NEW ARTICLE: Narrative Over Truth, Abortion Edition
Topic: The ConWeb
After a new documentary revealed that Roe v. Wade plaintiff Norma McCorvey said she became an anti-abortion activist because she was paid to do so, the ConWeb's anti-abortion activists sought to discredit the film. Read more >>

Trump Family Sycophancy Watch, 'Presidential historian' Edition
Topic: Newsmax

Our nation's first daughter's latest cause, providing food to needy families, has resulted in one billion meals to America’s poor.

The president could see that his resilient economy was indeed roaring back from the coronavirus shutdowns.

However, some were not able to get work and income quickly enough.

When Trump announced a bridge program "farmers to families" he asked Ivanka to take the lead.

In a curious way, this program cements Ivanka Trump’s own role as a figure in history.

She is not just one of the most extraordinary presidential daughters to have worked in the White House, she has entered a rare pantheon of women humanitarians.

Audrey Hepburn, used her beauty to raise money for UNICEF to feed the hungry.

Lady Di used her fame to show us how to embrace the victims of AIDS.

Melinda Gates uses her wealth to promote women in the workforce, including technology.

Ivanka Trump adds the power of her White House office to promote a long list of issues that would have been neglected without her.

[...]

The national media has been stubborn about awarding any recognition to Ivanka.

In the process of its condescending coverage has often ended up with egg on their faces.

Such as their rush to judgment about total jobs created by Ivanka, versus net jobs created during the same time period.

By any measurement, Ivanka Trump’s work has resulted in many hundreds of thousands of jobs for Americans.

-- Doug Wead, June 24 Newsmax column

WND's Mercer Has A Soft Spot For the Confederacy
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Ilana Mercer, in addition to having a soft spot for apartheid, apparently has a similar soft spot for the Confederacy as well. She wrote in her June 18 WorldNetDailiy column:

Steve Hilton is a Briton who anchors a current-affairs show on Fox News.

Mr. Hilton made the following feeble, snowflake's case for the removal of the nation's historically offensive statues:

It's offensive to our Africa American neighbors to maintain statues in public places that cause not only offense, but real distress. And it is disrespectful to our Native American neighbors to glorify a man who they see as having committed genocide against their ancestors. None of this is to erase history. Put it all in a museum. Let's remember it and learn from it.

"What's wrong with Camp Ulysses Grant," Hilton further intoned sanctimoniously. He was, presumably, plumping for the renaming of army installations like Fort Bragg, called after a Confederate major general, Braxton Bragg.

Sons of the South – men and women, young and old – see their forebear as having died "in defense of the soil," and not for slavery. Most Southerners were not slaveholders. All Southerners were sovereigntists, fighting a War for Southern Independence.

Not so much -- the Civil War really was about slavery. Her claim that Southerners died in the Civil War "in defense of the soil" is linked to an anonymously written column that proclaimed Confederate generals "heroes" who deserve the statues built in their honor and the "Charlottesville debacle" resulted in "countless right wingers excoriated by their peers and persecuted by the law unjustly."

Mercer went on to cheer a man named Thomas J. DiLorenzo as "the country's chief Lincoln slayer" and dismissing historian Doris Kearns Goodwin as "a pseudo-intellectual." Turns out DiLorenzo is a fan of the Confederacy as well; he tried to disassociate himself from the right-wing, white nationalist League of the South despite admitting to speaking before the group and endorsing its social and political views.

MRC's Graham Goes A-Heathering Against George Will
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center has been on a bit of a Heathering streak as of late. George Will is an unambiguous conservative but a never-Trumper, so that makes him the enemy to Tim Graham:

George Will is just another pseudo-conservative pundit at The Washington Post. He’s Jennifer Rubin with shorter hair. His latest column seals this image, explicitly calling for a rout of congressional Republicans, much to the delight of the liberal media. He compares Senate Republicans to Vichy collaborators with the Nazis:

[...]

He also compares them to affection-starved dogs:“Voters must dispatch his congressional enablers, especially the senators who still gambol around his ankles with a canine hunger for petting."

