CNS Runs Another AP Headline Through The Bias Machine Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com adds yetanotherentry to its growing list of Associated Press headlines it has rewritten to add right-wing bias.
Here's how the AP headlined an Sept. 20 article on the season debut of "Dancing With the Stars," which includes transgendered Chaz Bono: "New 'Dancing' cast makes its ballroom debut."
Run that same story through the bias machine at CNS, and it magically has a new headline: "'Dancing With the Stars' Rolls Out Its Transgender-Acceptance Season."
Never mind that the word "transgender" never appears in the article, nor does it discuss the issue of "acceptance." The MRC clearly has an agenda to push, and its marching orders are to freakout over the existence of Bono.
Between the rampant headline-rewriting and its bashing of AP as a "liberal media outlet," one has to wonder why CNS even bothers to pay it money for the privilege of publishing its stories on the CNS website (beyond trying to create the illusion that CNS is a real "news" organization, that is).
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:35 AM EDT
Updated: Wednesday, September 21, 2011 12:41 AM EDT
Kessler Fluffs Bush Through Plagiarism-Prone Ex-Aide Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax's Ronald Kessler has been a longtimefluffer of George W. Bush and his presidency. A new book by a former Bush aide gives him the opportunity to fluff once again.
Kessler's Sept. 15 column downplays the rampant plagiarism former Bush aide Tim Goeglein committed -- it's not mentioned until the fifth paragraph of his column, and well after he calls Goeglein "the conservative voice of the White House" who "acted as liaison with conservatives, taking Bush’s message to them and bringing back their concerns and suggestions" -- and quickly turns the story to the saintly actions of Bush:
“I departed the White House that Friday shattered and fearful, exiting the White House gates as I had done a thousand times before and vowing to myself that, even as I returned to work to foster a smooth transition for my successor, I would never again darken the doorstep of the West Wing,” Goeglein writes.
The following week, Josh Bolten, Bush’s chief of staff, told Goeglein that Bush wanted to see him. A few days later, Goeglein walked into the Oval Office and began by offering an apology; Bush cut him off.
“Tim,” he said, “I want you to know I forgive you.”
“But Mr. President, I owe you . . .”
“Tim,” he said, “I have known mercy and grace in my own life, and I am offering it to you now. You are forgiven,” he said firmly.
Then Bush stunned Goeglein even more. Bush said he wanted him to bring in his wife Jenny and two sons. The following week, they all met with Bush in the Oval Office.
“He gave each boy presidential gifts; photos were snapped; hugs all around and handshakes; we departed in a daze of gratitude,” Goeglein says.
“I was stunned not only that he offered his sense of forgiveness to me but also that he wanted to extend that grace and mercy to my family,” Goeglein says.
Kessler lets Goeglein explain away his plagiarism as "an extension of my horrid pride," as he also downplayed the extent of it. Kessler wrote that according to the Fort Wayne, Ind., newspaper that published Goeglein, "20 of 38 Goeglein columns between 2000 and 2008 contained 'portions copied from other sources without attribution.'" In fact, the paper found a total of 27 Goeglein columns dating to 1995 containing some form of plagiarism. Kessler also denies credit to the blogger who first discovered the plagiarism.
Kessler does, however, make sure offer a weird endorsement of Goeglein's book: "In his book, he presents a thoughtful critique of conservatism and what it means today. Ironically, in view of his plagiarism, the book is a breezy read, impressively researched, and full of thoughtful insights."
Kessler does not indicate whether he did any spot-checking to see if Goeglein plagiarized any part of his book.
Vadum Desperate to Link Anything To ACORN Topic: WorldNetDaily
We already know that Matthew Vadum is extremelyfact-challenged. Turns out he's also desperate to peddle his WorldNetDaily-published, ACORN-bashing book "Subversion Inc." by desperately trying to tie random news events to ACORN.
