NewsBusters Blogger Gets Mad Trump's Affinity For Right-Wing Strongmen Is Pointed Out
Topic: NewsBusters

Blogging at NewsBusters, former Media Research Center intern Ryan Foley tries the ol' whataboutism route in a May 16 post:

Opening Wednesday's CNN Tonight, the horribly biased Don Lemon pondered: “Why this President loves to surround himself with strong men, with dictators?” Naturally, Lemon proceeded to criticize Trump for meeting with dictators, apparently forgetting that President Obama attended a baseball game with Cuban dictator Raul Castro while administration officials had numerous meetings with Iranians. Lemon went further by saying that President Trump wants to “follow their lead” by acting like a king.

While Obama did attend a baseball game with Castro -- though some people were more upset that he did so in the wake of a terrorist attack in Europe -- he also held a joint news conference in which Castro was allowed to be asked questions by the news media for the first time in, well, ever. Foley also offered no evidence that any Obama administration officials treated those Iranians with the same deference Trump has treated his right-wing strongman buddies.

And who are those right-wing strongmen that are Trump's buddies, anyway? Foley mostly avoids them in his post. Two of them -- Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil and Viktor Orban of Hungary -- are two of the MRC's favorite right-wing strongmen as well; its "news" division CNSNews.com just loves them.

Foley did complain that Lemon pointed out Trump said to Chinese president Xi Jinping, "you’re President for life and therefore, you’re king," then sneered: "The far-left CNN host asserted that 'it should be no surprise President Trump is behaving like a king.' His evidence? Trump saying 'I alone can fix it' at the 2016 Republican National Convention. Big whoop."

NEW ARTICLE -- NewsBusted: The Sports Blogger Files
Topic: NewsBusters
One recent NewsBusters sports blogger hid behind a "pen name," while the current one has no media presence outside the blog so that may be a fake-name writer too. Not that the content differs all that much. Read more >>

NewsBusters Forgets Dershowitz Is A Sleazy Porn Lawyer Too
Topic: NewsBusters

P.J. Gladnick complained in an April 22 NewsBusters post: "Compare the legal backgrounds of Harvard's Alan Dershowitz versus sleazy porn lawyer Michael Avenatti. Who has the more distinguished career?  Yet CNN chose Avenatti over Dershowitz for the go-to person for legal analysis of the Trump-Russia collusion probe."Gladnick went on to reference "sleazy Michael Avenatti."

But Gladnick forgot that Dershowitz has his own sleazy-porn-lawyer record as well.

As we've noted, Dershowitz has served as a lawyer for Jeffrey Epstein, known for his political connections and his sex-trafficking scandal. Dershowitz has also been accused by one of Epstein's underage victims of engeging in sex with her (which Dershowitz has denied).

NewsBusters loved to talk about the Epstein scandal when Bill Clinton's name came up with it, but since it turns out Donald Trump had ties to Epstein as well -- he liked to hang out at Mar-a-Lago to the point that he picked up one of his victims there, who was working as a towel girl -- blogger Mark Finkelstein can't change the subject fast enough.

Somebody need to tell Gladnick that Dershowitz and Avenatti aren't that different after all.

MRC Sports Blogger Repeatedly Triggered By 50-Year-Old Protest
Topic: NewsBusters

Colin Kaepernick is not the only athlete about whom mysterious NewsBusters sports blogger Jay Maxson goes into regular freak-out mode over. He (or she) is also triggered by something that happened 50 years ago: the raised-fist salute by medal-winning U.S. sprinters on the podium at the 1968 Olympics.

Last October, Maxson fumed when Kaepernick and the sprinters were mentioned in the same breath, dropping the term "social justice warriors" for both of them, which is apparently the most serious thing Maxson can think of to call them:

As the 50th anniversary of the protest-marred 1968 Olympic Games nears, the New York Daily News' Carron J. Phillips and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar are glorifying Colin Kaepernick, as well as the two disgraced sprinters who staged a black power salute during the national anthem in Mexico City. The International Olympic Committee stripped Tommie Smith and John Carlos of their medals and expelled them from the Olympic Village. A 1968 headline in the Evening News declared, "Games are Rocked by Black Power." Media reporting has shifted 180 degrees since then, as many reporters sympathize with radical social justice warriors.

