Same Cliff Kincaid Anti-Gay Freak-Out, Different Day Topic: Accuracy in Media
Another day, another gay-bashing Accuracy in Media column by Cliff Kincaid disingenuously endorsing the proposed anti-gay law in Uganda.
Does Kincaid admit that the billwould allow the death penalty merely for homosexual behavior? Nope. Does Kincaid admit that most HIV in Uganda is spread via heterosexual contact? Nope. Does Kincaid once again baselessly present the opinions of two people as somehow being representative of the whole of Uganda? Yup.
This Is The Media Cheering? Topic: Media Research Center
Ina Feb. 9 MRC Culture & Media Institute item, Sarah Knoploh invokes the Depiction-Equals-Approval Fallacy by claiming that actress Anne Hathaway's decision to leave the Catholic Church was met by "media cheers." How so? "USA Today, New York magazine and The Huffington Post used the public break as an opportunity to scold the Church."
Knoploh's definition of "scolding," it seems, is as skewed as declaring short blurbs in three unrelated media outlets to be "cheers." There's no "scolding" going on; all these outlets did is report what Hathaway has said on the issue. All three outlets reported Hathway statement that "Why should I support an organization that has a limited view of my beloved brother?"
Knoploh also took offense at references to the Catholic church's "intolerant views on homosexuality," but she doesn't dispute the accuracy of the characterization.
Kolploh also appears to scoff at the idea that Hathaway once thought as a child about becoming a nun. Speaking from experience, it's not uncommon for a Catholic child to consider the priesthood or sisterhood at some point in their childhoods, however fleetingly.
Knoploh's wildly inaccurate confusion of reporting and opinion is apparently encouraged at CMI; Carolyn Plocher, in a Feb. 11 CMI post, referenced how Hathaway "recently announced to a cheering media" she was leaving the church.
NewsBusters' False Claim About Weather Exploded Topic: NewsBusters
There's a lot of global warming bamboozlement going on at NewsBusters right now in the wake of the back-to-back snowstorms that hit the East Coast, but the most egregious example has to be Mark Finkelstein's denial of the basic meterological fact that the warmer air is, the more moisture it can hold. Media Matters and Sadly, No! both demolished this claim.
NewsBusters in general, and Noel Sheppard in particalar, is a teeminghive of global warming bamboozlement.
Tancredo's Tea Party Remarks Finally Noticed At WND -- In Tancredo's Column Topic: WorldNetDaily
The good news: More than a week after they were first made, WorldNetDaily finally got around to noting Tom Tancredo's remarks at the National Tea Party Convention insulting Obama voters and calling for a "civics literacy test" before being allowed to vote (despite WND having a reporter covering events there). The bad news: they were noted by Tancredo himself in his column, and he's trying to defend them.
Tancredo's Feb. 13 WND column provides a disingenuous and misleading defense:
I did not say in Nashville that all 67 million Obama voters are illiterate rabble who would fail a civics literacy test. What I did suggest and what I believe is that in the 2008 presidential election, the margin of victory for Obama was provided by people who would not be at the polls if we had meaningful civics literacy requirements for voting.
That statement provoked a stream of angry e-mail messages from outraged Obama voters, many of whom proudly proclaimed their advanced degrees in art history, Egyptology and political science. The message was as consistent as it was strident: What an ignoramus I must be to question the educational level of Obama voters!
My tea-party remarks had nothing to do with educational credentials or even IQ. We are all painfully aware that Barack Obama, like Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton before him, got more votes from college professors than his Republican opponent.
And then, something really odd happened, mostly because I think that we do not have a civics literacy test before people can vote in this country. People who could not even spell the word "vote," or say it in English, put a committed socialist idealogue in the White House, name is Barack Hussein Obama.
He said nothing about "margin of victory," and has remarks as stated can only be described as a general insult against all Obama voters. (Oh, and Tancredo fails to quote his own exact words in his defense.)
He continues:
My remarks were aimed at the electorate's lack of civics literacy, which is quite different. Literacy in civics and American history is not necessarily enhanced by additional years of higher education devoted to increasingly specialized expertise in some field.
I have often suggested that new voters should be required to pass the civics literacy test already given to immigrants who want to become naturalized citizens. Yet, my suggestion was twisted into the idea that I want to see a return to "Jim Crow laws" that were used to keep blacks from voting.
