WND's Farah Says He Doesn't Know Roger Stone; Evidence Suggests Otherwise Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah rants in his Jan. 25 column:
You probably didn’t hear FBI Director Chris Wray whining about what makes him really mad – that some of his agents are not working because they’re not getting paid during the government shutdown, forcing other agents to cover their assignments.
He had his little hissy-fit the very day a dozen of his agents conducted a pre-dawn raid – SWAT-style – on Roger Stone’s house. They were packing lots of heat – automatic weapons, body armor. They banged on the door in the residential area of Fort Lauderdale demanding the guy who fully cooperated with Special Counsel Robert Mueller investigation into alleged “Russian collusion” with the 2016 Donald Trump presidential campaign come out with his hands up.
He was cuffed and treated like a terrorist mastermind or drug kingpin for his process crimes by Wray’s agents – presumably at his command.
You know what makes me angry? Gestapo police-state tactics by the FBI, Mueller and Wray.
I don’t know Roger Stone, but I know he’s no threat to me, his neighbors or the national security of the United States. It’s an absolute disgrace how he was arrested Friday. If the FBI hasn’t humiliated itself enough over the last several years, the spectacle of Stone’s raid made the agency look like either a joke or confirmation it is indeed a highly politicized national police agency punishing people whose only crimes are being in the periphery of President Trump.
We somehow doubt that Farah doesn't know Roger Stone -- he was a key figure in their reporting during the 2016 election.
As we documented, WND and then-reporter Jerome Corsi aligned themselves with Stone starting in 2015: WND columnist Myra Adams conducted an interview with Stone in which he listed Corsi, and Corsi used WND to promote an anti-Clinton book co-written by Stone. Corsi then worked with Stone to use WND to promote a man who claims without evidence to be Bill Clinton's illegitmate son. And in October 2016, a month before the election, Myra Adams interviewed Stone again.
Further, Corsi, while still at WND, was working with Stone when he found out that Russian operatives, not murdered Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich, stole DNC emails and gave them to WikiLeaks -- and still allowed WND to promote Seth Rich conspiracy theories for months afterward.
On top of that, Farah played a bit role in the current controversy involving Mueller, Corsi and Stone. The Washington Post reported in November that Corsi said that he offered to fly to London in July or August 2016 and meet with WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange if Farah would buy the plane ticket.
There may have been Farah-Stone contact well before that. The New York Times reported that in 2012, Stone urged Donald Trump to promote Obama birther conspiracy theories, which put Trump in conversation with Farah and Corsi.
There's enough incidental contact here that makes Farah's claim that he doesn't know Stone to be highly suspect. And we haven't even gotten to his odious "Gestapo" reference, which is highly hypocritical given how offended WND gets when anyone uses a Nazi reference in describing Trump.
CNS Touts Ben Stein Likening Ocasio-Cortez To Hitler Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com has gotten its right-wing marching orders to cast newly elected Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez -- and that's just what it's been doing, lame shots and all. Another one of those lame shots came in an anonymously written Jan. 24 item complaining that Ocasio-Cortez "sent out a Tweet on Wednesday responding to criticism of her views on climate change by quoting from the Bible." The post further complained that "Ocasio-Cortez did not indicate which translation of the Bible she was using or provide links to the passages she cited," then, as an apparent rebuttal, published the entirety of the first two chapters of the Book of Genesis that Ocasio-Cortez referenced (though not the chapter from Leviticus she referenced). The anonymous writer did not explain what, exactly, was being rebutted by doing that.
The same day, however, CNS went from lame to full-on nasty in a post by Craig Bannister touting how Ben Stein likened Ocasio-Cortez to Hitler:
Democrat Socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is promisng Americans the same thing brutal dictators promised, and those promises are never realized, Ben Stein explained in a Fox News Channel interview this week.
Stein, an economist, lawyer and writer, warned that, when politicians promising to punish success in the name of equality obtain power, their policies invariably have terrifying results:
"We have a society in which there are an awful lot of people who have no idea that Stalin, Hitler, Mao Tse Tung all came to power promising the same kinds of things that Miss Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is promising.
"These promises are old promises, and they invariably lead to bad things. The promise of saying to the people do what you can within the law to make your life better and your family's life better that system works extremely well. Capitalism is a system that allows people to make something of themselves instead of oppressing other people."
