MRC Mad That 'Family Guy' Quoted Trump Verbatim
Topic: Media Research Center

The TV show "Family Guy" worked the infamous tape of Donald Trump making vile misogynistic remarks into the most recent episode of the show, and the Media Research Center's Erik Soderstrom was not pleased, and works in a rather lame Clinton Equivocation as well:

Ever eager to do their part this election, Family Guy decided to wade into the 2016 presidential campaign on behalf of Hillary Clinton by including the “Trump tapes” as part of last night’s episode, “American Gigg-olo.” Crammed into a plot that spent most of its time following striking pilot turned male prostitute, Glenn Quagmire, Family Guy's writers weakly shoehorned the embarrassing video into the episode by cutting in audio as if the show’s main character, Peter Griffin, had also been aboard the Access Hollywood bus during the hot mic incident.

I won’t include the video, but the original is widely available online and FOX posted the episode’s edited version on Twitter if you feel compelled to watch it yourself. Donald Trump has already apologized for his remarks, and including the video wasn’t about the episode’s story; it was about piling on the Republican nominee in every medium as we inch closer and closer to election day.

I won’t hold my breath for a Family Guy flashback placing one of the show’s characters in the room when Hillary donned her best, fake African American accent and screeched, “I don’t feel no ways tired.” I don’t anticipate seeing them work the audio of Hillary chuckling about her defense of a child rapist and subsequent plea bargain into a character’s memories. When Hollywood makes in-kind donations, they always seem to end up on one side of the aisle.

Poor Erik. Not only does he have to admit that his preferred candidate for president is so raunchy he can't post a video of him saying said raunchy things at the MRC, he can only muster the defense that the video was "embarrassing" and that "Trump has already apologized for his remarks."

Of course, another reason why Soderstrom won't post the video is that "Family Guy" zings Trump rather harshly. The show mocks Trump's defense that it was merely "locker room talk"; that gets referenced, to which Peter Griffin replies, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, that’s not ‘locker room talk.’ I meant like ‘good play,’ ‘good pass,’ like that kinda thing.” Peter also pitches the idea for Twitter as a place where "crazy people can bash ladies and minorities at 3 a.m."

So Soderstrom is left with defending Trump by blaming the MRC's perpetual go-to, the "liberal media." Sad, really.

Chuck Colson Is Still The Hardest-Working Dead Guy At CNS
Topic: CNSNews.com

Chuck Colson has penned another op-ed for CNSNews.com, an Oct. 10 piece about how "Christians – Not the Enlightenment – Invented Modern Science."

As we've noted -- and CNS hasn't -- Colson died in 2012. The bio for Colson states once again that "Chuck Colson founded BreakPoint in 1991, a daily radio broadcast that provides a Christian perspective on today’s news and trends via radio, interactive media, and print," but not that Colson is dead.

An "Editor's Note" states that "On this Columbus Day, we present a classic BreakPoint commentary by Chuck Colson on Columbus and the rise of science," but that note comes straight from Breakpoint, not CNS.

Would it kill CNS to go beyond cutting-and-pasting from Breakpoint and explain to its readers why it's giving a byline to a dead guy? Apparently so.

MRC Ludicrously Claims Lack of Endorsements For Trump Means Media Is 'Rigged'
Topic: Media Research Center

Geoffrey Dickens does an admirable job of trying to play dumb in an Oct. 18 post, in which he pretends not to know why major newspapers that have endorsed Republicans in the past aren't endorsing Donald Trump for president.

His post is laughably headline "Rigged? Trump Doesn’t Have a Single Major Newspaper Endorsement." No, it's not "rigged," as Dickens should very well know, however much he'd like that to be the case in order to promote the MRC's anti-media agenda. Newspapers' editorial pages are separate from their news pages, and an endorsement generally does not influence news coverage.

Dickens complains that even papers who endorsed Mitt Romney in 2012 are endorsing Hillary clinton this year. He then huffs: "And while some of those papers have made the argument that Trump is not a reliable conservative, that doesn’t mean they have to go all the way in endorsing the liberal candidate," further complaining htat "some of the papers that switched from Romney to Clinton have attempted to justify their selection by claiming Clinton is 'bipartisan,' 'pragmatic,' and a 'centrist.'"

Dickens then excerpts from those endorsements  of Clinton -- but he never excerpts those papers' explanations of why they didn't endorse Trump. Why? Because it would show that being a "reliable conservative" is the least of those papers' worries about Trump.

