Did WND's Farah Plagiarize From Wikipedia? Topic: WorldNetDaily
We've detailed WorldNetDaily's misguided war of Wikipedia. WND's boss, however, seems not so averse to making use of Wikipedia when it suits his purposes.
In his Sept. 22 WND column defending birther-leaning Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio:
He was born in Springfield, Mass., to Italian immigrant parents, both from Avellino, Italy. His mother died giving birth to him in 1932, and he was raised by his father, a grocery store owner. At 18, Arpaio enlisted in the U.S. Army and served from 1950 through 1954. After his discharge, he moved to Washington and became a police officer. He also served in the Las Vegas police department for a time, before being appointed as a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, which later became the Drug Enforcement Administration. During his 25-year stint in the DEA, he was stationed in Argentina, Turkey and Mexico and ultimately headed the DEA's Arizona office.
In 1992, he campaigned and won the position of Maricopa County sheriff. He was re-elected in 1996, 2000, 2004 and 2008.
Here's the description of Arpaio that appears on his Wikipedia page:
Arpaio was born in Springfield, Massachusetts to Italian parents both from Avellino, Italy. Arpaio's mother died while giving birth to him, and Arpaio was raised by his father, a grocery store owner. Arpaio completed high school and worked in his father's business until age 18 when he enlisted in the United States Army. Arpaio served in the Army from 1950 to 1954 in the Medical Detachment Division and was stationed in France for part of the time as a military policeman.
Following his discharge in 1954, Arpaio moved to Washington, D.C. and became a police officer, moving in 1957 to Las Vegas, Nevada. He served as a police officer in Las Vegas for six months before being appointed as a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, which later became part of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). During his 25-year tenure with the DEA, he was stationed in Argentina, Turkey and Mexico, and advanced through the ranks to the position of head of the DEA's Arizona branch.
In 1992, Arpaio successfully campaigned for the office of Maricopa County Sheriff. The voters of Maricopa County re-elected him in 1996, 2000, 2004, and 2008.
It looks like Farah copied-and-pasted from Wikipedia, did a little editing, and voila, a good chunk of his column is filled in.
Of course, this isn't the first time Farah has plagarized from others.
(Thanks to a loyal ConWebWatch reader for the tip.)
MRC's Gainor Still Sliming Cain Accusers As Gold-Diggers Topic: Media Research Center
We've detailed how Media Research Center vice president Dan Gainor has been using Twitter to attack the as-yet-unnamed victims of Herman Cain's alleged sexual harassment as gold-diggers out for a book deal. He's still at it.
In one tweet, Gainor even used the #golddigger hashtag in writing, "Free Five Guys lunch (DC area only w me) to person who can guess exact amount of book deal advance for Cain accuser."
Gainor also wrote of one accuser: "So if she gets a book deal, does she have to refund cash to NRA?"
Funny, we don't remember Gainor or anyone else at the MRC being bothered by Kathleen Willey's book deal or how Gennifer Flowers changed her story after getting a sizable payoff from a tabloid.
Meanwhile, Gainor sounds like a birther in a ranting tweet about President Obama:
Yes, this man is a major figure at a major "educational" nonprofit group. How does the MRC have that tax status when it's making such blatantly partisan statements?
WND's Sue-Happy Lawyer Is In Trouble Topic: WorldNetDaily
We already know Larry Klayman is a sue-happy defamer. Now it appears he is so bad at being a sue-happy defamer that he can't even make an actual living at it.
The Miami New Times reports that Klayman -- a WorldNetDaily columnist who is representing WND in its defamation lawsuit against Esquire magazine -- has been reprimanded by the Florida bar for taking a $25,000 payment from a woman to represent her in a criminal case but failing to do any legal work for her. After he was ordered to return $5,000 of the money as agreed to in mediation, he failed to keep up the payments.
IN a 2010 letter to the Florida bar explaining why he hadn't kept up with the payments, Klayman wrote:
I have and have had very little funds, as my financial situation continues to be dire. I do not own any investments or retirement plans and just have a few pieces of jewelry and clothing, a television, a radio, a bed and clothing and shoes. I rent my apartment. The jewelry is a watch which is of negligible value, and consists of a watch and a ring valued currently under $200.00.
