained that one pastor was described as being “unapologetic about his anti-LGBTQ beliefs” but did not explain how that was at all inaccurate.
Newsmax, Trump Promote Each Other During Post-Arrest Interview Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax got rewarded for its defend-and-attackstrategy following donald Trump's (fourth) indictment): It scored an interview with Trump after he turned himself into Georgia authorities following the indictment. Of course, Trump helpfully plugged Newsmax during the interview, as detailed in an Aug. 24 article by Luca Cacciatore:
Former President Donald Trump believes that one reason he is being unfairly targeted is because he told people to watch Newsmax in the aftermath of the 2020 election.
Appearing Thursday on " Greg Kelly Reports," the former president said that Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy would be "thrilled" to know that the fastest-growing cable news channel was his go-to network.
"One of the things is I tell people — Newsmax. Did you know that? That was one of my tabs. I told people to watch Newsmax," Trump explained. "I got charged for telling people to watch Newsmax!"
The former president then jokingly warned host Greg Kelly: "I hope you don't get charged. You'll probably get charged because I mentioned your name, but I think you'll be OK."
"I think it's a badge of honor, quite frankly," Kelly replied.
Newsmax then squeezed seven additional articles out of the righly 20-minute interview:
Soros Derangement Syndrome At The MRC Continues Topic: Media Research Center
When it wasn't melting down over "Soros-funded" prosecutors holding Donald Trump accountable for his crimes and helping Elon Musk frame him as the Jew conservatives are allowed to hate, the Media Research Center was continuing its dirty war on George Soros in theusualways since we last checked in:
The MRC served up more detailed attacks as well. Clay Waters complained in an April 20 post that it was pointed out how right-wing attacks on Soros lean into anti-Semitism:
The House Judiciary Committee held an unusual “field hearing” in Manhattan to hear from local victims of violence -- a bank shot against Democratic Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who is prosecuting a dubious case against former president Donald Trump while being accused of being soft on actual violent crime.
New York Times responded with haughty defensiveness, rallying around both the city and prosecutor Bragg in “Republicans Attack Bragg, Spotlighting Crime Victims in New York” Wednesday, as reported by congressional reporter Luke Broadwater and Jonah Bromwich, who covers New York criminal justice.
One Republican bashed him as “pro-criminal.” Another called him a “terrible” prosecutor with a habit of losing cases. A third suggested he was in the pocket of a wealthy Jewish financier frequently demonized by the far right.
That “wealthy Jewish financier” would be billionaire and leading Democratic fundraiser George Soros. After downplaying Soros’s pro-Democratic election funding in an article earlier this month, this Times article never even bothers to confirm the connection between Soros and Bragg, leaving the implication that the Republican mention of him is motivated by random anti-Semitism.
But Soros pledged $1 million to support Color of Change PAC at almost the same time the PAC announced they would put $1 million into Bragg’s successful DA campaign, making Republican criticism legitimate. Isn’t the press usually more curious about political donations -- or is that just for conservatives who receive funding from, say, Charles Koch?
Waters went on to complain that "The Times conflated anti-Soros protestors with anti-Semitism" by noting that " a man held a sign with the name of the financier George Soros, a Jewish Holocaust survivor, along with the image of a Star of David and dollar signs." But rather than actually address the point, he playued whataboutism: "Speaking of 'dollar signs,' there was no comment from Democratic Rep. Ilhan 'all about the Benjamins' Omar, whose own anti-Semitic comments were aggressively downplayed by the same paper." He then claimed without evidence that "it's possible the sign is being held by a Democrat to help the narrative along."
A May 22 post by Joseph Vazquez cheered how a highly biased right-wing poll demonstrated how relentless attacks against Soros by the MRC and other right-wingers are apparently succeeding in demonizing him:
A majority of Americans are rejecting the media’s attempts to shield leftist billionaire activist George Soros from criticism and cast his opponents as anti-Semites.
A new survey by Rasmussen Reports and Ron Coleman’s ColemanNation podcast of 1,002 U.S. likely voters revealed that “Most American voters have a negative opinion of liberal billionaire George Soros, and nearly half agree with [Twitter owner] Elon Musk’s words comparing Soros to a comic-book villain.” Specifically, 51 percent of respondents reported viewing Soros “unfavorably,” which included 39 percent who had a “very unfavorable” impression of the billionaire. This poll’s release comes days after Musk set Twitter on fire for comparing Soros to Marvel supervillain Magneto, saying Soros "hates humanity" and for Soros for seeking to “erode the very fabric of civilization.”
Despite all the media bluster to make Soros into some kind of a victim, Americans clearly aren’t buying it. “Forty-seven percent (47%) of voters agree with [Musk’s] quote, including 35% who Strongly Agree that Soros ‘hates humanity,’” according to the survey taken between May 16-18, 2023.
Vazquez went on to quote "Bongino Report Content Manager Matt Palumbo" attacking Soros, but he didn't disclose that Palumbo moonlights by writing propaganda for arrested Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui.
Tom Olohan used a June 6 post to tout an anti-Soros book by a right-wing author (whose ideology Olohan didn't disclose):
A “one-eyed King among the blind,” “some kind of god, the creator of everything,” “brilliant” and “clever;” these are just some of the disturbing bona fides a new bookanalyzes that leftist billionaire George Soros has acquired for himself over his decades-long activist career.
“Soros is right; America is under attack; its Constitution, independence, and democracy are under attack by Soros and his army,” writes American Center for Democracy Founder and President Rachel Ehrenfeld in her new book The Soros Agenda (2023). Ehrenfeld’s work details the ungodly fortunes (over $32 billion) spent by Soros to transform society into his distorted view of an “open society,” a leftist utopia undergirded by anti-Americanism, Marxist economics, climate change extremism, abortion-on-demand and racial strife.
Ehrenfield does not shy away from controversial topics in this work, linking Soros to several color revolutions and to anti-Israel groups, while also providing evidence that Soros lacks compassion and despises his background. She also delves into the lack of transparency that is characteristic of many Soros initiatives.
The main task that Ehrenfeld undertakes with this work is to demonstrate connections that are regularly obscured or ignored by establishment media outlets, while Soros-funded fact-checkers rebuke those who do report on Soros’ actions.
Olohan made no effort to let anyone respond to Ehrenfeld's attacks -- he hates Soros as much as she does, after all.
The next day, Nicholas Schau complained that the right-wing anti-Soros machine was exposed:
NPR ludicrously claimed that the leftist Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) was not influenced by George Soros funding, despite NPR itself being funded by the leftist billionaire.
