MRC Bashes Critic For Criticizing Comedian's Unfunny Transgender Jokes Topic: Media Research Center
We've noted how the Media Research Center berlieves that the LGBT community is a preferred target for comedy, as exemplified by its defense of Steven Crowder's homophobic attacks on gay journalist Carlos Maza as being OK because it comes from a "comedian." Now the MRC has defended more bad LGBT-mocking humor.
In a July 11 post, Clay Waters bashed New York Times critic Jason Zinoman for criticizing comedian Dave Chappelle for maikng "lukewarm jokes" about transgenders, claiming that Chappelle committed the offense of "telling jokes about people that Zinoman doesn’t think he should be telling jokes about." Waters chortled later in thepost that "Zinoman was getting his own 'comedy roast' on Twitter for being such a censorious scold and advising comedian Chappelle what he can and cannot joke about."
Needless to say, the MRC loves to tell people who they can and cannot joke about. Indeed, the very next day, MRC leaders Tim Graham and Brent Bozell attacked a cartoon for making jokes about President Trump:
CBS-owned Showtime has created a Trump-blasting animated series called "Our Cartoon President," reminiscent of that George W. Bush-bashing "Lil' Bush" series that Comedy Central made while Bush was in office. Can you imagine Showtime having aired a president-mocking cartoon while Bill Clinton or Barack Obama were in office? How about one about President Hillary? They wouldn't dare.
Showtime thinks it's funny to claim that conservatives say they are "oppressed" and need a "safe space." The network says its "cutting-edge comedy presents the truish adventures of Trump ... and his family."
"Truish." That word gives you a clue. It's like the truth. The executive producer is CBS late-night star Stephen Colbert, so the "truish" part is fascinating.
[...]
"Truthiness" perfectly defines this nasty cartoon, made by a nasty man who announced on national television that this president's mouth is a holster for Russian President Vladimir Putin's penis. He presents Trump and conservatives as the worst kind of loathsome idiots, because that's the truth he wants to exist. It's "his truth," as the left so illogically tries to explain these things. It's just another dose of ongoing therapy for liberals who feel oppressed because Trump is president.
Of course, Waters never explained why jokes about transgenders are inherently and perpetually funny and immune from criticism.
Waters would never dare to call his bosses out for complaining that "Our Cartoon President" was "telling jokes about people that" Graham and Bozell don’t "think he should be telling jokes about," though they're acting exactly the same as the Times critic he attacks. We assume he values his paycheck too much.
CNS Buries Trump-Epstein Story, Pushes More Minor Crime From Federal Employees Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com has an oddhabit of ignoring legitimate news that makes President Trump look bad in favor of playing up minor crimes by low-level federal employees.
We see that again with the Jeffrey Epstein story. In contrast to its parent Media Research Center's efforts to deflect the Epstein scandal by trying to turn the story from Trump's connections with Epstein to Bill Clinton's connections with him (despite the fact that Clinton hasn't held public office in nearly two decades while Trump is the current president), CNS largely ignored it. The only mention of it in an original CNS article following Epstein's arrest on sex-trafficking charges was a July 9 piece by Melanie Arter repeating Trump's claim that "he’ll be looking 'very carefully' at the role that Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta played in a 2007 immunity deal for billionaire Jeffrey Epstein.
As befit her usual stenography mode, Arter uncritically repeated Trump's insistence that he "was not a fan of" Epstein, but failed to report that Trump said in 2002 that Epstein is a "teriffic guy" and even complemented the man's taste in younger women. When a video surfaced of Trump and Epstein together at a 1992 party -- further disproving Trump's claim never to be an Epstein "fan" -- CNS refused report on it. Nor did it report on Acosta's eventual resignation as labor secretary in the wake of criticism over the plea deal.
The next day, however, an anonymous CNS writer found something that was allegedly more newsworthy: more minor crime by a federal employee!
A National Park Service Facility Manager used a government charge card to buy approximately $2,297 in merchandise that he then pawned, according to a summary of the case released by the Office of the Inspector General for the Department of the Interior.
The government employee was sentenced to one day in jail.
Yep, this was more important to report for CNS than sex-trafficking allegations against a onetime friend of the president.
MRC Leader Graham's War on Fact-Checkers Grinds Dishonestly Forward Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center -- mostly in the person of Tim Graham -- has longwagedwar on media fact-checkers for purported bias (though really just for pointing out that conservatives in general, and President Trump in particular, lie on a depressingly regular basis). Let's take a quick look at how that war has ranged from the nitpicky to the dishonest in recent months.