I am in the process of gathering my financial information which is scattered about three states, where I formerly resided in whole or in part, and will soon file for bankruptcy pro se. I cannot afford bankruptcy counsel, having been asked for a $5000.00 retainer which I cannot afford. I will not use this bankruptcy to discharge my obligation under the mediation agreement as I am committed to honoring it. Its just that my financial situation has been so poor.
Klayman told Miami New Times that he has since paid the woman the $5,000 he was ordered to repay her.
Meanwhile, Klayman's license to practice law in Pennsylvania is on "administrative suspension." And as we've previously noted, Klayman's $10 million lawsuitagainst the White House Correspondents Association as part of WND's snit fit over not being able to buy as many seats as it wanted for the White House Correspondent's Dinner was essentially laughed out of court. (When we asked Klayman about it, he huffed that "we decided not to pursue that." So why file the lawsuit in the first place if you have no intention of pursing it? Aside from the publicity-stunt aspect, that is.)
NewsBusters Joins CNS In Headline-Rewriting Game Topic: Media Research Center
We've detailed CNSNews.com's propensity for rewriting Associated Press headlines to add right-wing bias. But another Media Research Center division is rewriting headlines too -- but this time, to remove something.
Ann Coulter's Nov. 2 column went out with the headline "Why our blacks are better than their blacks," an echo of her previous statement regarding the Herman Cain sexual harassment scandal:
That headline was apparently too much for NewsBusters, whose version of the column carries the much more cumbersome headline "How Dems and Liberal Media Cynically Use Race to Bash Conservatives, Especially Black Ones."
It seems NewsBusters understands that Coulter's statement was inflammatory and racially charged -- but not enough to criticize her in public for it. Changing Coulter's headline is a cowardly, passive-aggressive way of dealing with it, even as MRC chief Brent Bozell is crying racism over the truth being reported about Cain.
WND Columnist Is Under the Delusion WND Tells The Truth Topic: WorldNetDaily
Yes, Andrea Shea King really did begin her Oct. 31 WorldNetDaily column this way:
Unlike Internet news outlets such as WND, the liberal, so-called "mainstream media" does not report the truth – the unvarnished truth. In fact, if the liberal media can't get the story to fit its liberal template, it simply does not get reported. What tea party march on Washington? Journalistic integrity or ethics are impediments to their worldview and their agenda.
New media roots around, digs out the facts and reports them, regardless of where they may lead and irrespective of any discomfort they might bring. The "elite" media, on the other hand, selectively brings you only the "news" it wants you to know.
Does King even read the website she writes for? WND not only repeatedlytellslies, news does not get reported that does not fit its right-wing template. For instance, shouldn't Jerome Corsi have told his WND readers about a book that debunks birther claims? Yes, but he won't because he is a chief source of the claims the book debunks.
King goes on to regurgitate "new media journalistic star" James O'Keefe's latest joke of an "undercover investigation," touting how it "calls into question the reporters behind the headlines." Well, actually not so much: All O'Keefe captured, according to the Washington Post's Erik Wemple, was "a couple of professors prattling on in not-so-fascinating ways about media and politics." One of O'Keefe's targets, journalism professor Jay Rosen, put it, the heavily edited tape O'Keefe released was "incoherent, context-less and, frankly, boring."
If King can't recognize WND's numerous journalistic lapses (then again, she is on the WND payroll, so it's in her monetary interest not to recognize them), she's certainly prone to thinking that O'Keefe is a "journalistic star."
MRC Is Unhappy That News About Cain Is Being Reported Topic: Media Research Center
There's lots of outrage at the Media Research Center that news is being reported by news reporters.
Scott Whitlock complained that "The network evening newscasts on Tuesday and the morning shows on Wednesday continued to hype the Herman Cain "firestorm," creating 12 more stories in less than 24 hours." Not that any of the reporting was wrong or misleading -- the problem was that it was being reported, period.
Matt Hadro spun Cain's confrontation with reporters who committed the offense of asking questions he didn't want to answer about the sexual harassment allegations as having "briefly raised his voice at reporters on Wednesday and his staff moved them aside."
Whitlock returned with another story-count item, grousing that "NBC, CBS and ABC have developed an insatiable hunger for the Herman Cain sexual harassment story, devoting an incredible 50 stories to the allegations since Monday morning. In contrast, over a similar period these networks mostly ignored far more substantial and serious scandals relating to Bill Clinton." Whitlock ignores the fact that, as we've pointed out, the allegations against Cain are documented (if Cain would only give the National Restaurant Association permission to lift the confidentiality clause barring the victims from speaking publicly), while Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey and Juanita Broaddrick were all exploited by Clinton-haters as a tool to bring down the president and had other credibility problems.
