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Wednesday, March 26, 2014
MRC Channels Limbaugh, Goes Slut-Shaming On Birth Control
Topic: Media Research Center

For a March 25 Media Research Center Culture & Media Insititute piece, Kristine Marsh channels the MRC's favorite slut-shamer, Rush Limbaugh:

Out: First Amendment protections guaranteeing religious liberty. Oh, and the right to free association. In: The inalienable right to have strangers pony up for your sex life.

Welcome to our new constitutional order, if some major American newspapers and left-leaning sites have their way.

If you'll recall, the MRC effectively endorsed Limbaugh's three-day tirade of misoygyny against Sandra Fluke -- in which he, among many other vile things, claimed that because Fluke argued for coverage of contraception, she "wants to be paid to have sex"-- to the point where it started an "I Stand With Rush" website.

Marsh seems to be unaware that there are legitimate medical reasons to take contraceptives that have nothing to do with birth control.

Marsh also invokes the ad populum fallacy at the end of her column:

Not everyone agrees with the left-wing media, however. The Becket Fund, who’s representing The Greens, the owners of Hobby Lobby in their case against the Obama Administration, have argued:

“In Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby, 84 amicus briefs were filed – among the largest amicus efforts ever. By an almost three- to-one margin, these briefs favored Hobby Lobby, demonstrating the breadth and depth of support for the Green family, Hobby Lobby, and religious freedom.”

The number of amicus briefs has no relation whatsoever to the legal legitimacy of the views argued in them.


Posted by Terry K. at 3:33 PM EDT
Colin Flaherty Race-Baiting Watch
Topic: WorldNetDaily

America's favorite race-baiter, Colin Flaherty of WorldNetDaily, checks in:

Just when the Knockout Game is declared dead, a week of heightened bloodshed proves reports of its demise to be greatly exaggerated.

Five months after the New York Times said this spontaneous racial violence was an urban myth; four months after NPR admitted it happened once in a while but race had nothing to do with it; three months after CBS News said maybe it was happening after all; two months after a Philadelphia family court judge said racial violence exists because white people deserve it; and one month after CNN said the Knockout Game fad was over, victims and videos and witnesses and suspects just keep piling up.

Just in the last 10 days, there have been several reports, but many in the media still refuse to connect the dots and report the central organizing feature of the Knockout Game: The perpetrators are black. The victims are not.

Got that, folks? Black people are violent! They engage in "spontaneous racial violence"! They don't need any provocation whatsoever to be violent! And blacks are the only people ever to have perpetrated the knockout game!

No wonder nobody believes WND.


Posted by Terry K. at 2:39 PM EDT
MRC's Graham Resurrects Old Bashing of Iran-Contra Prosecutor
Topic: NewsBusters

It's apparently "I Hate The '90s" week at the Media Research Center.

On the heels of baselessly attacking Anita Hill, Tim Graham uses a March 21 NewsBusters post to unleash a tirade against Iran-contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh, who died last week:

Iran-Contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh died Thursday at the age of 102. A quick quiz of the millennials around our office showed no one had the slightest idea who he was. A search of our network news/cable news database also turned up nothing in the last news cycle.

Here's how middle-aged conservative media critics remember Walsh: On the last Friday night before the 1992 election, Walsh indicted Reagan defense secretary Caspar Weinberger. President Bush was scheduled that night for a live sit-down on Larry King Live. CNN allowed then-Clinton campaign staffer George Stephanopoulos called in to fight with him about his alleged lying on Iran-Contra. That was dirty trick piled on dirty trick, as I wrote in my book Pattern of Deception.

Graham can sure hold a grudge, can't he? And this is from the same guy who was outraged that the media would dare examine what Mitt Romney did in high school.


Posted by Terry K. at 10:59 AM EDT
WND Thinks We Care What Kathleen Willey Has To Say
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Kathleen Willey is a professional victim with a history of telling tall tales in an attempt to extend the 15 minutes that clocked out on her when she accused Bill Clinton of sexually assaulting her. For WorldNetDaily -- where Clinton derangement is trumped only by Obama derangement and the truth doesn't really matter -- tall tales are good enough.