In an article published June 4, NPR complained about waning support for ERIC — an organization focused on voter registration — in Republican states and ridiculously attributed the ire over its ties to a so-called “far-right misinformation machine.” However, according to the Capital Research Center (CRC), there is real evidence that Soros’ network provided funding for the organization, which was established as a project of The Pew Charitable Trusts. According to CRC investigative researcher Parker Thayer, “NPR’s insistence that there is no connection between ERIC and George Soros is laughable and refuted by their own article.”
Specifically, as Thayer pointed out, “[NPR] admit[ted] several paragraphs into the article that Soros’s private foundation provided money to the organization that created the ERIC but spen[t] the rest of the same article insisting that there is no connection.”
Schau didn't disclose that the CRC has a biased right-wing ideology, nor did he explain why ERIC's mission of encouraging voter registration and modernizing the election process is purportedly a bad thing, let alone "leftist." He also offered no proof that any of the money Soros donated to "the organization that created the ERIC" went directly toward creating ERIC. Finally, Schau didn't deny the existence of a right-wing anti-Soros machine -- hard for him to do when he's obviously part of it.
FAKE NEWS: WND Hypes False Claims About Retracted COVID Vaccine Study Topic: WorldNetDaily
The COVID vaccine misinformation just never stops at WorldNetDaily. Bob Unruh contributed in a July 21 article:
A new study, conducted by respected medical researchers and published in The Lancet, a renowned medical journal, indicated that the COVID shots themselves actually killed people – and the study now has been killed.
That's according to a report from Liberty Counsel, which has been one of the key fighters in court against the Biden administration's various COVID shot mandates during the pandemic.
The report said the "bombshell" study was done by Dr. Peter McCullough and others and was published in The Lancet.
But it "was quickly censored within 24 hours after its publication because it showed clear evidence that the COVID-19 shots were responsible for many deaths."
Of the 325 autopsies reviewed, "the study revealed the COVID shots directly caused or significantly contributed to up to 74% of those deaths."
But as an actual fact-checker at AFP pointed out, the study was never published in The Lancet; it appeared on a preprint server where studies typically appear before peer review, and it was never accepted for publication by The Lancet.
Unruh went on to hype the alleged credentials of the study authors:
The report said McCullough, a renowned internist, epidemiologist and "one of the most published cardiologists in American with more than 1,000 peer-reviewed publications," did the study with eight other researchers.
They included Yale researcher Dr. Harvey Risch, pathologist Dr. Roger Hodkinson and Dr. Paul Alexander, formerly of the Department of Health and Human Services.
McCullough, of course, is a prolific COVID misinformer whom WND has repeatedlytouted. Risch, Hodkinson and Alexander are COVID misinformers as well.Their study was removed from the preprint server because it was highly flawed, as AFP documented:
Zhou Xing, an immunology professor at McMaster University, found the methodology to be flawed as it did not seem to factor in medical conditions and age as possible reasons that death could have occurred after vaccination.
"It seems an astoundingly ridiculous analysis and conclusion and I believe one does not have to be a scientific or medical expert to find the major flaws," Xing said in a July 12 email.
Xing noted that because a large majority of people have received Covid-19 shots, mortality rates will inevitably be higher for vaccinated individuals regardless of the cause of death.
AFP also showed how the paper's claims of having been "independently reviewed" is bogus:
Brian Ward, a professor of experimental medicine who studies the adverse effects of vaccines at McGill University, said he questioned the study's claims of independent researchers, given the physicians' histories of spreading Covid-19 misinformation could lead them to be invested in reaching a conclusion that supports their previous statements.
"The way they use the word 'independently' here simply means that each of the biased individuals sat in a separate room to reach a personal conclusion before sharing their (largely pre-determined) classifications with each other," Ward said in an email on July 12, 2023.
Ward said he believed it was unlikely the paper would ever be published in a medical journal.
AFP also noted a professor who lamented that the claims in this "zombie paper" will become part of the discourse despite its having been discredited and retracted.But the truth does not matter to WND; instead, Unruh uncritically quoted McCullough making the blatantly untrue claim that "They are trying to kill [the study] so the world doesn’t see the data."
MRC Buries How Right-Wing-Friendly Film's Inspiration And Star Embrace QAnon Topic: Media Research Center
Despite having a history of attacking actors who make political statements, the Media Research Center makes an exception for actors who spout right-wing talking points. That's what Christian Toto did in his July 1 column touting the star of the right-wing-friendly film "Sound of Freedom":
Jim Caviezel doesn’t read off the Hollywood script on the promotional circuit.
Yes, that’s the understatement of the year.
The “Passion of the Christ” star works steadily in the industry despite his reluctance to toe the company line. Now, talking to select press for his new film “Sound of Freedom,” Caviezel has taken the shackles entirely off.
That means he’s not promoting the progressive cause du jour.
Examples?
The star mocked the mainstream media for telling lie after lie after lie.
“Hunter Biden laptop, 2 years, you told us, not true…then it’s true. For 7 years, we learn Donald Trump is a Russian spy…Durham report drops” *snaps* “he’s not a Russian spy.”
[...]
He decried sexually explicit Pride displays where children are routinely present, another liberal Hollywood no-no.
What Toto didn't mention, however, is Caviezel's embrace of far-right conspiracy theories.He has become a QAnon adherent and has promoted the wacky claim about "adrenochroming," the bizarre -- and utterly baseless -- theory that global elites are trafficking children and harvest a chemical called adrenochrome from their blood to stay young. As it just so happens, "Sound of Freedom" is based on the true story of a man who fights child sex trafficking.
Toto also noted that "The actor also dubbed the Academy Awards as the “Irrelevant Show” for ignoring films like “The Passion of the Christ” (the film earned three minor nominations – Best Score, Best Makeup and Best Cinematography)." He didn't mention that "The Passion" was criticized for leaning into anti-Semitism by blaming Jews for the crucifixion of Jesus, which makes more sense after director Mel Gibson's virulent anti-Semitism was revealed.
Alex Christy tried to whitewash how "Sound of Freedom" leaned into QAnon conspiracy theories and Caviezel's embrace of QAnon in a July 8 post:
CNN Tonight host Abby Phillip decided to do something different for Friday’s show by doing a movie review. Specifically, Sound of Freedom starring Jim Caviezel who stars as Tim Ballard, a real-life former DHS agent who works to bust child sex trafficking rings. For Phillip and The Storm is Upon Us author Mike Rothschild, the film focuses on a real issue, but is nevertheless a “moral panic” and a plot to get QAnon conspiracy theorists to feel good about themselves.
