WND's Hypocritical Concern Over Nazi Name-Calling Topic: WorldNetDaily
On Wednesday, WorldNetDaily promoted on its front page a (stolen) article from another news source under the headline "Dem compares GOP guv to Hitler's mistress."
WND's sudden concern over Nazi insults is rather laughable -- after all, WND publishes them on a regular basis when the target is a Democrat in general or President Obama is particular:
WND called the Clinton administration's "third way" political strategy "the original brainchild of Adolph Hitler," likened Monica Lewinsky to Hitler's mistriess, likened Bill Clinton to Joseph Goebbels, liken AmeriCorps to the Hitler Youth, and likened Al Gore to Hitler.
WND not only regularly smeared Obama as Nazi-esque, it defended the idea of doing so because ""The cult of personality and hysteria for a charismatic orator are frightening parallels between Obama and Hitler."
WND's champion of Nazi smears was the late Hilmar von Campe, unsurprisingly a former Hitler Youth who purportedly repented of his Nazi ways. Yet he embraced Nazi-esque "Big Lie" techniques to liken Obama to Hitler.
MRC Can't Stop Taking Obama Out of Context Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center takes its deliberate misrepresentation of President Obama's "you didn't build that" remark to new heights of lameness by sending videographer Dan Joseph to a street festival in Charlotte and asking vendors if they got any governmnet help in building their businesses.
Needless to say, Joseph never fully identifies himself as a partisan right-winger to any of the vendors he's ambushing, and he includes the deceptively edited "you didn't build that" clip of Obama.
And, thus, the MRC continues its work as the media arm of the Mitt Romney campaign.
Another Deceitful WND Headline Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily adds to its recent streak of falseheadlines with a Sept. 3 article by Bob Unruh, carrying the headline "Obama lawyer warned against certifying eligibility."
The headline's clear implication is that a lawyer for President Obama is making that statement. But in fact, it's failed lawyer Larry Klayman, who is most definitely not working for Obama. The "Obama lawyer" Bob Bauer is the receipient of the "eligibility" message, not its sender.
Klayman continues his record of factually inaccurate birther ranting in his letter to Bauer that Hawaii State Registrar Alvin Onaka "undeniably failed to verify that the image posted at whitehouse.gov 'is a true and accurate representation of the original record.'" But Onaka was not required to do so; as indicated by the state law that Klayman quotes in his letter, Onaka is required only to provide verification of the existence of a certificate, which is exactly what he did.
Klayman goes on to rant that "no one can state with any legal certainty that candidate Obama is even old enough to be president, much less that he meets the exclusively high bar of ‘natural-born citizen’ status, required by Article II, Section I, Clause 5."
It's hard to take seriously an unsolicited letter from a failed attorney with a personal grudge against the president and whose law license is on administrative suspension in at least one state, but that's what WND and Unruh want us to do.
Newsmax's Kessler Turbocharges His Romney-Fluffing Topic: Newsmax
How far in the tank is Newsmax's Ronald Kessler for Mitt Romney? He's now making outlandish predictions about how big Romney will win.
Kessler's Sept. 4 column carries the headline "Why Mitt Romney Will Win Decisively." He kicks things off with his usual Obama-bashing:
In the last presidential election, the press hoodwinked Americans into thinking Barack Obama was the messiah.
The press never reported that Obama had no significant achievements. As a community organizer, his only success was removing some of the asbestos from one Chicago apartment project.
After whining yet again about Rev. Wright, Kessler cranks up his Romney-fluffing jets:
Polls cannot measure how many will actually show up to vote for one candidate or the other. Now that Paul Ryan has been added to the Romney ticket, conservatives are fired up. The crowds of students supporting Obama on college campuses are now nowhere to be seen. Blacks who have borne the brunt of Obama’s dismal employment record are far less enthusiastic about him than they once were. Independents who favored Obama now support Romney.
For months before he was elected, Ronald Reagan was behind Jimmy Carter by double digits in the polls. In the end, Reagan won by 10 percentage points.
Romney and the Republican National Committee have more money than Obama. They are starting to flood the country with ads that portray Obama’s failure and replay his comment that businessmen are not responsible for their own success.