So WND is more than happy to grant Willey's request to cling to the spotlight by publishing her March 23 column filled with recycled Hillary-bashing. She complains that Hillary Clinton's "word means nothing," which is rich coming from a woman who has repeatedly flip-flopped on the details of her purported Clinton encounters.

Willey concludes: "We have all become weary of the Clintons and their dysfunctional family drama. We deserve better." Coming from someone whose own dysfunctional family drama led her to beg WND readers to help pay off her house, the irony is almost painful.

WND, meanwhile, is all too willing to let Willey debase herself so it can feed off her Obama derangement -- though the nutritional value from that particular teat-sucking has long ago dissipated.


Posted by Terry K. at 1:40 AM EDT
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
NewsBusters: MSNBC Covered Missing Plane To Avoid Covering Obama
Topic: NewsBusters

Mark Finkelstein writes in a March 20 NewsBusters post:

You're MSNBC.  That hurts I know, but work with me.  So, what would you like to feature: President Obama getting Putinized?  Syria flouting the WMD agreement?  Iran's inexorable march toward nukes?  The ongoing Obamacare debacle?

Not so much.  Say: why not make like CNN and go all in on MH-370? Which is precisely what Morning Joe did today.  The first 103 minutes were devoted exclusively to the story of the missing plane, as an endless series of experts and panelists speculated to no particular avail.

Finkelstein is echoing right-wingers like those on Fox News who complain that there's some kind of conspiracy to report on the missingplane so they wouldn't have to report on negative things about Obama.


Posted by Terry K. at 3:27 PM EDT
WND Editor's Hatchet Job on Valerie Jarrett
Topic: WorldNetDaily

The latest issue of WorldNetDaily's Whistleblower Magazine is one long hatchet job on Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett, and David Kupelian's essay on her encapsulates the smears.

Kupelian repeats his earlier denigration of President Obama as "a pathological narcissist with an absurdly grandiose view of yourself and almost no tolerance for criticism and disagreement" and further insults him by calling him "a mixed-race child abandoned by his drunk, bigamist, communist father, and who later also lost his Muslim Indonesian stepfather to divorce."

But the article is about Jarrett, and Kupelian saves most of his venom for her. He repeats WND's earlier libel  of her as "the night stalker" -- thus likening her to notorious serial killer Richard Ramirez, whose "Night Stalker" moniker was devised by Kupelian's boss, Joseph Farah -- and even goes on to call her "Obama's Rasputin," adding, "we are confronted with another breed of out-of-touch czar."

Funny thing about Kupelian's diatribe, though -- none of the claims he makes about Jarrett can be traced to an on-the-record sources. Kupelian cites several writers who in turn cite unnamed or anonymous sources. Chief among them is Edward Klein, for whom Kupelian tries to construct a patina of legitimacy by describing him as a former "foreign editor of Newsweek and editor in chief of the New York Times Magazine." In fact, he's a right-winger who has written a hatchet job on Hillary Clinton and co-wrote an embarrassing self-published novel treating every crazy Obama conspiracy as fact.

By passing this screed off as some sort of investigative journalism, Kupelian is demonstrating why nobody believes WND.


Posted by Terry K. at 2:35 PM EDT
MRC Wants You To Think Anita Hill Did It For The Money
Topic: Media Research Center

Two decades later, the Media Research Center is still mad at Anita Hill.

Scott Whitlock devotes a March 19 MRC item to bashing a Hill appearance on ABC's "The View," grumbling that host Barbara Walters "allowed no tough questions of Hill, just queries about the "cost" of speaking out. " Whitlock then huffed:

A tough journalist might have pointed out that Hill has since written a book, become a professor at Brandeis University and has starred in a documentary. The book deal came with a reported $1 million payday. If the cost of the hearings on her life is fair game, what about Hill's enrichment? 

Yes, Whitlock is suggesting that Hill came forward with her criticism of Clarence Thomas for "enrichment" purposes. Never mind that Hill has never changed her story over the years, nor has she been proven wrong.