A Sept. 13 WND article highlights how Andrea Pringle, a senior aide to Washington, D.C., mayor Vincent Gray -- described as a "high-level Democratic Party insider" -- admitted to voting in the District of Columbia in one election, even though she lives in Maryland; according to the article, this "appears to constitute voter fraud." The headline calls Pringle an "ACORN operative" even though no direct ACORN employment is noted and any actual connection to ACORN is tangental at best, like this:
She was campaign manager for former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun, D-Ill., when she sought the presidency in 2004. Barack Obama helped to elect Braun to the U.S. Senate in 1992 when he ran a successful get-out-the-vote effort for ACORN subsidiary Project Vote.
Yeah, that's all WND and Vadum have.
The point of the article was to plug Vadum's book, featuring this Vadum quote: "The tired old refrain we keep hearing from the Left is that voter fraud is a myth, but in fact it is fairly common crime." Well, no; Vadum offers no evidence that this was anything other than an isolated instance, or that Pringle set out to deliberately commit "voter fraud." Pringle has said that she voted in D.C. because she had not officially established residence in Maryland.
We can only assume Vadum's book is filled with the same kind of desperate guilt-by-association as this article.
CNS' Ingratitude to the Associated Press Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com pays a fee to the Associated Press for the right to publish AP wire copy on its website. And what does the AP get from CNS (and its parent, the Media Research Center)? Nothing but ingratitude.
A Sept. 19 CNS article by Susan Jones on President Obama's deficit reduction plan contained this line: "As for Obama’s call to put 'country above party,' even liberal media outlets don’t see it that way." And what is the only "liberal media outlet" that Jones cites? The Associated Press. At no point does Jones offer any evidence that the AP is "liberal."
Then, Jones rather hilariously includes this footnote at the end: "The Associated Press contributed some of the information used in this report."
CNS is paying AP for the privilege of insulting it. Talk about ingratitude. If the AP is so "liberal," why is paying to run the AP's news on its website?
Even more funny: The sign-up box for CNS' email newsletter contains this exhortation: "Be the first to know all of the news that the liberal media are hiding." It's laughable for CNS to make that claim when much of the news on the CNS website is directly from that very same "liberal media" it purports to despise.
Either CNS has no scruples and is simply paying for AP copy to create a veneer of credibility it wouldn't have otherwise, or it simply doesn't care about the logical inconsistency of publicly bashing a news organization it pays to obtain the content it's bashing.
If the AP is so horrible, CNS should cancel its contract.
Apparently, a condition of employment at WorldNetDaily is that you must be a birther. WND's Aaron Klein has used his WABC radio show in the past few weeks to peddle some key birther claims about the supposed inauthencity of President Obama's birth certificate.
On the Sept. 4 edition of his radio show, Klein told guest, fellow WND employee and fellow birther Jerome Corsi that "I personally hired independent forensics experts, as did WorldNetDaily -- but I did myself. They didn't know who I was, they didn't know each other, and they independently verified that there were modifications made, that they found modifications on the birth certificate PDF document that was released. They can't say what the modifications were, but that already raises questions." Klein offers no further elaboration on who these so-called "experts" are.
That would be surprising, because Corsi has already admitted that no real forensic document examiners will venture an opinion on the authenticity of the PDF file, and that none of the so-called "experts" he has cited are not "traditionally trained court-authorized forensic document examiners." That raises questions about the so-called "experts" Klein retained. Further, WND has already pointed out that the "modifications" that were made were done to enhance the legibility of the document -- hardly the conspiracy he suggests it is.
Klein complained that anyone who peddles birther conspiracies "are disparaged, they are smeared by the media" -- then inadvertently demonstrated why that is by letting Corsi spin his conspiracy that Donald Trump is secretly working with Obama to exploit the issue to achieve Obama's re-election.
Klein expanded on his birtherism on his Sept. 18 radio show while ranting about the Obama campaign's new AttackWatch.com site, bizarrely blaming Obama for the birther rebuttal on the site: "Obama making the birth certificate and issues of eligibility into a story again. Not me, not anybody else, it is Obama." Um, wasn't Klein jusdt talking about it two weeks earlier? Yes, he was. Talk about projection.