For instance, Dickens highlighted the Arizona Republic's noting that "Hillary Clinton has long been a centrist," but not what it said about Trump. For instance: 

Trump’s inability to control himself or be controlled by others represents a real threat to our national security. His recent efforts to stay on script are not reassuring. They are phony.

The president commands our nuclear arsenal. Trump can’t command his own rhetoric.

Were he to become president, his casual remarks — such as saying he wouldn’t defend NATO partners from invasion — could have devastating consequences.

Dickens was also curiously silent about threats of death and violence sent to the Republic after the Clinton endorsement, nor did he mention that Clinton was the first Democrat ever endorsed for president by the Republic -- a clear sign that its concerns about Trump transcend ideology.

Dickens also highlighted that the Dallas Morning News claimed that Clinton achieved "common ground with some of Congress’ most conservative lawmakers" as a senator. But he didn't note what the paper said about Trump:

Trump's values are hostile to conservatism. He plays on fear — exploiting base instincts of xenophobia, racism and misogyny — to bring out the worst in all of us, rather than the best. His serial shifts on fundamental issues reveal an astounding absence of preparedness. And his improvisational insults and midnight tweets exhibit a dangerous lack of judgment and impulse control.

The News hasn't endorsed a Democrat for president since 1944. Dickens didn't mention that either.

Dickens also failed to mention how some of these papers also noted that right-wing criticism of Clinton has become ridiculous. The Dallas Morning News wrote that Clinton's shortcomings "pale in comparison to the litany of evils some opponents accuse her of. Treason? Murder? Her being cleared of crimes by investigation after investigation has no effect on these political hyenas; they refuse to see anything but conspiracies and cover-ups." The Republic stated of Clinton: "She has withstood decades of scrutiny so intense it would wither most politicians. The vehemence of some of the anti-Clinton attacks strains credulity."

Of course, doing that wouid not only highlight the feeling among the public that the Clinton-haters at the MRC have overplayed their hand, it would also dispel the notion there's a monolithic "liberal media" that's driven by ideology to attack anything Republican and conservative.

But since Dickens is a loyal MRC employee, deviating from the agenda is not his job -- pushing the meme, however dishonest, is.

Months After It Would Have Mattered, WND Weighs In On Cruz's Eligibility
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Months ago, back when Ted Cruz was still running for president, WorldNetDaily couldn't run fast enough from questions about Cruz's eligibility to be president despite the fact that, by WND's own definition, Cruz was even more ineligible than it claimed President Obama was.

Nnow, all of a sudden -- months after Cruz stopped running for president and his eligibility is off the table for at least the next four years -- WND is expressing an opinion about Cruz's eligibility.

As does a lot of things at WND right now, it comes in the context of the stolen WikiLeaks emails. In an Oct. 16 article, an anonymous WND writer speculates about a proposed Democratic plan during the primary to declare that it would not challenge Cruz's eligibility:

But, was that the real story – or the whole story?

No, it wasn’t. Had the Democrats challenged Cruz on eligibility, it would have been tantamount to challenging Obama. Both had one American citizen parent – in both cases, their mothers. But, given the age of Obama’s teen-age mother at the time, there were legal questions raised, whereas Cruz’s mother had long been established as an American citizen. It would have been a tough case to make against Cruz given the ridicule the Dems piled on all those who challenged Obama’s constitutional eligibility.

Astute birther scholars will notice that this anonymous WND writer repeats an irrelevant claim and also moves the birther goalposts.

The statement that "there were legal questions raised" because of the age of Obama's mother at the time of his birth is true -- but it leaves out the fact that this clause only applies if the child was born outside the United States. Since Obama was born in Hawaii, and WND has not proven otherwise, it doesn't matter how old his mother is -- Obama is a citizen.

WND's current insistence that Cruz is a citizen because his mother "had long been established as an American citizen" is a change in position from the one it has long promoted: that both parents must be citizens in order to confer citizenship on the child.

Of course, WND doesn't explain the reason it wouldn't address Cruz's eligibility at that time: because Joseph Farah, Jerome Corsi and crew knew that if they defended Cruz -- since, again, he was even more ineligible than Obama since, unlike Obama, he was born outside the U.S. -- they would also have to prove Obama was eligible as well. That refusal simply proved that WND's obsession with Obama's eligibility was never about the Constitution and always about trying to personally destroy Obama.

So, it apparently took six-plus months for WND to figure out a defense of Cruz's eligibility that managed to also keep Obama's eligibilitiy in question -- and it's still dishonest. That's just another reason nobody believes WND.

