MRC's Graham Lets Laura Ingraham Spin Away Gunshot Sound Effect Topic: NewsBusters
Is there any offensive behavior by a right-wing radio host the Media Research Center won't defend or try to spin away?
Last year, the MRC responded to Rush Limbaugh's tirade of misogyny against Sandra Fluke by starting a "I Stand With Rush" website. Now, in an Aug. 27 NewsBusters post, Tim Graham gave radio host Laura Ingraham an unfettered opportunity to play the victim after she was criticized for using a gunshot sound effect to interrupt a speech by Rep. John Lewis discussing the assassinated civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. on the 50th anniversary of his "I Have A Dream" speech, and Graham added his own tacit endorsement:
On Monday, Ingraham exploded the Lewis soundbite as he demanded “comprehensive immigration reform,” just before he used the ridiculous metaphor of illegal aliens hiding “in the shadows" -- she noted they were brought as guests to Obama's State of the Union address. Ingraham explained their sound effect to NewsBusters:
My producers and I have used this blow up effect to interrupt windbags for 10 years of political and cultural persuasions. The cannon or "blow up" sound is meant to convey the gaseous thoughts of a speaker combusting, but of course the bilious Joan Walsh of Salon.com knows that. (My producers have even blown me up when we play long clips from TV appearances!)
Par for the course--people with an ideological axe to grind are attempting to read malicious intent where none exists. Their goal is not to debate, but to stifle speech.
So using a gunshot/explosion/whatever sound effect to interrupt a speaker is not an attempt to stifle speech? And using it on a civil rights leader who saw several of his colleagues assassinated isn't crass and insensitive?
Graham continued to let Ingraham play defense:
Ingraham told me: "This is absurd and venomous and the predictably pathetic work of people who mean to crush free speech as they advance a failing, progressive agenda. If Joan Walsh or other left-wing loons give voice to their moronic, dishonest analysis, they might self-combust on my show, too. Boom."
She also said "I referred to John Lewis as a 'trailblazing civil rights figure.' They're absurd."
Praising John Lewis before insulting him with a gunshot sound effect is supposed to absolve Ingraham? Really?
The only absurd thing we see here is Graham so desperately willing to spin away odious behavior by his beloved right-wing radio hosts.
WND's Erik Rush Pretends He's Not Actually Calling for Obama's Assassination Topic: WorldNetDaily
Obama-hater Erik Rush has already been beaten to the punch by fellow WorldNetDaily columnists Mychal Massie and Ellis Washington in making the ludicrous comparison of President Obama to Caligula, but he gives it a go in his Aug. 28 WND column:
While his predecessors had gotten away with a lot, Caligula was the first of the Roman emperors to wholly disregard the Roman Senate and wield absolute power. He was said to have delighted in watching torture and executions, and spent his nights in orgies of gluttony and lust. His tendencies toward public sexual degeneracy and the summary execution of individuals for trifles offended even the questionable Roman sensibilities of the day. The Praetorian Guard assassinated him in January of 41.
Although it hasn’t been popularly acknowledged, America has herself a real, live emperor, and the reason I go so far as to compare him to Caligula (as opposed to other Roman emperors) has to do with his apparent belief that he can do nearly anything he wants (even if it is actually carried out by minions) with no concern for the consequences.
Like a god.
Barack Obama may not be bat-crap crazy like Caligula, but he could be unstable, and he is certainly acting in an autocratic, even dictatorial modality.
Then Rush takes it a step further by essentially endorsing his assassination:
Unfortunately, people like Obama – and Caligula – inevitably devour or destroy everything within their reach, whether it be the people closest to them, those in their charge, or the nations they lead. The citizens of Rome could see the danger they were in, but at least they had the benefit of their insane emperor operating completely without restraint or buffers. Thus, it was easier for those who ultimately took action to justify doing so.
Not that I’m making any suggestions, mind you …
Oh, bull. If Rush didn't want Obama to die like Caligula, he wouldn't have spent his entire column likening Obama to Caligula.
It appears that Rush can expect a visit from the Secret Service in the very near future.
Manning Inspires Transgender-Bashing At AIM Topic: Accuracy in Media
The gay-bashers at Accuracy in Media are at it again, this time freaking out over Bradley Manning's request to become a woman named Chelsea.
Daniel Greenfield fires off numerous remarks aimed at denigrating transgenders in an Aug. 26 AIM column:
After a great deal of fuss about national security and terrorism, sentence was passed and Bradley Manning, the man at the center of the storm who used a Lady Gaga CD to smuggle out classified information, announced that what he really wanted was to live as a woman.