He insisted that he believes Obama was born in the United States, but he repeated his assertion that he hired (anonymous) experts who found supposed anomaies in the PDF file. Responding to the site's assertion that FactCheck.org verified the authenticity of Obama's birth certificate, Klein claimed that this was "misleading information" because "FactCheck.org is not a nonpartisan organization. It is funded by the Annenberg Challenge -- yes, the same Annenberg Challenge that funded the Chicago Annenberg Challenge that gave President Obama his first job. And who was the chairman of the board? Why, it was none other than Bill Ayers. So don't tell me on this website that FactCheck.org is a nonpartisan organization."
We've previously noted that Walter Annenberg, whose Annenberg Foundation was the source of the funding behind FactCheck.org and the Annenberg Challenge, was a prominent Republican. And FactCheck.org points out that the Chicago Annenberg Challenge "finished its work long before we came into being in late 2003," the two projects are among 5,200 grants funded by the Annenberg Foundation, and the current foundation chairman donated to John McCain's campaign in 2008.
Klein is also blatantly lying when he says that the Chicago Annenberg Challenge position was Obama's "first job." That would be in a Baskin-Robbins ice cream parlor as a teenager in Hawaii.
Obama Derangement Syndrome Watch, Wayne Allyn Root Edition Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax columnist Wayne Allyn Root has really been ramping up his Obamaderangement of late.
In his Sept. 7 column, Root depicted how he wanted President Obama's speech to Congress to go:
President Barack Obama has the most important speech of his presidency on Thursday. A speech built around creating jobs and inspiring economic recovery. You want an economic recovery? You want jobs? Two magical words are needed to change the course of history.
Two words change the future for millions of desperate unemployed Americans. Two words transform a depression into a boom. Two words motivate and inspire every business owner in America to create jobs. Two words free the U.S. economy from the current doom, despair, debt, depression, misery, and malaise.
Only two words need to be uttered by President Obama’s lips: “I resign.”
Imagine an Obama-Free America.
Overnight 2 1/2 years of pain are erased. Trillions of dollars and millions of jobs are brought back into the USA. Millions of business owners breathe a sigh of relief and begin to plan their recovery. Investors begin investing again, unleashing a torrent of buying and business expansion.
Root declared in his Sept. 14 column: It’s all over for Mr. Obama. He is a one-term president, destined to go down in the record books as the man who presided over a second Great Depression, the destruction of the middle class, and the loss of America’s Triple A credit rating." He then went off on another delusion:
I believe Hillary is weighing her options at this very moment. She now knows that blue-collar white Democratic voters across America have broken with Obama. The Jews are the final straw that broke the camel’s back. It is now clear that in places filled with white blue-collar voters — like Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and Texas — Hillary could defeat Obama in a presidential primary — just as I predicted 18 months ago.
Only one thing is holding Hillary back from a decision to jump into the race. I believe she is concerned with political strategy. She now knows she can defeat Obama in a Democratic primary. Her only concern is the loss of black voters for the general election.
If black voters see Hillary as a backstabber of their beloved Obama, and sit on their hands for the 2012 general election, Hillary cannot possibly defeat her Republican opponent. That is the debate now raging in Hillary’s camp of political advisers.
Her question is simple: Is there a way to defeat Obama but still retain the support of black Democratic voters for the general election?
Root really went to town in his Sept. 19 column, suggesting that Obama was like Hannibal Lecter:
President Barack Obama delivered a masterful and forceful speech on jobs a couple of weeks ago. He must think we are all lambs, sheeple, or complete idiots.
He must be counting on business owners being as ignorant as the traditional Obama voters who cry at his rallies and gush to the camera, “Now I’ll never have to worry about paying rent, or putting gas in my car.”
He must assume we are so naïve that we have forgotten or forgiven all Obama has done to demonize and punish business owners, and damage our businesses.