ConWeb Embraces Dishonest Report on Political Donations By 'Journalists'
Topic: The ConWeb

The Center for Public Integrity has issued a report claiming to detail how "journalists" have donated to HIllary Clinton's campaign far more than to Donald Trump's. Needless to say, the ConWeb jumped right on it.

At the Media Research Center, Tim Graham touted how "the liberal Center for Public Integrity" issued the study.(No, Tim, an organization that funded a fraudulent hit job on Al Gore and was once run by the editor of the right-wing Washington Times is not "liberal.")

WorldNetDaily's Bob Unruh highlighted the finding that "journalists so far in this election season have given 27 times as much money to Hillary Clinton as to Donald Trump." Accuracy in Media's Don Irvine similarly promoted the findings, "as if we needed any further evidence that the liberal media are in the tank for Hillary Clinton." And Jason Devaney of Newsmax states that the report claims "people working in the media — which includes journalists, reporters, news editors, and TV news anchors — are opening their wallets for the former first lady."

But if you read the report closely -- which the ConWeb has no interest in doing -- it's obvious that CPI is using an overly broad definition of "journalist."

For instance, all four ConWeb reports highlighted that former ABC anchor Carole Simpson has donated $2,800 to Clinton. What CPI and the ConWeb don't make clear: Simpson left ABC in 2006 and currently works as a college professor. Insisting that Simpson continue to be held to the standards of a job she has not held for a decade -- and CPI offers no evidence that Simpson made any political donations while employed as a journalist -- is simply dishonest.

CPI also touts the donations to Clinton by talk show host Larry King, highlighted as well by AIM, Newsmax and the MRC. But has anybody ever considered King to be a "journalist"? No. More dishonesty.

In fact, the first example of an actual working journalist is the New Yorker's Emily Nussbaum. But she's a TV critic and rarely covers news or politics. But most of the working journalists in hard news that CPI cites as making political donations are employed by small local papers, not large media organizations, which generally prohibit reporters from making poltiical donations.

But because this dishonesty plays into the hands of the right-wing narrative about the evil "liberal media," the ConWeb will stick with the clickbait headline and ignore the dubious contents.

MRC Blames GOP Office Firebombing on Bill Maher
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center isn't interested in waiting for the facts to come in before assigning blame for the firebombing of a county Republican office in North Carolina. It's the age of Trump, after all, and the MRC no longer believes in facts.

The MRC's Kyle Drennen has a culprit all lined up. In an Oct. 17 post, he complains that NBC's "Today" show were discussing whether Donald Trump's "dark tone" set the stage for election violence. We'll let Drennen rant from here:

The reporter had the audacity to feature a sound bite from left-wing HBO host Bill Maher to lecture viewers on civility: “If you have that mindset, and then he loses, what happens?”

In July, Maher referred to Republicans as “retarded Nazis” who plan to force immigrants into “boxcars.”

It was precisely that kind of rhetoric that was employed by the criminals who firebombed the Republican Party office in North Carolina. 

So, it's apparently Bill Maher's fault that the GOP office got firebombed. Got it.

What, you say? That's specious logic, you say? Well, we're just using the the MRC's own logic patterns. The day before, the MRC's Nicholas Fondacaro asserted that CNN's Brian Stelter "was concluding Donald Trump’s 'over heated the rhetoric' [sic] was what caused the attack." This despite the fact that Fondacaro also quouted Stelter as saying, "We have no idea who has done this. We don’t know if it’s a Republican, a Democrat, a movement. No idea."

Fondacaro then went on to say, "But according to a report by The Hill, two hours before Stelter was on air, authorities found the graffiti labeling local Republicans as Nazis. That’s not really a term Republicans like to call each other oddly enough, it’s usually a term flung by the left."

So, apparently, it all comes back to Bill Maher.

WND's Farah Suggests Anti-Muslim Bombing Plot Is A False Flag
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah has a conspiracy theory he'd like to share with you. From his Oct. 16 column:

 Have you ever asked yourself what the real purpose of Barack Obama’s “fundamental transformation of America” is really all about?

Have you considered why Obama has opened America’s doors to tens of thousands of unscreened and unscreenable, so-called Muslim “refugees” from Middle East terror hotspots?

Have you ever wondered what the endgame of this national suicidal policy is all about – along with other actions that seem to be pushing the hot buttons of even the clearest-thinking Americans with an ounce of common sense?

Maybe what appears to be a foiled “domestic terror plot,” in Kansas, so far under the radar of the national media, should give us a clue.