Posting a photo wearing the least convincing wig outside of clown college, Manning announced that from now on, his name will be Chelsea.
Life might have been simpler for everyone if Manning had just gone straight to the bad wig. In the age of Obama, his right to pretend to be a woman would have been protected with more vigor than the lives of American soldiers serving in Afghanistan.
[...]
Every media outlet is now doing cheerful stories about some little boy being raised as an “Adorable Transgender Little Girl” by his Munchausen-by-proxy parents and the intolerant schools who won’t let him use the wrong bathroom.
Gender as a construct is one of those mechanistic progressive fantasies straight out of a Brave New World society where every aspect of human identity can be customized. Like most of the futuristic dystopias, it ends badly.
[...]
Bradley Manning betrayed his country for the same reason that he put on a blond wig; because he is mentally ill.
Not to be outdone, notorious homophobe Cliff Kincaid offered his own thoughts in an Aug. 26 column:
CNN’s story, “Chelsea or Bradley Manning: Addressing transgender people,” ignores the other alternative—he/she is simply a pervert who should have been booted out of the service years ago and should never have received a security clearance. The key question—not pursued by the media—is why Manning was allowed to remain in the Army when he was acting in violation of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” policy.
Manning will pay a price in prison, but those who permitted this to happen have still not been held accountable.
[...]
The media won’t remind us of this fact, but two previous NSA defectors to the Soviet Union/Russia, Bernon F. Mitchell and William H. Martin, were also perverts.
Mitchell confessed to “sexual experimentation with dogs and chickens,” according to the 1962 report, “Security Practices in the National Security Agency.” Mitchell, who had “associations with members of the Communist Party,” was “sexually abnormal,” had “posed for nude color slides perched on a velvet-covered stool,” and had “homosexual problems.”
Meanwhile, Kincaid -- wearing the hat of his own personal anti-gay/anti-commie group, America's Survival -- is calling for Fox News anchor Shepard Smith to publicly acknowledge that he's gay, presumably so Kincaid can bash him further. His little group has issued a 40,000-word report, authored by fellow homophobe Peter LaBarbera, warning about "Fox News’ Growing Pro-Homosexual Bias."
Matt Barber Lies About Gay Legislator Topic: WorldNetDaily
Professional gay-basher Matt Barber's latest column -- published at WorldNetDaily and CNSNews.com -- carries the headline "‘Gay’ Lawmaker to Christians: ‘We’ll Take Your Children’."
Just one problem: Nobody said that. Nowhere in his column does Barber directly quote anyone saying, "We'll take your children."
What Barber is presumably referring to is an "openly homosexual" politician in New Jersey defending the state's new law against forcing minors to undergo dubious same-sex reparation therapy:
On Wednesday, New Jersey Assemblyman Tim Eustace, who sponsored the bill and is openly homosexual, bombastically compared change therapy to “beating a child” and suggested that the government take children seeking change away from their parents. He told Talk Radio 1210 WPHT, “What this does is prevent things that are harmful to people. If a parent were beating their child on a regular basis we would step in and remove that child from the house. If you pay somebody to beat your child or abuse your child, what’s the difference?”
Notice at no point does Eustance say "we'll take your children." And complaining that Eustace "bombastically compared" reparation therapy to child abuse is rich from someone who, earlier in the column, bombastically called bans on reparative therapy for minors the “Jerry Sandusky Victimization Act.”
Scott Whitlock writes in an Aug. 27 NewsBusters post:
Appearing on Hugh Hewitt's radio show, Monday, liberal MSNBC panelist Karen Finney angrily hung up on the host after he dismantled her claim that conservatives are modern day McCarthyites for opposing health care. Hewitt stopped Finney and demanded she explain her historical analogy.
As described by Politico, Hewitt pressed, "Did any communists infiltrate the United States government?" Finney squirmed, "I think if we go back to the McCarthy hearings, it’s pretty clear that he created a culture of paranoia and fear that people later recognized, they sort of bought into it and then recognized that it was absolutely misplaced." The former head of the Democratic National Committee even declined to answer this basic question: "Was Alger Hiss a communist?"
Refusing to be diverted, Hewitt needled, "Karen, Karen, I’m just a little talk show host, I’m not an MSNBC host, I just have history...I just want to know, do you think Alger Hiss was a communist?"
After Finney (see file photo at right) instructed her conservative host to "go ahead and name" Cold War-era communists, Hewitt retorted, "Can you?"