After noting the film is battling Indiana Jones“for the top spot at the box office,” Phillip also noted “the film and its star are raising eyebrows among critics. Some say that it bends the truth about child exploitation, and it caters to QAnon conspiracy theorists. Its distributor, Angel Studios, denies those accusations. Jim Caviezel, the star of the film, is also known for openly embracing QAnon theories.”
After introducing Rothschild, Phillip led him with more of a statement than a question, “the star of this film, Jim Caviezel is coming under a lot of scrutiny for his embrace of QAnon conspiracy theories. And you seem pretty familiar with him because he doesn't really hide his association with this real wild plot that involves, you know, drinking the blood of children and things like that.”
Rothschild elaborated on that idea, “he is openly embracing and he's openly using its catchphrases and its concepts. He's speaking at QAnon conventions. And this film is being marketed to either specific QAnon believers or to people who believe all of the same tenets as QAnon, but claim they don't know what it is.”
Phillip added, “And the Sound of Freedom does focus on a real issue of sex trafficking. But that theme, it's sort of like that kernel of truth that feeds the QAnon conspiracy theory. Tell us how those two things work together.”
Christy's response to all this? "CNN is reviewing Caviezel’s personal life and not the actual movie." That's a hypocritial statement -- the MRC reviews the personal lives of actors all the time, such as Jane Fonda and Rob Reiner, when make statements that aren't conservatively correct.
Christy then cited a reviewer who noted that the movie was based on a true story, adding: "Exactly. If you want fewer QAnon conspiracy theorists then do not associate movies about fighting sex trafficking with QAnon." By thte same token, if you don't want your movie associated with QAnon, don't hire a QAnon adherent as your star. And maybe don't base your movie on a guy who repeatedly spews xenophobia and anti-LGBT rhetoric and who won't distance himself from QAnon.
The MRC then hypocritically swung back to reviewing a person instead of his work in a July 18 post by Bill D'Agostino attacking a writer who pointd out how "Sound of Freedom" leans into QAnon:
On Saturday, Bloomberg published a guest opinion piece by the former communications director of a pro-pedophile advocacy group. The article, titled “QAnon and ‘Sound of Freedom’ Both Rely on Tired Hollywood Tropes,” was a late arrival to media crusade against ‘Always With Honor’ — a film about, of all things, child trafficking.
Freelance journalist Andy Ngo over the weekend pointed out the author of this Bloomberg piece, Noah Berlatsky, had an alarming history of defending pedophiles online.
[...]
The obvious question is: Why does Berlatsky spend so much time defending pedophiles, downplaying child sex trafficking, and demonizing parents? Perhaps the answer is just as obvious, but we don’t want to allege something we can’t definitively prove.
Instead, let’s ask: Why are Bloomberg’s editorial staff struggling so spectacularly to disavow a man who built his career around defending pedophiles?
Can we also ask why D'Agostino said absolutely nothing at all about the content of Berlatsky's column?
Toto returned for a July 22 column raging at actress Ellen Barkin for making a non-conservative statement, huffing that she and other liberal actors "never suffer for unhinged views like right-leaning stars often do," adding: "Just ask Jim Caviezel, whose sin is being an openly Christian star. The media loathes him for it., and he allegedly lost two agents for starring in 'Sound of Freedom.'" Toto censored Caviezel's QAnon endorsements, which is likely the real reason Caviezel lost those agents.
Tierin-Rose Mandelburg spent a Sept. 1 post complaining that people were still talking about the QAnon-adjacent leanings of "Sound of Freedom":
Though it seems like everyone has moved on from baselessly bashing the Sound of Freedom, CBS Mornings couldn’t find anything better to talk about Friday, as the network allotted a whopping seven minutes-and-change attempting to paint the movie as something of a QAnon conspiracy.
Apparently exposing the truths and travesties of the child trafficking network is just right-wing propaganda - that is, according to CBS. For starters, the chyron of the segment read, “‘Sound of Freedom’ Controversies.” Fill-in co-host Jamie Yuccas stated, “Sound of Freedom is a lightning rod for controversy and conspiracy theories,” adding that the movie has been embraced by “supporters of the fringe conspiracy theory, QAnon," who "falsely believe in the existence of widespread human trafficking rings run by Hollywood and so-called liberal political elites.”
In the segment, hosts spoke with writer-director Alejandro Monteverde, immediately asking how he feels about the film being at the center of so much controversy.
Again, I don’t think the illegal sexual exploitation and abuse of children is controversial. Nobody should ever be for it, full stop. But, I digress.
Nobody is, dear, and merely criticizing this movie does not mean one is in favor of human trafficking. But we digress; Mandelburg went on to assert that the film can't possibly be leaning into QAnon because the director said it wasn't:
Despite Monteverde’s redirect to focus on the facts of the film and its real-life implications, co-host Nate Burleson asked if the choice to cast Jim Caviezel as the main character was the right selection.
Monteverde then went on to explain that Tim Ballard, the man on whom the movie is based, wanted Caviezel to play the role due to the fact that he is a “man of faith.”
Mandelburg censored Caviezel's embrace of QAnon. She concluded by whining again that the QAnon-adjacent aspects of the film were being pointed out:
At the end, the hosts did give a nod to the movie. King insisted it was important to recognize that the movie was made “before all these conspiracy theories.” Great, so out of a seven-minute segment trying to get Monteverde to claim the movie was based on a far right-wing conspiracy theories, a whopping 10 seconds was dedicated to agreeing the movie did a good thing by exposing the horrific child trafficking epidemic.
Honestly, the hosts should be embarrassed. They couldn’t get off the schtick that this movie was supported by “QAnon” and allowed it to essentially run and ruin the whole segment. Kudos to Monteverde for sharing the truth and holding his own.
If Mandelburg really thought the film was honest, she wouldn't be fighting so hard to bury the fact that both Ballard and Caviezel are very much QAnon-adjacent. She's definitely not showing any embarrassment over her deceit.
There's nothing that right-wingers won't invent conspiracy theories about. Take the concept of "15-minute cities," which seeks to place most of person's basic needs within a 15-minute radius, via walking or biking, of their house. The false fearmongering has begun, with Rolaant McKenzie ranting about "globalists" who want to imprison people in his July 6 WorldNetDaily column in which he makes the leap to "open-air prison" for no discernable reason:
Over the past several years, the World Economic Forum (WEF) has been promoting the implementation of an urban planning concept called the "15-minute city" (sometimes abbreviated as FMC). This is described as arranging an urban area in such a way that most daily necessities such as going to work, buying food and clothing, going to school, visiting the doctor, and engaging in leisure and entertainment can all be done within a 15-minute walk or bicycle ride from any point of the city.