Like many of its news articles, WorldNetDaily's birther activism is defined in no small part by anonymous sources. Aaron Klein, for instance, claims that anonymous "independent forensics experts" have found that Barack Obama's long-form birth certificate is a fake, and Jerome Corsi has cited at least one anonymous "expert" to back up his claim the the birth certificate is fake.
A Nov. 1 WND article by Corsi follows in that tradition, claiming that "Sources close to the sheriff's law enforcement investigation" say that the sheriff's posse appointed by Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio plan to "demand the original microfilm of Obama's birth certificate." No named source backs up Corsi's claim.
Meanwhile, an earlier WND article on the sheriff's posse dropped this tidbit about how stacked this silly little posse is: "Earlier this month, WND senior staff reporter Jerome R. Corsi spent 18 hours over a two-day period in Arizona briefing the Cold Case Posse on a wide range of evidence regarding Obama's eligibility. There was no mention that anyone who contradicts Corsi's conspiratorial claims was invited to tell their story before the posse, such as John Woodman, author of a book debunking many of Corsi's birther claims.
If not, that makes this sham a kangaroo court, not a posse.
CNS Repeats Cain's Falsehoods About Planned Parenthood Topic: CNSNews.com
An Oct. 31 CNSNews.com article by Michael Chapman uncritically repeated two claims by Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain -- that “75 percent" of Planned Parenthood facilities "were built in the black community,” and that Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger "did talk about preventing the increasing number of poor blacks in this country by preventing black babies from being born.”
Chapman didn't report that neither claim is true.
The Washington Post's Glenn Kessler debunked both claims. While Sanger was involved in the now-discredited eugenics movement that was popular during her lifetime, Cain's claim that she specifically sought to have "black babies" aborted is taken out of context:
But don’t believe everything you read on the Internet. The most damning quote by Sanger has been taken out of context. Meanwhile, a number of doctoral dissertations have closely examined the early days of Planned Parenthood and its relationship with the African American community, and found nothing to confirm these allegations.
[...]
What about Cain’s claim that Sanger wanted to “kill black babies” and thus spoke of “preventing the increasing number of poor blacks in this country by preventing black babies from being born?” Starting in 1916, Sanger’s clinics at first were aimed mainly at poor immigrant women; a Harlem clinic was opened in the 1930s. In the late 1930s, Sanger began an effort to bring the clinics to the rural south, in what was called “The Negro Project.”
Sanger recruited a who’s who of black leaders to support the effort and, in letters to the project’s director, urged that white men who were outsiders should not run the clinics. She said the effort would gain more credibility with greater community involvement, given natural suspicions.
“The minister's work is also important and he should be trained, perhaps by the Federation as to our ideals and the goal that we hope to reach,” Sanger wrote in a letter in 1939. “We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”
In that context, the sentence, while inartfully written, does not back up Cain’s claim. (We received no further evidence from the Cain campaign.)
Cain's claim that most Planned Parenthood facilities are located "in the black community" is even more false, Kessler writes:
Cain also claimed that 75 percent of Planned Parenthood’s clinics were built in African American communities. That is clearly incorrect historically, but is that true today?
Tait Sye, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood, said that 73 percent of Planned Parenthood’s 800 facilities are in rural areas or what are known as Health Professional Shortage Areas, defined as areas with “too few primary care providers, high infant mortality, high poverty and/or high elderly population.” In other words, clinics are opened in areas of medical need.
Clearly, not all of these would be in minority areas, so Cain’s figure is obviously much too high. Indeed, the Guttmacher Institute — which supports abortion rights — earlier this year calculated that fewer than one in 10 of all abortion clinics (totaling about 1,800 in 2008) were located in predominantly African American neighborhoods.
Black women do have much higher abortion rates than white women, but that is linked to the fact that they have much higher rates of unintended pregnancies — not where clinics are located.
That also seems to shoot down Chapman's thesis that Cain's false claim "seems to be indirectly confirmed" by the higher rate of abortion among blacks.
Chapman also drops a reference to "Dr. Alveda King" even though, as we've documented, her doctorate is honorary and not an earned title.
Is it too much for Chapman to publish the truth about Cain's claims? Given that Cain is a personal friend of his boss, Brent Bozell, probably so.