The ads portray Romney as the decent man he is: With the exception of some in the press, almost everyone at the GOP convention in Tampa teared up as they heard from members of his church recounting how Romney took the time to visit and comfort their dying kids.
Kessler concludes: "I have faith in the American people and their ability this time to see Obama for what he reveals himself in his own memoirs to be: a pitchman. My prediction is that Romney will win by 10 to 12 percentage points."
Kessler might want to tone down the fluffing a bit.
Chutzpah: WND's Liars Accuse Others of Lies Topic: WorldNetDaily
It takes more than a little chutzpah for documented liars to complain about the lies that others are allegedly telling.
The latest edition of WorldNetDaily's Whistleblower magazine has the theme “DISINFORMATION AGE: How America’s news media have become ‘useful idiots’ for Marxists, sociopaths and tyrants.” Among the articles in it is one called "The lie launderers" by WND managing editor David Kupelian, which claims to be "an in-depth and eye-opening report documenting why and how spreading disinformation has become business as usual for America’s elite media."
Kupelian could have started his research a little closer to home -- specifically, down the hall at WND headquarters to the office of his boss, Joseph Farah, who has no apparenly moral qualms about telling lie after lie after lie to his readers.
Meanwhile, Mychal Massie began his Sept. 3 WND column by asking, "Does Obama really have such disrespect for the people of America that he believes he can just say anything at all and people will believe it?" Massie would do much better asking that same question of himself. LIke Farah, Massie also spews lie after lie, in the apparent belief that his obsessive hatred of Obama justifies the lies.
Are Kupelian and Massie really that blind and self-unaware, or are they simply craven deceivers who have sold their souls in a desperate bid to destroy Obama? We report, you decide.
CNS Portrays DNC Caucus Meetings As 'Division,' Ignores Actual RNC Division Topic: CNSNews.com
Under the headline "While Republicans Stressed Unity, Democrats’ Convention Schedule Already Shows Division," Susan Jones writes in a Sept. 3 CNSNews.com article that Michelle Obama "will address -- separately -- several key Democratic constituencies as they divide themselves into smaller groups based on race, ethnicity, gender or sexual preference." By contrast, Jones wrote, 'Speaker after speaker at the Republican convention ... are racial or ethnic minorities who stood up to celebrate the values and dreams they share with all Americans."
Of course, caucus groups are not the same as intra-party "division," no matter how much Jones and CNS would like it to be. Further, Jones failed to mention one actual division at the Republican convention -- an attempt to change the rules of how delegates are selected that, in the words of CNN, pitted establishment Republicans against "the likes of Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann and grassroots activists."
Jones offered no evidence of that kind of actual division at the Democratic convention.
Obama has been anything but truthful about his real intentions, but for those who are willing to factually assess what he has done thus far, his intentions are crystal clear.
Those leftists who believe themselves to be wise and all-knowing have spread the Neo-Leninist “America is evil” lie as they espouse views critical of our capitalist free-market economy and foment class warfare.
All of this being said, I believe Obama aspires to accomplish three primary objectives: fundamentally change America, collapse America’s economic system to the point that we fall under a world rule, and redistribute America’s wealth in the way and manner that pleases him, consistent with his Neo-Leninist philosophy.
What I’ve said may be difficult for some to believe, but that makes my assertions no less true.
Obama didn’t start America’s love for free stuff. But, Brother, what a follow-up artist! Obama has made us comfortable with Marxism. At least the real Communist countries never seemed to worry about any national debt.
It was Communism that made Richard Nixon president, first as vice president because of the good job he did exposing Alger Hiss as a traitor. I remember when the Communist scare was so acute, if you got called down to the “security office” of a government bureau over a lost glove, your co-workers wouldn’t sit with you at lunch any more.
And now we’ve got a Communist Party in America and their preferred candidate: Barack Obama!
Is Obama really a Marxist? Yes. He’s 100 percent Marx – 50 percent Karl and 50 percent Groucho.
There is no room in this column to point out all of the obvious defects in Mr. Obama’s transparently forged “birth certificate.” I have summarized them in a briefing for my Peers. Get it from www.moncktononline.com. Forgery has been committed. The fraudsters should be locked up forever.