Graham never explains why Trump and his supporters must never be criticized, especially by fellow conservatives. Instead, he throws a tantrum that CNN employees -- another MRC enemy -- liked Will's column. But Graham wasn't done with his anti-Will tantrum:

This column absolutely demonstrates Will is not a conservative. Demanding a “rout” of the Republican Party is enabling Democrats making noises about a radical agenda of “Medicare for All,” a “Green New Deal,” government-funded abortion, ending border enforcement, taking tax-exempt status away from churches and organizations that refuse to recognize same-sex marriage…and so much more.

It should be obvious that Will is supporting this agenda by advocating the removal of any obstacles to it.

[...]

Will is so cocky about Trump’s defeat he told [NPR anchor Rachel] Martin that Biden could win just by staying in his basement until November:  “It's Biden's to lose. And if he stays in his basement, he won't lose it…. I think he's one of the beneficiaries of the great lockdown. He leaves the national stage to the president, and the president is using it in a way very injurious to himself.”

All of this insulting talk of shedding principles, of sacrificing dignity, of being “soft wax” for powerful men, can just as easily be applied to George Will, pleasing his employers at The Washington Post. He’s melted butter for Bezos.

It’s certainly ludicrous to call him a “conservative”….when making the path straight for a leftist “revolution” is what he’s advocating.

Remember that Graham is so invested in seeing no flaws in Trump that he just blithely handwaves Trump's legacy of lies by ranting that Trump gets fact-checked and weakly claiming that he "has a casual relationship with the truth." Graham is so committed to the lie that he can no longer see the truth.

CNS' Jeffrey Absurdly Tries To Blame Pelosi For Federal Deficits
Topic: CNSNews.com

CNSNews.com editor in chief Terry Jeffrey has ramped up his efforts to blame anyone but President Trump for exploding budget deficits.

Jeffrey served up his usual monthy articles on federal spending on June 10 -- the first on how "The federal government set records for both the amount of money it spent and the deficit it ran in the first eight months of fiscal 2020" and the second on how "The debt of the federal government topped $26 trillion for the first time." As usual, the words "Trump" and "Republicans" appear nowhere in the article even though they signed off on all that debt, and the articles are illustrated by stock photos of President Trump with Nancy Pelosi -- once again trying to saddle Pelosi with blame even though she controls only one-half of one branch of government.

But in his June 24 column, however, Jeffrey ridiculously placed all the blame on Pelosi:

In the 2,000 days that Speaker Nancy Pelosi has now served as the leader of a division of the federal government that the Constitution gives authority over all appropriations, the federal debt has increased by a record $9,655,515,485,628.06.

That is more than all the debt the federal government accumulated ($8,670,596,242,973.04) under all of the House speakers who served before Pelosi first took that position on Jan. 4, 2007.

The record $9,655,515,485,628.06 in federal debt amassed during Pelosi's first 2,000 days as speaker works out to an average of $4,827,757,742.81 in added debt per day.

None of her predecessors comes close to that mark. She is, indisputably, this nation's Queen of Debt.

It will mark her place in history.

Jeffrey is deliberately leaving out a lot of context. For instance, Pelosi's six years as House speaker coincided with two financial crises -- the 2009 recession and the coronavirus pandemic -- that required large infusions of emergency federal spending to rejuvenate the econony. 

Jeffrey also forgot to mention that four of Pelosi's six years as speaker were under Republican presidents, meaning that Republicans also signed off on all that spending for which Jeffrey is solely and absurdly blaming Pelosi for.

The word "Trump" doesnt appear, of course. The word "Republican" appears only in the final paragraph, when he huffed, "Americans should hope that when Pelosi leaves the speakership, she is not succeeded by someone who shares her ability to borrow and spend — even when serving with Republican presidents." Jeffrey made sure to ignore the fact that Republicans are an equal or greater partner with Pelosi on the spending Jeffrey claims to abhor and could have objected to it or blocked it -- but chose not to.

In addition to censoring inconvenent history, Jeffrey also got some of his numbers wrong; an editor's note buried at the end of the column states that "The debt numbers from the tenure of former Speaker Dennis Hastert were incorrect as initially reported in this column and have been corrected."

Getting facts straight -- especially when they run counter to his narrative -- is not Jeffrey's strong suit, apparently.