According to federal investigators, who apparently infiltrated a “militia group” called the “Crusaders” in the town of Liberal, Kansas, three men were arrested last week for planning to bomb a Garden City, Kansas, apartment complex where 120 people, including many Somali immigrants, lived – then publish a manifesto. The date of the attack was set for Nov. 9, the day after the presidential election.

Think about it. This is the kind of event that would put the seemingly bizarre Obama-Hillary Clinton agenda for the Islamization of America on steroids.

I hate to say it, but they seem to be dreaming about just such a bizarre attack – doing everything in their power to make it a reality.

[...]

Do you remember how Bill Clinton blamed Rush Limbaugh for the bomb attack on the Oklahoma City Murrah Federal Building in 1995?

I hate to say it, but an attack like this one would represent a sweet aroma to the noses of Obama and Hillary. It would provide an opportunity for massive surveillance, propaganda, sweeping federal control and worse.

Those who rightly oppose their certifiably insane policies on national security and open-door immigration practices would be blamed. They would finally have their evidence of widespread xenophobia, Islamophobia and right-wing “hate crimes.”

Sooner or later, it’s bound to happen.

I suspect it didn’t happen this time only because local police stumbled onto evidence for the impending attack when one of the plotters was turned in by his girlfriend on a battery charge.

Until then, FBI investigators were providing them with weapons and offering money for the attack. The plotters were under surveillance since February, the FBI said.

[...]

Operations? It sounds like these guys had other ideas in mind besides the November bombing. They also talked about bombing a mosque. What if they acted prematurely – without consultation with the FBI or confidential source? Was that a concern? Or was it the plan?

I hate to speculate like this. I hate to think like this. But it’s getting hard not to. Am I crazy paranoid – or are you thinking the same way?

Nope, you're crazy paranoid, Joe. You've been listening to the likes of Alex Jones and Michael Savage rant about false-flag conspiracies that you've now apparently decided to get in on that action and concoct one of your own.

You can't admit that some -- let alone the vast majority -- of Muslims in America are peaceful and not deserving of the condemnation and lazy Islamophobia your website heaps upon them.

And you most definitely can't admit the possibility that WND's anti-Muslim may very well have played a role in inspiring these men to plot to blow up Muslims in the middle of Kansas. (You've done this before.)

So, you hide behind tinfoil hats and false flags and pretend you're being the reasonable one.

And you wonder why nobody believes you or WND.

Newsmax Puts Pro-Trump Spin On Poll Showing Him Behind
Topic: Newsmax

Here's how the Washington Post described its latest poll:

With three weeks until Election Day, Hillary Clinton holds a four-point lead over Donald Trump in the race for the White House, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, with the Republican nominee hobbled by persistent perceptions that he is not qualified to be president.

The poll was conducted during one of the most tumultuous periods of Trump’s candidacy, after the release of a video in which he spoke about taking sexual advantage of women and during a time when numerous women have accused him of sexual misconduct.

And here's how Newsmax spun that poll in a unbylined article:

Hillary Clinton leads Donald Trump by just 4 points in a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, well within its margin of error and a clear sign that Trump may be regaining his momentum.

Clinton leads Trump, 47 to 43 percent, among likely voters in the poll released early Sunday. Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson has 5 percent and the Green Party’s Jill Stein has 2 percent.

And here's now Newsmax promoted that article on its front page: "WashPost Poll: Trump Essentially Tied With Clinton." No, really:

That's some amazing pro-Trump spin on the part of Newsmax. The Post article on the poll states that it has 4-point margin of error, but that's not "well within its margin of error" as the Newsmax article describes -- that's on the fringe of it. And it certainly doesn't equal "essentially tied."

MRC Writer Flip-Flops on Hitler Comparisons
Topic: Media Research Center

In an Oct. 4 post, the Media Research Center's Sarah Stites complained: "More than 15 public figures have stooped to comparing Donald Trump to history’s most infamous Nazi dictator – but at what cost? Perhaps we're seeing where that kind of hate takes the nation." Stites went on to complain that "such illegitimate parallels cheapen the Holocaust" and cited writers who warned of "rhetorical desensitization."

This denunciation of Trump-Hitler comparisons is interesting, because just 10 days later, an MRC post appeared with the headline "Who Said It: Margaret Sanger or Adolf Hitler?" It states: "100 years ago, as a result of the tireless efforts of Margaret Sanger, Planned Parenthood opened its doors for the first time. Although Sanger is memorialized by many women as a paragon of the feminist movement, she actually condoned eugenics, racism and state regimented family planning." The following interactive slideshow does indeed mesh Sanger quotes with Hitler quotes to equate the two, though none of the quotes prove that Sanger endorsed racism, as the post suggests it does. (The MRC has a long history of spreading lies about Sanger, perhaps comfortable in the idea that the dead can't be libeled.)