According to its proponents, this would be a convenient way to reduce car dependency, promote healthy and sustainable living, improve the well-being and quality of life of city residents, and greatly reduce carbon emissions in the ongoing fight against climate change.
Under the guise of climate-change prevention, car ownership and use would be eliminated over time by making it too expensive and limiting the infrastructure to sustain it. Roadblocks and gates would be erected over time throughout the city. Along with restrictions on the freedom of movement, constant surveillance would characterize life, turning the FMC into an open-air prison similar to the districts in "The Hunger Games."
[...]
The attempts by global elitists to create "15-minute cities" where they value their progressively confined residents for what they can get from controlling and destroying them will fail, because it will be utterly overcome by the eternal city built by God, who valued lost humanity so much that He sent His own Son Jesus to die on the cross for our sins and rise again so that all who trust in Him will live liberated from sin, death and confinement forever.
"Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love Him." (1 Corinthians 2:9)
McKenzie noffered no evidence whatsoever that anyone wants to imprison people in their neighborhoods -- he's just that much of a far-right conspiracy theorist, and he knows WND will never fact-check him.
Flashback, Part 3: MRC Still Hyping Kneejerk Defenses Of Guns Topic: Media Research Center
Our flashbackseries on the Media Research Center's kneejerk defense of guns continues with Nicholas Fondacaro using an April 18 post to bash "The View" for expressing concern that an elderly white man shot and killed a black teenager who mistakenly rang the doorbell at his house:
Never letting a bad situation go to waste, the ladies of ABC’s The View spent the beginning of Tuesday’s episode exploiting the tragic and allegedly unlawful use of deadly force by an elderly white man against a black teenager in Missouri. According to them, it was “unfortunate” that people had the right to self-defense at all, and insanely proclaimed that elderly people who couldn’t physically fend off an attacker shouldn’t be allowed to own guns.
During the incident in question, 16-year-old Ralph Yarl was shot after he rang the doorbell of 85-year-old Andrew Lester thinking it was the house he was supposed to pick up his siblings from. According to reports, no words were exchanged and there was no evidence of an attempted forced entry before Lester shot Yarl twice with his revolver through the glass door. Prosecutors also allege that there was an unspecified “racial component” to the shooting.
With the details as reported, Missouri’s self-defense laws (particularly their castle doctrine) didn’t seem to apply. But nuance and attention to detail weren’t things The View excelled in.
Co-host Sara Haines repeatedly advocated for the elderly to have their Second Amendment rights stripped from them if they felt they couldn’t fend off an attacker with their bare hands:
[...]
In reality, those too weak to defend themselves physically were arguably the ones who needed guns for self-defense the most.
Haines then lashed out at the National Rifle Association, despite the fact they were not defending Lester. According to her, this incident “fuels the profit of more gun sales” and the NRA wanted to roll back “the accountability of the people shooting.”
Yes, Fondacaro is defending the man's use of his gun for "self-defense" despite admitting that's not what actually happened.
On April 20, Fondacaro lashed out at criticism of states that have permitless concealed-carry laws:
In the liberal media’s crusade to eliminate gun rights, no complaint is too absurd to be presented to their viewers as a serious point. CBS Mornings was guilty of this Thursday as co-anchor Tony Dokoupil singled out Alabama, Missouri, and Texas (the locations of recent mass shootings) for not requiring residents to obtain permits to buy rifles and shotguns. But only seven states out of 50 have that requirement.
If you'll recall, the MRC attacked a "Soros-backed" prosecutor for dropping a gun charge against a man who later committed a massacre -- but didn't mention that the charge was carrying a concealed weapon without a permit.
The next day, Alex Christy was upset that a commentator pointed out that Fox News likely played a role in feeding the elderly man with fear of crime and black people -- something the man's grandson agreed with -- to the point where he killed a black teen who merely rang his doorbell:
MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle used the Thursday edition of The 11th Hour to give credence to the idea that Fox News was responsible for shooting of Ralph Yarl by an 84-year old man after he wrong the doorbell. Former FBI assistant director counterintelligence Frank Figliuzzi took it one step further and demanded Fox and “the firearms industry” feel “financial pain.”
Beginning the show by going through a list of recent shootings that were the result of either identifying the wrong car or a ball rolling into someone’s yard before coming to Yarl, Ruhle decalred “There is another deep troubling element to all of this and it relates to the shooting of young Ralph Yarl. The grandson of the 84-year-old man charged in that shooting put it this way.”
Christy then complained that the commentator said that Fox News should feel the pain of inculcating people that way, just as it had to with the $787 million settlement with Dominion for spreading election fraud lies (which the MRC tried to insist wasn't a big deal because right-wingers will believe whatever it sees on the channel regardless):
Figliuzzi then gave a chilling case for censorship, “Yeah, this is where I'm a strong advocate of financial pain for those who spew out propaganda. We just saw Fox News, you know, paying, you know, just under a billion dollars because of what they've been doing and the question is whether or not that is enough pain or not to make a difference.”
What is Figliuzzi’s definition of propaganda? He never says, but disagreeing with MSNBC on guns or crime is not at all the same as repeating conspiracy theories about voting machines.
When a "View" co-host criticized Fox News over the shooting, Fondacaro viciously smeared her as a "racist" for doing so in an April 21 post:
Despite her whining to the contrary, View co-host Sunny Hostin is a staunch racist and shows it often from her ABC platform. On Friday’s edition of the show, she spewed her toxic racism again when she suggested the problem with gun owners in America was that they had white skin and were “radicalized” by Fox News, thus a danger to the country.
Spurred by recent reported shootings by trigger-happy property protectors against innocent people, fill-in moderator Joy Behar wondered: “So what is going on and why are these people shooting first before they even know why somebody mistakenly went into their driveway?”
Later that day, Fondacaro whined that CBS highlighted a group of moms trying to stop gun violence are "either long-time liberals or don’t have a strong political history." Fondacaro didn't explain why the moms who "don’t have a strong political history" should be attacked.
On April 24, Stephanie Hamill bashed the TV show "Gray's Anatomy" for "predictably push[ing] the anti-gun agenda while peddling the ‘weapons of war’ myth," pushing her side's pro-gun agenda in response: "And, of course, no mention about the lives that could have potentially been saved and injuries avoided had there been a good guy with a gun to immediately intervene. Also, there was no mention of the crimes committed with guns in states and cities with strict gun control laws."
After yet another mass shooting in Texas, Mark Finkelstein tried to change the subject in a May 4 post to the shooter being an "illegal immigrant":
When it comes to crime, [David] Jolly and his Democrat friends focus almost entirely on guns--rather than on the people who commit crimes. A significant portion of serious crimes in America were committed by illegal immigrants; the suspect in the mass Texas shooting among them.