In fact, Hewitt was the one doing the diverting by insisting on talking about Alger Hiss instead of the subject at hand, Ted Cruz's inflammatory rhetoric. Media Matters documents what Whitlock won't about the Finney-Hewitt interview:
Instead of discussing Cruz's behavior, however, Hewitt decided to discuss the history of McCarthyism, ostensibly defending the Wisconsin senator.
"Was Alger Hiss a communist?" Hewitt asked. Finney responded, "I think that's distracting from the point I was trying to make."
Finney continued, "And the point I was trying to make was, you had Joe McCarthy was on a mission to root out communism in the government, and he did it in such a way that created a hysteria that was very unhealthy for this country. Do you really disagree with me on that?"
Hewitt refused to engage with Finney's question and refused to discuss the damage McCarthy had done, just like he refused to acknowledge the damage to our discourse caused by Ted Cruz's behavior. This is after Finney explicitly stated, "Obviously, spying on this country and betraying this country is absolutely wrong. Of course it is."
Why shouldn't a guest hang up on a radio host who refuses to have an honest conversation? Whitlock doesn't explain.
One Author's Deal With The WND Devil Topic: WorldNetDaily
Michael Thompson writes in an Aug. 24 WorldNetDaily article:
Coincidence?
Maybe. Or maybe not…
It was on Tuesday when Al-Jazeera America, the latest enterprise of the Islamist-inspired, Middle East-based media empire, was launched.
And it was on Tuesday when “The 9/11 Prophecy” by James F. Fitzgerald, the creator of “The Watchword Bible,” officially was launched.
“It just so happens Al Jazeera, the pro-Islamic TV news channel, is launching in America on the same day my book, ‘The 9/11 Prophecy,’ is being officially released by WND Books. I can’t help but be struck by the irony of this timing,” said Fitzgerald.
Or perhaps Thompson and Fitzgerald are so desperate to gin up sales for a WND-published book that they're simply glomming onto a random, unrelated event for maximum exploitation.
Meanwhile, Richard Bartholomew points out that Fitzgerald's book -- based on a self-published e-book he wrote a couple years earlier -- is notable for its "easy conflation of personal biography, historic events, and cosmology."
Bartholomew also notes that Fitzgerald made "a deal with the devil" by letting his "WatchWord Bible" be distributed by WND: "This means that a hitherto neutral Bible product with potentially quite a wide reach will be tied directly to WND‘s paranoid and shrill political agenda and fringe apocalypticism."
That may be another explanation of why Fitzgerald is so eager to glom onto unrelated events for self-promotion purposes.
NEW ARTICLE: Alan Caruba, Bamboozler Extraordinaire Topic: CNSNews.com
It's not just climate change: Mr. National Anxiety Center also loves Obama-bashing and believes that right-wing chain emails are credible sources of information. Read more >>
Corsi, Shoebat Team Up To Defend Murderous Assad Regime In Syria Topic: WorldNetDaily
From Joel Gilbert to various shady Kenyans, WorldNetDaily's Jerome Corsi has a bad habit of sourcing his outlandish claims with less-than-credible sources. We're seeing that again with Corsi's newest BFF, apparent charlatan Walid Shoebat.
Corsi has already pushed Shoebat's assertions that President Obama's half-brother works for the Muslim Brotherhood and that a purported Morsi government document shows that Obama has been bribing Egyptian Islamists (though the document in question has a German date on it).
Now, Corsi and Shoebat are taking the side of the Syrian government in claiming that suspected chemical weapon attacks were carried out by Syrian rebels, not the Assad regime, with this evidence:
With the assistance of former PLO member and native Arabic-speaker Walid Shoebat, WND has assembled evidence from various Middle Eastern sources that cast doubt on Obama administration claims the Assad government is responsible for last week’s attack.
So we have "various Middle Eastern sources" promoted by an apparent charlatan and a documented liar to take the side of a regime that has perpetrated a civil war on its own people that have resulted in tens of thousands of deaths.
On top of that, Corsi writes that "Russian media sources have consistently reported Syrian military have discovered rebel warehouses containing chemical weapons agents and have documented rebel chemical weapons attacks on the Syrian civilians the military." Given that Russia is in bed with the Assad regime, why trust anything the Russian media has to say?
WND hasregularlysided with the murderous Assad regime in the Syrian civil war, despite Assad's human rights record. This is just the most desperate example of it.