This distortion of my proposal requires two acts of self-deception. First, it requires you to believe that minorities will fail any civics test, an idea that is highly insulting to all minorities. Secondly, it requires a willful disregard of the real history of Jim Crow laws. Blacks were not kept from voting by the laws themselves but the blatant discriminatory way they were administered by local officials. It is absurd to claim that any civics literacy test will be discriminatory, yet that is how my proposal was described by leftist bloggers and liberal journalists like E.J. Dionne.
Tancredo misses the point. Literacy tests have been outlawed precisely because of their potential for abuse to keep "undesirables" from voting, as happened in the Jim Crow South. And Tancredo himself expresses a discriminatory motive in favoring their reinstatement: to prevent "undesirables" -- that is, people who think differently from himself -- from voting.
Discrimination is discrimination, whether it's racial or ideological. Too bad Tancredo doesn't see the difference.
Palling-Around-With-Terrorists Watch Topic: WorldNetDaily
On Feb. 15, Joseph Farah willonceagainserve as guest host for convicted felon and domestic terrorist G. Gordon Liddy's radio show.
Meanwhile ... Topic: The ConWeb
We wrote this week's Media Matters weekly summary, where we pay special attention to Dana Perino's role as the factually challenged press secretary in exile at Fox News. Read it.
Anderson Cooper Derangement Syndrome Watch Topic: WorldNetDaily
The tough tenor toward the missionaries from Central Valley Baptist Church in Meridian, Idaho, was set by CNN alpha female Anderson Cooper. The activist anchor and his houseboys in Haiti had been exceedingly hard on the hapless group, whose aim it was to, first, whisk the children to the Dominican Republic and, next, help "each child find healing, hope, joy and new life in Christ," as well as "opportunities for adoption into a loving Christian family."
[...]
In fairness, Anderson is not working with much. He suffers from what Peter Brimelow, editor of VDARE.COM, has termed intellectual inertia. It infects most mainstream journalists. Put less politely, Anderson's stupid. How is he to know that a legal burden must be met before a manifestly ludicrous prosecution proceeds? Hopefully, a Haitian justice has taught Anderson a legal lesson (and some humility).
Kessler Misleads to Protect Bush Admin Topic: Newsmax
In a Feb. 12 Newsmax column, Ronald Kessler appears to be cribbing from Dana Perino's talking points regarding comparisons between alleged "underwear bomber" Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and shoe bomber Richard Reid:
Holder and White House officials have cited the fact that the Bush administration gave the same rights to shoe bomber Richard Reid as to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab after his arrest in Detroit.
The comparisons are misleading. Reid was arrested three months after 9/11, before the Bush administration had established military tribunals and procedures for dealing with such threats outside of civilian courts.
In fact, the Bush administration placed numerous people in military custody before and around the time that Reid was arrested, which seemed not to have been hindered by the alleged lack of a military tribunal system.
WND Birthers Rail Against Fellow Right-Wingers for Rejecting Birtherism Topic: WorldNetDaily
How desperate are the birthers at WorldNetDaily getting? They're turning against longtime right-wing allies that won't join their conspiracy.
In his Feb. 10 column, Joseph Farah lashed out at Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly for ridiculing his obsession, insisting that they're the real conspiracy theorists because they think President Obama benefits from such a fringe obsession.
This was followed, almost as in lockstep, by a Feb. 11 WND column by Farah's successor at the Western Journalism Center, Floyd Brown, who similarly bashed Beck and O'Reilly, then added Andrew Breitbart to the mix. Brown lovingly calls Farah "heroic" for pursuing this obsession.
But Brown also seems to be turning his back on the so-called investigation the WJC has done on the subject. Brown writes that a curiously unnamed investigator for WJC found that "It would have been very easy for a relative to forge an absent parent's signature [to a Hawaiian birth certificate in 1961] to a form and mail it in." But this seems to contradict the WJC's previous claim that Hawaii would not issue a birth certificate for a child born out of state that claimed the child was born in Hawaii.
Further, just because something is theoretically possible does not mean it's likely, as Brown and the WJC seems to be suggesting regarding Obama. There's no evidence whatsoever that any member of Obama's family had any motivation to ensure Barack was designated as Hawaii-born if he was not.
This is the kind of conspiracy-mongering that is causing the likes of Beck, O'Reilly and Breitbart to remain at arm's length from birthers. But Farah and Brown would like to pretend otherwise.
Meanwhile, Farah still wasn't done ranting about it. In his Feb. 12 column, he rails again at O'Rreilly and Beck, accusing them of flip-flopping on the subject.