In January, Graham once more denounced the very act of Trump being fact-checked, complaining about fact-checkers' "one-sided aggression toward Trump" -- seemingly oblivious to the idea that perhaps the president of the United States should be held to a higher factual standard than the "liberal Senators" he thinks should be fact-checked a lot more. Of course, nobody's stopping Graham and the MRC from setting up their own fact-checking operation; it seems complaining makes for a more exploitable narrative than actually doing something about it.
In April, Graham complained that Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler hasn't denounced Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg for claiming that Vice President Mike Pence supported anti-gay conversion therapy -- only to admit that "Buttigieg hasn't expressly attacked him for it." He then complained that Kessler said that "Pence could certainly settle this conundrum if he has rejected such therapies in his own words, rather than through a spokesman. Then there would no longer be any question," adding that "It's especially weird for Kessler to diss [Pence spokesperson Alyssa] Farah like this. ... Those aides are good enough for him to make a ruling (or avoid a ruling)."
That might be a good argument had the MRC not done the same exact thing. In 2016, disgraced NewsBusters blogger Tom Blumer insisted that Bill Clinton's denial that he raped Juanita Braoddrick isn't real because the denial came from spokesmen and not directly from Clinton's mouth.
In May, Graham tried to justify Trump's statement at a rally abpout laws protecting the right to abortion that "The baby is born and you wrap the baby beautifully and you talk to the mother about the possible execution of the baby" was somehow true because the statement was "borrowing from what Gov. Northam said in an awkward radio interview about how a baby 'unsuccessfully' aborted would be treated." But Northam's spokesperson pointed out later that the governor misspoke and was not endorsing infanticide but, ratrher, "the tragic and extremely rare case in which a woman with a nonviable pregnancy or severe fetal abnormalities went into labor." Shouldn't Graham have given Northam the benefit of the doubt here because of the spokesman's statement, just like he demanded Pence's spokesperson be treated as the real thing?
In a June post, Graham stuck the right-wing narrative while grousing that a fact-checker pointed out that there's "little evidence" to support Trump's claim that the real Russian collusion was done by Democrats and not with the Trump campaign, further whining that "he won't explicitly acknowledge the Russian cooperation in the Steele dossier, where an ex-British spy dug up salacious dirt on Trump from Russian sources. He only mentioned it to deny it had any importance (and forget the fact of the FISA warrants spawned by it)." But as others have pointed out, the Steele dossier was not the basis for the FISA warrant to invesitgate onetime Trump campaign official Carter Page.
Graham joined (read:ghostwrote) with his boss, Brent Bozell for a July 2 column complaoining that Democratic presidential candidates aren't fact-checked as much as they demand:
PolitiFact actually boasted on Twitter during the debate: "We've been fact-checking @ewarren since 2014. She has never received a rating lower than Half True." How is that possible? Easy. For one, PolitiFact has never issued a Truth-O-Meter ruling on Warren's claim of being part Cherokee Indian.
Perhaps because there's no evidence that Warren ever deliberately lied about her heritage -- she was simply repeating family stories about it that were ultimately found not to be true. Graham and Bozell presented no evidence whatsoever of deliberate deception.
That kind of partisan pettiness permeates the column; at one point they grouse that "Our favorite whopper of the night was when Julian Castro asserted that a 'trans female' should have a right to an abortion, when a 'trans female' is someone who is born male, born without a uterus." As leaders of a partisan political operation that sneers at transgenders, they would say this.
WND's Peterson Goes Full White Supremacist Topic: WorldNetDaily
A couple weeks back, we noted that WorldNetDaily columnist Jesse Lee Peterson had cranked up his white supremacist schtick by gushing over how "white men founded and built America, the greatest country on earth" and declaring that "If we lose whites as a majority, we lose America."
Well, Peterson found a bigger crank. Behold his July 21 WND column:
This month of July is my second annual celebration of White History Month. America is great thanks to white people. But it’s so overrun with blind white-hating people that we now have a Muslim woman with a head rag in Congress! Rep. Ilhan Omar, D.-Minn., is an evil, America-hating, Christian-hating “social justice warrior.” But she falsely claims, “I probably love this country more than anyone that is naturally born.” Her kind of “love” is the same emotional, egotistical spirit as angry single black mothers who raise thugs and defend them when they commit crimes.