[...]
If MSNBC were actually interested in reducing serious crime in America, it would be clamoring for candidates who will fight illegal immigration. Instead, the liberal media prefers to focus on "gun violence," and use it in an attempt to elect Democrats.
Christy spent a May 9 post complaining that MSNBC's Joe Scarborough pointed out that right-wing kneejerk defense of guns:
MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough opened up his Monday night primetime special with a solemn, yet outrageous and profoundly unserious rant where he accused Republicans, “cowards,” “pathetic souls,” and “vacuous creatures” of being the modern equivalent of “slaveholders and segregationists.”
In Scarborough’s view of things, “Politicians idly stand by and watch as America's children and their parents are slaughtered… All because these cowards fear gun lobbyists more than they fear the next Uvalde, Parkland, or Sandy Hook.”
That accusation would be bad enough, but as is his nature, Scarborough proceeded to escalate, “Like those enablers of slaveholders and segregationists, these timid, empty, pathetic souls care more about beating back next year's right-wing primary challenge than they do saving young children's lives. But there is no doubt that these vacuous creatures willnot escape history’s thunderous verdict.”
Christy didn't rebut anything Scarborough said -- he just complained it was said.
WND's Brown Bails Out Of His Political Analysis Topic: WorldNetDaily
Michael Brown began his July 28 WorldNetDaily column this way:
Let me state clearly from the start that this is a spiritually focused article, not a politically focused article (and certainly not a partisan political article). Let me also state clearly that this article is not meant to attack any individuals, although I will be speaking quite directly about individuals. Instead, the purpose of this article is to make a spiritual point, specifically, to understand the spiritual implications of this unique moment in our country's history.
The problem with that statement is that it requires us to ignore that he spent years boosting Donald Trump and trying to get his fellow evangelicals to turn a blind eye to Trump's amoral narcissism because he was delivering the right-wing goods, and it wasn't until after the Trump-incited Capitol riot that Brown began to finally express serious doubts about whether the ends justify the means. In that spiri, when he went on to criticize Trump, he devoted at least as much space to attacking President Biden (or, more to the point, repeating right-wing anti-Biden talking points):
At present, the two leading presidential candidates for 2024 are current President Biden, now 80, and former President Trump, now 77.
As for Trump, he is the only president in our history to be impeached twice, although his defenders would surely argue that both impeachments were based on bogus charges. Plus, they would remind us, he survived those impeachment efforts. In any case, there was constant turmoil during his years in office.
As for Biden, there are growing calls for his impeachment, regardless of how plausible those calls might be.
When have we seen something like this in our history?
In addition to this, Trump has been indicted not once, but twice, with rumors swirling of a potential third indictment. Is it possible that a former president could actually do time in jail?
As for Biden, his son Hunter appears to be in ever increasing legal trouble, with the genuine possibility of jail time.
Unfortunately for President Biden, some of the allegations brought against his son potentially impugn him. Could the current president be indicted as well?
Again I ask, when have we seen something like this in our history?
Added to this are the growing concerns about President Biden's physical and mental fitness. (And who can forget the constant attacks on then-President Trump, calling his mental fitness into question?)
After admitting that age may not be the major issue here, Brown turned disingenuous again:
Also, since I am full of vigor and health and vitality and energy at 68, I recognize that 80 does not have to be that old. So, I'm not yelling for people to retire or get out of the way unless they are clearly unable to function on the job, thereby endangering others.
As for the charges and allegations concerning Trump and the Bidens, I have no ax to grind or agenda to push. I simply pray for equal standards of justice for all. And if there is guilt, my prayer is that there will be heartfelt acknowledgment of wrongs done along with genuine contrition and repentance.
In sum, I'm not rooting for anyone to fall, nor am I gloating when things look grim for someone whose political goals I reject.
Again, Brown was a big Trump booster and apologist, so he is very much rooting for one side over the other, even if he refuses to admit it. He went on to repeat more right-wing talking points:
In our case today, the trauma of COVID is not that far in the past, nor is the memory of the race riots or the election scandals or the storming of the Capitol. Then there are the growing fears of a potential World War III – a nuclear war at that – which could decimate the planet. And this, too, is only a partial list of the crises (or potential crises) of the hour.
There's also the question of trust. Can we trust the mainstream media? Cable media? Internet media? Left-wing sources? Right-wing sources? The government? The medical profession? The education system? Organized religion?
And how do we know if something is a ridiculous conspiracy theory that should be ignored as opposed to a genuinely important story that "the powers that be" are trying to suppress? How do we figure this out?
Brown seems to be reminded that the outlet that publishes his column is a prolific promoter of fake news and conspiracy theories, and much of that untrustworthy news emanates from his side of the political aisle.
But rather than address these issues with any sort of seriousness or honesty, he turned it into a religious tract: "The good news is that times of instability, uncertainty, distrust and fear make for fertile ground for the Gospel. ... May we sow the seeds of Gospel love with tears of intercession so that, in the years ahead, many millions will come to faith with shouts of joy."
MRC Complains Again That Anti-Abortion 'Crisis Pregnancy Centers' Are Accurately Labeled Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center lovestoloudlycomplain that the media and social media websites tell the truth about so-called "crisis pregnancy centers" -- that they are virulently anti-abortion and have a penchant for misleading women in the process of coercing them into having a baby.Tom Olohan took a crack at rpomoting the approve right-wing narrative in a June 21 post, complete with hurling the sleazy "digital brownshirts" Nazi smear in his headline at the organization opointing out the dishonesty:
CNN got around to criticizing Big Tech, but only for the purpose of shaming Google for running pro-life crisis pregnancy centers ads.
CNN cited the leftist group Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) in an June 15 article criticizing Google for earning “more than $10 million over the past two years by allowing misleading advertisements for ‘fake’ abortion clinics.” In other words, abortion-obsessed CNN and the CCDH apparently couldn’t stand the fact that anti-free speech Google dared to allow crisis pregnancy centers to advertise online. The CCDH report went even further, calling crisis pregnancy centers “fake reproductive health clinics” and referring to abortion mills as “genuine clinics.” The group also linked to an earlier pressure campaign against Google and cited the abortion lobbying group NARAL when it bashed crisis pregnancy centers and claimed they were “exploiting the lack of regulation.”
Throughout the piece, CNN writer Jennifer Korn complained that crisis pregnancy centers, or “fake clinics” as she calls them, appeared in searches for abortion mills. Lest any mothers be helped or babies be saved, Korn breathlessly warned readers. “Using Semrush, an analytics tool, researchers at the CCDH identified ‘188 fake clinic websites’ that placed ads on Google between March, 2021 and February of this year. CCDH estimates that ads for fake clinics were clicked on by users 13 million times during this period.”