The author of this post? Sarah Stites -- who was denouncing Trump-Hitler comparisons just 10 eays earlier. Nowhere in this post does she fret over cheapening the Holocaust or rhetorical desensitization.

Stites has not explained her flip-flop on Hitler comparisons.

Bizarre: Black WND Columnist Endorses White Nationalists' Anti-Black Race-Baiting
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Jesse Lee Peterson is more concerned about white people than ever. He begins his Oct. 9 WorldNetDaily column by warning: "Warning to whites: Avoid black people. Your life may be at risk. Whites are under attack like no other time in history. It’s about to get worse."

The proximate cause this time is the new film "The Birth of a Nation," about the Nat Turner slave rebellion. Peterson likens the film to the original, century-old and very racist "Birth of a Nation" film, which sparked a resurgence in the Ku Klux Klan, calling both "hate-inspired propaganda."

If it's not bizarre enough that Peterson is attacking his fellow African-Americans, he adds this:

It’s evil enough to stir black anger to new levels of violence against whites.

If you don’t already know about rampant black-on-white crime (rape, robbery, murder and atrocious assaults), check the research of Colin Flaherty, Heather Mac Donald and Jared Taylor.

Yep, he wrote that.

Flaherty, as we know, is a race-baiter who promoted a blanket description of blacks as violence-prone thugs -- a grossly inaccurate generalization Peterson appears to endorse.

Mac Donald is an author attached to the right-wing Manhattan Institute who has attacked the Black Lives Matter movement as a campaign based on lies and, like Flaherty, paints blacks as violence-prone criminals and effectively deserving of being shot by police.

Taylor, of course, is head of the unabashedly white nationalist American Renaissance. He's an unabashed racist; the Southern Poverty Law Center quotes him as saying, "Blacks and whites are different. When blacks are left entirely to their own devices, Western civilization — any kind of civilization — disappears." It appears Peterson is totally down with this kind of "research" from Taylor.

Peterson interviewed Taylor in 2005 (available on the AmRen website). His pushback on Taylor's advocacy of racial separation is tepid at best, and he and he concurs with Taylor's view of black liberal activists like Jesse Jackson and that black activists "hate white folks." So it's probably not a surprise that he's moved so far right that he's apparently signing on to Taylor's white nationalist aggenda.

Yes, Peterson has a long record of invoking his black conservative privilege by saying things that would be considered racist were he not a black conservative. But to actually make common cause with white nationalists and white race-baiters in peddling harmful stereotypes about blacks? That's just bizarre.

MRC Rants About Purported Media-Clinton Collusion, Ignore Actual Trump-Media Collusion
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center continued its conspiratorial ways by blaming the media for reporting unflattering news about Donald Trump in the Oct. 14 column by MRC Brent Bozell and Tim Graham, which asserts the conspiracy is real:

We once scoffed at the suggestion there was some form of a liberal media conspiracy against conservatives. Do liberals meet for breakfast and plan attacks on their ideological foes? Of course not, we'd answer. It's not a conspiracy. It's a mindset wherein what is liberal is good, and what is conservative is in opposition to what is good.

Apparently it was a conspiracy after all. The latest emails emerging from WikiLeaks have brought in the evidence. There is an unquestionable collusion between "objective" journalists and the Clinton campaign. Leaked emails show that her operatives discuss which reporters were the most pliant recyclers of their narratives (they picked Maggie Haberman of The New York Times). But reporter Mark Leibovich — also from the Times — gave Clinton's communications director, Jen Palmieri, veto power over quotes to be included in a Clinton profile in July.

It's not just WikiLeaks that has provided numerous other examples documenting the inseparable nature of the Clinton-media relationship. What TMZ has reported on the Trump tape with the shameless sex banter is far more telling. An article published yesterday by TMZ staff said: "Multiple sources connected with NBC tell us ... top network execs knew about the video long before they publicly said they did, but wanted to hold it because it was too early in the election. The sources say many NBC execs have open disdain for Trump and their plan was to roll out the tape 48 hours before the debate so it would dominate the news cycle leading up to the face-off."

In this election, it's now documented fact that "newsgathering" was not the goal of the architects of our top newspapers and newscasts. Rather, it was victory for the Democrats.