NewsBusters Also Touted Writer Who Inspired Violent Militia Plot Topic: NewsBusters
WorldNetDaily wasn't alone in touting the work of Mike Vanderboegh, whose self-published novel apparently inspired a group of militia members to formulate a plot to attack federal office buildings and disperse biological poison. The militia members were arrested before they could put the plot into action.
NewsBusters touted or served as an apologist for Vanderboegh on several instances:
A May 2006 post by Tim Graham complained about a Time magazine article that highlighted Vanderboegh as part of a group of former right-wing militia members who had since become active in the immigration debate. Graham bashed Time for "cribbing from the SPLC" in its profile of Vanderboegh, though he didn't challenge the accuracy of what was written about him.
A March 2010 post by Brent Baker criticized the TV networks for reporting extremist rhetoric regarding the passage of health care reform. One report Baker cited included a clip of Vanderboegh saying, "The muzzles of three million rifles who can be – if required – pointed directly at the hearts of anyone who wants to be a tyrant in this country."
NewsBusters republished a March 30 column by Michelle Malkin touting the work of "gun rights advocates David Codrea and Mike Vanderboegh" in exposing the Fast and Furious gun-walking scandal.
A Sept. 9 post by P.J. Gladnick excerpted a blog by Codrea touting "efforts made by this reporter, Mike Vanderboegh of Sipsey Street Irregulars, and a handful of supportive readers" on exposing the scandal.
An Oct. 16 post by Tom Blumer excerpted Vanderboegh's blog for a "succinct summary (HT Ed Driscoll) of the establishment press's coverage of Issa's actions since the subpoenas' issuance."
Will NewsBusters tell its readers about the violent militia plot and the man who inspired it? Don't count on it.
WND Not Exactly Rushing to Cain's Defense Topic: WorldNetDaily
The Cain-gasm at WorldNetDaily has suddenly ground to a halt.
Given Herman Cain's close relationship wtih WND, you'd think that, in the wake of the sexual harassment claims against Cain, WND would making a full throated defense of their favorite Republican presidential candidate, conspiracy-mongering the heck out of it, and mindlessly atacking those making the accusations against him (you know, like Dan Gainor, Brent Bozell and the Media Research Center). Instead, WND's ostensible "news" side has mounted no defense whatsoever.
WND's initial original coverage consisted of cribbing a few paragraphs from other, more aggressive news outlets, then sticking a link to the original article at the end, as it did here and here. Another original news article simply rehashed Cain's denial of the charges.
However, it wouldn't be WND if it didn't trying to exploit a news story to make money off it. Thus, we have an Nov. 1 article plugging Aaron Kleins new guilt-by-association book, which quotes Klein as opining, "If Obama was hit with the same sexual harassment charges as Herman Cain, much of the news media would be working overtime to minimize the damage while investigating the backgrounds of the women who made the claims," Klein told WND today.
Meanwhile, WND's opinion side has been just as quiet, with just three columns so far. Two are syndicated -- Ann Coulter's column repeated her eariler statement that thecontroversy shows that "our blacks are better than her blacks," and Larry Elder cried double standard because the media didn't report on Jesse Jackson's "alleged numerous and rampant instances of infidelity" during his1988 presidential campaign.
The lone non-syndicated WND column on the subject is an Oct. 31 column by Floyd Brown:
One of the ugliest of racial stereotypes is that black men have large and uncontrollable sexual impulses. Many a hanging tree across America silently testifies to the unproven allegations that a black man made unwanted advances to a local white girl. Alleged rape or unwanted sexual contact was a constantly used tool by Southern elites to unburden their communities of black men they didn't like or feared.
Now, the liberal elite in the media have decided the Cain Train has gotten too long. They fear that the plainspoken business executive with a genuine American success story to tell threatens their power. They fear Herman Cain, so they are launching a high-tech, Internet-based lynching.
The goal is to embarrass Herman Cain, yes, but even more importantly, their goal is to create fear in the hearts of women. Politico, the publication that published its unfounded story should be ashamed. The story alleges that two unnamed women were paid off to keep silent about sexual advances made by Cain some 20 years ago. Despicable journalism, no documents presented, no firsthand testimony, just unnamed sources offering disgusting vile allegations.