Further, Hill's book on the Thomas hearings wasn't published until 1997 -- six years after her testimony -- which makes Whitlock's portrayal of her as someone trying to cash in on fame even more ridiculous.

In 2011, Whitlock ludicrously cited a 20-year-old poll to suggest that Hill was a liar. The MRC's Tim Graham has also baselessly portrayed Hill as a liar without providing any evidence to back it up.


Posted by Terry K. at 12:54 PM EDT
WND's Klayman Spews More Hate and Lies
Topic: WorldNetDaily

The failed lawyer and sue-happy defamer Larry Klayman strikes again in his March 23 WorldNetDaily column. Let's unpack what he writes here:

That we have sadly become a nation of men and not of laws is best seen in the context of the legal challenges to the eligibility of Barack Hussein Obama to be president of the United States. Clearly, even if Obama were born in Hawaii and not Kenya to an anti-American, Muslim, anti-Semitic father – and his being born in the United States is doubtful given all that we know (see “Where’s the Real Birth Certificate?”) – he is not a natural born citizen – that is born to two citizen parents – as required by the U.S. Constitution.

Over the last five years, many court challenges have been filed concerning Obama’s eligibility. Indeed, I have filed three in Florida and one in Alabama. In every instance, and I am not just referencing the cases that I filed, these court challenges have been dismissed. (They are currently on appeal.) But what is more troubling than the dismissals is that the judges presiding over these cases have generally refused to even explain the reasons for their dismissals. Apparently, they are so afraid of taking on this issue that they don’t want to go on record for their actions. That is because these dismissals are not legally justified.

Klayman is lying when he claims that Constitution requires that a president be the child of "two citizen parents." As we've pointed out when he has told this lie before, the Constitution does not define "natural born citizen," and no American court has issued a definition.

Klayman is also lying about his court filings. As Dr. Conspiracy notes, the judges have, in fact, explained their reasoning, either in their rulings or in upheld rulings.

And because Klayman has been stricken with a particularly virulent strain of Obama derangement, he cannot help but libel and smear the president:

We cannot quit. The imposter in the White House must be held accountable, and he should indeed be told to get up off his knees and come out with his hands up.

The boy just can't help himself. He must lie and smear in order to make his own pathetic life (in which he threatens to sue anyone who tells the truth about him) have some sort of meaning. Yet despite his demonstrated incompetence, he remains WND's house lawyer. Sad, really.


Posted by Terry K. at 12:55 AM EDT
Monday, March 24, 2014
NewsBusters Can't Stop Portraying Discrimination Against Gays As 'Religious Liberty'
Topic: NewsBusters

Ken Shepherd grumbles in a March 21 NewsBusters post:

MSNBC is at it yet again, slandering conservatives wishing to protect the religious liberties of business owners as "anti-gay" bigots.

The latest example comes with the headline for Adam Serwer's March 21 story, "Georgia Republicans tack anti-gay amendments onto unrelated bills." 

As we've pointed out when Shepherd and his Media Research Center buddies have previously advanced this idea, there's a good reason such "religious liberty" bills are seen -- and accurately portrayed -- as anti-gay: The impetus for introducing them was to keep business owners from being forced to do anything that could possibly be considered support for gay marriage, like baking a cake or taking photos, allowing to skirt federal public-accomodation mandates.

Shepherd has previously framed the anti-gay discrimination that such laws would make possible as a "free-market remedy."

Posted by Terry K. at 8:08 PM EDT
Obama Derangement Syndrome Watch, Supersize WorldNetDaily Edition
Topic: WorldNetDaily

One Hollywood marriage was so disastrous that when she (Ethel Merman) wrote her autobiography, she left the chapter about her marriage to him (Ernest Borgnine) completely blank!

Pretend I’m doing that now to President Obama’s speech of Friday, Feb. 28, about Russian troop movements against Ukraine. I was wildly excited when I heard he was going to speak. I could see no reason for him to speak at all except to interrupt his Niagara of flaccid, empty, even cowardly foreign policy speeches and get rough, tough and real for a change. What a loser! This was the most flaccid, empty and cowardly ever. Forget it. Pretend this is all blank space until now!