Obama must think we work so hard, we have no time to read the news. He must think that he can fool all the people, all the time. He must think we listen to what a man says, but we ignore what he does.
He must be hoping we’ll all remain silent, while he redistributes our money, targets and punishes business owners, destroys the U.S. economy, and poisons capitalism. He is counting on “the Silence of the Lambs.”
But I won’t be silenced. Neither will over 30,000,000 American small business owners. We aren’t lambs, or sheeple, or complete fools. You can fool some of the people Mr. Obama, but not all of the people. Some of us watch what you do, not what you say.
Is likening the president to a cannibalistic serial killer elevating the rhetoric? Uh, no.
WND Columnist Defends Taking Hoffa Out of Context Topic: WorldNetDaily
In his Sept. 7 WorldNetDaily column, Phil Elmore went on a rampage against Labor Day speech the Labor Day speech made by union official James Hoffa (whom he misidentifies as "Jimmy Hoffa Jr."), taking out of context the statement "Let's take these son of a bitches out," declaring: "He was saying, clearly and publicly, that his political opponents in the tea party must be intimidated, assaulted and killed. That is what it means to "take out" someone whom you characterize in such profane terms. There is no other plausible explanation." Elmore didn't mention that Hoffa had prefaced his statement by saying, "Everybody here's got to vote."
Readers called Elmore on the out-of-context stuff in the Facebook comment thread attached to his column, further wondering why he didn't take to task similar rhetoric by right-wing activists, citing Michele Bachmann's 2010 comment, "We need to have your help for candidates like me. We need you to take out some of these bad guys."
Elmore didn't appreciate that, apparently, so he used his Sept. 14 column to double down. He complained about the "small army of leftist trolls and self-proclaimed "independents'" who criticized his out-of-context plucking of Hoffa's remark, dismissing them as "simply persistent contrarians trolling WND's pages." Elmore asserted that "Neither the alleged perfidy of Fox News nor the casual inclusion of a reference to voting excuse, rationalize, justify, or even sufficiently modify Hoffa's comments," adding:
When Gabrielle Giffords was shot by a deranged assassin, libs were quick to blame Sarah Palin for again creating that bothersome tone, that viciously evil atmosphere. Between the OKC bombing and Giffords' shooting were countless other examples of liberal ghouls eager to pin random acts of violence on conservatives as a group. It doesn't matter that a conservative or libertarian never says, explicitly, what liberals claim he or she is implying. Democrats' political opponents are presumed to speak in a complicated code that only lib augurs can interpret correctly.
When Jimmy Hoffa speaks, by contrast, he must be taken at his literal word, because he is a Democrat who supports Democrats. If he does not say, "we must physically assault our opponents," he must, we are told, be given the benefit of any doubt the rest of his violent rhetoric generates. Why, he even went so far as to mention voting in the "full clip," which was so scurrilously edited by the ever-nefarious Fox News to "smear" poor, innocent James P. Hoffa. How dare Fox paint him as a firebrand exhorting his followers to perpetrate violence?
The problem with Hoffa's original speech, and with his follow-up comments, is that his words are laden with violent metaphor and pregnant with threats both implied and credible. When an aggressive man speaking before an organization with a history of aggressive protest aggressively invokes deliberately aggressive imagery, then says, "of course, not aggressively," I don't believe him. If Hoffa had said, in the middle of his original speech about "taking out" those "son of a bitches," something like, "… but of course through nonviolent means," a disclaimer so explicit would still be insufficient to soften the loaded rhetoric surrounding it.
Elmore remained silent about Bachmann's "take out some of these bad guys" comment, let alone opine on whether we should be taking her at her literal word or merely focusing on tone and atmosphere.
Newsmax's Kessler Fluffs New RNC Chairman Topic: Newsmax
Ronald Kessler didn't give Michael Steele a fawning profile when he became Republican National Committee chairman in 2009 -- all he got was a mostly straightforward story on his plans. Kessler eventually turned on Steele, claiming that he "seemed to go out of his way to thumb his nose at fellow Republicans."