We have been doing research of our own, and here is what a woman who has worked with Herman Cain for the last 12 years, and will go on the record, says: "I've been around Herman now for 12 years, and he has never done or said anything inappropriate around me or any other female I know, so … I think he may have run into a couple of gold diggers."
Of course, Brown offers no evidence that the "liberal elite" is behind the highlighting of these allegations, an increasingly absurd notion giving that the Cain campaign is blaming his Republican challengers for it. And if Brown was so concerned about debunking the stereotype that "black men have large and uncontrollable sexual impulses," we would have seen him by now denounce efforts by WND's Jerome Corsi and D.J. Dolce to link President Obama to gay sex. He hasn't.
Interestingly, WND editor Joseph Farah -- who has described Cain as "my friend" -- has not weighed in on the Cain controversy at all. Wonder why that is?
CNS Just Can't Stop Adding Bias to AP Headlines Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com just keeps racking up the biased rewrites of Associated Press headlines.
An Oct. 29 AP article was sent out with the headline "Need a speaker? President Obama may be available."
Run that through the CNS bias machine, and you get the headline "Obama Making the Dinner-Speaker Rounds Before Leaving Office."
CNS' headline attaches a false narrative to the article that the article itself doesn't make: that Obama will lose the 2012 election and doing as many speaking engagements as he can before "leaving office."
But that's exactly the impression CNS wants you to have -- even if the AP never claimed any such thing.
On Tuesday, four alleged members of a Georgia right-wing militia group were arrested in connection with an alleged plot to kill numerous government officials by attacking federal office buildings and to disperse a deadly biological poison. It turns out they were inspired by a "Second Amendment analyst" who has been approvingly quoted by WorldNetDaily.
As Media Matters reports, the federal criminal complaint against the four men states that one of the accused "intended to model their actions on the plot of an online novel called Absolved," written by Mike Vanderboegh. In the self-published novel, underground militia fighters declare war on the federal government over gun control laws and same-sex marriage, leading to a second American revolution. In the introduction to Absolved, Vanderboegh calls the book "a cautionary tale for the out-of-control gun cops of the ATF" and "a combination field manual, technical manual and call to arms for my beloved gunnies of the armed citizenry."
Vanderboegh is a former militia member famous for urging his blog readers to hurl bricks through the windows of Democratic offices.
By contrast, WND has presented Vanderboegh as a "firearms writer and Second Amendment analyst," quoting him several times criticizing federal officials over the Fast and Furious gun-walking scandal in articles on July 25, July 28, Aug. 13, Aug. 30, and Sept. 21. All were written by Michael Carl. WND columnist Jeff Knox also cited Vanderboegh regarding Fast and Furious on two occasions, on Jan. 22 and March 31. Like Carl, Knox obscures Vanderboegh's extremist background.
Also, Bob Unruh quoted Vanderboegh in a 2009 article attacking the Southern Poverty Law Center as "conflation experts," going on to portray the far-right group Oath Keepers as "quintessentially America."
In the Aug. 13 article, Carl quotes Vanderboegh as saying of Fast and Furious: "This is proof positive of the banality of evil. These people have so identified with a regime, a way of thinking, that they no longer believe regular morality applies to them." It seems the same thing could be said of Vanderboegh.
Will WND tell its readers that one of its favorite so-called experts inspired a violent right-wing insurrection against the government? Don't count on it.
Bozell No Longer Disclosing His Conflict of Interest With Cain Topic: Media Research Center
We've already noted that Brent Bozell's second ranting Media Research Center press release on the sexual harassment allegations against Herman Cain lacked something his first one had: the disclosure that Cain is a "personal friend" of Bozell's as well as the former national chairman for the MRC's Business & Media Institute.
That sudden lack of disclosure, after starting so well, has spread to other venues where Bozell has popped up. In an Oct. 31 interview with Newsmax, Bozell repeated his assertion from his first press release that "The one thing the left cannot bear is an uppity conservative black man leaving the liberal plantation." But there too, Bozell failed to mention his relationship with Cain.
Meanwhile, other items on Cain at MRC websites have continued to not repeat Bozell's disclaimer, even though it appears to be a significant factor behind the MRC's pushback.
NewsBusters Criticizes Politico -- But Not Cain -- About Vagueness of Cain Allegations Topic: NewsBusters
NewsBusters' Mark Finkelstein has been working his little corner of the Media Research Center's defense strategy on behalf of Brent Bozell's personal friend, Herman Cain: monitoring MSNBC's "Morning Joe" and pushing a certain theme in the process.