MRC Intern Perpetuates Falsehoods About Antifa And Violence
Topic: Media Research Center

Intern Duncan Schroeder used a June 19 Media Research Center post to dismiss criticism of the then-upcoming Trump rally as coming from a "local liberal politician," then got mad at CNN host Jim Sciutto for bringing up the possible threat of far-right extremists disrupting the atmosphere surrounding the rally:

Sciutto then blamed white supremacists for the violence that has broken out at recent protests and suggested that this could be a concern in Tulsa: "There has been concern that demonstrations in the wake of George Floyd have attracted extremist groups including white supremacist groups that have deliberately sparked violence. Are you concerned about that in Tulsa this weekend?" Hall-Harper proclaimed: "Absolutely. Absolutely. We know that, that Trump has a pretty large following of, of extremists."

The anchor made such statements despite far-left activists such as Antifa being responsible for much of the violence at recent protests. In fact, since the death of George Floyd, leftist protesters have injured and killed a significant number of police officers.

As proof of his statement that Antifa is "responsible for much of the violence at recent protests," Schroeder linked to a June 1 MRC post by Kristine Marsh that referenced "left wing mobs like Antifa rioting and looting,"but she offered no proof. In fact, there's little evidence that anyone affiliated with Antifa, given how arrest records show virtually no record of Antifa affiliation, and a fact-checker concluded that "There has not yet been a single confirmed case in which someone who self-identifies as antifa led violent acts at any of the protests across the country." It can be argued that more right-wing extremists have been arrested in connection to planned or perpetrated violence than anyone connected to Antifa.

And as proof of his claim that " leftist protesters have injured and killed a significant number of police officers," Schroeder linked to a June 11 post by Bill D'Agostino complaining that the networks were insufficiently covering "the injuries and death inflicted on police officers," which he seemed to suggest were perpetrated by leftists. In fact, as we documented, a man affiliated with the far-right Boogaloo movement was arrested in the deaths of two of the officers he referenced.

Neither Schroeder nor anyone else at the MRC has told their readers that a right-wing extremist is apparently responsible for the deaths of two officers -- after all, that would run counter to their Antifa-fearmongering narrative.

CNS Doesn't Like Court Ruling Barring LGBT Job Discrimination
Topic: CNSNews.com

CNSNews.com reacted to the Supreme Court decision finding that gays and transgenders are protected from job discrimination pretty much the way you'd expect, given its largely anti-LGBT history.

Susan Jones started things out with a surprisingly balanced article on the ruling; she excerpted from both the majority and minority opinions on the ruling, though she let her bias slip at the end by stating that "While a homosexual advocacy group called the ruling a "landmark victory for LGBTQ equality," conservative groups disagree" and then quoting only conservative groups opposing the ruling.

From there, it was a descent into the usual bias. Editor in chief Terry Jeffrey devoted an entire article to the losing minority opinion under the headline "Alito and Thomas Smack Gorsuch." Jeffrey followed that with a bizarre column headlined "Will Joe Biden Become Our First Female President?"

Some Americans were hopeful in 2016 that Hillary Clinton would become our first female president. She did not.

But now Joe Biden may do it.

Excuse me, you might ask, isn't Biden a man?

Well, he is for now — under the Biden gender rules. But he need not be next year.

"Transgender equality is the civil rights issue of our time," Biden tweeted on Jan. 25.

[...]

So, presumably, under Biden's sex identification policy that holds that "every transgender or non-binary person should have the option of changing their gender marker to 'M,' 'F,' or 'X' on government identifications," a biological male who identifies as a woman one year can get government documentation — including a passport — that indicates he is a woman.

The next year, when he identifies as a man again, he can change his documentation to say he is a man.

Six months after that, when he decides he is neither a man nor a woman, he can get government documentation that says he is "X."

If he has only a singular transgender transformation — and is not a non-binary person — all he or she needs to do is change the indication of his or her sex on his or her government documentation once.

This aggressively deliberate misunderstanding of what it means to be transgender led up to Jeffrey's claim that the Supreme Court ruling "just goes to show that Gorsuch and Roberts share Biden's view of what makes a man a woman," adding, "The entire argument here might have been considered a reductio ad absurdum had the original proposition — that a man can become a woman or vice versa — not been absurd in the first place."