-- Barry Farber, March 4 WorldNetDaily column

The Obama administration has without fail, since day one, stood in direct contradiction to what the president and his minions appear to be advocating.

For example, just last week, Time reported, “Obama looks to boost young minorities,” while behind the back of young minorities he advocates their eradication through Planned Parenthood (concerning the topic of abortion).

Despite this, Obama publicly puts on a front that he is “his brother’s keeper” and wants to protect America’s youth by educating them.

-- Bradlee Dean, March 6 WND column

One of the many things Obama says that annoys me no end is when he makes reference to the international community and pretends, one, that it actually exists and, two, that it possesses moral authority. Until he got the house key to the White House, one could argue that whatever morality existed in the world was mainly possessed by the United States. But he has seen to it that when he said that America was no more exceptional than any other nation, he fully intended to prove it by transforming it in his own repulsive image.

-- Bur Prelutsky, March 11 WND column

One has to look no further than those who support this administration to find that Obama’s allies are America’s enemies, which by definition is treason.

For example, Obama enjoys support from Cuba, China, Russia (all of which are communist nations) and the Muslim Brotherhood, America’s sworn enemy. In fact, Obama has the audacity to entertain America’s sworn enemies right within the White House in Washington, D.C.

This administration stands guilty as charged. No debate, no argument and no compromise through corrupt deliberation and/or interpretations.

This president has already identified himself as an enemy of the Constitution of the United States by his intentions and actions, through which he has violated it time and time again.

-- Bradlee Dean, March 13 WND column

Today, We the People are confronted by a tyrant far worse than Bill Clinton. Obama is a socialist who has shown disdain and enmity not just for the birthplace of Judaism and Christianity, Israel, but the Judeo-Christian heritage in general. He has attempted to further the interests of his ultra-leftist agenda at the expense of those he perceives are part of the rich white establishment, preferentially elevating “his people” over others who are not of his ilk and liking; turning upside down the discrimination he seeks to right for those dear to him.

In so doing, President Barack Hussein Obama has used every dirty and lawless trick in the book to try to achieve his distorted and perverse mission, giving rise to what he has coined and dismisses as “phony scandals.” And to thus far cover up these scandals, he and his minions have used the traditional means of which I speak to keep truth and justice from the American people.

-- Larry Klayman, March 14 WND column

The current occupant of the Oval Office seems to think that just because it works with his daughters, a time out is all it takes to make Putin toe the line. What Barack fails to grasp is that when Putin looks at his Obama Christmas card, he sees four females, not three, and he realizes that in a fight, Michelle is the only one he might have reason to worry about.

-- Burt Prelutsky, March 18 WND column

The White House says the president’s National Security Council has had almost daily meetings about the Ukrainian crisis, but it hasn’t said how many of those meetings had Obama in attendance. Of course, given modern technology, he can easily follow the action from the 17th tee at the Congressional Country Club golf course. Has “leading from behind” been replaced by hiding in the short rough?

Folks, it’s hard to take this man seriously as a “world leader,” and his approval rating has now fallen below 40 percent. Coming on top of the domestic policy disaster called Obamacare, this foreign-policy tailspin is undoubtedly contributing to the collapse of those poll numbers. Would you hire this man to run your pizza franchise?

-- Tom Tancredo, March 21 WND column

I have a feeling even Barack Obama is surprised by how much he has been able to accomplish in tearing America down in less than six years. It’s because he had a lot of help before that six years began.

America was ripe for the taking.

But I’ll just bet he is surprised sometimes how easy it all was.

I have no doubt he wonders some days why he doesn’t have more real opposition – whether he is being set up.

But most days he is probably more inclined, as a narcissist and ego-maniac, to believe he’s invincible, a man of destiny, maybe even anointed by some force for a time such as this.

He may think he can do whatever he wants and get away with it.

Wouldn’t you think like that if you had lived his life?

-- Joseph Farah, March 23 WND column


Posted by Terry K. at 3:11 PM EDT
Not News At The MRC: Catholic Activist's Demand That Liberal College Profs Be Shot
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center loves to play gotcha by cherry-picking random right-wing-friendly stories and bashing the "liberal media" for not reporting them. For example:

You'd think that the MRC reports all news and doesn't ignore incidents that don't conform to its right-wing agenda. That, of course, would be wrong.