In addition to the crass, politically motivated insult -- presented without criticism, by the way -- CNS is engaging in a double standard. It has previously complained when others have likened President Trump to Hitler: Susan Jones feigned outrage that "MSNBC's Joe Scarborough actually compared Trump to Hitler on Tuesday morning, reading a U.S. government psychological profile of Hitler on-air," while managing editor Michael W. Chapman listed a Hitler comparison as among the things that the "liberal media" have called Trump that are "contributing to America's political incivility, even though their diction is far more militant, repulsive, and noxious than anything Trump has said about the press."
Needless to say, Chapman has not lectured Stein about his uncivil, repulsive and noxious attack on Ocasio-Cortez.
WND's Cashill Brings Back An Old, Discredited Conspiracy Topic: WorldNetDaily
Never underestimate the ability of WorldNetDaily columnist Jack Cashill to cling to a bogus conspiracy theory. Thus, we have this blast from the past in Cashill's Jan. 16 column, appearing in the midst of a larger rant about his pet conspiracy theories about the crash of TWA Flight 800:
When testifying before the 9/11 Commission in the spring of 2004, then CIA Director George Tenet first addressed the “wall that was in place between the criminal side and the intelligence side.”
Tenet, a Clinton appointee who kept his job under President Bush, made that barrier sound impenetrable. “What’s in a criminal case doesn’t cross over that line. Ironclad regulations,” he insisted.
“So that even people in the Criminal Division and the Intelligence Divisions of the FBI,” he continued, “couldn’t talk to each other, let alone talk to us or us talk to them.”
[...]
In her response to Tenet, 9/11 Commissioner Jamie Gorelick acknowledged the wall and claimed to have used “brute force” as Clinton’s deputy attorney general in her attempt to penetrate it, but she took no responsibility for its creation.
The task of assigning credit was left to Attorney General John Ashcroft. In fact, he was the first witness to call attention to the inherent conflict in Gorelick’s double agency.
“The single greatest structural cause for Sept. 11 was the wall,” Ashcroft testified before the commission on April 13, 2004.
He was referring here to the same memo Tenet had, the one issued in 1995, which provided instructions on the “separation of certain foreign counterintelligence and criminal investigations.”
These instructions, as Tenet noted, disallowed FBI agents from communicating with intelligence gatherers at the CIA and elsewhere.
“Full disclosure,” Ashcroft continued, “compels me to inform you that its author is a member of the commission.”
That author, of course, was Gorelick. “We predicted Democrats would use the 9/11 Commission for partisan purposes, and that much of the press would oblige,” thundered a Wall Street Journal editorial.
“But color us astonished that barely anyone appreciates the significance of the bombshell Attorney General John Ashcroft dropped on the hearings Tuesday.”
But as we documented at the time, Gorelick responded to Ashcroft's conveniently declassified memo with a Washington Post op-ed pointing out that she didn't create the so-called "wall"; it was created in 1978. Her 1995 memo merely detailed procedures that she said permitted a freer exchange of information between criminal and counterterror investigators than had been allowed under the Reagan and first Bush administrations. Additionally, she said, Ashcroft's own deputy attorney formally reaffirmed the 1995 guidelines just a month before 9/11.
Cashill apparently doesn't know that we have at least as long a memory about his bogus conspiracies as he does.
Time For Another Bogus Trump Coverage Study Topic: Media Research Center
Since the Trump presidency started, the Media Research Center has pushed narrowly defined studies purporting to show that the media's coverage of President Trump has been highly negative. As we've pointed out, the MRC's studies 1) focus only on a tiny sliver of news -- the evening newscasts on the three networks -- and suggests it's indicative of all media; 2) pretends there was never any neutral coverage of Trump by explicitly rejecting neutral coverage in favor of dishonestly tallying only "explicitly evaluative statements"; 3) fail to take into account the stories themselves and whether negative coverage is deserved or admit that negative coverage is the most accurate way to cover a given story; and 4) fail to provide the raw data or the actual statements it evaluated so its work could be evaluated by others. Not only does the MRC get huffy when the extreme narrowness of its so-called studies are highlighted, it actively encourages falsely extrapolating its bogus results into an indictment of the media as a whole.