Bozell and Graham also claimed that Trump had "half-joked" that  he'd throw Clinton in jail if elected president, whining that "the media bigwigs ranted and wailed that Trump sounded like Joseph Stalin or Adolf Hitler or a garden-variety tin-pot dictator." But Trump's repeated insistence Clinton should be jailed puts the lie to any claim of a "joke" and shows just how in the tank Bozell and Graham are for Trump.

Another sign of their in-the-tankness: In constructing this purported campaign-media conspiracy, the MRC is deliberately ignoring another one.

In August, Steve Bannon, the leader of Breitbart News, became the CEO of Trump's campaign.  Repeat: The head of a media organization went directly from that to becoming the head of a political campaign -- something we are pretty sure never happened with any mainstream media organization. That is, in the flesh, the media-campaign collusion conspiracy that the MRC only imagines is happening in the "liberal media."

But has the MRC complained about it? Nope!

When Bannon's appointment to the Trump campaign was first announced, the MRC complained that Breitbart News was being maligned for its occasional anti-Semitic tendencies and how its incendiary content was accurately labeled as such.It said nothing at the time about the obvious media-campaign collusion.

Nor has it since. In fact, it's whitewashing Bannon's media connection completely. An Oct. 12 post by Graham complains that a Washington Post columnist "unloaded a Two Minutes Hate column on Trump campaign CEO Steve Bannon," and he doesn't even acknolwedge Bannon is also the head of a media outlet.

Of course, pointing out right-wing media-campaign collusion, even when it's in plain sight,  doesn't serve the MRC's -- or Trump's -- agenda. Feeding Trump's anti-media conspriacy, however, does.

Larry Klayman Reminds Us That He Can't Take Criticism
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Larry Klayman is a buffoon, a terrible lawyer and an ambulance-chasing hate peddler who likes to file nuiscance lawsuits to take revenge on his critics. He can't even tell the truth about himself, and when he's confronted with a situation in which he must -- i.e., when his ex-wife accused him of "inappropriate behavior" with his children -- he pleads the Fifth Amendment.

Here's an example of thte latter, from Klayman's Oct. 8 WorldNetDaily column, in which he complains about the indignities he suffered while filing nuisance lawsuits in the 1990s against Bill and Hillary Clinton, whom he calls "the Bonnie and Clyde of American politics":

In addition, every two weeks, an article would appear in the politically compromised the Washington Post – which, not coincidentally, is a client of Kendall’s Williams & Connelly. The articles contained false and misleading “information” to smear me. The name of the biweekly column, written by sleazy, pliant reporter David Segal, was called “The Klayman Chronicles,” a phrase adapted from a film, “The Clinton Chronicles,” about Slick Willy. While I was flattered to have my “own” biweekly column in the Washington Post, I was also outraged that this major newspaper, however leftist and compromised, would make it a mission to try to run interference for Bonnie and Clyde.

You will not be surprised to learn that this story happened completely differently from the way Klayman portrays it. David Segal did not write a "biweekly column" about Klayman for the Post; he wrote a column called "Washington Hearsay" in which he occasionally included a "Klayman Chronicles" section (it's unclear whether that section appeared on a biweekly schedle, as Klayman claims).

The purportedly "false and misleading information" Klayman claims Segal wrote about him is apparently a reference to a 1999 column in which Segal highlighted how aggressive Klayman's Judicial Watch minions were in badgering bookers to try and get Klayman on TV. According to a former employee, writes Segal, "Klayman demanded that his public relations person call a handful of talk show producers every single day, rain or shine, regardless of the day's news":

"He would come in each morning and ask, `Who have you called and why haven't you called?'" said the onetime employee, who requested anonymity. "If the show was doing Hollywood that night, he'd say call anyway. If they were doing Tiananmen Square he'd say, `Well, I'm an international lawyer, try to pitch that.' If there was a school shooting he'd say, `So what? We're doing important things here.'"

Unsurprisingly, Klayman sued Segal over this, claiming that he had been defamed because Segal "falsely caused [him] to appear so bent on publicity for himself that he is insensitive to the murder of innocent children." The case went to trial and Klayman lost, with the trial judge noting that "Mr. Klayman does not dispute that he considers his activities to warrant significant media attention."

Klayman appealed and he lost there too. The District of Columbia Court of Appeals stated that "the challenged material, in context, demonstrates that the article's message centered on Mr. Klayman's drive for publicity" and that the statements "could perhaps be viewed as unpleasant and offensive from Mr. Klayman's perspective, but such perceived unpleasantness and offensiveness are not sufficient to sustain an allegation that material is reasonably capable of defamatory meaning." The appeals court concluded: "Rather, when read in context, a reasonable person of ordinary intelligence would understand the words to convey the message that a school shooting tragedy should not interfere with an employee's scheduling of television talk show appearances to enable Judicial Watch to explain its public interest endeavors, even if scheduling appearances required pitching the public relations strategy to a major event of the day, such as the Tiananmen Square event."