But the real criminals are those in high office who know Mr. Obama’s birth certificate is a forgery but willfully, sullenly do absolutely nothing about it.
Now, back to reality, including the possibility that what we could be facing after Nov. 6 is not Romney-Ryan tinkering around the edges, but, rather, a permanent Der Fuhrbama dictatorship. So voters have to decide whether they prefer quick death or slow, agonizing death. What a great choice.
I indicated earlier that I am decidedly skeptical when it comes to polls that show President Obama in this supposed dead heat with Romney. I predicted that biased polling and duplicitous respondent data would substantially affect poll results, and that the press was going to report Obama as ahead up until Election Day, even if Romney winds up winning by a landslide. Some of these factors have been challenging to members of the conservative base and newly galvanized independents, who understand how vitally important it is that Obama is defeated in November. Considering the decades of plotting and subterfuge in which the far-left machine has engaged, they tend to perceive it as a juggernaut that could run roughshod over the electorate, ensuring another term for this dangerous and criminal administration.
“There is one experience which most sincere ex-Communists share,” wrote Whittaker Chambers in his classic conversion narrative “Witness,” and that is the epiphany, the road-to-Damascus moment, the instant they realize the life they have been living is a lie.
Chambers memorably quotes one young woman about her father’s Damascus moment: “He was immensely pro-Soviet … and then – you will laugh at me – but you must not laugh at my father – and then – one night – in Moscow – he heard screams. That’s all. Simply one night he heard screams.”
Barack Obama has never heard those screams. He has written two books – or at least put his name on two books – and not hinted that he ever had anything like a Damascus moment.
Barack Obama is going to war with Mitt Romney. He isn’t fighting this war alone. He is fighting it with some women. Not just any women, he has a brigade of women who cannot or will not think for themselves.
They pick their president the way a 7-year-old picks her Barbie Doll. They think Obama is cute and swoon over meaningless phrases like “hope and change.” They have bought into his class-warfare rhetoric, the old zero-sum game. I am poor (or not as comfortable as I’d like to be) because someone else is rich. Obama has promised to punish the rich, and these women believe the rich deserve it.
I had another analogy, a parable, for the choice we made four years ago:
You’re seated comfortably in a brand new Boeing 777 Stratoliner for its maiden flight. As it begins to taxi out to the runway, a friendly voice announces, “This is your captain speaking. Welcome aboard the first flight in this magnificent aircraft. Sit back and relax, you’re in good hands. I’m Captain Barack Hussein Obama, and I promise you I’m going to fundamentally transform the whole experience of flight for you! I’ve never flown this particular craft before. To be honest, I’ve never actually flown any plane before … but I can figure out how all these buttons and switches and gauges work as we go. Don’t worry about a thing, I’m the captain, and I’m in charge.
“Now, let’s see … how do you start this thing?”
In this parable, I see virtually every passenger clawing at the windows and rushing the exit doors, screaming to be let off! And that pictures just one aircraft – the reality it represents is the largest economy, the strongest nation and military, the most complex and successful government on the planet, handed over to a charming man who had absolutely no experience managing any of those things, or anything like them!
MRC Keeps Up the Hypocrisy on Taking People's Words Out of Context Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center lets its hypocrisy on taking people out of context show again.
A Sept. 1 NewsBusters post by Rusty Weiss carries the headline "Liberal Media Takes Quote Completely Out of Context to Paint Romney as Out of Touch." Weiss complained that a quote of Mitt Romney telling Hurricane Isaac victims could "go home and call 211" "has been taken grossly out of context."
But the MRC complains only when conservatives and Republicans are taken out of context and actively works to take liberals, and especially President Obama, out of context -- most recently Obama's "you didn't build that" remark.
That happened again in an Aug. 29 MRC TimesWatch item by Clay Waters that ridiculed a New York Times writer for doing what Weiss did -- put words in their proper context.
Waters complained that the Times writer accurately described Obama's remarks as being "selectively edited" by Republicans and that Obama was actually talking about "roads and bridges." Waters responded by playing the grammar card he has previously played: "If eloquent Obama meant 'roads and bridges,' why did he employ the plural 'those' instead of the singular 'that'?"