[...]

In the decades since then, the sprinters have been turned into heroes by the Left. There's a statue honoring them in California. President Barack Obama celebrated them in the White House. They are the subjects of documentaries and invited, as heroes, to speak on college campuses.

Maxson ranted in another post from October:

October 16 marked the 50th anniversary of the 1968 Olympic Games protest by U.S. sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos. Their black power salute on the medal stand at Mexico City angered many Americans and divided the media. But today, the united American media celebrates them as royalty. Media treat another athlete disliked by many, Colin Kaepernick, as the successor to Smith and Carlos as a social justice icon.

[...]

Today one is hard pressed to find any opposition to Kaepernick and other SJW protesters. When he started protesting during the national anthem in 2016, he said, “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color.”

In February, Maxson was still ranting, complete with another SJW reference:

Former U.S. Olympic athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos shocked with black power salutes at the 1968 Summer Games in Mexico City. They were sent home in disgrace then, but now that the media has a love affair with social justice warriors like Colin Kaepernick, Smith and Carlos are treated like heroes and adorned with honors by the progressive, social justice crowd. The Golden State Warriors saluted Smith during a game Wednesday, and visiting San Antonio Coach Gregg Popovich predicted that Kaepernick, too, will become greatly admired.

[...]

But, hey, it's 2019 and social justice warriors are cool now! No apology, no mea culpa are required in the Left's world of low standards. So then, in the far-, far-out world that is the Bay Area, Smith received a jersey from the Warriors in recognition of Black History Month.

And Maxson was still at in in an April 7 post:

For many Americans, social justice warriors in sports uniforms have disrespected America and turned them away from sports. The Nation's Dave Zirinhas made a slobbering career of apologizing for and glorifying these malcontents. He's written books on 1968 Olympic protester John Carlos and radical NFL player Michael Bennett. He staunchly defends Colin Kaepernick and others who politicize sports, too. Zirin is the "parallel universe," and this week he bitterly complains that Carlos and fellow '68 Olympic protester Tommie Smith are being disrespected by their alma mater, San Jose State University.

Fifty years ago, Smith and Carlos were America's top sprinters. In the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City they won two of the three medals in the 200-meter dash. On the victory stand, during the playing of the Star Spangled banner, they looked down at the ground and raised their gloved hands to the air in protest to racism. Those in the stadium and watching around the world were stunned. The International Olympic Committee booted them out of the Olympic Village and sent them home in disgrace.

America's disgrace became a "noble" cause for far Left writer Zirin and San Jose State U. He wrote the book, The John Carlos Story: The Sports Moment That Changed the World. San Jose State built statues to the two malcontent sprinters, but Zirin claims the two SJWs are now being treated horribly by the university.

Maxson noted Zirin quoting someone saying that San Jose State University removing the track where Carlos trained and replacing it with a parking lot was "another sad day for the Spartans," Maxson huffed: "A sad day for the Spartans and a sadder reminder for Americans offended by the acts of Smith and Carlos."

You know, if Maxson keeps getting so triggered by events that happened 50 years ago, maybe he's the one in a parallel universe.

MRC Mad At 'Black Press Only' Event, Silent On Pompeo's Briefing Only For 'Faith Based Media'
Topic: NewsBusters

Randy Hall found something to be offended about in a March 29 NewsBusters post (boldface in original):

One of liberal Democrats’ favorite tactics these days is to smear anyone who doesn’t agree with them as a racist. However, they don’t always follow their own rules due to an apparent “do as I say, not as I do” mentality.

That philosophy was on full display in Savannah, Georgia, on Wednesday night, when reporters attempting to cover an event for candidates in the upcoming mayoral election were greeted with signs that said “Black Press Only.”