Farah has devoted every column this week to the subject of birtherism. Is someone feeling a little defensive?
Aversion to 'Gay' At CNS, WND Explained Topic: CNSNews.com
Ever wonder why CNSNews.com won't use the word "gay" (and even censors it in its comments) and WorldNetDaily puts it in scare quotes, and both make copious use of the word "homosexual"?
A newly released CBS/New York Times poll found that 57 percent of Americans approve of "homosexuals" serving in the military -- but when "homosexuals" was replaced by "gay men and lesbians," support jumped to 70 percent. On the question of "serving openly," 44 percent were in favor when "homosexuals" was used, but 58 percent were in favor when "gay men and lesbians" was used.
The insistence on thte part of CNS and WND on using "homosexual" over "gay" seems to confirm that, as AmericaBlog notes, the intent in doing so is derogatory.
Perhaps the respective poohbahs at CNS and WND would like to explain their usage to their readers, just in case we're wrong.
WND Birthers Sever Ties With Longtime Allies Topic: WorldNetDaily
How desperate are the birthers at WorldNetDaily getting? They're turning against longtime right-wing allies that won't join their conspiracy.
In his Feb. 10 column, Joseph Farah lashed out at Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly for ridiculing his obsession, insisting that they're the real conspiracy theorists because they think President Obama benefits from such a fringe obsession.
This was followed, almost as in lockstep, by a Feb. 11 WND column by Farah's successor at the Western Journalism Center, Floyd Brown, who similarly bashed Beck and O'Reilly, then added Andrew Breitbart to the mix. Brown lovingly calls Farah "heroic" for pursuing this obsession.
But Brown also seems to be turning his back on the so-called investigation the WJC has done on the subject. Brown writes that a curiously unnamed investigator for WJC found that "It would have been very easy for a relative to forge an absent parent's signature [to a Hawaiian birth certificate in 1961] to a form and mail it in." But this seems to contradict the WJC's previous claim that Hawaii would not issue a birth certificate for a child born out of state that claimed the child was born in Hawaii.
Further, just because something is theoretically possible does not mean it's likely, as Brown and the WJC seems to be suggesting regarding Obama. There's no evidence whatsoever that any member of Obama's family had any motivation to ensure Barack was designated as Hawaii-born if he was not.
This is the kind of conspiracy-mongering that is causing the likes of Beck, O'Reilly and Breitbart to remain at arm's length from birthers. But Farah and Brown would like to pretend otherwise. And WND's abrogation of the basic tenets of journalism by letting the first word about Tancredo's remarks on its website come in the form of Tancredo defending in a column WND is paying him to write is nothing less than appalling.
A Feb. 10 WorldNetDaily article by Bob Unruh is a veritable symphony of gay-bashing, baselessly portraying a bill by a "homosexual congressman from Colorado" as a power grab for favorite WND whipping boy Kevin Jennings to institute his "homo-genda" -- a phrase that, despite appearing in quotes in the headline, appears nowhere in the article, quoted or otherwise. As an authority for what the bill purportedly does, Unruh consulted rabidly anti-gay right-winger Linda Harvey, who even admits that she can't prove a thing she's saying.
CNSNews.com makes its contribution to Avatar Derangement Syndrome with a Feb. 11 article by Penny Starr detailing "Best-selling author and screenwriter" Andrew Klavan's attacks on "Avatar":
On the other hand, “Avatar” is blatantly critical of the United States and the military, he said. And even if Cameron has changed from touting his film as being one that reflects how America is waging the war on terror to one about environmentalism, the message is clear.
"Of course, it's anti-American and anti-military," Klavan said. "(The U.S. military) are sadists and killers. They are happy to march over the indigenous, native people to get their resources."
Ironically, Klavan says, the natural world inhabited by the peaceful blue creatures on the planet Pandora in "Avatar" is really filled with the technology and democracy that has made the world a better place: even if aviation is in the form of flying dragons, it is the trees that light up and have Internet-like connections to power and wisdom, and the female species are treated as equals to males.
In other words, Cameron has successfully blended fantasy with his ideological message.
"He hit the sweet spot of environmental irrationality," Klavan said.
Starr baselessly claims that "Klavan is an insider when it comes to understanding liberalism in popular culture, especially when it comes to Hollywood." She doesn't disclosejust how right-wing Klavan is -- he regularly posts videos on the the right-wing PJTV, and has appeared on Glenn Beck's radio and TV shows numerous times.