The latest installment came on Jan. 15, and Rich Noyes began by falsely conflating his tiny sliver of "research" as representative of the entire "establishment media": "At the midpoint of Donald Trump’s first term, the establishment media’s obvious hostility shows no signs of relenting, but polls show this negative coverage has had no discernible impact on the public’s attitudes toward the President." Fox News has been firmly established for more than 20 years, but Noyes will never admit it's part of the "establishment media."
Noyes does admit that "neutral statements" are excluded from the MRC's work, then bizarrely complains that the so-called "negative" coverage of Trump peaked when "a White House aide [was] accused of domestic abuse." Noyes did not explain what positive spin the networks should have been done to lower that number.
That, of course, is one key flaw in the MRC's methodology -- it refuses to acknowledge that at least some negative coverage is deserved.
Still, Noyes concludes by whining: "The media elite have clearly waded into the political fray to wage war against this President. But have they accomplished anything beyond cementing their reputation as political partisans, not objective journalists?"
Yes, that's coming from an organization whose "media research" lacks all objectivity and is narrowly designed to reinforce a right-wing narrative instead of following where the evidence leads.
Newsmax Columnist Joins Snowflakes Triggered By Challenges to Toxic Masculinity Topic: Newsmax
The message I see in this ad is that men need to stop being men and that men’s default position is bestial. I think that’s outrageous.
I am not surprised that ad executives have fallen prey to the "men are bad" narrative, which is the extreme and ridiculous response to the equally extreme and ridiculous “women are victims” narrative that has become conventional wisdom in the wake of the sexual abuse accusations against Harvey Weinstein. Madison Avenue has about as much of a social conscience as Wall Street.
Unfortunately, the executives at Gillette aren’t the only ones who think that men are a problem.
This month, the American Psychological Association (APA) released its first-ever guidelines designed to help psychologists work with men and boys to address the so-called epidemic of “toxic masculinity.” According to the APA’s research, "traditional masculinity - marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance, and aggression - is, on the whole, harmful.”
I believe this hostility toward men is dangerous, but I also know that it’s nothing new. As the second and third wave feminists gained momentum over the last 50 or so years, they bolstered a narrative that has become accepted wisdom: Men, the patriarchy, and masculinity in general have been the source of women’s suffering. Women are taught to blame men for everything bad that has ever happened to them. The #MeToo movement is just the next generation of this.
The new guidelines put a negative spin on characteristics that have traditionally belonged to the male of the species.
[...]
The people who support the APA’s new guidelines and praise Gillette’s message are pretending to care about the welfare of boys and men, but I don’t believe that’s true. I believe they are mistakenly trying to protect women from a patriarchy that they deem to be harmful.
Masculinity is not toxic. It’s normal, it’s human, and it’s good. We need to remember that, despite what Madison Avenue or #MeToo wants us to believe.
CNS Keeps Cheering On Its New Favorite Right-Wing Authoritarian Leader Topic: CNSNews.com
We've previously noted that Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro is the latest hardline right-wing leader CNSNews.com has become infatuated with. That infatuation has grown over the past month as Bolsonaro assumed the presidency in Brazil.
A Jan. 1 article by Patrick Goodenough highlighted Bolsonaro's inauguration and his pledge to free Brazil from "corruption, crime, economic irresponsibility and ideological submission" and to respect its "Judeo-Christian tradition." Goodenough described Bolsonaro's ideology only as "conservative" but did concede that his critics "accuse him of homophobia and misogyny."
On Jan. 7, CNS managing editor Michael W. Chapman touted how Bolsonaro "suggested it is possible that a U.S. military base could be installed in Brazil dependent up on what happens in the world ... to counter Russian influence in nearby Venezuela, a socialist regime that is collapsing under the dictatorship of Nicolas Maduro, a Marxist."
Three days later, the homophobic Chapman cheered when Bolsonaro "signed an executive order removing LGBT concerns from the government's human rights ministry, apparently affirming his traditional Christian, pro-family views and his rejection of 'gender-based ideology.'"
All three items also noted that President Trump has tweeted his congratulations to Bolsonaro.