According to an article by Amanda Prestigiacomo, a writer with the Daily Wire, attendance at the Bolton Street Baptist Church was even more restricted than that, as other signs stated that “No Audio or Video Recording!” would be allowed.

Prestigiacomo then quoted the Savannah Morning News for noting that the event was coordinated by Rev. Clarence Teddy Williams, owner of the Trigon Group consulting group, "to garner support for just one black candidate in Savannah’s mayoral election."

[...]

While several black reporters and public officials attended the gathering, none of them would state they agreed with the overtly racist policy demonstrated there:

[...]

Of course, if this event had been arranged by a conservative Republican, and there were signs on the doors of “White Press Only” and “No Audio or Video Recording,” it would be virtually impossible to escape the scathing coverage across the country from virtually every outlet in the “mainstream media.”

Meanwhile, Hall -- not to mention anyone else at NewsBusters or any other Media Research Center website, for that matter -- has yet to mention a similar act of bigotry perpetrated not by a political candidate but by the Trump administration.

On March 18, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo held a press briefing conference call only for "faith-based media" -- thus effectively creating a religious test for reporters wanting to cover Pompeo. Not only has the State Department refused to release a list of the "faith-based media" outlets who took part in the briefing, it has also refused to release a transcript of what was said in the briefing.

If the coverage restriction by the Georgia candidate is so offensive to Hall -- as judged by the boldface he used in writing about it and the word "SEGREGATED" in all-caps in his headline -- why isn't Pompeo's discriminatory and segregated coverage restriction? We may never get an answer.

NewsBusters Blogger Thinks Roy Cohn Was A Good Guy
Topic: NewsBusters

In a March 29 NewsBusters post, Mark Finkelstein complained that a "bitter" Joe Scarborough said that President Trump found his "own Roy Cohn" in Attorney General William Barr. Finkelstein then explained what he thought was the reason liberals hate Cohn so much: "In liberal-speak, Roy Cohn is a synonym for "someone we really hate." After all, he committed the egregious sin of successfully prosecuting the Rosenbergs, communist spies who worked to divulge America's nuclear secrets to the Soviets at the height of the Cold War."

Um, no, Mark. It's more that Cohn was Joe McCarthy's henchman in purging alleged (but not necessarily proven) communists from federal jobs, then followed that up with working to purge alleged (but not necessarily proven) homosexuals from federal jobs despite being a closeted homosexual himself. He was disbarred shortly before his 1986 death from AIDS for various unethical deeds. Cohn was also a mentor to, and attorney for, a young Donald Trump -- and such an influence that President Trump once lamented, "Where's my Roy Cohn?"

A couple days later, Alex Christy similarly took offense to Scarborough likening Barr to Cohn, but offered a different defense, insisting that Scarborough "may have bungled his analogy, because the real McCarthyites were people like Scarborough who saw Russian agents or Manchurian candidates behind every corner."

NewsBusters Blogger Still Denying Trump-Epstein Link
Topic: NewsBusters

As we've documented, NewsBusters blogger Mark Finkelstein is very much in denial that convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has with President Trump and tries to steer the conversation at every opportunity to former President Clinton's links to Epstein, despite the fact that, well, Clinton hasn't been president for nearly two decades.

Finkelstein slid even more into denial in a March 28 post, whining that MSNBC's Joe Scarborough "is test-marketing a new line of attack: attempting to tie President Trump to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein" and "fantasizing about the possibility that Epstein was at the table at Mar-a-Lago when Trump reportedly mentioned to wealthy friends that he had made them money with his tax cuts." Finkelstein huffed in response: "Just one problem with Joe's fantasy: as Scarborough presumably knows, Epstein couldn't have been there. As reported in the Washington Post, according to court documents Trump has barred Epstein from Mar-a-Lago for assaulting an underage girl."