The right-wing views opposing the ruling piled up after that:

A "news" article by John Jakubisin featured "Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D., president of the pro-family Ruth Institute" hyperbolically attacking the ruling as "erasing womanhood" while relegating a view supporting the ruling by "the pro-LGBT Human Rights Campaign" to the final two paragraphs of the article.

Hans von Spakovsky and Ryan Anderson -- the latter an anti-LGBT activist CNS has previously promoted -- bashed the ruling as "an act of judicial activism" and an "extreme policy."

Mary Beth Waddell and Peter Sprigg of the right-wing, anti-LGBT Family Research Council, ranted that "Sexual orientation and gender identity nondiscrimination laws are  unjustified in principle, because these characteristics are not inborn, involuntary, immutable, innocuous, or in the U.S. Constitution—unlike race and sex."

CNS' favorite dishonest Catholic, Bill Donohue, fretted that the ruling might mean an anti-LGBT church or religious organizatoin might have to "employ a teacher who is in a homosexual relationship, or no longer identifies with the sex he or she was assigned at birth." In another column, he attacked the "flawed anthropology upon which the ruling rests" and dismissed homosexuality as a "behavioral attribute."

Mychal Massie Meltdown Watch, Black Lives Matter Edition
Topic: WorldNetDaily

I'm sick of hearing how black lives matter. Black Lives Matter is a Stalinist domestic terrorist group comprised of bigots, racists, anarchists and terrorists with three things in common: 1) They all hate America; 2) they're funded by taxpayer money and Soros money; and 3) they're all going to hell when they die, if they do not confess their sins, repent and turn from them, and accept Jesus Christ as their Savior.

The factual truth is that lives do not matter, be they black, white, gray or chartreuse, until a black person dies during a confrontation with white police officers.

If lives mattered, there would be no alcoholism; there would be no drug addiction; there would be no violent assaults; there would be no rape; there would be no pornography and prostitution; there would be no marital infidelity or spousal abuse. Because if lives mattered, the mentality that supports, encourages and applauds the aforementioned reprobate behavior would not be celebrated.

And, if black lives mattered, there wouldn't be over 20 million blacks who have been murdered by the industrialized systematic extermination of black children. If lives mattered, women as a collective wouldn't have had over 60 million children murdered.

[...]

If lives mattered, there wouldn't be north of a trillion dollars in property damages across the United States owing to domestic terrorist groups like Antifa and godless immoral opportunists who personify the zeitgeist where looting and stealing is viewed as supporting one's family.

[...]

Specifically, if black lives mattered, over 70 percent of homes with black families wouldn't be single-parent households, headed by women with children from multiple men.

If lives mattered, vile self-serving politicians and lucifarian community organizers wouldn't attack America as being racist. They would speak the truth that in America opportunity abounds and that the road to success begins with proper behavior, personal responsibility, and marketable educational and employment skills.

[...]

If lives truly mattered, be they black or otherwise, true men and women of God would speak the truthful Word of God, not advocate sinful orthodoxies that promote sexual deviants to the pulpit, women to pastoral positions and the fallacious idea that God is a respecter of persons based upon skin color.

-- Mychal Massie, June 8 WorldNetDaily column

MRC's Graham Is Mad Once Again That Trump Is Fact-Checked
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center's Tim Graham is totally cool with President Trump lying all the time -- so much so, in fact, that he and the MRC attack the media for fact-checking him. Graham did this again in his June 10 column, in which he complains that Washington Post fact-checkers have compiled a book of Trump's falsehoods.

Graham served up his usual hand-waving of Trump's falsehoods: "Trump has a casual relationship with the truth. Even MAGA hat-wearing Trump boosters know it." (Graham said the same thing in a 2019 MRC post.) He then complained:

There's a Big Lie at the end of the "fact-checker" book: a passage from page 261, in the concluding chapter, titled "Toward a Resurgence of Truth." It was plucked out and celebrated by CNN host Brian Stelter, since it's a favorite Big Lie on the left. The authors claim Trump is like a dictator: "A hallmark of authoritarian regimes is to call truth into question — except as the regime defines it. Russian president Vladimir Putin offers up a fog of disinformation to maintain power, including denying obvious facts (such as Russian involvement in the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17), spouting falsehoods and deflecting attention with nonsensical comparisons (dubbed 'whataboutism')."

Then the authors quote former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul as saying, "A cumulative effect of all these tactics is nihilistic debasement of the very concept of truth."