Newsmax Falsely Tries To Portray 'The Butler' As A Failure Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax has been trying rather desperately to attack the fim "Lee Daniels' The Butler" because its portrayal of President Reagan is not completely fawning. Now it's trying to portray the film as a financial failure.
An. Aug. 26 Newsmax article by Jennifer G. Hickey touts how the film "saw its weekend box office receipts plummet by nearly a third, from $24.6 million in its opening week to $17 million last week, after a storm of protests from Republican and veterans groups." But Hickey doesn't explain that films almost always see a falloff in receipts between their opening weekend and the following weekend, and that "The Butler's drop-off is a relatively small one. By comparison, the previous top film, "Elysium," saw a 54 percent falloff from its opening weekend to the second weekend.
Also, the $51 million "The Butler" has made so far exceeds its production cost of $30 million, so it's ostensibly a profitable film (Hollywood accounting methods notwithstanding).
Meanwhile, Newsmax has found another reason to attack the film: the casting of Jane Fonda as Nancy Reagan. Newsmax offers no opinon on Fonda's performance, but instead highlights how her casting "has sparked a backlash among military veterans who cannot forgive her for her actions during the Vietnam War."
Newsmax has also published a column by Michael Reagan railing against the film's portrayal of his father. Reagan does not indicate that he has actually seen the film. and he falls into a bizarre defense of his father's inaction on apartheid: "My father’s position on lifting the South African sanctions in the ‘80s had nothing to do with the narrow issue of race. It had to do with the geopolitics of the Cold War. "
So racism was a "narrow issue" regarding a system founded on it? Really?
Meanwhile ... Topic: WorldNetDaily
Richard Bartholomew does a fine job of deconstructing WorldNetDaily's promotion of a Catholic cardinal purportedly warning of "the threat of 'The Smoke of Satan' descending on the Vatican itself." Turns out the cardinal said nothing about the "Smoke of Satan" and was merely issuing "a general warning against compromise; to see a coded reference here to Satanic covens is simply a grotesque misreading." Bartholomew writes.
Speaking Of Frantic, Unhinged Screeds ... Topic: CNSNews.com
Jen Kuznicki used an Aug. 22 CNSNews.com blog post to rant against a "frantic, unhinged screed" against Mark Levin's new book. But the only frantic, unhinged screeding we see is by Kuznicki.
How bad is it? Here's what she writes about Media Matters (disclosure: my employer):
Any time that putrid organizations like Media Matters, which was originally organized to defend the abuse of women by Bill Clinton, becomes frantic and outlandishly over-the-top, you know you are headed down the right path.
Actually, Media Matters was founded in 2004, nearly four years after Clinton left office.
What was that about a frantic, unhinged screed, Jen?
Uh-oh -- Jerome Corsi has another supposedly incriminating document.
Corsi declares in an Aug. 24 WorldNetDaily article:
A question apparently being raised in next week’s trial in Cairo of Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood leaders facing criminal charges is this: Was the Obama administration paying bribes as large as $850,000 a year to the Morsi government that were distributed by top ministerial level officials to Muslim Brotherhood leaders, with the direct involvement of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo?
WND is in possession of an official document from inside the Morsi government that lends credibility to a report published in Arabic by an Egyptian newspaper in Cairo that lists the charges brought by the current military-controlled government against Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood leaders.
As seen above, WND has obtained official records from the deposed Morsi government in Egypt, with signatures, documenting monthly “gifts” paid to Muslim Brotherhood leaders in Egypt by the former prime minister and foreign minister of Qatar, Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabor Al Thani.
The document was seized from Egyptian government offices in Cairo when the Morsi government was deposed by the military July 3.
Corsi does not explain how he came "in possession" of this document, nor does he offer any evidence of its authenticity. He does, however, have suspected charlatan Walid Shoebat vouch for it.
Forgive us if we're a tad skeptical about this, but we remember the last time Corsi did something like this. In 2008, Corsi made a big show of traveling to Kenya to retrieve documents purporting to prove that Barack Obama "backed" the "ruthless, foreign thug" and Kenyan president Raila Odinga and that Obama donated "nearly $1 million" to Odinga's campaign. In fact, both documents were demonstrated to be fake or fraudulent.
Plus, something jumps right out at us regarding this document. At the top is the date "28.März 2013." "März" is the German word for the month of March. Why does a supposedly Egyptian Brotherhood document have a date in German?
Unless Corsi can offer up compelling evidence of the authenticity of his latest document -- not to mention the date in German -- there's absolutely no reason to believe anything he says.