Case in point: The MRC has had a friendly relationship with Austin Ruse of the right-wing Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM). He has been a signatory to two MRC-circulated open letters -- one demanding that President Obama fire Harry Knox as a member of the Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships for alleged "anti-Catholic" remarks (which were actually just criticism of the Catholic Church's stance on homosexuality), and a letter to the broadcast networks demanding that they "stop censoring coverage of the trial of Philadelphia abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell."

Ruse has also been regularly quoted at CNSNews.com, opining on such issues as the United Nations and gender identity. So you'd think that if Ruse makes the news, it would be news to the MRC.

Earlier this month, while serving as guest host for fellow right-wing Sandy Rios' radio show, Ruse said that “the hard left, human-hating people that run modern universities” should “all be taken out and shot.” Ruse initially responded to criticism of his remarks by calling his critics “dumb,” “stupid” and “idiots.”

But then Ruse started feeling real heat: The American Family Association, which runs Rios' show, cut ties with him, and one Catholic leader resigned from C-FAM over the remarks. That prompted to issue a more abject apology, insisting that his death threat "was not intended to be taken literally" and hypocritically claiming that "I have dedicated my life and career to ending violence."

Despite this controversy, no MRC site has reported on it, not even its purported "news" organization, CNS.

Given that the MRC's first instinct when Rush Limbaugh went on a three-day misognystic tirade against Sandra Fluke was to start an "I Stand With Rush" website, this censorship really isn't a surprise. And given theprominence of Catholics such as Brent Bozell and Terry Jeffrey in running the MRC, their silence is nothing more than cowardice.


Posted by Terry K. at 10:06 AM EDT
More Non-Disclosure From WND's Farah
Topic: WorldNetDaily

When Joseph Farah wants his readers to save the country, it generally involves buying something from WorldNetDaily. But Farah takes non-disclosure to a new level in his March 19 WND column:

So, is there any expectation things will change in 2015 if and when Republicans win control of both houses of Congress?

Not unless Republican voters are selective in whom they nominate to run for seats up for grabs.

Those decisions won’t be made in November. Those decisions are being made now. Some of them – too many really – have already been made.

The time to mobilize, then, to take America back is not next fall. It’s right now. That is the central thesis of a new book called “Takeover” by conservative founding father Richard Viguerie, a political genius instrumental in the presidential sweeps of Ronald Reagan and one of my personal political and marketing mentors.

Viguerie doesn’t just tell us what the objective is. His book is a guide to achieving it. No one better understands that establishment Republicans are not the solution, they are the problem.

If there is one political book you read this year, make certain it is “Takeover” by Richard Viguerie.

Not only has Farah somehow forgotten to disclose that WND is publishing Viguerie's book, he failed to mention that he and Viguerie serve together on the board of the Takeover Super PAC along with WND's Jerome Corsi and other right-wingers.

Not only is Farah being an unethical journalist by getting involved in partisan politics, he's hiding his partisan poltical activity from his readers. Anyone surprised? 


Posted by Terry K. at 12:21 AM EDT
Sunday, March 23, 2014
MRC Still Botching Bozell-Graham Byline; Column Itself Isn't Any Better
Topic: Media Research Center

CNSNews.com continues to cheat Tim Graham out of a proper byline for ghostwriting Brent Bozell's column. As we've noted, CNS has moved to giving Bozell and Graham separate bylines instead of a shared one, which means the column appears twice in CNS' archive.

(Meanwhile, Bozell and Graham get a shared byline at NewsBusters, while the main MRC website has simply stopped posting their column -- only one has been posted since the ghostwriting ruse was exposed, and none in the past month.)

But just because the byline is more accurate doesn't mean anything else is. Bozell and Graham write in their March 21 column:

"The Laramie Project" is an agitprop play compiled from real-life interviews that indicted the entire state of Wyoming as homophobic and therefore responsible for the murder of Matthew Shepard. One character announced it was just like "the Germans who looked the other way are guilty of the deaths of the Jews, the gypsies and the homosexuals."