Slate's David Weigel has previously shot down the grammar-police argument, which requires, yes, putting Obama's words in their full context.
NEW ARTICLE: Joseph Farah's Pack of Lies Topic: WorldNetDaily
If the founder and editor of WorldNetDaily thinks he can get away with peddling falsehoods, why should anyone trust the rest of his website? Read more >>
Another Reason Larry Klayman Sucks As A Lawyer Topic: WorldNetDaily
Larry Klayman's record as an attorney in recent years has been one of continual failure. He keeps it up in his Aug. 31 WND column, which begins:
The Constitution is as clear as the nose on your face. According to Article II, Section 1, to be eligible to be president or vice president of the United States one must be a “natural born citizen.” That means born in the United States to two American citizen parents.
Um, no, it doesn't. As even WND has admitted, the Constitution does not define what "natural born citizen" means, and the Supreme Court has never weighed in on the issue as it applies to presidential eligibility.
Thus, what Klayman is stating about the definition of "natural born citizen" is an opinion, not a fact. His apparent inability to tell the two apart is further evidence of his incompetence as an attorney.
Since this is Klayman, he offers even more libelous attacks on the president:
Obama can claim all he wants to be a patriotic Christian American, but anyone with half a brain and who is not comatose knows better. He is the Muslim version of the “Manchurian Candidate,” in effect an Islamic mole who – aided and abetted by communists, socialists, radical gays, lesbians and feminists, Muslims, white-haters and others on the subversive fringe of American society – defrauded his way into the White House. As a result, after four years of what in effect is Obama’s “reign of terror,” we find ourselves not only on the precipice of economic disaster, but living the nightmare of having a charlatan “Muslim” socialist impostor as the head of the greatest nation on earth. The framers are more than turning in their hallowed graves.
Klayman also asserts that Obama "claims falsely that he was born here," which is true only if you ignore all the evidence to the contrary, which WND does.
Klayman, like many others who write for WND, does not care about the facts, only about destroying Obama. That means not only can he not be trusted as an attorney, he can't be trusted as a human being.
MRC Misleads on GM Plant Closing, What Obama Said About It Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has its Republican marching orders on criticism of Paul Ryan's claims about the General Motors plant in his hometown of Janesville, Wis.: 1) The plant closed in 2009, not 2008, and 2) President Obama promised to keep it open. Both claims are either misleading or false.
Here's how the MRC has forwarded these talking points:
An Aug. 30 NewsBusters post by Matt Vespa asserted that "the plant closed in June of 2009" and that "Obama promised to keep the plant open, but then shut it down."
An Aug. 30 post by Ken Shepherd asserted that "assembly line operations ceased in the spring of 2009," citing a Janesville Gazette article stating that "about 100 employees" were still on the job at the time. Shepherd also declared that "campaigning on hope and change, then-Sen. Obama optimistically held forth that a government bailout would save the Janesville plant. Alas, the government bailed out GM, but GM didn't save the plant from being shuttered."
An Aug. 30 CNSNews.com article by Matt Cover declared: "Ryan is in fact correct. The Janesville GM factory stopped production of SUVs in December 2008 and closed its doors for good in 2009 – less than one year after Obama promised to keep it open for another hundred years."
An Aug. 31 MRC item by Kyle Drennen asserted that Ryan made an "accurate claim that President Obama promised to keep open a GM plant that closed in 2009."
All of these writers take great pains to ignore the fact that the vast majority of the plant was shut down, and the vast majority of its workers laid off, in December 2008 -- before Obama took office. From the Janesville Gazette article that Shepherd cites:
SUV production ended in Janesville on Dec. 23, a little more than five months after the plant lost a second shift of production.
More than 2,000 hourly and salaried GM workers were laid off as a result of the production cuts. Supplier companies laid off another 1,200 people.
The plant's main purpose was to build SUVs. That line shut down in December 2008, laying off nearly all of the 2,000 workers hired by GM to build them. The 100 or so employees who remained between December 2008 and mid-2009 were not building SUVs for GM but, rather, medium-duty trucks for Isuzu under contract with GM. Thus, the plant was, for all intents and purposes, closed in December 2008. It's dishonest for the MRC to take a binary approach by insisting that because a handful of workers remained until 2009, Ryan is correct to claim that the plant was "open."