NewsBusters' Blumer Has A Fit That AP Is Reporting Good Economic News Topic: NewsBusters
Tom Blumer just hates it when there is good economic news under a Democratic president.
An Associated Press article noting the decline in new unemployment applications since the depth of the recessions sent Blumer on an unhinged, petty rant in an Aug. 23 NewsBusters post:
After a two-year hiatus, the Associated Press has apparently decided that Americans need a weekly reminder of how bad weekly layoffs were during the recession.
In June 2011, possibly as a result of some hectoring by yours truly, the wire service totally or almost totally stopped reminding readers that "(unemployment) claims applications peaked at 659,000 during the recession." That tired figure was already over two years old, and isn't even an all-time record (several weeks during the 1980s were higher, even with a much smaller workforce). So who cares? But in each of the past three weeks, AP has resurrected that tired number (since revised slightly upward because of changes to seasonal adjustment factors), as if a one-week stat from almost 4-1/2 years ago means anything to anybody right now:
Blumer then goes ballistic over the AP stating that unemployment claims have "fallen steadily" reaching their peak because "here are two periods of more than seven month or so since that peak during which the four-week moving average moved up and stayed up." But the chart of this he includes to prove this demonstrates beyond a shadow of a doubt that the overall trend has been steadily down:
Blumer, mind you, is the chief economic blogger for NewsBusters. But it appears that, like with many other things, he'd rather put his right-wing politics before economic facts.
WND Pretends A White Teen Wasn't Involved In Lane Killing Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily originally scrubbed its initial article on the death of Chris Lane of most of its overt race-baiting after it we pointed out that one of the suspects in Lane's death was white, not black. Apparently, WND has now decided it can race-bait over Lane's death after all.
An Aug. 23 WND article promoting Jack Cashill's upcoming book on Trayvon Martin contains this paragraph about the Lane killing:
Two teenage African-Americans are charged with the murder of Lane, and another teen faces charges for his involvement in the brutal slaying. Lane was shot in the back while jogging through his neighborhood and his death has prompted an international outcry.
Not only is the third suspect, Michael Jones, not identified as white, his role in the murder is minimized.
Cashill goes on to desperately draw a parallel between the two black suspects and Trayvon Martin, declaring that "if Trayvon was the son of Barack Obama, they were his brothers." Cashill does not say that if he had a son, he would look like Michael Jones.
AIM Promotes Concussion Trutherism Topic: Accuracy in Media
An Aug. 19 Accuracy in Media article by Malcolm Kline uncritically promotes a new book defending football and minimizing the impact of the injuries its players suffer.
The book, "The War on Football" by Daniel J. Flynn, appears to fulfill the right-wing agenda of its publisher, Regnery, by channeling RushLimbaugh's lamenting that concussions aren't a real problem for football players and efforts to reduce the incidence of concussions will destroy the sport. Kline even throws his own two cents into the endorsement:
Moreover, as Flynn eloquently points out, the benefits of football far outweigh the drawbacks. “Players get knocked down and they either stand up or stay on the dirt,” Flynn writes. “Teams lose.”
“Then they choose—regroup to fight another day or fold. Perseverance makes the impossible possible. Players succeed by transcending pain rather than brooding in it.”
The season I played on the team in high school—sophomore year—I had one pulled muscle. That’s when one of the coaches taught me a trick I’ve used ever since. Don’t respond to pain by doubling over but by straightening up. It works. Could that be a metaphor for life itself?
If concussions are such a minor problem, why did the NFL refuse to cooperate with a documentary produced by ESPN and public television on the effects of concussions in the league? (ESPN has since taken its name off the documentary due to arguments about editorial control.)
Kline is the head of AIM's offshoot, Accuracy in Academia. He apparently didn't try to find any, in the form of dissenting opinions on the concussion issue, before writing this column.
Is there any offensive behavior by a right-wing radio host the Media Research Center won't defend or try to spin away?
Obama-hater 
The 
Professional gay-basher 
Scott Whitlock writes in an Aug. 27 NewsBusters 
Michael Thompson writes in an Aug. 24 WorldNetDaily 
From 
Newsmax has been 
Jen Kuznicki used an Aug. 22 CNSNews.com 
Uh-oh -- Jerome Corsi has another supposedly incriminating document.
Plus, something jumps right out at us regarding this document. At the top is the date "28.März 2013." "März" is the German word for the month of March. Why does a supposedly Egyptian Brotherhood document have a date in German?
Tom Blumer just hates it when there is good economic news under a Democratic president.
WorldNetDaily originally 
An Aug. 19 Accuracy in Media 