Well, temporarily overlooking the fact that Finkelstein seems to be conceding that being banned from Mar-a-Lago means Epstein must have been a regular there and, thus, linked to Trump, let's take a look at that Post article Finkelstein is citing. It notes that Trump was an "occasional guest" of Epstein, adding:

One woman, Virginia Giuffre, sued Epstein’s longtime friend Ghislaine Maxwell, who she said recruited her in 1999 from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club to be Epstein’s “sex slave,” starting with “massages” and moving to sex acts. Giuffre had worked at the club as a 15-year-old locker room towel girl. She settled with Maxwell last year.

In a different civil case against Epstein, records showed that he had attended parties at Mar-a-Lago and that Trump flew on Epstein’s private jet at least once. Trump told New York magazine in 2002 that Epstein was “a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”

During the 2016 presidential campaign, another young woman, known in court records only as Jane Doe, said Trump had raped her when she was 13, in 1994, at a party at Epstein’s New York mansion. But the woman dropped her lawsuit and canceled a news conference at which she was expected to spell out her allegation.

On top of that, Trump's labor secretary, Alex Acosta, is a former prosecutor who cut a deal with Epstein that got him a short jaill stint despite the severity of the charges against him.

That's a lot of links to Epstein. Why doesn't Finkelstein want to admit that these ties exist? Indeed, Finkelstein is so desperate to district that he adds a note at the end of his post: "If there is one President who deserves to be tied to Epstein, it is, of course, Bill Clinton. He reportedly flew 26 times on Epstein's private Boeing 727, AKA the 'Lolita Express,' ditching his Secret Service protection on several occasions."

Finkelstein continuing to deny the truth about Trump and Epstein just makes him look even more pathetic.

NewsBusters Blogger Insists Clinton's Link to Epstein Is More Important Than Trump's
Topic: NewsBusters

Mark Finkelstein whines in a Feb. 22 MRC NewsBusters post:

Court documents show that Bill Clinton took at least 26 trips on convicted sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein's notorious "Lolita Express" party plane. There's no indication that Donald Trump ever did. But in a segment on Epstein on her MSNBC show today, Joy Reid managed to refer to President Trump six times, accompanied by extended photo displays of Trump in Epstein's company.

Number of times Reid mentioned Lolita Express frequent flyer Clinton? A New York bagel, of course.

It's almost cute how Finkelstein is pretending that Trump has no links whatsoever to Epstein. As we've documented, Trump has flown at least once on the "Lolita Express," Epstein hung out at Trump's Mar-a-Lago club, and one of Epstein's sex trafficking victiitems was recruited while working as a 15-year-old towel girl at Mar-a-Lago. Additionally, the attorney who cut the deal that let Epstein get off with a relative slap on the wrist, Alexander Acosta, is Trump's labor secretary.

(There's also the fact that Trump is currently the president while Clinton has not been for quite some time.)

Additionally, the video montage Finkelstein supplies is a bit on the curious side. Two of the instances are of Reid edited to say only "Donald Trump" without context, which tells us that Finkelstein is trying to hide something. One reference noted the fact that Trump  ws a friend of Epstein, another noted the link to Acosta, and a fifth noted Trump's previous praise of Epstein.

This is the first time Finkelstein has tried an Epstein deflection; in 2016, he wanted to talk about Clinton's connection to Epstein instead of former Republican congressman Dennis Hastert's admission to molesting children.

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 Bible across 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.

MRC's Sports Blogger Goes Into Cognitive Dissonance Mode Again Over Ray Lewis
Topic: NewsBusters

Mysterious NewsBusters sports blogger Jay Maxson just loves how former NFL star Ray Lewis is so religious -- so much, in fact, that Maxson conveniently forgets Lewis' involvement in a double murder that he ultimately plea-bargained down to obstruction of justice, and that Lewis has yet to come fully clean about his involvement in the deaths.