In short, Klayman is still holding a grudge over something written about him nearly two decades ago, reminding us that he can't handle criticism. (Sound familiar?)

Klayman spends the remainder of his column denouncing the release of the Donld Trump tape in which he discusses his vile misogyny (though he concedes Trump made "disgusting, lewd comments"), ranting that "I would bet the ranch that David Kendall, Williams & Connelly and their private investigators – either the old ones or a whole new crop of sleaze balls – were behind this." No evidence has ever surfaced that they are.

AIM's Kincaid Cheers Putin Meddling With U.S. Elections
Topic: Accuracy in Media

Accuracy in Media's Cliff Kincaid has normally despised Russian leader Vladimir Putin -- at least when acts as a foil for his right-wing views. Kincaid, who still lives in a Cold War mindset, has criticized Putin for pursuing "the Leninist dream of a world dominated by the KGB" and bashed Pat Buchanan for being "a slavish devotee of all things Putin."

But it turns out Kincaid is a slavish devotee of some things Putin. He has cheered Putin's anti-gay efforts and denied that he any kind of homophobe, declaring that "the Russian response to America’s export of homosexuality under Obama is understandable, not objectionable, and it doesn’t constitute 'homophobia.'" That "response" was a law that forbids people from saying anything nice about gays.

Nonw, in his Oct. 13 AIM column, Kincaid is cheering a foreign power -- Putin, no less -- involving itself in the U.S. election  process by stealing other people's property and strategically releasing it to benefit Trump:

But he has professed his love for the Putin when he

The Hillary Clinton campaign says the hackers behind the leaked email evidence of their collusion with the major media are from Russia and linked to the Russian regime. If so, I want to publicly thank those Russian hackers and their leader, Russian President Vladimir Putin, for opening a window into the modern workings of the United States government-corporate-media establishment.

[...]

But the Russians, if they are responsible, have performed a public service. And until there is a thorough house-cleaning of those in the major media who have made a mockery of professional journalism, the American people will continue to lack confidence in their system. 

Strange that an anti-communist like Kincaid is so happy that a foreign communist is meddling with American elections. Thats what happens when hate trumps intellectual integrity.

Meet Bob Just, The WND Democrat
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Back in 2008, we identified Jerry Zeifman as a "Newsmax Democrat" -- a self-proclaimed Democrat who did nothing but appear at right-wing websites to bash his purported fellow Democrats (and misled about his relationship with Hillary Rodham Clinton during the Watergate investigation).

Well, it looks like we now have a WorldNetDaily Democrat, one Bob Just. His WND bio describes his this way: "Bob Just is a WND columnist, editor-at-large of Whistleblower magazine and a veteran national radio talk-show host. He has guest-hosted Sean Hannity's national radio show and also worked on Hannity's best-selling book, "Deliver us from Evil," doing research and development."

Does that sound like a Democrat to you? Yet he insists he is one.

In 2014, for instance, Just wrote a WND column insisting that "it has never been more important for mainstream Democrats to draw a line by not voting Democrat." Why? Because of the "disastrous leadership" of President Obama and the influence of Saul Alinsky on both Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Now, Just has written a couple of columns lamenting the state of "my Democratic Party." On Sept. 28, Just praises Donald Trump's campaign:

Among other things, that’s what Donald Trump says he’s campaigning to do. “Imagine what our country could accomplish,” Trump said recently, “if we started working together as one people under one God, saluting one flag.”

Sounds like “the greatest generation” talking.

And if Trump wins, the executive branch could cease being the enforcing arm of PC power. Then PC’s oppressive hold over the American people would start to break.

Just attacks Hillary Clinton as "she of the Benghazi scandal" and quotes approvingly from conservative anti-Clinton author Peggy Noonan. He concludes: "But most Americans aren’t fans of fantasy politics. They know something is terribly wrong – that this country is truly and dangerously on the wrong track. And that Hillary Clinton will not bring the change we need. In fact, she’s an enabler of our woes."

Just returned on Oct. 11 to lament "the cold civil war of my Democratic Party," in which he makes another pro-Trump argument and tries to spin away his vile misogyny: "Voters – especially women voters – are now being heavily pressured to consider Donald Trump as an unthinkable choice for president. Yes, his 'hot mic' comments from over a decade ago were unthinkable, but for many crucial reasons his candidacy is not."