CNS' Cover did concede that "the Janesville plant shut down the majority of its production in December 2008," but it's buried in the second-to-last paragraph of his article, and it comes several paragraphs after his assertion that "Ryan is in fact correct."
On the second point, Obama never actually promised to keep the plant open. As PolitiFact points out, Obama "had pledged to help keep the Janesville plant and others like it 'viable.' That's not quite the same thing as pledging keep the Janesville plant open."
Shepherd tried to skirt that, claiming that "Ryan did not directly blame the plant's closing on President Obama."
The MRC also largely ignored the fact that Obama made his statement in February 2008, but GM didn't announce that the plant would close until June 2008 -- again, before Obama became president.
Further, as former auto czar Steve Rattner noted, the auto companies that were bailed out by government -- not the government itself -- decided which plants stayed open:
“In this case the government, we aren’t really equipped to make those decisions,” he said. “We go to management and say, ‘Give us a plan, show us what you’ll do and what your business will look like.’ We look at the numbers and say whether we think it works, or if it needs more or fewer plant closings. But beyond that we have no expertise to decide whether a plant in Janesville should be kept open versus one in Wilmington, Del., or Tennessee or anywhere else.”
No MRC item mentioned Rattner's statement.
UPDATE: NewsBusters' Noel Sheppard joins the misleading parade in a Sept. 3 post, declaring that "if the plant remained open 'through late spring 2009,' Ryan's right." Sheppard quotes only from a quick summary debunking the claim by Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler, ignoring a more detailed piece by Kessler pointing out that "The plant was largely closed in December 2008 when production of General Motors SUVs ceased — before Obama was sworn in."
Joseph Farah is leading WorldNetDaily by example with his rampantmendacity.
An Aug. 30 WND article by Aaron Klein on a court blocking a new voter ID law in Texas carries the head line "Texas voter ID ruling based on 'faked' data."
That is a complete and utter lie. Not even Klein argues that "faked" data was cited in the case.
Instead, Klein attacks the Brennan Center for Justice, who he claims "was heavily instrumental in opposing the voter ID law in Texas, including providing key data to the Justice Department and to the organizations behind the lawsuit against the law." Klein asserts that the Brennan Center is a "radical group that has a history of biased research," but at no point does Klein address the quality of the data allegedly used in the Texas case.
Instead, as part of documenting the Brennan Center's alleged "history of questionable research," Klein rehashes a decade-old attack in which the right-wing Weekly Standard claimed that the Brennan Center "deliberately faked" in support of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law.
Klein didn't mention, however, that the Weekly Standard's bashing has been dismissed as a partisan attack. The Brookings Institution's Thomas Mann wrote:
Sound familiar? Harsh and unsubstantiated personal attacks from seemingly independent voices. Highly selective and contentious bits of information packaged to conjure up a vast conspiracy. Amazing strategic and rhetorical consistency in the nominally uncoordinated campaign to discredit a very inconvenient body of research. And confidence that the media will lend the charges credibility, if only by framing stories in the familiar "he said, she said" crossfire.
I am appalled by the nature and ferocity of the attack on this body of research. I say this as someone who was present when this research was first conceived, served on a Brennan Center committee to explore its policy implications, and testified publicly on its quality and significance.
I am a supporter of the new law and believe its major provisions are constitutional. But I am willing to place on the line my professional reputation, built on more than three decades of work at the American Political Science Association and the Brookings Institution, in asserting that the demonization of this research is bogus and in no way undermines its central conclusions.
But Klein and WND aren't terribly interested in balance or telling the truth, are they?
NewsBusters: Birthers Have Been 'Disavowed' By GOP (Like Romney?) Topic: NewsBusters
Jeffrey Meyer used an Aug. 30 NewsBusters post to complain that MSNBC's Chris Matthews asked "a ridiculous question about birtherism" following her "inspirational convention speech." Meyer declared that birtherism is "an issue that numerous Republicans have disavowed since the beginning," adding, "Matthews’ obsession with a fringe group of individuals that have been disavowed by the Republican Party shows the bigoted and small mindset he represents."