Maxson went into cognitive dissonance mode again in a Jan. 3 post complaining that a "lefty" sports blog called Awful Announcing "shamed" Lewis "for his faith." Maxson was mad that Awful Announcing pointed out how Lewis "uses every opportunity to talk about how religious and holier-than-thou he is," specifically claiming that current NFL star Odell Beckham Jr. "has removed God from his life" in relation to a off-the-field incident involving a model and "potential drugs" that did not result in any league sanctions against Beckham.

Maxson also noted another of the blog's slams against Lewis: "Ah, yes, the man known for his guilty plea to obstruction of justice after the murders of two men really should be the life counselor to a man who has never been criminally charged with anything." But Maxson strangely let that pass without comment, declining to address the conflict between his involvement in that crime and his current "holier-than-thou" status.

Maxson doesn't seem to understand it's not necessarily about Lewis being an judgmental religious man now, it's that he has never reconciled that religiosity with his violent past, let alone fully make amends for it. Unless Maxson can address that issue, perhaps he/she should stop whining about people criticizing Lewis for being overly religious.

NewsBusters Blogger Doesn't Know His Political History
Topic: NewsBusters

NewsBusters has apparently dealt with the departure of the disgraced Tom Blumer by bringing back Mark Finkelstein as a contributing editor. Finkelstein has a shaky history of veracity and insults in his previous work for NewsBusters, but you might remember him best as the guy who suggested that then-NBC "Today" co-host Matt Lauer was supporting Palestine by his choice of wearing a checkered scarf.

Finkelstein has apparently been given the MSNBC beat at NewsBusters. A Nov. 25 post on one MSNBC segment featured a guest forwarding a possible Michelle Obama-Oprah Winfrey ticket for the Democrats in 2020, followed by host Joy Reid shooting down the idea because "We know racially-polarized voting is a real thing and people will say they'll vote for Oprah until she is on the ballot." Finkelstein then complained: "So those racist white Americans won't support a black presidential ticket. Reid didn't try to square her view with Barack Obama's two presidential victories, or with the fact that Oprah is wildly popular across a broad swath of Americans, including countless whites."

It seems that Finkelstein has never heard of the Bradley effect, which summarizes the pattern of non-white candidates losing elections despite leading the polls, suggesting that some white voters don't accurately tell pollsters who they will vote for. It's named after former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, who is believed to have lost a race for California governor due to this.

In other words, Reid is correct, and Obama's election may have been an anomaly from the Bradley effect.

So ... welcome back, Mark!

MRC Writer Criticizes NY Times Obit Of Conservative, Doesn't Disclose Man Gave Money to MRC
Topic: NewsBusters

Clay Waters complains in an Oct. 15 NewsBusters post:

Monday’s New York Times obituary by Robert McFadden for American beer pioneer William Coors (of the brewing company that carries his name) violated the usual tasteful norms for an obit, starting with the headline and the text box: “William Coors, Ultraconservative Leader Of Brewery Based in Colorado, Dies at 102.” The text box: “A chairman’s speeches were often labeled racist, sexist and homophobic.”

Waters also complained that "McFadden stubbornly kept the focus on liberal outrage, not the Ivy League chemical engineer who had an inventive and successful career building the company." Curiously, Waters did not dispute the accuracy of those claims -- perhaps because the obit lays out in detail the evidence to support them.

Waters failed on another count: He didn't disclose that the Media Research Center, which publishes the blog on which his post appeared, has reportedly received funding from the Castle Rock Foundation, which was backed by Coors money.

Seems like an important conflict of interest to report, yet Waters failed to do so.

MRC Again Claims That Conservatives Are Accurately Labeled In Battle Between Catholic Factions
Topic: NewsBusters

The Media Research Center has long had a bee in its bonnet regarding stories about conservatives in which the conservatives are accurately labeled as "conservatives." Matthew Balan -- a former MRC "news analyst" who's now freelancing for the MRC's NewsBusters blog -- pushes this again in an Aug. 30 post:

The Washington Post followed the example of AP and The New York Times with a Thursday article that played up the role of conservative Catholics in a controversy involving a former Vatican diplomat's recent "testimony" against Pope Francis.