In addition, a Nov. 28 item by Chapman proclaimed that "Brazil's newly appointed foreign minister, Ernesto Frago Araujo, who starts his new job in January under President Jair Bolsonaro, has stated that the climate change issue was invented by 'cultural Marxists' to help push a globalist agenda that is anti-growth and anti-Christian." Chapman also highlighted Araujo's wild anti-gay, anti-socialism rant:
The incoming foreign minister also criticized Brazil's left-wing Workers' Party for promoting a "socialist ideal" while crushing individualism, freedom of thought, and economic freedom.
It is nothing more than totalitarianism, he wrote, because it "criminalizes everything that is good, spontaneous, natural and pure. Criminalizing the family on charges of patriarchal violence. Criminalizing private property. Criminalizing sex and reproduction, saying that any heterosexual act is rape and every baby is a risk to the planet because it will increase carbon emissions."
Socialism is "criminalizing faith in God," he said. "Criminalizing patriotism. Criminalizing biology by prohibiting the statement that a person is born a man or a woman. Criminalizing competition ("sport is a fascist thing," I once heard a leftist colleague). Criminalizing red meat. Criminalizing air conditioning [for climate science reasons]. Criminalizing beauty. Criminalizing all Western thinkers since Anaximander [d. 536 BC]. Criminalizing history and its heroes. Criminalizing Disney movies. Criminalizing love for children and ancestors. Criminalizing oil or any energy efficient and cheap."
Chapman probably thinks this is all true. Fact-checking isn't CNS' strong suit, after all.
WND's Farah Pretends There's No Evidence Of Trump's Racism Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah rants in his Jan. 24 column:
Democrats running for president against Donald Trump in 2020 are staking out their campaign theme.
Do you know what it is?
“Trump’s a racist.”
Kamala Harris said it. Bernie Sanders said it. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, a New York Democrat, took the slur even further, saying, “We have a hater in the White House, a birther in chief, the grand wizard of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.”
The dirty little secret behind these irresponsible and dangerously hyperbolic lies is that all of these people know very well the claims are false, groundless, without any substance.
How do I know that? How can I prove it?
It’s not exactly like Donald Trump was an unknown before running for president in 2016.
He was a major celebrity, one of the most well-known businessmen in the world, a best-selling author, a major donor to Democratic politicians, a media star, the billionaire prince of New York City.
Trump was the toast of the town in New York. He was the toast of Hollywood. He was the toast of the Democratic Party.
In all the years before he ran for president, guess what no one called Trump? A racist.
Why? Because there was no evidence to support such a malicious accusation.
And there is no evidence to support a malicious accusation like that today. And his accusers know it.
How do I know they know it? Because they never provide any evidence. They just make accusations, reckless claims, smears.
[...]
It’s time to demand they all put up or shut up with the racism accusation. Where’s the evidence? It’s un-American to make such a charge against a standing president, inviting, encouraging and inflaming violence against him.
Even by Farah's and WND's standards, this is an exceptionally lazy column.Both of Farah's accusations -- that nobody accused Trump of racism before he ran for president, and that there's no evidence to support current claims of racism -- are easily disproven.
Snopes has a list debunking the former, including racial discrimination in Trump-owned rentals and racial slurs against employees of his casinos. (Which puts the lie to Farah's claim that Trump has "worked with people of all races throughout his career without incident.") And there are numerouslistsavailable substantiating the latter, which you can read for yourself -- many more than Charlottesville, which Farah insists isn't actually proof because Trump "was 100 percent correct" to blame both sides for the violence.
A simple Google search would have prevented Farah from embarassing himself by writing this column. The fact that he wouldn't do even that serves up much more evidence that he has not demonstrated WND deserves to live.
NewsBusters Blogger Tries to Justify Black Guest's Eviction From Hotel Topic: NewsBusters
NewsBusters blogger Brad Wilmouth complained in a Jan. 1 post that "CNN has devoted a substantial amount of time to hyping the story of a black man who complained about racial discrimination after he was evicted from a DoubleTree hotel in Portland, Oregon. Two employees were fired for the incident." Wilmouth snarked that the security guard who challenged the guest "should have known he was going to be on CNN in heavy rotation....and out of a job," then tried to justify that the man deserved to be evicted from the hotel he was staying at because "became loud" after being challeged about being in the lobby:
Viewers could see why a black man would feel singled out. But you also wonder why, if he wanted privacy, [guest Jermaine] Massey didn't simply go to his room. Other guests appeared to be walking to their rooms, and not "loitering" in the lobby. It's also obvious that taking Massey to his room to get his things would certainly demonstrate he was a guest at the hotel.