I’ve been saying for years that if anyone does not love this country, they can leave! If you hate white people, and you believe in so-called “racism,” even though whites let you into this country, go back to Africa or wherever you came from! Same with the white communist antifa members who hate American freedom – get out of my country!
President Trump rightly said the same thing in a few tweets last Sunday. He suggested that these “progressive” Democrat Congresswomen “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.” He’s right. But they won’t, because they’re hypocrites – including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley. Not only will they not fix their own communities, they want to mess up ours! They only offer abortion, immoral socialism, false victimhood and hatred of white people, men and Christians.
[...]
There’s nothing more important than rebuilding men. There are no men in the Democrat Party – only weak beta males. Women run the Democrat Party, which is anti-American and of Satan. We saw what happened when men disappeared from black homes. The black community worships “mama” while they kill one another. Now other races, including whites, follow in blacks’ footsteps of self-destruction, by following women. Whites have turned to weakness and surrender, thinking the people of color will love them. That’s not the way.
Watch and learn from this president, who makes evil unwelcome again.
Again: Peterson sounds no different from David Duke, Jared Tayulor or any garden-variety white supremacist. But sounding like a white supremacist is something WND wants in his columnists -- espeically since he can invoke his black-conservative privilege and face no consequences in his shrinking right-wing bubble.
Normal, polite society doesn't accept this kind of talk from white people. Why should Peterson get away with it?
MRC Does Damage Control For Border Patrol Topic: Media Research Center
After ProPublica broke a story about a secret Facebook group for former Border Patrol agents filled with racist and sexist comments and jokes about dead migrants, the Media Research Center did something that had nothing whatsoever to do with "media research" -- it rushed to the Border Patrol's defense by throwing out what might be generously described as alternative facts.
In a July 5 post, Corinne Weaver asserted that "Facebook’s past policies may have implicated innocent users in some controversial activities" -- even though she admitted that ProPublica double-checked names in the group against that of known Border Patrol agents. She continued:
A Facebook spokesperson confirmed that before December 2018, users could be added to a group without agreeing to be added. They would receive an invitation to the group, but the invite automatically added the user. Now, the new policy makes users “accept invitations” before they are added to a group.
The border patrol group is 3 years old, according to ProPublica. For two years, some members of the group could have been added without realizing it. Only brand-new group members are guaranteed to have joined voluntarily.
In addition, many members in the group might have missed some or all of those posts. If a member of a group does not interact with a group for a certain period of time, the latest posts float down to the bottom of the newsfeed. So very active members of the group would have been able to see most of the posts, while less active members would not have seen as much.
Just because someone was a member of a group does not mean they were active members who commented, posted, or even saw all of the content.
Weaver is simply making excuses. The facts remain that this Facebook group does exist, and these agents did belong to it -- even Border Patrol chief Carla Provost was forced to admit she belonged to it (though she denied being an active member).
It's highly unlikely that Weaver or anyone else at the MRC would give the same benefit of the doubt to anyone who belonged to a Facebook group that published offensive content that could be considered liberal-leaning -- recall its incessantwhining about the "Journolist" listserv because non-conservative journalists were involved (and its complete silence about Groundswell, the secret listserv for conservative journalists and activists, not even to discuss whether any MRC employee took part in it).
Weaver's defense of the Border Patrol is nothing but political damage control that's little more than just another MRC double standard.
Jones' CNS 'News' Article Is A Pro-Trump Editorial Topic: CNSNews.com
We've already caught CNSNews.com reporter Susan Jones trying to create a bogus narrative that Joe Biden doesn't really want to be president. The same day that article was published, though, she wrote another one that, while labeled "news," was in truth little more than a pro-Trump editorial.
Jones began by noting a July 4 speech by Biden in which he said that Trump "is incapable of celebrating what makes America great because I don't think he gets it." Then the editorializing began with Jones writing:
Hours later, under rainy skies on the Mall, President Trump did indeed celebrate what makes America great.
In his nonpartisan speech, Trump hailed some of the patriots and inventors who made this country what it is. He told stories of military bravery and heroism, pausing for flyovers from each branch of the military, including a roaring B-2 bomber.
[...]
Trump told the cheering crowd, "Americans love our freedom, and no one will ever take it away from us."
After a long excerpt from Trump's speech, Jones editorialized against Biden, claiming he "recited the familiar Democrat litany of various injustices heaped on the middle class and the working class." She concluded by whining; "And so it went, as Americans in Iowa listened to what's wrong with Trump's America -- and Americans on the Mall listened to Trump tell them what's so right."