Anti-Abortion Activist Calls Out Stanek's Condoning of Tiller Murder Topic: WorldNetDaily
As we detailed last year, WorldNetDaily initially sought to distance itself from the shooting death of abortion doctor George Tiller by Scott Roeder (despite having repeatedly labeled him as "Tiller the Killer" prior to his death), depicting Roeder as mentally ill and not a part of the anti-abortion movement (even though he was). So it's interesting that most recent mentions of Roeder at WND sought to condone his murderous behavior.
Jack Cashill defended the murder as a "frontier justice" necessity in columns on Nov. 12 and Jan. 14. And in a Feb. 3 column, Jill Stanek tried to have it both ways, claiming that she had "a problem with Scott Roeder murdering Tiller" while simultaneously lamenting that Roeder was not allowed to mount a "necessity" defense because it is "is anathema to both pro-aborts and the U.S. legal system thanks to abortion," going on to cite "Tiller's continued avoidance of justice."
This prompted a response by Gregg Cunningham, head of the anti-abortion Center For Bio-Ethical Reform, chastising Stanek's condoning stance, which WND surprisingly published on Feb. 8:
Regarding the murder of abortionist George Tiller, she argues essentially that Scott Roeder's jury should have been allowed to find that stalking, ambushing and blowing out the doctor's brains wasn't murder because George Tiller was an abortionist. Jill emphasizes that she is personally opposed to vigilante assassinations. She says that she might not have voted to reduce Scott Roeder's offense to manslaughter had she been given that option as his juror. But she then asserts that jurors should be permitted to consider the horror of abortion as a mitigating circumstance when deciding the fates of those who kill abortionists. This chilling, "eye-for-an-eye" ethic is difficult to distinguish from the barbaric apologetic used by the "Army of God" anarchists who cheer on sociopaths such as Scott Roeder. It is a license to kill.
[...]
Jill also endorses Roeder's failed attempt to establish that killing George Tiller wasn't murder because Tiller was allegedly committing illegal abortions for which he wasn't being brought to justice. George Tiller was never convicted of aborting unlawfully. A very pro-life Kansas prosecutor named Phill Kline couldn't even nail him for what amounted to paperwork violations. And even if bias by other prosecutors protected Tiller from further pursuit, is a lynch mob really the proper antidote for prosecutorial corruption?
[...]
Jill concludes by lamenting that the babies were denied "their day in court" when the Roeder judge placed abortion off limits as a proper consideration in determining the defendant's guilt. But she has chosen the wrong forum for a fight over rights of personhood for unborn children. There are two issues here. The first is whether Scott Roeder did or did not murder George Tiller. The second is whether abortion should or should not be legal. The first is a criminal-justice issue, and the second is a public-policy matter. If those two questions are not resolved in separate arenas, the rule of law becomes the real victim.
This puts Stanek in a bit of a spot, since she previously praised Cunningham for writing an "absolutely fabulous, must read letter" in support of using graphic images of abortion during protests of President Obama's speech last year at Notre Dame; Cunningham had written that Notre Dame students who voted for Obama "must not be allowed to graduate in comfort" and called Obama a "serial-killer."
Interestingly, Stanek has yet to respond to Cunningham, either in her column or on her blog. Meanwhile, a similar letter by Cunningham to anti-abortion extremist Randall Terry got a much different response -- derision and scorn from another extremist, George Offerman.
So, any chance Cunningham can pen a letter to Jack Cashill?
In the poem, Obama seems to be confronting Gramps with the realization that he is actually his father. Obama calls the poem "Pop," after all, not "Gramps."
"Under my seat, I pull out the Mirror I've been saving," writes Obama. Yes, the two look alike, they smell alike, they have the same ears, and Pop even has "the same amber stain on his shorts that I've got on mine." (I'll leave the last one alone.)
Obama is right. They do look alike. Obama does not, however, look like Barack Sr. – and, Abercrombie concedes, the grown-up Obama does not sound at all like him, either.
As Obama admits in "Dreams," Gramps hangs out in otherwise all-black bars and pals around with his communist soulmate and sex merchant, Frank Marshall Davis.
Did a black woman – perhaps a friend of Davis' – give birth to a child of Dunham's? Might that explain what Obama describes as "the complicated, unspoken transaction between the two men"? Or, another possibility, was Davis the father of Ann's baby, as he, too, matches the description of "Pop" in all salient details?