But there's a new RNC chairman now, and Reince Priebus is getting the full Kessler fluff treatment, right down to the banal personal details:
A lawyer from Wisconsin who ran the state Republican party, Priebus, 39, served as general counsel of the RNC under Steele. Priebus’ first name Reince rhymes with pints, as in pints of his favorite beer, Miller High Life from Wisconsin. In his office at just 6 p.m., Priebus offers me a cold Miller but does not seem offended when I go for a Heineken instead.
“I’ve got a bizarre name, but I’m about as normal as they come,” Priebus says. “I always tell people it’s what happens when you have a Greek and a German who get married. It’s a bit of a disaster.”
Priebus graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater in 1994 and from the University of Miami School of Law in 1998. He met his wife, Sally, at a high school youth group; their first date was a Lincoln Day conservative dinner.
“We did go to a movie afterward,” Priebus says, “so it was a legitimate date.”
They married in 1998 and have two children, Grace, 1, and Jack, 6.
Priebus likes to fish and golf. He owns three shotguns, a rifle, and a handgun. He has enjoyed an occasional moose steak.
Kessler also gets in some parting potshots at Steele, citing anonymous "RNC officials" as claiming that "Steele rarely got on the phone to raise money."
MRC Admits Social Security-Ponzi Scheme Is Bogus -- But Runs With It Anyway Topic: Media Research Center
Slavishly toeing the conservative line, the Media Research Center has embraced the erroneous idea that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme -- so much so that it lashes out anyone who proves otherwise.
That's what Clay Waters did in a Sept. 13 MRC TimesWatch post. He dismissed a New York Times blog post debunking the Social Security-Ponzi scheme comparison as a "liberally slanted fact check" by "two liberal reporters." Waters makes no attempt to disprove the fact-check -- thus conceding the factual basis that there is no connection -- but declares that the reporters are stupid for clinging to silly facts because the bogus comparison works as a talking point for right-wingers:
[Reporters Michael] Cooper and [Nicholas] Confessore seem unable to conceive that “Ponzi Scheme” is a (potent) metaphor for the unsustainable state of Social Security’s current financing trajectory (one that liberal MSNBC host Chris Matthews has also recently employed), meaninglessly faulting Perry for his comparison not being an exact match in all particulars.
But, again, Waters offers no evidence that it matches up at all. In other words, winning a political argument matters more to Waters than the truth.
Another Dubious Islam 'Expert' Linked to WND Topic: WorldNetDaily
We've already noted how WorldNetDaily attempted to discredit Walid Shoebat for exposing holes in his past as a self-proclaimed former terrorist while giving presentations to law enforcement groups as a so-called expert on Islamic terrorism who engages in little more than Muslim-bashing. Now another dubious terrorism "expert" has WND ties as well.
Wired's Danger Room blog details how an FBI intelligence analyst named William Gawthrop has created Muslim-bashing research used in counterterrorism briefings for law enforcement. Before he joined the FBI, a 2006 WND article reported how Gawthrop said that the Pentagon has never conducted "a 'systematic study' of Muhammad's military doctrine" since "Muhammad's mindset is a source for terrorism," and that"hitting "soft spots" in the Islamic faith that, once exploited, "may induce a deteriorating cascade effect upon the target." But first, according to WND, Gawthrop said that "officials must first overcome the political taboo of linking Islamic violence to the religion of Islam."
Wired notes that such simplistic elevating of cherry-picked Quran verses is as useful a guide to terrorist behavior as “diving into the rite of exorcism” is to understanding Catholicism.
CNS Puts Words In Obama's Mouth Again Topic: CNSNews.com
A Sept. 16 CNSNews.com article by Fred Lucas carries the headline "Obama Predicts: His Plan Will Cost $235,263 Per Job." But Obama never said that.