Interestingly, Olohan made no attempt to rebut the claim that these clincs mislead women -- instead, he complained about the "fake clinics" terminology (odd given that he enthusiastically smeared CCDH with a Nazi reference) and repeated the usual MRC attacks agains CCDH. He also attempted a lame, context-free defense o the clinics, that consisted largely of copying-and-pasting information from clinic websites:
What sort of clinics are CNN and CCDH collaborating to smear? One of the crisis pregnancy centers cited in the CCDH report, Obria Medical Clinics, offers pregnancy testing, ultrasounds, counseling, STD and AIDs testing, health education coaching, health resources and support, referrals, and prenatal care among other services. Another cited crisis pregnancy center, Alpha Pregnancy Center, offers similar services as well as adoption referrals, supplies for mothers and infants, and parenting education. These organizations and others like them offer alternatives to abortion to pregnant women and critical care and counseling, often supplied by volunteers and donated materials.
In fact, Obria has been caught misleading patients (and the government) by suggesting that they provide contraception when they only offer instruction in "natural family planning," which involves tracking menstrual cycles and abstaining from sex instead of actual contraception (which is more effective), and it also pushes the dubious claim also made by other anti-abortion activists that the abortion pill can be reversed if the dosage is not fully taken.
Olohan also complained that "the CCDH made two absurd recommendations, that crisis pregnancy centers should be forced to devote ad space to abortion disclaimers rather than pitching their services and that Google should highlight and prioritize genuine abortion clinics in search results.” In fact, Google did just that this past January when it prioritized Planned Parenthood in search results for the word pregnancy the day before the March for Life." As we've pointed out, this was another MRC search gotcha, and the MRC did not dispute the accuracy of anything on the Planned Parenthood site they were complaining about.
WND's Orient Attacks DEI, Then Laments 'Unbridgeable' Gap Between Left And Right Topic: WorldNetDaily
Still a bit adrift for things to latch onto after a couple years of spreading COVID misinformation, Jane Orient jumped onto the right-wing anti-DEI bandwagon in her July 17 WorldNetDaily column:
Corporations, universities, and medical societies talk constantly about diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). But the other side of inclusion is exclusion, and the two always go together.
[...]
We hear about the virtuous exclusion of people who wear MAGA hats, wrap themselves in an American flag while others wave the "Pride" flag, wear a cross, assert that there are two genders, or use the "wrong" pronouns. They can be kicked out of school, refused service at a restaurant, rejected for medical care, called vile names, denied the right to receive their diplomas at graduation, or otherwise treated like an untouchable, a pariah, or even a "terrorist." They can be excluded from polite society ("canceled"). Parents who complain about pornography in school libraries at a school board meeting might even risk arrest. Pro-life activists have even been excluded from normal life by being imprisoned.
"Diversity" refers to skin color or ethnicity, not to philosophy or opinion. The categories used by the U.S. Census Bureau for diversity measurements include Hispanic, non-Hispanic White, Black, American Indian and Alaska Native, Asian, and Pacific Islander. To improve their diversity score, universities need to exclude some better qualified applicants who happen to be White or Asian in order to include more persons from the other recognized groups who may be less qualified. The U.S. Supreme Court decision declaring admissions policy based on race to be unconstitutional, some fear, may have a "chilling effect" on "racial justice."
Nevertheless, Orient wanted to apply racial characteristics to her own inclusion and exclusion list:
Most of the hundreds of racial or ethnic groups in the world are excluded from the special preferences called "equity," no matter how disadvantaged they were historically or are now – e.g., Italians, Irish and Eastern Europeans.
Of course, there are people most of us would like to exclude from our lives – and from society. My list would include voyeurs, exhibitionists, child molesters, rapists, seducers and seductresses, trespassers, vandals, shoplifters, pornographers, drug and human traffickers, etc. – no matter how troubled their childhood or what race they are.
I want to include people who are respectful, punctual, orderly, honest, thrifty, loyal, competent, dependable and diligent – regardless of race or ethnicity. Don't you? Are these characteristics of "Whiteness"? Why isn't it "bigotry" to assume that? There are millions of non-Whites who meet or exceed these expectations for decent people in a civilized society.
I want to exclude people who are vulgar, insulting, tardy, slovenly, dishonest, wasteful, unfaithful, untrustworthy, incompetent, disruptive, or lazy. Don't you? There are millions of White people who fit that description. But it would be "discrimination" to exclude such a person if the person happened to be "diverse."
Orient refuses to acknowledge that there discrimination based on race and ethnicity continues despite it being illegal, and it doesn't cease being discrimination because it's not overt or blatant. Which, of course, is the entire point behind DEI initiatives. She does not explain why DEI is so bad that it apparently must be dismantled. She instead served up an somewhat dishonest plea to get along:
I want children to be taught virtue and honor – not grievances. I want them to create a better world – not tear down the work of their imperfect ancestors and leave us with chaos. I want them to live in a world of ordered liberty with equal treatment under the law – not a world of censorship, snitching, arbitrary rules and constant fear.
Our country is sharply divided into factions about what should be included and what excluded – what is good and what is evil. The gap appears to be unbridgeable. Ultimately, everyone will have to take sides.
The problem is that it seems she doesn't see her fellow right-wingers as part of the problem. Her side doesn't want the imperfections of our ancestors to be discussed at all, and it is at least as guilty of spreading "censorship, snitching, arbitrary rules and constant fear" as she accuses liberals of doing. If that gap between those factions is as "unbridgeable" as she claims, she's part of the problem, and she is making no effort to do anything about it. If she changes her mind, apologizing for spreading COVID misinformation would be a good start.
Flashback: MRC's Kneejerk Defense Of Guns Continues Topic: Media Research Center
Our flashback on the Media Research Center's kneejerk defense of guns continues with an April 1 column by Jeffrey Lord accusing Democratic Rep. Jamaal Bowman, an advocate of gun regulation, of being a hypocrite because he benefits as a congressman from having a security detail:
There is Rep. Bowman shrieking all this - as he and every other Member of Congress work daily in the Capitol and surrounding House and Senate office buildings that are swarming with - yes indeed - gun-carrying Capitol Police officers. Bowman has specifically called his Republican colleagues cowards for not supporting gun control. Which raises the obvious question: Is Congressman Bowman a coward for refusing to give up the gun-carrying Capitol Police that protect him?
[...]