But if Trump was all about telling people "what's so right" with Trump's America, his speech wasn't exactly as "nonpartisan" as Jones claims, was it? Further, at no point did Jones refute any of the claims Biden made -- she simply mocked them as a "Democrat [sic] litany."
Jones has already proven herself to be a loyal Trump stenographer. But such blatant bias on her part belies CNS' mission statement to "put a higher premium on balance than spin."
MRC Goes Into Full Deflection Mode on Trump-Epstein Ties Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center and its NewsBusters division (looking at you, Mark Finkelstein) have a problemacknowledging that Donald Trump has a connection to accused pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, which typically manifests itself in labored attempts to complain that Bill Clinton had dealings with Epstein too (ignoring the inconvenient fact that Trump is the current president while Clinton hasn't been president for nearly 20 years now). With Epstein's latest arrest on charges of sex trafficking and with exposure of Trump labor secretary Alexander Acosta's role in working out a sweet plea deal for Epstein when he was a federal prosecutor, the MRC was compelled to deflect and defend anew.
A July 8 post by Kristine Marsh set the page, huffing that one ABC news show failed to report on "Epstein’s highly controversial connection to former President Bill Clinton" or that Epstein was "a major Democrat [sic] donor," referencing a Fox News report (of course) claiming that "Clinton was a frequent flier on Epstein’s private jet full of underage girls." Marsh further complained that other news reports "tried to connect Epstein to Trump" and one of those reports "didn’t mention that after Epstein had been convicted of assaulting an underage girl, Trump had barred him from Mar-a-Lago." Marsh didn't address the issue of why Trump allowed Epstein into Mar-a-Lago in the first place.
ABC finally broke its silence, finally mentioning Bill Clinton’s connection to registered sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a man now accused of new charges of sex trafficking. But the combined mentions on Monday night and Tuesday morning only amounted to 38 seconds. In comparison, the total amount of Epstein coverage since Sunday has been 21 minutes and 3 seconds.
Whitlock failed to acknowledge Trump's links to Epstein, though he did reference the Acosta controversy.
Marsh got all huffy again in another deflection-filled post, complaining that "The View" co-host Joy Behar "tried desperately to connect the longtime Democrat donor to President Trump" though "Epstein was a major donor to the Clinton Foundation and President Bill Clinton reportedly took over two dozen trips with the sexual predator on his private jet nicknamed the 'Lolita Express'."
Ryan Foley, meanwhile, simply engaged in stenography, touting how Fox News' Sean Hannity was "scorching the media’s attempt to make President Trump such an outsized force in coverage of the Jeffrey Epstein case," making sure to repeat the talking point that Trump "banned him from Mar-a-Lago years ago."
Emma Fantuzzo groused that MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell and guest Tim O’Brien made over-the-top claims and speculations into the relationship between recently indicted Jeffery Epstein and President Donald Trump," further complaining that a "17-year-old quote" from Trump calling Epstein a "terrific guy" and complementing his taste in younger women "was supposedly evidence that Epstein still stands in the President’s good graces, despite accounts that Trump banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago years ago for inappropriate behavior." She added, per the MRC's narrative: "Incredibly, the only mention of Bill Clinton was in his defense, citing the statement written by Clinton that he hadn’t known about Epstein’s crimes."
Alex Christy complained about "insistence on Wednesday's Deadline: White House comparing President Trump to alleged serial child sex abuser and trafficker Jeffrey Epstein," while Gabriel Hays gave a big "YAWN" to "lefty" John Lithgow "read[ing] an excerpt from his poetry on Trump’s relationship with now-resigned Department of Labour Secretary Alexander Acosta, a man Lithgow believes covered for sex trafficker, billionaire Jeffrey Epstein," sneering "Clearly Lithgow wants us to know he’s a Renaissance man … Please clap?"
On Sunday, CNN’s Brian Stelter and Phil Mattingly warped the recent sentencing of child abuser and Democratic mega-donor Jeffrey Epstein into a story about (who else?) Donald Trump. Following the resignation of Labor Secretary Alex Acosta — who had come under scrutiny for a shockingly favorable plea deal he had previously granted Epstein as a federal prosecutor — both Stelter and Mattingly brandished Acosta’s resignation as the latest example of instability and high turnover within the White House.