What he did say, according to Lucas:
“It’s estimated that the American Jobs Act would add two percentage points to the GDP, and add as many as 1.9 million jobs, and bring the unemployment rate down by a full percentage point,” Obama said, according to the official White House transcript of his remarks.
Lucas then performs a bit of crude math: "$447 billion divided by 1.9 million equals approximately $235,263."
This isn't the first time CNS has portrayed Obama as saying things he did not say. In 2009, CNS editor in chief Terry Jeffrey asserted that Obama "referred to American opponents of amnesty for illegal aliens as 'demagogues'" when, in fact, Obama was discussing a "pathway for legalization" for illegal immigrants -- something for which Jeffrey provided no evidence is "amnesty" -- and never used the word "amnesty."
Similarly, Jeffrey claimed that then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid supported a bill "that would include giving amnesty to illegal aliens" when Reid never used the word "amnesty."
Christopher Ruddy takes a surprisingly moderate view of George Soros in his Sept. 15 Newsmax column, declaring that "he’s neither evil nor completely liberal. He is, in my mind, a liberal partisan whose own political views don’t fit neatly into any box." But he also writes this:
Despite the fact Soros has billions — an estimated fortune of $14.5 billion — he cannot determine elections at will, as 2004 and 2008 proved.
I have found that when billionaires like Soros attempt to influence matters, they often create an “equal and opposite“ reaction from others in the political system.
We saw that effect in 2010 when wealthy Republicans contributed hundreds of millions to help the GOP take back the House.
Ruddy doesn't admit it, but he knows whereof he speaks when he talks about "billionaires like Soros" who "attempt to influence matters" -- after all, that's what Newsmax owes its existence to. Conservative billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife -- for whom Ruddy worked as a reporter for the Scaife-owned Pittsburgh Tribune-Review -- contributed money to the startup of Newsmax, and by 2002 was its third-largest shareholder. Scaife and Ruddy are the sole owners of Newsmax.
But Newsmax was but one arm of Scaife's anti-Clinton operation in the 1990s; he donated millions to right-wing, anti-Clinton causes, including to anti-Clinton (and now anti-Obama) group Judicial Watch.
It can be argued that Scaife's aggressive funding of anti-Clinton causes -- including Newsmax -- helped lead to “equal and opposite“ reaction from liberals, culminating in the election of Barack Obmaa as president in 2008. Again, don't expect Ruddy to mention that.
Richard Bartholomew catches WorldNetDaily's latest reader-fleecing scheme: selling a "9-11 / 10th Anniversary “NEVER FORGET” Challenge Coin." Turns out you can buy the coin a lot cheaper directly from its manufacturer, without WND's significant markup.
WND loves taking its readers for everything it can.
Posted by Terry K.
at 10:25 AM EDT
Updated: Saturday, September 17, 2011 10:26 AM EDT
CNS Rewrites AP Headline To Claim Obama Wants “Amnesty” For "Illegal Aliens" Topic: CNSNews.com
President Obama gave a speech last night at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute's Awards Gala, and the Associated Press write-up of the event led with Obama saying his jobs package "would put more money in the pockets of Latino workers and business owners and increase opportunities for Hispanics." It carried the headline "Obama pushes jobs plan as help for Hispanics."
That headline apparently wasn't exciting enough -- or sufficiently disparaging of Obama -- for CNSNews.com. Its version of the AP article carries the headline "Obama Renews Call for Amnesty for Illegal Aliens," with the original headline relegated to a subhead:
CNS made no changes to the AP article itself; rather, it decided to ignore the AP's lead and interpret a statement later in the article that Obama "remained determined to pass a rewrite the nation's immigration laws to offer a pathway to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants" as calling for "amnesty" for "illegal aliens."
Neither "amnesty" nor "illegal aliens" appears in the AP article, and the AP Stylebook rejects the use of "illegal alien," preferring the term "illegal immigrant" instead.
CNS regularly declares anything faintly resembling immigration reform to be "amnesty" -- which is a loaded term that influences people to oppose immigration reform.