In an Oct. 31 post, Finkelstein complained that a reporter for Politico, which first published the allegations of sexual harassment against Cain, "was being evasive about the details of the allegations" in his appearance on "Morning Joe," going on to further attack the story's "sketchy generalities." Finkelstein went on to grumble that "as for the details in the Politico story, they are as ambiguous as can be," adding, "Politico is going to have to do better than that. [Jonathan] Martin's evasiveness today was telling."
Finkelstein repeated that theme in a Nov. 1 post on that day's "Morning Joe," which featured another Politico staffer, Mike Allen. Finkelstein huffed that rather than detail the publication's 'vague allegation that Herman Cain had made gestures "that were not overtly sexual but that made women uncomfortable,' Allen's telling first instinct was to point to the story's popularity on a social networking site."
Finkelstein didn't mention that nobody has contradicted Politico's claims about Cain, even as vague as they are. Nor did he mention that many of those details he's seeking are bound by confidentiality clauses in the settlement agreement that Cain's accusers reached with the National Restaurant Association.
As we've noted, there is one easy solution to all that ambiguity: Cain can ask the National Restaurant Association to unbind everyone involved from the confidentiality clause.
Will Finkelstein make that request of Cain? Then again, he was quick to blame Politico for the vagueness of the allegations while exempting Cain -- the man who can answer all of Finkelstein's questions -- from responsibility for that vagueness.
Finkelstein also played the Clinton equivocation the MRC loves so much -- minimizing the seriousness of the allegations against Cain by comparing them to something Bill Clinton did -- in another Oct. 31 post, this one attacking Democratic strategist Bob Shrum for noting that "if he didn't do anything, why in the world did they pay tens of thousands of dollars to these women?" First he smeared Shrum by claiming he was "suffering from the not-so-early-onset of some dread memory-loss syndrome," adding, "Does the failed presidential campaign consultant's support of Bill Clinton, despite his much larger, $850,000 settlement with Paula Jones while "adamantly denying" her claims, fire any synapses in Shrum's cerebrum?" Finkelstein further minimized the allegations by adding, "And remember that the reported five-figure settlements by the National Restaurant Association represent no more than a long-week's work for a team of big-time defense attorneys."
Well, Finkelstein does have a actual title at NewsBusters -- senior contributor -- which tells us he's on the MRC's payroll. And even if he isn't, he's very much down with the MRC's agenda of protecting Bozell's buddy.
Newsmax, MRC Mix Gay Panic With Their HPV Vaccine Fear-Mongering Topic: Newsmax
WorldNetDaily isn't the only ConWeb entity peddling myths and falsehoods about the human papilloma virus vaccine Gardasil. With federal approval of a recommendation that the HPV vaccine be administered to boys, a new crazy narrative has popped up: that only gay males are susceptible to the types of cancer an HPV vaccine can prevent.
Tammy Bruce summed up that attitude in an Oct. 26 Newsmax column: "After all, I suppose it’s easier to inject a drug into every child than to suggest we guess which ones will become gay."
The Media Research Center's Tim Graham, a longtime gay-basher, copped a similar attitude in an Oct. 26 NewsBusters post with the alarmist headline "Will Your 11-Year-Old Boy Get Cancer from Gay Sex? Networks Avoid Angle As They Push HPV Shots."
Graham grumbled: "An advisory panel to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that the HPV vaccine be given to boys aged 11 to 12, and not just girls. Why? Boys aren’t at risk of cervical cancer." He noted a New York Times article stating that "many cancers in men result from homosexual sex," then complained that "the gay angle was completely missing from network TV coverage."
Graham's suggestion that he has no problem with gays dying of a preventable cancer is as offensive as it is misleading. CBS offers a more rational approach:
Preventing a cancer that's associated with gay men may not be much of a selling point, said Dr. Ranit Mishori, a family practice doctor in Washington, D.C. and an assistant professor at Georgetown University School of Medicine.
Some parents may say "`Why are you vaccinating my son against anal cancer? He's not gay! He's not ever going to be gay!' I can see that will come up," said Mishori, who supports the panel's recommendation.
Schuchat said the CDC is ready for that argument: "There's no data suggesting that offering a vaccine against HPV will change people's subsequent sexual behavior," she said.
Graham is too committed to gay-bashing to be bothered with such common sense.