[...]
Given how heavily news networks like CNN have focused on Acosta and the Trump administration throughout this scandal, it’s worth asking how much of the media’s renewed interest in Epstein was driven by a desire to paint the saga as the latest black mark on the President’s record.
So in denial is the MRC over Trump and Epstein that when a video surfaced of the two together at a 1992 party, Gregory Price insisted there was no news value whatsoever:
If there is one thing that is sure to end the presidency of Donald Trump, it is a video of him at a party in 1992 surrounded by NFL cheerleaders and having a conversation with Jeffrey Epstein long before anyone knew he was guilty of sex trafficking. On Wednesday, NBC News went through its archives to find a segment from Faith Daniels’ NBC talk show that captured Trump at one of his Mar-a-Lago parties (something common in the ‘80s and ‘90s).
MSNBC’s Morning Joe and NBC’s Today each dedicated at least 10 minute segments to an extraordinary achievement in investigative journalism: Trump was active in the wealthy New York/Florida party scene during his career as a real-estate mogul. This is neither new information, nor relevant to Epstein’s case because many millionaires were friends with him at the time.
[...]
If NBC was serious about actually doing hard-hitting journalism about the Epstein case, they would focus less on videos of parties from 1992 and more on President Bill Clinton’s sketchy relationship with Epstein. Not only did Clinton lie about the number of times he flew on Epstein’s private jet according to flight logs, but investigative journalists also found that Clinton was on his plane at the same time as underage girls.
In another attempt to go after President Trump, NBC once again falls flat on its face.
But if the current president's link to a convicted pedophile is not newsworthy, why is a long-former president's link somehow totally newsworthy? Unsurprisingly, Price never explained the difference.
CNS Pushes Idea That Biden Doesn't Really Want To Be President Topic: CNSNews.com
Add Joe Biden to the list of Democratic politicians CNSNews.com has covered in a bizarre or mocking way. Susan Jones writes in a July 5 article:
Former Vice President Joe Biden, now making a third run for his party's presidential nomination, seemed to raise the possibility that he may not make it this time, either.
In a Fourth of July speech in Iowa, Biden told the crowd, "If Donald Trump has eight years in the White House, he's going to forever and fundamentally alter the character of this nation. And we can't let that happen, period," Biden said to applause.
"Whether or not I'm your nominee, and I hope I will be your nominee, I'm going to work like the devil, whoever the nominee is if it's not me, to see to it that doesn't happen..."
This is under the meaningless teaser headline "Biden: 'Whether or Not I'm Your Nominee...'"
Of course, Jones is simply apply her own right-wing bias to Biden's words. Biden is simply saying that the goal of the Democrats is to oust President Trump in 2020, and he's realistic enough to note that while he may or may not be that person, keeping eyes on the prize is the important thing.
But in Jones' biased eyes, acknowledging reality gets twisted into a suggestion he's not really serious about running for president or is expecting to lose.
MRC's Double Standard On Calling A Conservative Journalist A 'Conservative Journalist' Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Kristine Marsh gets all huffy in a July 2 post:
When you’re a liberal and you fabricate a ludicrous story painting conservatives as the violent aggressors with absolutely zero evidence, your story gets nationwide media coverage for weeks on end with little scrutiny. If you’re a conservative clearly attacked on video by leftists, with corroborating witnesses however, you story is given scarce attention and cast with doubt by the media. We saw that this week with Quillette journalist Andy Ngo, whose assault by Antifa members was captured on video, yet CNN repeatedly qualified the incident as just “his word.”
[...]
“Conservative journalist assaulted says Antifa behind attack,” the chryon read on screen (emphasis mine). First off, anyone with two eyes can see clearly what happened, it’s not a matter of he said or she said. Second, why the “conservative” qualifier? Would CNN have called Ngo a “liberal” journalist who “says” he was attacked, if this had happened at a Trump rally?
We'd take Marsh's outrage at face value, but for the fact that the day before, the MRC identified Ngo as ... a conservative journalist.
"Conservative Journalist Andy Ngo Recounts Vicious Assault By Antifa" was the headline of Nicholas Fondacaro's July 1 post, adding: "On Saturday, conservative journalist Andy Ngo, who reports for Quillette, was brutally beaten with fists and weapons and doused with milkshakes laced with quick-dry cement by the left-wing, domestic terrorist group Antifa." Foncacaro's post even carries the "Conservatives and Republicans" tag (curiously missing frpm Marsh's post).