In contrast with the other networks, Friday's CBS This Morning did at least inform viewers that, according to the police report, Massey "became loud and started yelling that the hotel was racist."
He also allegedly got angry and slid a hotel Bibleacross the floor while berating the security guard as he packed his items in his room, according to the police report. “While he was getting his belongings he took the Bible from the hotel room and slid it across the carpet toward [security guard Earl] Meyers and told him he needed to read it and learn how to be a human.”
Wilmouth is leaving out certain details that more fully explain the story. According to a news article to which Wilmouth links, Massey had just returned to the hotel following a concert and had stayed in the lobby to return a phone call to his mother when the security guard approached him and demanded that he prove he was staying at the hotel or leave. When Massey couldn't immediately give the guard his room number, the guard had the manager call police. Massey claims he was singled out because he was a black man wearing a hoodie while white guests in the lobby were not similarly questioned.
Rather then demanding that the hotel explain why it singled Massey out in an instance of what looks to all the world like racial profiling, Wilmouth seems to believe the man deserved to be thrown out of the hotel because he objected to being singled out.
CNS Kept Up Pro-Trump Stenography During Gov't Shutdown Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com has never stopped being dedicated to pro-Trump stenography, and that behavior didn't change during the government shutdown.
A Jan. 2 article by Susan Jones uncritically rehashed several Trump tweets, including claims that Obamas have a "ten foot Wall around their D.C. mansion/compound" and that the idea of a concrete wall "was NEVER ABANDONED." In fact, as an actual news outlet reported, there is no "ten foot Wall" around the Obamas' house but, rather, chain link fencing and security fencing on top of an existing retaining wall; and Trump has wavered on the kind of wall he wants built.
Meanwhile, Jones was much more opinionated about Democrats she featured. She huffed that Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer highlighted "their plan to end what they call the 'Trump shutdown'" (you know who else called the Trump shutdown? Trump himself) and going on to opine: "One of President Trump's harshest critics in the liberal media, MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski, began Wednesday's "Morning Joe" with a sneer, proving that 2019 is beginning with the same anti-Trump venom that thrived in 2018."
Jones didn't mention that she and the rest of CNS were beginning 2019 with the same pro-Trump stenography that they embraced in 2018.
A Jan. 8 article by Craig Bannister touted how trump sent Department of Homeland Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen's (whose name Bannister misspells as "Nielson") presentation on "the threat of illegal immigration" arter "Democrat [sic] leaders refused to hear it at the White House," then repeated many of the numbers in it. But as another actual news outlet reported, several of the numbers are misleading or unsubstantiated; for instance, thte claim that "Illegal drugs at the southern border experienced a dramatic spike FY17-FY18" omits the fact that most of those drugs are seized at ports of entry.
The same day, Jones gave a pass to Nielsen (whose name was spelled correctly this time) for refusing to say exactly how many suspected terrorists cross the border because "the exact number is sensitve," then played up her assertion that "I am sure all Americans would agree that even one terrorist reaching our borders is one too many. As a fact-check pointed out, "the terrorist watch list doesn’t mean these are terrorists. It means their names were similar to those of people on the list." The fact-check added: "If any of these people was actually a terrorist, you can bet that we would know by now."
On Jan. 9, Melanie Arter devoted an article to Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham slobbering over Trump's Oval Office address, proclaiming it "the most presidential" he has seen Trump. Arter did not permit any dissenting opinion.
In a Jan. 14 article, Bannister highlighted how Trump "described the horrors of women who are bound and gagged by traffickers, crammed into vehicles “three, four, five, six at a time,” and smuggled against their will into the U.S.," adding that "Human traffickers don’t enter through official U.S. checkpoints – they go through unsecured areas on the border that don’t have a wall or steel barrier – Trump said." In fact, as another fact-checker documented:
[H]uman-trafficking experts and advocates for immigrant women have said they are perplexed by this increasingly repeated story in Trump’s repertoire — and are at a loss for where he got his information. It was not from them, they say; in fact, they have no idea what he is talking about.
[...]