Long-time Post religioin reporter Michelle Boorstein narrowed her scope and focused exclusively on the involvement of an "influential...conservative Catholic" media in the issue. Boorstein emphasized that "conservative Catholic media outlets have become power players by conveying the anti-Francis point of view." She also zeroed in on the role of "powerful Italian conservatives" in breaking the story.

The correspondent used the "conservative" term a total of 30 times in her write-up. (For a contrast, see Boorstein on April 5, in which she couldn't find a liberal/leftist label for Vermont ice cream barons Ben & Jerry, or "Black Lives Matters supporter DeRay McKesson," or the socialists at Sojourners magazine.)

First: The Post story about the church is specifically abaout political factions inside the Catholic Church, and it's absurd for Balan to be offended that conservatives are accurately labeled as such. Second: The story referencing Ben and Jerry, Mckesson and Sojourners is in a story about fightinbg racism -- unless Balan is conceding that fighting racism is now solely a "liberal" or "leftist" cause these days.

Balan  went on to huff that the Post reporter noted that "the reporting from these conservative 'power players" were akin to "the way in which Breitbart News and Drudge Report have served as media conduits for the brand of conservative American populism led by President Trump." If the Post can easily identify how a 'tight-knit' ideological network can unite to remove a powerful leader, certainly they can understand how conservatives see them and their fellow liberal 'power players' at 'media conduits.'" Of course, Balan's just parroting the anti-media attack from his former employer.

Then -- ironically for a website that fearmongers about George Soros for supporting liberal causes -- Balan complained that the Post story highlighted the role of financier Timothy Busch in conservative Catholic politics and even likening him to the Koch brothers, "controversial siblings involved in right-of-center politics in the U.S."

"Right-of-center"? The word you're looking for is "conservative," Matt.

Two days earlier, Balan complained that "The Associated Press and the New York Timesboth tried to spin a Catholic archbishop's recent exposé about the Church's sex abuse scandal as an ideological attack on Pope Francis from the right." Again, Balan doesn't dispute the ideological battle; he grouses about (arguably accurate) labels.

NEW ARTICLE: Tom Blumer Gets NewsBusted
Topic: NewsBusters
The blogger was fired from the Media Research Center-operated NewsBusters after white nationalist links were discovered in his posts. But what about the MRC editors who let those links go through in the first place? Read more >>

NewsBusters Blogger Sees Anti-Conservative Conspiracy in ESPN Dropping Comments Section
Topic: NewsBusters

Jay Maxson, the mysterious NewsBusters sports blogger, was in ESPN derangement mode for a July 8 post portraying ESPN discontinuing the comments section of its website as a proof of anti-conservative bias:

Progressives from Berkeley to Bristol would rather shut down a debate than stomach opposition views. Fascists at California and other universities have perfected the strategy of shutting down free speech. No longer willing to endure conservative opposition to its progressive social and political posts, ESPN.com has just joined the club by shutting down its comments section.

Hilariously, Maxson quotes someone predicting his freakout: the Awful Announcing website noted that "To some people, predictably, this move is a sign of something much more sinister: censorship of a free-flowing conversation where people weren’t afraid to call out ESPN on their obviously over-the-top liberal agenda."

Surely Maxson is familiar with website comment sections, and how they're not exactly repositories of well-reasoned thought. One has only to look at NewsBusters' own comments section, which is all about taking mean-spirited potshots and nothing about robust debate. Indeed, as we know from experience, NewsBusters makes sure the latter never happens by working to ban anyone who tries to engage in one -- making Maxson's complaint about ESPN utterly hypocritical.

Further, Maxson never proves his/her thesis, that ESPN shut down comments specifically to squelch conservative opinion. He's simply issuing an uninformed opinion that fits better in a comment section instead of a standalone blog post at a major right-wing website. Of course, given the lax editing at NewsBusters, maybe its placement is not a surprise after all.