Of course, if Ngo wasn't a "conservative journalist," the MRC wouldn't be working so hard to exploit the incident (it helps that Ngo himself is eager to exploit it to boost his media profile). It crankedout a slew of its patented "a narrow slice of media didn't cover X, so that proves it's biased" post whining that Ngo's attack wasn't covered. Curtis Houck huffed that a CNN story "was spun with Ngo being dubbed a 'conservative blogger' and mentioned alongside white nationalist groups like the Proud Boys."
It's OK for the MRC to identify Ngo as a "conservative" but it's somehow bias and spin for a non-conservative outlet to do the same thing? We're confused.
(Houck didn't mention thaty the Proud Boys was founded by Gavin McInnes, who was at the time a host for CRTV, run by close friend of the MRC Mark Levin.)
WND Columnist Gushes Over Putin's Russia Topic: WorldNetDaily
A few years back, we noted how WorldNetDaily columnists were demonstrating their love for Valdimir Putin's Russia, what with the anti-gay crackdowns, the squelching of dissent and the ogling over the manly specimen that is Putin. That love affair hasn't really abated.
'Hanne Nabintu Herland devoted her July 3 WND column to gushing over Russia, delcaring that "Over 80 percent in the former atheist USSR now believe in God, >probably constituting the greatest revival of Christianity in our time," while "somehow the left in America got so tired of individual freedom and the Constitution, they now crave to become a socialist state where the elite has total control over national revenues, the media, the public, the universities." She copntinued to gush:
So, today Russia is a traditionalist, religion-friendly, capitalist society that remembers its history and honors its historic heroes: the precise values that makes the American establishment and its mainstream media puke. Russia’s turn from Leninism to Christian Orthodoxy has largely happened under president Vladimir Putin, who is so demonized in the atheist Western press that it is almost impossible to Google his name and find unbiased facts.
In the U.S., very few are even aware of the massive revival that is happening in Russia as millions have turned to their cultural roots in Eastern Orthodoxy in the past years. 25,000 churches all over Russia, Putin on repeated pilgrimages to Mount Athos in Greece and so on.
Actually, Putin's Russia is a crony capitalist system run by oligarchs with Putin's blessing (and profiting off the scheme) that suppresses dissent, sometimes violently, as LGBT activists have discovered. And Herland describing Russia as "religion-friendly" ignores that pretty much the only religion it's friendly to is the Russian Orthodox Church, effectively the state religion, and is hostile to even other Christian religions.
Herland did aver that "Russia is far from perfect, still battling corruption, elitism and its own vices," but she didn't mention Putin's role in said corruption and elitism; she was too eager to return to gush mode over how "an address by President Putin at the 2013 Valdai Summit illustrates the million miles between the borderless relativism most Western politicians seem to promote and the Russian way of thinking."
NEW ARTICLE -- CNS' Managing Editor of Gay-Bashing: 2019 Edition Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com managing editor Michael W. Chapman has been spewing hate at the LGBT community for years, and he's continuing to use his Media Research Center-provided platform to spew more of it. Read more >>
Newsmax Columnist Somehow Blames Obama For HIV Among Gay Black Men Topic: Newsmax
Former NFL player Jack Brewer goes on a weird little tirade in his July 12 Newsmax column:
I’m all for equal rights for gays and lesbians, but I think the large campaign donations hypnotized Obama to prioritize gay marriage over bringing quality education and criminal justice reform to the ancestors of our ailing former slave population. I’m sure both were important issues to him at some level, but in politics you have to prioritize as all presidents know they are on a short timeline.
The debate is still out there as to whether the Obama years brought the country farther from our Christian foundation.
I applaud President Obama for openly saying Jesus and quoting powerful scripture on many occasions. I was just a little bothered by his policies, which too often went against the word of God.
Obama stuck to his commitment to the LGBTQ community when he backed unprecedented legislation that expanded the sacred biblical “marriage” characterization to gay and transgender couples. I just think we could have given all Americans their deserved equal rights without challenging the biblical definition of marriage. Now homosexuality is on super speed in the black community where you see a surge in gay black males particularly in urban communities like Atlanta, LA, and throughout the south.
The CDC recently reported that 50% of black gay men will contract HIV, which is scary given the growing gay lifestyle promotion as a result of the Pride movement. Despite being only 12% of the population, blacks make up 43% of those infected with HIV in America. This epidemic can’t be ignored and we can’t deny the results of a culture that promotes sex and homosexuality as things that are publicly glorified.