In interviews with The Washington Post this week, nine aid workers and academics who have worked on the border or have knowledge of trafficking there said the president’s tape anecdote did not mirror what they have seen or heard. A separate story reported in the Toronto Star cited several additional experts who said Trump’s lurid narrative — migrant women bound, gagged and driven across the border — does not align with their known reality.
When Trump offered concessions in the form of temporary extensions of DACA and TPS policies for undocumented immigrants already in the country as an enticement for Democratic negotiation, Arter devoted an article to summarizing the proposal, then publishing the entire speech. Bannister, meanwhile, only vaguely noted Trump's "concessions to Democrats on the issues of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for asylum-seekers." Neither of them told readers that Trump was giving up nothing; as TPM reported, "it was the Trump administration that attempted to terminate DACA in the first place, and the Trump administration that has aggressively sought to end Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, for the vast majority of foreign nationals currently living legally in the United States with the designation."
In a Jan. 24 article, Arter quoted only Republicans in attacking Democrats for failing to support a bill that would have allowed the federal government to continue paying federal workers furloughed by the shutdown -- but she didn't explain why Republicans would support paying someone for work that wasn't being done, nor did she clarify that that bill would not have ended the shutdown at all, since the workers would still be forbidden to work.
Another article by Arter the same day was only slightly less biased: Sixteen of its 18 paragraphs were devoted to Republicans attacking Democrats for refusing to negotiate on border security until the shutdown ended.
When Trump did finally cave and permit the reopening of the government while border negotiations continued, CNS didn't want to admit he caved, at least at first. Arter's initial story on Trump announcing the end of the shutdown quoted only Trump, but it waited until the next day (a Saturday) to publish another, anonymously written article highlighting Schumer's speech on the Senate floor before the body voted to reopen the government, conceding in the headline that "Schumer Claims Victory."
MRC's Double Standard on Vandalism Topic: Media Research Center
In March 2017, Tom Blumer, the departed contributing editor to the Media Research Center's NewsBusters blog, was offended that a Washington Post report on "far-left environmental vandals" defacing a Donald Trump-owned golf course called it "a daring act of defiance." "In a sane world, reporter Peter Holley and anyone else who reviewed the post before it went live would be severely and publicly disciplined," Blumer complained, adding that "The original report did not characterize the actions as "vandalism" until its fourth paragraph." Blumer further huffed of the vandals: "They and their destructive sympathizers are surely thrilled to see their handiwork given such prominent national visibility."
But the MRC has since found some vandalism it can get behind and give prominent national visibility to. Gabriel Hays cheerfully wrote in a Jan. 14 post:
It turns out there are still a few good-humored, politically-incorrect folks in Hollywood after all. Over the weekend, lefty-bashing street artist provocateurs publicly slammed HBO’s Bill Maher with a satirical billboard depicting him not as the thought leader he imagines himself to be, but as a rote purveyor of mainstream liberal propaganda. Specifically he was made fun of as being an “NPC.”
On Sunday pranksters from conservative street artist group “The Faction” decided to point out the fact that Maher might actually belong to this category, going after a Real Time with Bill Maher billboard located at the corner of La Cienega Boulevard & West Holloway in West Hollywood. “The Faction” spray painted a gray, expressionless face over Maher’s and changed the image’s tagline from “The Whole Truth and Nothing But” to “The Whole Narrative and Nothing But.” They also changed “HBO” to “NPC.”
Hays never uses the word "vandals" to describe the perpetrators -- they're "street artist provocateurs" -- or the word "vandalism" to describe what they did -- it's just "satirical" (though he did complain about Trump's Hollywood Walk of Fame star "being vandalized multiple times since his election."
Clearly, Hays and his editors were not "severely and publicly disciplined" for endorsing vandalism the way the MRC was demanding of others not too long ago, even though we can assume that The Faction and their destructive sympathizers are surely thrilled to see their handiwork given such prominent national visibility by the MRC. (Of course, the MRC couldn't even do that with the editors who let the white-nationalist links in Blumer's NewsBusters posts get through whatever editing process it claims to have, and then to stand unchallenged for years before it was pointed out to them).