And as Rep. Bowman himself just illustrated, the Congressman adamantly opposes providing teachers in schools with guns to protect school children - but makes no move to demand the Capitol Police surrounding him give up theirs.
In other words, the message from all these supposedly anti-gun media types and Democrats in Congress like Congressman Bowman is simple.
“Guns for me but not for thee.”
Clay Waters complained in an April 3 post that someone on PBS was critical of guns after the Nashville shooting (about which the MRC wanted you to focus on the allegedly transgender shooter, not the guns):
Tax-funded PBS features the Amanpour & Co interview show, and the Tuesday edition featured a self-righteous gun-control rant by host Christiane Amanpour keyed to the murders at a Christian school in Nashville. Left unanswered: How would many of the proposed gun-control measures (like background checks) would have stopped this attack? Amanpour can't blame the shooter. She has to blame the gun-rights lobby. Notice there's not the slightest attempt to avoid editorializing.
[...]
Amanpour interviewed Dr. Joseph Sakran of Johns Hopkins Hospital, who called for guns to be considered a “public health problem.” Amanpour once again called for her own bizarre version of “sensible gun control,” which looks a lot like the gun confiscation that occurred in Australia after a mass shooting there.
We don't recall Waters or anyone else at the MRC complaining that someone on Fox News failed to make "he slightest attempt to avoid editorializing."
Kevin Tober used an April 5 post to dismiss protests in favor of gun regulation by high school students as nothing more than "tantrums":
On Wednesday, petulant leftist high school students in select cities across the United States walked out of school to demand lawmakers infringe on their fellow Americans' Second Amendment rights in the juvenile belief that this infringement would somehow keep schools safe from deranged people wanting to commit mass murder. Naturally, CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News were more than happy to champion their cause and hype their truancy for at the behest of the left's anti-American gun-grabbing agenda.
[...]
Meanwhile, onNBC Nightly News, anchor Lester Holt acted as a stenographer for the gun control activists by breathlessly reporting how "across the country, today students walked out of their classrooms by the thousands demanding that officials and politicians do more to stop gun violence."
Holt added that some of the students were apparently "saying they didn’t want to live in fear in their schools."
Maybe if members of the media like Holt would report on these shootings responsibly and add context, like the fact that high school students have a better chance of dying in the car on the way to school than dying in their classroom, these students wouldn't be living in fear.
Tober didn't explain exactly what level of high school student being massacred in their classroom he find acceptable.
When a commentator pointed out how little Republicans care about keeping guns away from dangerous people, Tober ranted later that day:
On Wednesday night's edition of MSNBC's The Last Word, vile leftist Lawrence O’Donnell lashed out at Republicans and accused them of not having any sadness over children dying in mass shootings. To make matters even worse, he doubled down and outrageously claimed Republicans are dedicated to ensuring "America's mass murderers are the very best-equipped mass murderers in the world." O'Donnell is no stranger to this kind of incendiary rhetoric. In fact, he's made almost identical claims last year after the tragic Robb Elementary School shooting. Prior to that, O'Donnell sneered how "Republican politicians do not care how large the body count gets."
After mocking South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham for being outraged at the political prosecution of Donald Trump by the George Soros-backed prosecutor Alvin Bragg, O'Donnell claimed that Graham shows emotion for Trump but not for children being killed. He then took it a step further and painted the entire Republican Party as being unmoved by children dying: "Professional Republicans absolutely do not cry for dead American children when they are murdered by AR-15s," O'Donnell falsely claimed without any evidence at all.
[...]
It appears there is no low O'Donnell is willing to stoop to in order to smear half the country as being complicit in murder. When will MSNBC hold him accountable?
Despite all his ranting, Tober made no effort to disprove anything O'Donnell said.
MSNBC’s The ReidOut host Joy Reid had one of her most vile meltdowns since September 2021 when she claimed conservatives “love Covid so much” that they “want it everywhere” to murder as many people as possible, and drink it in a Kool-Aid cup.” As bad as that was, Monday night’s Reid meltdown was a whole nother level of evil. Reid opened her show claiming Republicans “clearly don't give a damn if they or their friends die a painful, gruesome death at the hands of an assault rifle.”
Later on in her demonic, hate-filled program, Reid brought on turncoat former Republican consultant Matthew Dowd to kvetch about how Texas Republican governor Greg Abbott was considering a pardon of a Texas police officer who was wrongly convicted of killing a Black Lives Matter terrorist who pointed a rifle in his face.
That last claim by Tober didn't age well. As we noted, not only did the shooter provoke the confrontation, no witness saw the "Black Lives Matter terrorist" point a gun at him, and it was revealed a few days later that unsealed documents from the case showed that the shooter had a history of making racist and violent comments on social media, stating just a couple months before the shooting that “I might go to Dallas to shoot looters."
An April 13 post by Brad Wilmouth dismissed gun laws as "irrelevant":
On the morning after the shooting attack on a bank in Louisville, CNN This Morning was true to form in promoting new gun laws that were not relevant to the crime, and devoted a segment to allowing anti-gun Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) to push for irrelevant gun laws.
Even though the Louisville gunman passed a background check and purchased the murder weapon legally from a gun dealer, co-host Poppy Harlow plugged Senator Murphy's push for "universal background checks" as she opened the show at 6:00 a.m. Eastern: "We'll talk to Senator Chris Murphy later in the show, who keeps reintroducing this universal background check bill -- keeps trying, keeps trying, keeps trying."
At 8:08 a.m., Harlow recalled that President Joe Biden keeps calling for more gun control in the aftermath of each high-casualty mass shooting, playing recent clips of him. She then reiterated Senator Murphy's push for "universal background checks" as she introduced the Connecticut Democrat: "Let's bring in Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut. He was a key negotiator in the previous bipartisan gun talks -- keeps reintroducing legislation for universal background checks."
It is baffling that "universal background checks" (requiring private sellers of used firearms to pay a gun dealer to conduct a background check) is so reflexively brought up when it is never relevant to any of the mass shootings that receive media attention.
Without mentioning the role that journalists and other liberals have played in stoking murder rates and shootings by portraying police officers as racists, and complaining about "mass incarceration" of criminals, Harlow blamed guns for a recent surge in gun-related deaths of children.
Wilmouth didn't explain why racist cops shouldn't be exposed or why they should be protected.
Dawn Slusher went on a tirade over the Shonda Rhimes-created show "Station 19" in an April 17 post after a character declared that "the answer to anything in this country is not more guns" (bolding in original):
Finally, “the answer to anything in this country” is absolutely more guns - more guns in the hands of the right people, to be exact. Guns in the hands of the right people have always been what’s stopped active shooter situations. Guns in the hands of the right people are what keep law and order. Guns in the hands of the right people are what people use to defend themselves and others against an attack.