In short: Brewer is mad that Obama didn't hate the LGBT commmunity as much as he does, and he offered no evidence that ceasing to hate gay people has created more of them or caused an increase in HIV infections. Also, allowing gays to marry does not "challenge the biblical definition of marriage"; it expands it. Further, there are numerous reasons that gay black men are at a higher risk of HIV that don't involve "promotion" of the "lifestyle."
Brewer also complained:
The Obama administration chose to pour food stamps on our most underserved with few effective programs to incentivize our impoverished to go to work. Obama ironically boasted about giving out more food stamps than any other president in U.S. history. You can’t make this up.
Brewer didn't mention that the country was recovering from a recession for much of Obama's presidency, and he doesn't explain how cutting off food stamps to those who needed them would have helped things.
Though Brewer proclaimed himself to be a "lifelong Democrat" who supported Obama (until he stopped hating gays, apparently), he's basically a pro-Trump shill here. In praising Trump for signing the First Step Act, he bashed Bill Clinton and Joe Biden for supporting the "evil" 1994 crime bill, ignoring that the bill had the support of many black officials at the time, as well as bipartisan political support. He also didn't mention that the First Step Act had bipartisan support too.
And, lo and behold, on July 21 Brewer tweeted thanks to Trump "for taking so much time to meet with me this weekend to discuss tackling the critical issues affecting blacks in America." If the reason Brewer sucked up to Trump was to get a meeting with him, he succeded.
MRC Seems To Be Making Things Up In Assigning Ideology To Debate Questions Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center did its best to try and work the refs ahead of the Democratic presidential debate in June -- but, as usual it refuses to complete show its work in assigning ideology to the questions asked at the debate.
Geoffrey Dickens kicked things off in a June 24 item by demanding that NBC and affiliated networks ask questions with a right-wing bias: "If they are to match what their colleagues did with Republican candidates in 2015, they should ask questions designed to humiliate, badger and paint them as not ready for prime time, cartoonish, out-of-touch extremists." Dickens refused to acknowledge that the questions asked of the Republicans were legitimate even though they put the candidates on the spot.
After the first night of the debate, the MRC was quick to frame anything non-conservative as a pejorative. Scott Whitlock declared that "the NBC and MSNBC hosts" asking questions "catered to the party's far-left base, offering questions about just how to take guns away from Americans, the need for aggressive action on climate change and repeated questions about how the nominee would fight the looming threat of Mitch McConnell."
Rich Noyes followed up by falsely conflating "left-wing," hard-edged leftism" and "liberal," asserting: "A Media Research Center analysis finds 39 of the questions at the debate echoed liberal talking points or were framed around a liberal world view, vs. only five that challenged liberal/Democratic assumptions. Another 15 questions were framed in a neutral fashion, or were neutral follow-ups to previous questions.?" Noyes never explained how the MRC made these decisions, though he linked to Whitlock's post containing a complete list of questions.
Noyes followed up after the second night of the debatye with more of the same:
After two nights, NBC/MSNBC has proved that they deserve the nickname “MSDNC.” The twenty Democrats who made the presidential debate stage were treated to questions that were wildly skewed (69%) to the left, with only a scant 13% challenging the candidates to defend their outside-the-mainstream views, a five-to-one disparity.
A Media Research Center analysis finds 70 of the 102 distinct questions at the two debates echoed liberal talking points or were framed around a liberal world view, vs. only 13 that challenged liberal/Democratic assumptions. Another 19 questions were framed in a neutral fashion, or were neutral follow-ups to previous questions.
[...]
here’s a reason why these debates are moderated by (supposedly) independent journalists, who are supposed to challenge the candidates, rather than party insiders who would want to present both the candidates and the party’s platform in as favorable a light as possible.
But it’s hard to see how NBC/MSNBC/Telemundo’s approach was at all different than a debate moderated by Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and other liberal Democratic bigwigs. Real journalists should gag at the two-night display of bias.
Noyes again failed to explain the MRC's alleged methodology, nor did he provide evidence that any view of any Democratic candidate -- let alone all of them, as he seems to be claiming -- is "outside-the-mainstream." Its standards here are purely subjective: a question was deemed "liberal" seemingly because it needed a big number of "liberal" questions to make the so-called analysis exploitable for politial purposes.