Snowflakes At WND Also Triggered By Criticism of 'Toxic Masculinity' Topic: WorldNetDaily
The Media Research Center wasn't the only group of right-wing snowflakes to freak out over the guidelines from the American Psychological Association and a Gillette commercial that challenge negative aspects of traditional masculinity. WorldNetDaily columnists were triggered as well.
The last thing American males need today is less masculinity.
If you need proof, ask women who are looking for a husband whether the men they date exhibit too much masculinity, too little masculinity or just the right amount. I have talked to hundreds of women on my radio show (every week I have a “Male/Female Hour”), at speeches and in private who are dating to find a spouse. Not one has said men today are too masculine. Virtually all of them have said men today lack masculinity.
Also, he wrote, this somehow proves that "The left ruins everything it touches," adding that "Any therapist who cannot unequivocally condemn the APA statement is unworthy of your time and your money, let alone your psyche."
Erik Rush similarly denounced the APA guidelines: "Given the APA’s track record in contributing to the normalization of deviant behavior in recent years, I’m not quite sure why many who should know better continue to validate the organization as an arbiter of healthy psychological paradigms."
For starters, since when does anyone – in this case, a manufacturer of men’s shaving and body products – have the right to tell an entire gender how to act or, even more intrusively, how to raise their sons? Alluding to its own slogan, the company degradingly asks in the ad, “Is this the best a man can get?” Last time I checked, raising children is a parent’s job, not the purview of a disposable razor company whose products, after a few uses, get thrown in the trash – exactly where its male-bashing ad belongs.
[...]
Perhaps the company has forgotten that alpha male “boys being boys” were who fearlessly stormed the beaches at Normandy and led Allied forces to ultimate victory in World War II, putting an end to the Holocaust and Adolf Hitler’s satanic grip on Europe. Boys being boys dressed in New York Police Department and New York Fire Department uniforms bravely rushed into collapsing buildings at ground zero during 9/11, rescuing lives while risking – or losing – their own. And let’s not forget the brave boys being boys on United Airlines Flight 93 who charged the cockpit and battled with terrorists, thereby diverting the hijacked plane from its target, the U.S. Capitol – saving countless lives.
If that kind of masculinity – that “let’s roll” bravado and heroism – is what “boys being boys” is all about, someone should tell the “woke” crowd we need more of it, not less.
WND devoted a "news" article to the "serious backlash" Gillette has received over the ad, citing such supposed paragons of masculinity as Piers Morgan and Rush Limbaugh. It also [published syndicated columns by Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin bashing the ad.
CNS Managing Editor Obsesses Over Possible Presidential Candidate's Sex Life Topic: CNSNews.com
So South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg is considering a run for the Democratic nomination for president. But filtered through the homophobiclens of CNSNews.com managing editor Michael W. Chapman, the only thing that matters is that Buttigieg is gay.
The headline on Chapman's Jan. 24 article on Buttigieg is headlined "First Openly Gay 'Married' Man Announces 2020 Democratic Presidential Exploratory Committee." The scare quotes around "married" persist in Chapman's head paragraph:
Pete Buttigieg, the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Ind., who is openly gay and "married" to another man, announced on Jan. 23 that he has launched a presidential exploratory committee to determine whether he will run for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.
The stuff about Buttigieg being a military veteran who served in Afghanistan, a Rhodes Scholar and a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard? Chapman waited until the second paragraph to mention it.
Scare quotes abounded in Chapman's piece: He noted that "On June 16, 2018, Buttigieg 'married' Chasten Glezman at the Cathedral of St. James' Episcopal Church in South Bend, Ind. ," and he included a picture of Buttigieg and his spouse with a caption stating that it showed him "and his 'husband,' Chasten Glezman."
He even suggested that Buttigieg was deceitful by claiming that he "came out of the closet as homosexual in June 2015, a revelation he did not make to South Bend voters back in 2010-11 when he first ran for mayor." Chapman did not explain why this was important.
MRC Ignores Facts (Again) in Attacking ProPublica Topic: Media Research Center The Media Research Center's Julia A. Seymour groused in a Jan. 14 post:
The liberal journalism non-profit ProPublica is expanding again — this time to Washington, DC so it can do even more anti-Trump administration investigations.
Of course, that wasn’t how the group framed it, but it’s doubtful it’ll be doing a lot of investigations of liberals considering its donor base and the articles it chose to showcase this expansion.