Just consider the fact that authorities admitted that trans school shooter Audrey Hale targeted the Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, because they didn’t have armed security and she bypassed another target because they did. That alone proves armed security works and gun-free zones do not. In fact, gun-free zones are basically an open invitation to bad people with guns like Hale.
But leave it to Hollywood to get it all backwards. In the Shondaland of make believe, facts don’t matter and propaganda reigns supreme.
Wilmouth returned for an April 19 post grousing that a CNN interview of Republican New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu "even went so far as to try to credit strict gun laws in neighboring blue states for New Hampshire's low homicide rate," going on to sneer that "In the same vein, the liberal news network also has a history of trying to blame pro-gun Indiana for crime in the more anti-gun Illinois." He made no effort to disprove either assertion.
Newsmax Continued Trump Defense After (Fourth) Indictment Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax's defend-and-attack strategy over Donald Trump's fourth indictment unsurprisingly continued well after the indictment itself. This is what it published in Aug. 16 and 17, a few days after the indictment was announced:
Newsmax slowed the pace a bit over the next few days, focusing more on highlighting Trump'swhining about the indictment. It did, however, publish a wire article noting that members of the Georgia grand jury that handed up the indictment of Trump and his cronies were facing threats. But it also published an article touting how "A new Newsmax/McLaughlin national survey shows former President Donald Trump maintaining his strong national lead over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the 2024 Republican presidential primary" while failing to disclose that McLaughlin is Trump's campaign pollster -- which would suggest a certain amount of bias in the polling.
As arraignment time arrived -- which coincided with a Republican presidential debate Trump refused to take part in -- defend-and-attack mode returned:
On Aug. 24, the day Trump traveled to Georgia to turn himself in and have his mugshot taken, Newsmax did its usual ramping up of attacks (with the occasional smattering of more balanced accounts):
But there was also a dissenting columnist in the midst of all this. Michael Reagan took a break from sayingcrazythings by spending his Aug. 18 column trying to warn people that Trump is not doing himself any favors as a presidential candidate by continually getting indicted:
But when the indictments keep rolling in — aren’t we up to four now? — it’s time to stop thinking with your heart and start thinking with your head.
In 2024 instead of being on the campaign trail, Trump is going to be spending a great deal of his time in the courtroom trying to stay out of prison.
That’s a DEFCON Level One distraction.
Rallies and news conferences on the courthouse steps do not a campaign make.
Another huge distraction are the legal bills entailed with his effort to stay among the free.
Trump must hire four different legal teams in four different jurisdictions.
That is a Ukraine-summer-offensive-level expense right there.
[...]
The best strategy for people who love Trump and/or who feel Trump is being persecuted is to nominate a candidate who can actually convert the 53% anti-Trump voters into pro-GOP voters in 2024.
A viable Republican candidate, without all Trump’s baggage — fair and unfair — has a chance to win undecided voters who will never pull the lever for our naion's 45th commnader in chief.
That victory spares the country four more years of disastrous leftist rule and allows Trump to devote all his attention to this, unprecedented, third world variety legal persecution targeting him.
On the other hand, a Trump nomination means gloom was the correct response.
We all lose. Trump, Republicans, and the United States of America.
Needless to say, the pro-Trump management at Newsmax felt the need to stick an editor's note at the top stating that "The following column does not constitute an endorsement for any political party or political candidate on the part of Newsmax."
Posted by Terry K.
at 6:25 PM EDT
Updated: Wednesday, September 6, 2023 12:19 AM EDT
WND Pushes Another Baseless Attack On COVID Vaccine Topic: WorldNetDaily
The COVID vaccine misinformation at WorldNetDaily just doesn't stop. Bob Unruh wrote in a July 15 article:
A health emergency has been declared by officials in Peru over a sudden surge in Guillain-Barre syndrome, which is a potential side effect to the COVID-19 shots used so often around the world.
National File, revealing that the development "has been linked directly to COVID jabs," said the "rare and dangerous neurological disorder" has been sweeping across the country where 84% have been "fully vaccinated."
"There has been a significant increase in recent weeks that forces us to take actions as a state to protect the health and life of the population," according to Peruvian Health Minister Cesar Vasquez, who was quoted in the report.
The report continued, "While Peru’s government and media have indicated that the outbreak of Guillain-Barre cases could be related to COVID-19, they have not acknowledged the elephant in the room; which is the question of whether or not Peru’s widespread adoption of the COVID jabs, and not the disease itself, has led to the outbreak."
In fact, as an actual fact-checker found, no information has been presented to positively link COVID vaccines to Guillain-Barre syndrome. Unruh also censored the fact that Peru has had previous outbreaks of Guillain-Barre in 2018 and 2019 -- neither of which could possibly have been caused by a COVID vaccine since they didn't exist yet -- and some of the patients in this year's cases presented with a bacterial infection that was blamed for the 2019 outbreak.
Unruh also failed to disclose that his source for this story, the right-wing National Wire, has a history of publishing medical misinformation. It's cleaer that Unruh didn't bother to fact-check anything in the article -- he was apparently content to serve as a servile stenographer to feed content into the WND machine.
The Media Research Center has had mixed feelings about the Barbie doll in recent months -- it whined about the existence of a transgender Barbie, but it praised the creation of a Down syndrome Barbie (and even gently criticized toxic right-wing influencer Steven Crowder for mocking it). So the new 'Barbie' movie was bound to result in the creation of manufactured outrage at the MRC. Christian Toto spent his July 15 column fearmongering that the movie might be (gasp!) "potentially woke," whatever that means:
Like the 
The Navy apparently hired a drag queen as a recruitment tool, and the dragphobes at the Media Reserach Center unsurprisingly didn't take it well. Kevin Tober raged over it in a May 3 
Newsmax got rewarded for its 
When it wasn't 
The COVID vaccine misinformation just never stops at WorldNetDaily. Bob Unruh contributed in a July 21 
Despite having a history of attacking actors who make political statements, the Media Research Center makes an exception for actors who spout right-wing talking points. That's what Christian Toto did in his July 1 
There's nothing that right-wingers won't invent conspiracy theories about. Take the concept of "15-minute cities," which seeks to place most of person's basic needs within a 15-minute radius, via walking or biking, of their house. The false fearmongering 
Our 
Michael Brown began his July 28 WorldNetDaily 
The Media Research Center 
Still a 
Our flashback on the Media Research Center's 
Newsmax's 
The COVID vaccine misinformation at WorldNetDaily just doesn't stop. Bob Unruh wrote in a July 15 