The play packs a political punch, and the left has seen to it that it has been widely performed at colleges and even high schools across America for years. But last year, the accepted narrative began to unravel. Author Stephen Jimenez produced years of research that argued Shepard's killers Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson were not heterosexual monsters after all.

"A manager of a gay bar in Denver recalls seeing photos of McKinney and Henderson in the papers and recognizing them as patrons of his bar. He recounts his shock at realizing 'these guys who killed that kid came from inside our own community.'" It was a gay-on-gay murder. That would make the political message — the very essence of the play — fraudulent.

But on the left, an effective yarn is never having to say you're sorry. Forget the reporting; stick with the legend.

Bozell and Graham are embracing Jimenez's Shepard revisionism. As we noted when Bozell (and, we presume, Graham) promoted Jimenez's book on the case, it flies against established facts in the case, including that one of the killer not only denied having sex with Shepard, he mounted a "gay panic" defense at his trial.

Further, as Media Matters points out, Jimenez is also a friend of the defense attorney of one of the killers, which further raises questions about his objectivity.

Now that the right has an "effective yarn" to discount Shepard 's death, Bozell and Graham are sticking with that legend and don't care much for actual reporting.


Posted by Terry K. at 10:39 PM EDT
WND's Unruh Lazily And Dishonestly Reports On Birther Lawsuit Dismissal
Topic: WorldNetDaily

One telltale sign WorldNetDaily is about to bamboozle you: the story's headline doesn't convey the actual news being reported.

Thus, WND presented a March 21 article by Bob Unruh  under the headline "Breaking: Judge rules on Obama eligibility; 7-2 majority in state's high court announces decision on constitutional question."

In other words: the birthers lost yet another court challenge. If the birthers had won, that would surely be in the headline.

The bamboozlement continues in Unruh's opening paragraph: "One of the last remaining court battles over Barack Obama’s presidential eligibility has gone down in flames in a 7-2 decision by the Alabama Supreme Court to render 'no opinion.'"

Wrong. The court did issue an opinion -- it affirmed a lower court decision dismissing the lawsuit by Hugh McInnish and Virgil Goode demanding that the Alabama Secretary of State verify Obama’s eligibility to be on the 2012 Alabama presidential ballot. It simply chose not to explain its decision, though two of the judges issued concurring opinions pointing out that there is no statutory obligation for the Alabama Secretary of State to verify the eligibility of a presidential candidate.

Unruh didn't mention those opinions, though. Instead, he quotes extensively from the opinions of the  two judges who dissented, Roy Moore and Tom Parker, even though their opinions are moot. Unruh also touted Moore's previous opinion that "he had seen no convincing evidence that Obama is a 'natural born citizen' and considerable evidence that suggests he is not" -- which should have disqualifed him from judging the McInnish case.

Most of the rest of Unruh's article is lazy rehashing of earlier so-called evidence to prove that Barack Obama's birth certificate is fake without any mention that said evidence has been discredited.

It's all the laziness and dishonesty we've come to expect from Unruh and WND on birther issues.


Posted by Terry K. at 2:14 PM EDT
Saturday, March 22, 2014
CNS Promotes Catholic League, Doesn't Disclose Bozell Is On The Board
Topic: CNSNews.com

Barbara Hollingsworth devotes a March 21 CNSNews.com article to an interview with the Catholic League's William Donohue in which he promotes his boycott of Samuel Adams and Guinness beers for not sponsoring St. Patrick's Day parades in Boston and New York because parade organizers refused to let gays march.

Hollingsworth devotes all but two paragraphs of her 26-paragraph article to Donahue, waiting until the final two paragraphs to include comments from, or attempts to contact, the brewers Donohue is targeting.

What Hollingsworth fails to mention, of course, is that her boss, Brent Bozell, is on the advisory board of Donohue's group.

Failure to disclose that conflict of interest is unethical journalism. But given that Hollingsworth devotes her article to serving as a stenographer for Donohue, journalism isn't exactly the most important thing on her mind.


Posted by Terry K. at 11:57 PM EDT

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