If birtherism has been so soundly "disavowed" by Republicans, why did the Republican Party's nominee, Mitt Romney, invoke birtherism when he remarked, "No one's ever asked to see my birth certificate"? Doesn't that make Romney a "fringe individual" by Meyer's definition?
Of course, NewsBusters immediately ran to Romney's defense over the remark, portraying it as a "joke" and criticizing people from trying to read anything more into it.
WND's Farah Even Lies About Himself Topic: WorldNetDaily
Joseph Farah has demonstrated a disturbingpropensity to lie in recent days. His mendacity is so pervasive that he'll even lie about himself.
Farah starts his Aug. 30 WorldNetDaily column with a falsehood: that the Southern Poverty Law Center "inspir[ed] a shooting attack on the Family Research Council in Washington." In fact, nobody -- not even the FRC's Tony Perkins -- has provided any evidence whatsoever to prove that.
The rest of Farah's column is devoted to whining about a new SPLC piece on WND, which Farah claims "mixes misinformation, innuendo and outright lies to paint a picture of an extremist organization rather than what it admits is one of the most popular news organizations on the Internet." Farah then tried to rebut some of the article's alleged falsehoods, telling new lies in the process. For instance:
One of my board members is credited with joining me in an effort to revive the Sacramento Union, the daily newspaper I once ran, in 2004. Neither one of us was involved in any such effort.
The SPLC cites ConWebWatch for this claim; we wrote in a 2007 article that Farah and Richard Botkin were advisory board members for the Union revival. We cited a Sacramento Business Journal article that stated (emphasis added):
The advisory board for the magazine includes some folks who haven't been shy in the past about letting their politics show. It includes former GOP Assemblywoman Barbara Alby and Assemblyman Larry Bowler; Charles H. Bell Jr., general counsel to the California Republican Party and the Western Journalism Center; WorldNetDaily.com execs and contributors Richard Botkin and Farah, who also has a radio talk show; California Business Properties Association CEO Rex Hime; auto dealership founder Wes Lasher; developer Marvin L. "Buzz" Oates; and local ad exec Sal Russo.
In other words, Farah is lying through his teeth.
Farah also complains:
SPLC attempts to link me with R.J. Rushdoony, whom it identifies as the “father of Christian Reconstructionism.” Yet, reconstructionists, including the late Rushdoony, all know or knew I do not subscribe to their theological views.
Farah seems to be trying to split hairs here. He doesn't explain what "theological views" of Rushdoony he does not "subscribe to," but it's clear that Farah moves in reconstructionist circles -- the two were both (and Farah may still be) members of the secretive right-wing group the Council for National Policy, and WND board member Wayne Johnson is also on the board of the Rushdoony-founded Chalcedon Foundation. And as we've documented, Farah does hold some reconstructionist views, like opposition to public education and the death penalty for moral crimes such as adultery.
Farah writes:
The article contends an organization I founded, Western Journalism Center, “was hit with a $2 million libel suit for promoting a ‘report’ suggesting that White House Deputy Counsel Vincent Foster had been the victim of foul play, rather than suicide. (The suit was later dismissed.)” No such lawsuit was ever filed – though the Bill Clinton White House did, in fact, order a highly publicized Internal Revenue Service audit of WJC as a result of the investigation.
The SPLC's wording on this is imprecise, which Farah is trying to take advantage of. The specific allegation appears to be that a WJC-published article by Christopher Ruddy claimed that the Park Police had staged the scene of Foster's death, which resulted in a lawsuit by one of the Park Police officers named in Ruddy's article. That is sourced to Dan Moldea's book "A Washington Tragedy: How the Death of Vincent Foster Ignited A Political Firestorm."Farah has previously denounced the book in a 1998 column as a "journalistic con job" and, even worse, boring -- but he did not challenge Moldea's depiction of the lawsuit.
Farah writes:
SPLC claims I was “scheduled to be a featured guest at a 2007 conference run by Vision Forum Ministries, an ultraconservative outfit whose director Doug Phillips is the son of Constitution Party co-founder Howard Phillips.” I have never been invited to speak at such an event!