Seymour groused burther that ProPublica receives "money from a host of liberals and their foundations" -- read: George Soros and Tom Steyer -- then uses this as an excuse to paint ProPublica's content as "liberal." But the only example she notes is a list of three stories that "were obvious attacks on Trump, Trump 'associates,' or the people he chose to lead government agencies." At no point does Seymour dispute the accuracy or those stories or or even identify anything in them that she considers to be biased.
Fursther, as ProPublica president Richard Tofel detailed in a previous attack on the organization (which Seymour underreported on in December), ProPublica covers many stories that target liberal and Democratic politicians.
But Seymour is not trying to report fairly; she's trying to perpetuate a right-wing narrative.
CNS Denounces Appropiating King For Political Purposes -- While It Does Exactly That Topic: CNSNews.com
When Planned Parenthood issued a tweet honoring Martin Luther King Jr. on his birthday, CNSNews.com enlisted his niece, anti-abortion activist Alveda King (whom CNS, for once, refrained from giving her the unearned honorific "Dr.") for a Jan. 21 article denouncing Planned Parenthood for approprating King for a political cause: "To dishonor a prophet by raising a political banner which supports killing innocent babies on MLK’s birthday is so inhuman. To dishonor a prophet by raising a political banner on his birthday is so inhumane."
Elsewhere the same day, CNS was, um, appropriating King for its own political causes.
A column by Media Research Center "senior fellow" Allen West appropriated King for the anti-abortion cause:
Last week was the National March for Life, and potentially hundreds of thousands, not just 1,000s, gathered to be the voice of life for our unborn. The march is going on 45 years, and I believe that Dr. King would have been part of this march. Why? Put simply, Dr. King was an impeccable man of faith, and watching now, some 18 million black babies having been killed in the womb of black mothers would undoubtedly bring tears to his eyes. In that number, how many could have been the next man, or woman, from the Old Fourth Ward, a leader and a visionary, not just for the black community, but for freedom and liberty for all?
CNS also reposted an October column by editor in chief Terry Jeffrey placing Ronald Reagan on the level of King, declaring them "two of the greatest leaders in American history not only because of the struggles they won but how they won them." Jeffrey equated Reagan's1987"tear down this wall" speech at the Berlin Wall to King's Letter from Birmingham Jail, then declared:
Reagan and King believed that human freedom depends on faith in God and respect for His laws.
Reagan led America in defeating an evil that threatened us from abroad by standing up for and righteously speaking that truth. King led America in defeating an evil that threatened us from within by using the very same means.
Today, as in other eras, there are forces that would like America to abandon this ultimate truth that King and Reagan embraced and acted upon. To these forces, the principle enshrined in the Declaration of Independence is like the sign of the cross shining off the tower at Alexanderplatz. It needs to be eradicated.
We should teach our children that these forces are wrong, and that King and Reagan were right.
So, apparentl, it's OK at CNS to appropriate King for political purposes after all.
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Mysterious Media Research Center blogger Jay Maxson just can't stop ranting about the existence of former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick. Read more >>
WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah rants in his Jan. 25 column:
CNSNews.com has gotten its right-wing marching orders to cast newly elected Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez -- and that's just what it's been doing, 
Never underestimate the ability of WorldNetDaily columnist Jack Cashill to cling to a bogus conspiracy theory. Thus, we have this blast from the past in Cashill's Jan. 16 
Since the Trump presidency started, the Media Research Center has pushed narrowly defined studies purporting to show that the media's coverage of President Trump has been highly negative. As we've 
The message I see in this ad is that men need to stop being men and that men’s default position is bestial. I think that’s outrageous.
We've previously 
WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah rants in his Jan. 24 
NewsBusters blogger Brad Wilmouth complained in a Jan. 1 
CNSNews.com has never stopped being dedicated to pro-Trump stenography, and that behavior didn't change during the government shutdown.
In March 2017, Tom Blumer, the 
So South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg is considering a run for the Democratic nomination for president. But filtered through the 
The Media Research Center's Julia A. Seymour groused in a Jan. 14 
When Planned Parenthood issued a tweet honoring Martin Luther King Jr. on his birthday, CNSNews.com enlisted his niece, anti-abortion activist Alveda King (whom CNS, 