Just's alleged "civil war" is between the religious and the secular, and he wants religion -- and Trump -- to dominate:

If we as voters allow our judgment to be clouded by anger or frustration at Donald Trump’s real flaws (possessed also by previous presidents), we will be making a dangerous emotional decision – rather than a sober one that creates the real future we want for our children and grandchildren. I’m asking you, as a Christian and as a Democrat, to vote to remain America.

The only “unthinkable choice” is Hillary Clinton.

Dos that sound like a Democrat to you? We didn't think so. But as long as Just insists on calling himself one, WND will continue to allow him to indulge in his fantasy.

MRC Invents a Media Conspiracy to Avout Talking About Trump's Sexism
Topic: Media Research Center

Brent Bozell and his Media Research Center are in full conspiracy mode now.

As we've noted, the MRC has been in spin mode all week in trying to distract attention from the "Access Hollywood" tape of Donald Trump spewing vile misogyny, mostly serving as a surrogate for the Trump campaign by playing the Clinton Equivocation -- that anything the Clintons have done to women is far worse because, you know, the Clintons.

Anyway, the MRC has latched onto what it thinks is a full-blown conspiracy. TMZ reported, citing anonymous sources, that NBC officials purportedly knew about the Trump tape sooner than it has claimed and that the video's release was originally scheduled to influence the second presidential debate.

The MRC's Julia Seymour was first to pick up thte story, in which she downplayed Trump's misogyny by claiming that then-"Access Hollywood" host Billy Bush "goaded" Trump into saying those awful things. But her boss got wind of it and immediatedly went into full froth (with crazier stuff in bold):

What NBC has done is a direct threat to the democratic process and evidence of what conservatives have been saying all along. A network that purports to hold itself up as an objective news source while at the same time attempts to fix an election has lost all credibility. NBC must take responsibility, apologize to Donald Trump, and fire whoever was behind the strategic release of this tape. If the rest of the media do not call out NBC for their actions, they are complicit in a cover-up. Until then, I call on fellow conservative leaders to join me in denouncing this network for its hypocrisy and deliberate abandonment of journalistic integrity.

The ignorance and hypocrisy Bozell is displaying here is staggering.

First, note that Bozell says nothing about the content of the tape, which as a self-proclaimed family-values guy should give him pause. And he won't say anything beyond rote references to how "repugnant" it is, because that will make Trump look even worse, and as part of the GOP pact he and the MRC have, he can't do that.

Second, he's repeating TMZ's ignorance about NBC's structure. "Access Hollywood" is produced by NBC's entertainment division, a different entity from NBC's news division. The TMZ story doesn't discuss entertainment vs. news; it talks about NBC as a single entity. According to the Washington Post, NBC News official state they weren't aware of the Trump tape until just a few days before it was aired, and that the news side had allowed "Access Hollywood" to break the story first.

Third:The TMZ report is unsubstantiated with any on-the-record source. Is that thet standard the MRC is following for credible information these days, or is lack of substantiation perfectly accessible because it suits the MRC's agenda?

Fourth: "Fix an election"? "Complicit in a cover-up"? Really, Brent? That's just cray talk. Are you trying to tell me your own "news" operation, CNSNews.com -- which, last time we checked, is chock full of WikiLeaks articles and scant on stories about Trump's perviness -- never timed its coverage of a story to gain maximum outside coverage? That seems to be CNS' entire M.O.; the 2015 MRC annual report touted CNS' "constant presence on the Drudge Report."

Because CNS is apparently little more that Drudge clickbait, it didn't do the one thing that would have pre-empted the October Surprise nature of the "Access Hollywood" tape: vet Trump during the Republican primary process. That's not NBC's fault -- that's Bozell's, even though he came out against Trump during the primary.

But Bozell is still not done ranting about it. He's continuing to portray the predator Trump as a victim, appearing on friendly Fox Business to rant that the media is "secretly colluding with the Clinton campaign." 

Here's a challenge for you, Brent: We dare you to release all records of contacts the MRC -- all divisions, including CNS -- has had with the Trump campaign and its surrogates about promoting Trump's agenda and devising messaging for damage-control operations and discussions about the success of that messaging. After all, your invention of a media conspiracy is being done for the benefit of the Trump campaign.

Do you have the guts, Brent?

When you can't defend the message, attack the messenger. That's what Bozell and the MRC are doing here by attacking the media for reporting on Trump's lengthy record of acting like a pervert.