The Vision Forum Ministries page on the conference (which appears to have been canceled) would seem to prove him wrong. Here's a screen shot of Farah's bio from the page:
Farah also writes:
SPLC makes the completely unfounded accusation that “WND shilled for a publication titled ‘The Antichrist Identity’ that claimed President Obama is a crypto-Communist ‘apostle’ of the ‘New World Order’ who is setting up the planet for a takeover by ‘Jewish Masonic’ elites who will reduce the population by 5.5 billion and ‘enslave all of mankind under the thumb of a Jewish master race led by a world messiah of Jewish ancestry who is to rule from Jerusalem.’” This is a complete fabrication – made up out of whole cloth.
The SPLC points out that the publishers of "The Antichrist Identity" rented WND's mailing list to promote it, so it's not entirely untrue to call that "shilling." Besides, WND is no stranger to portraying Obama is the Antichrist, so it's unlikely that they saw the book as so extreme they should not accept money to rent out its mailing list to promote it.
Farah also repeats his disingenuous claim that WND has a wide variety of opinion because it published a couple of token liberals:
Yes, there are “ultra-conservative” views expressed at WND. But, of course, SPLC neglects to mention there are also ultra-liberal views expressed at WND in what is the broadest spectrum of political opinion to be found anywhere in the world.
Repeatedly, SPLC caricatures WND’s Judeo-Christian worldview as “anti-gay” and “anti-Muslim” – an incendiary and explosive combination that, according to the assailant, inspired a recent violent attack on Family Research Council, one of its other prominent targets, that resulted in the shooting of its security guard.
What SPLC does next is to use partial quotes from a long list of individual commentators over a 15-year period to suggest all of their opinions somehow represent those of WND. Of course, SPLC doesn’t quote from a single liberal contributor – people like Bill Press and Ellen Ratner – because that would contradict the thesis that WND is a monolithic, extremist company that pushes Christian dominionism.
In fact, as we've pointed out, of the three dozen or so columnists WND regularly publishes, Press and Ratner are the only liberals, apparently kept around only so Farah can claim that WND has "the broadest spectrum of political opinion to be found anywhere in the world." They're never promoted the way the "ultra-conservative" columnists are -- of which there are many more -- usually buried at the bottom of the commentary page.
Farah even complains of the SPLC article that "The race card is repeatedly played, too – ignoring the fact that WND showcases twice as many black columnists than any other news or commentary forum in the world." The fact that Farah treats that as a bragging point suggests that the only reason WND has so many black conservative columnists -- many more than the total number of liberals he publishes, by the way -- is to inoculate it from charges of racism.
That presumably gives WND licence to publish Pat Buchanan, known for his racially charged work, and to engage in a race-baiting campaign by publishing Colin Flaherty's articles depicting blacks as mob-prone thugs.
After all these disingenuous lies and misrepresentations, Farah still claims that "SPLC is a dangerous, repulsive group of liars and frauds with only two things in mind – making money through direct-mail scare tactics and recklessly putting targets on the backs of 'enemies,' like me, whom it demonizes with false accusations and misrepresentations."
MRC's Latest Freakout: A Skittles Ad Topic: Media Research Center
Earlier this week, the Media Research Center freaked out over an androgynous male model. Now, it's a candy commercial.
An Aug. 28 CNSNews.com article by Penny Starr uncriticially repeats the claims of the right-wing American Family Association's One Million Moms about the alleged offensiveness of a commercial for Skittles candy "that features a young woman french kissing a walrus." Starr writes that the group argues "it is 'irresponsible' for Mars and Wrigley to make an ad of this kind that promotes a product used by children."
But neither Starr nor the AFA offer any evidence that the commercial was targeted at children -- after all, children aren't the only people who buy Skittles. Nor do they explain why all ads for everything, even products not for children, apparently must be dumbed down to a child's level.
The MRC wasn't done with the manufactured outrage, however. MRC chief Brent Bozell's Aug. 31 column also references the Skittles ad, insisting without evidence that "the ad is targeted to children." Bozell goes on to whine that "this is a thoroughly bizarre way to sell candy to children," adding that "upsetting people who protest indecencies to children doesn't bother them at all."
Again, no MRC employee has offered evidence that this ad was targeted to children -- the one thing that would make this something other than a manufactured controversy from a pair of right-wing groups peddling professional prudery.