If Noyes can't offer a sound, scientifically valid methodology for determining "bias," we have to come to the conclusion that the MRC is simply making things up, letting their own right-wing opinions color their judgment and are motivated only by partisan politics designed to advance its anti-media agenda.
WND Frames Transgenderism As A Disease Topic: WorldNetDaily
The LGBT-haters at WorldNetDaily do an interesting but of framing in an anonymously written June 27 article, suggesting that transgender people are "victims" of gender dysphoria, which they "suffer" from:
An organization that monitors the readiness of the U.S. military is opposing an amendment to a defense spending bill that would allow gender dysphoria victims in the ranks.
The military disallowed people who suffer gender dysphoria – defined clinically as persistent feelings of identification with another gender and discomfort with one’s own assigned gender – until President Obama changed the policy with an executive order. President Trump reversed the order, but courts have ruled in favor of military personnel with gender dysphoria.
In keeping with its history of journalistic bias, WND quotes only right-wing anti-gay groups attacking efforts to reverse Trump's ban: Elaine Donnelly's Center for Military Readiness and the Family Research Center, "whose leadership includes experts in military matters." WND repeated unchallenged the FRC's assertion that "People with gender dysphoria should be excluded because it’s a specific medical diagnosis, and 'it is associated with significant mental health problems.'"
Such blatant bias is not the sort of thing that inspires confidence in the integrity of WND's journalism or the idea that it deserves to live.
Now That Carl Cameron's No Longer At Fox News, MRC Goes On The Attack Topic: Media Research Center
When longtime Fox News correspondent Carl Cameron announced he had joined a website operation that declared it would be the liberal answer to the right-wing Drudge Report, we knew the Media Research Center would lash out at him following the decades of protection that was afforded him as a Fox News employee. Tim Graham does the deed in a June 25 post:
For decades, Carl Cameron was a top political reporter for Fox News. But now he says he left because "right-wing hosts drowned out straight journalism with partisan misinformation."
He said this in a promotional video for a new left-wing website called Front Page Live, which hopes to be the "antidote" to the Drudge Report. "What’s a former Fox guy doing here on Front Page Live partnering with progressives? Well, it’s about facts, not partisanship." But Cameron sounds a lot like partisan networks like CNN and MSNBC in this video.
[...]
Anyone glancing at this website sees sections on "#Climate Crisis" and "#RadicalRight." It's an attempt at Drudge for liberals. Except Cameron promised there would be "ACT NOW" buttons for people to get involved in campaigns. They link to articles pushing concepts like "The Green New Deal is surprisingly popular."
When Cameron pointed ot that Trump did, in fact, "collude and coordinate with Russia to get elected" and is endangering democracy, Graham couldn't offer any facts in response but instead just sneered, "Riiiight."
Prior to this, the only time we could find that the MRC ever criticized Cameron was in a 2008 post claiming that he "took the low road" by "repeating rumors and gossip from unnamed staffers in the McCain camp about Sarah Palin: her knowledge, temperament, being a shopoholic, etc." in a "somewhat fevered manner." Funny how one becomes an MRC target once you veer from right-wing orthodoxy or, as Cameron has ultimately done, escape the right-wing Fox News media bubble completely.
Consider this yet another reminder that the MRC doesn't give a damn about journalism and cares only about forcing the media to embrace only right-wing narratives.
In a July 11 post, Clay Waters bashed New York Times critic Jason Zinoman for criticizing comedian Dave Chappelle for maikng "lukewarm jokes" about transgenders, claiming that Chappelle committed the offense of "telling jokes about people that Zinoman doesn’t think he should be telling jokes about." Waters chortled later in thepost that "Zinoman was getting his own 'comedy roast' on Twitter for being such a censorious scold and advising comedian Chappelle what he can and cannot joke about."
CNSNews.com has an 
The Media Research Center -- mostly in the person of Tim Graham -- has 
A couple weeks back, we 
After ProPublica 
We've already 
Add Joe Biden to 
The Media Research Center's Kristine Marsh gets all huffy in a July 2 
A few years back, we 
Former NFL player Jack Brewer goes on a weird little tirade in his July 12 Newsmax 
The Media Research Center did its best to try and work the refs ahead of the Democratic presidential debate in June -- but, as usual it refuses to complete show its work in assigning ideology to the questions asked at the debate.
The LGBT-haters at WorldNetDaily do an interesting but of framing in an anonymously written June 27 
When longtime Fox News correspondent Carl Cameron 