CNS likes to add a right-wing reinterpretation of AP headlines to AP articles on its site, particularly when immigration issues are involved. Last month, it changed an AP article headline from "US makes criminals priority for deportation" to "Obama Administration Grants De Facto Amnesty to Many Illegal Immigrants."
In July, it changed the AP headline "AP sources: Obama ends talks brusquely" to "Obama Showboats His Way Out of Debt-Limit Talks."
WND's Farah Still Can't Take Criticism Topic: WorldNetDaily
You'd think that after all these years working in the media, Joseph Farah wouldn't be so thin-skinned about criticism. But he is, with all the petulance we've come to expect from him.
In a Sept. 13 WorldNetDaily column even he admits he's "probably better off not writing," Farah takes radio host Michael Medved to task for criticizing WND on his show ... in May. Farah only caught it last week, when the show was rebroadcast. Farah takes his usual potshots, noting that Medved once "toiled for the site as a weekly columnist – a position from which he was terminated for lack of interest by the public" and that "years after, Medved called both me and my wife, Elizabeth, to tell us, in his words, that I was the most ethical businessman he had ever worked with in his life."
Conspicuously missing from Farah's column is any direct quote of anything Medved said -- it's all paraphrase except for a single word, Medved's use of "WorldNutDaily." That evasion gives Farah license to set up straw men of Medved that he can easily knock down.
Farah then writes, "Everybody in show business or promoting a book needs a gimmick – even if it means ad hominem attacks and name-calling." You know, just like Farah.
But Farah wasn't done bashing his critics. He demonstrated he can hold a grudge for a needlessly long period of time on his Sept. 14 column, in which takes glee in how a the life of former critic has turned out more than a decade after said criticism was made.
In a 1999 column about right-wing attempts -- led by Farah -- to downplay the death of Matthew Shepard by bringing up Jesse Dirkhising, a 13-year-old boy who died as a result of sexual abuse at the hands of two homosexuals, Then-Washington Post columnist E.R. Shipp pointed out that the Post gave more coverage to Shepard's death because it "parked public expressions of outrage that themselves became news. That Jesse Dirkhising’s death has not done so is hardly the fault of The Washington Post," adding that "those who are inclined to believe the David Dukes, Joseph Farahs and Tim Grahams of the world – who have asserted that the story has been suppressed so that homosexuals won't be portrayed negatively – will not be satisfied."
Farah is still raging over that comparison:
To this day, I still don't know who Tim Graham is, but I do know who David Duke is. I didn't like the implication that association made then, and I don't like it any better today. Shipp, whose claim to fame is winning a Pulitzer Prize for commentary while with the New York Times, knows that association with David Duke is the coward's way of calling someone a bigot, a racist, a Ku Klux Klansman.
(Really? Farah is completely unfamiliar with one of the leading figures in right-wing media criticism? Or does Farah have a petty grudge against too?)
Needless to say, this all leads up to mean-spirited potshots against Shipp and what she has done since leaving the Post:
For a few years, Shipp served as a professor of journalism at Hofstra University.
You can see just how popular she was among her students.
Here are a few of the more polite and printable adjectives students used to describe her classroom demeanor: rude, condescending, belittling, unprofessional, unhappy, nasty, awful, horrible, terrible, arrogant.
Some also described her as the "worst teacher ever." One said he was "shocked that anyone would hire her." Another said she "learned nothing" in the class, while another student described the experience of taking her class as a "waste of money." There was not a single favorable comment on this faculty rating site. Not one – not even a neutral characterization.
She left Hofstra in 2008 for whereabouts unknown.
Farah also dips his toe into the Shepard revisionism pool, claiming he was killed "apparently by monsters who knew nothing about his sexual proclivities." That's the story one of the killers wants you believe now, in contradiction of all the evidence indicating otherwise, like his gay-panic defense during his murder trial.
Farah doesn't explain how Shipp's purported fate is somehow worse than his own -- doomed to fleece his readers by running a truth-challenged, conspiracy-obsessed website.