This "authoritarian" lie was repeated when Kessler appeared on "Morning Joe" on June 2. Co-host Mika Brzezinzki said Trump isn't just assaulting truth. "It's also an assault on our democracy."

Kessler said, "Correct."

This is what Kessler calls a Bottomless Pinocchio, an often-repeated untruth. Donald Trump is not a dictator. Nobody's jailing anyone at The Washington Post for maintaining anti-Trump databases and screaming, "Democracy dies in darkness!" like a panic-stricken teenager on the front page every day.

So a president can't be described as "authoritiarian" if you don't act on those authoritarian impulses? Then perhaps he and the MRC should apologize for portraying President Obama and other Democrats as having gone authoritarian even they know that, by Graham's standards for Trump, they haven't.

For instace, David Limbaugh ranted in a May 2016 column published by the MRC attacking the Obama administration's policy to bring more equality to transgendered people:

The Obama administration obviously cares not a whit for the privacy of students who don't want to be forced to share a restroom with students of the opposite sex. The rights of the many will be subordinated to the rights of the very, very few -- not to protect the rights of those few but to manufacture rights that don't exist to make an authoritarian statement on behalf of Big Brother.

Folks, there has to be a tipping point -- a point at which we'll no longer tolerate this kind of tyranny, even if it means the states' forgoing blood money from the federal leviathan.

In a March 2016 column published by the MRC, Michelle Malkin complained about an "educational SWAT team" then-candidate Hillary Clinton wanted to establish to improve education: "Clinton's SWAT team solution, you should know, is like all her other authoritarian plans: a moldy, recycled oldie."

In an August 2015 post, Matt Philbin complained of director Quentin Tarantino's praise for Obama, asserting that Tarantino is "totally stoked the president’s been ruling by executive fiat" and adding, "Scratch a liberal – or cut his ear off – you find an authoritarian."

In a December 2014 post, Tom Blumer declared Obama's executive action to create a program to protect undocumented immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as minor children to be an "authoritarian immigration move."The month before, Blumer similarly attacked a provision in the Affordable Care Act: "Auto-defaulting consumers into a lower-cost plan and forcing them to do something about it if they want to keep their current plan's design and provider network is (here we go again) heavy-handed, authoritarian over-reach."

Blumer also complained that a "Like A Boss" T-shirt sold by Democrats "has obvious authoritarian overtones," huffing: "That Democrats can openly sell hate and Dear Leader-admiring authoritarianism at their online store is thus a small indicator of a much, much larger problem."

That's right: According to the MRC, Obama T-shirts are "authoritarian," while Trump is not.

Graham concluded his column by ranting: "We have an election in November. No one has canceled it. But liberal journalists speculate that imaginary tyrant Trump will never leave office if he loses...which is laughable, since they've never accepted he was legitimately elected in the first place." Remember that the MRC effectively condoned Obama birtherism by not criticizing it until it was applied against Brent Bozell's preferred 2016 presidential candidate, Ted Cruz, so it can be argued that Graham and Co. never considered Obama to have been legitimately elected.

CNS Keeps On Publishing -- And Defending -- Increasingly Extremist Malkin
Topic: CNSNews.com

CNSNews.com is continuing to publish and defend right-wing columnist Michelle Malkin even as she moves further to the far-right fringe and embrac s white nationalism and conspiracy theories.

A June 4 article by commentary editor Rob Shimshock complained that "Twitter locked the account of Michelle Malkin on Wednesday, after the conservative author and columnist suggested the use of force on violent criminals.," declaring Malkin's tweet that violent criminals should be shot" to be "not dissimilar from sentiments expressed by some in law enforcement" -- as if that excused her violent intent. Shimshock went on to write:

"Every day, Twitter allows Antifa to doxx and harass journalists and Trump supporters," Malkin told National File. "Every day, Twitter allows BLM agitators to incite escalating violence against cops."

"Twitter makes no moral distinction between armed self-defense against violent criminals and proactive terrorist threats against law enforcement officers doing their jobs," she posted on Telegram.

Shimshock didn't tell readers that National File is a far-right website that promotes conspiracy theories and white nationalist events, or that Telegram is a social-media site dominated by white supremacists.

Meanwhile, Shimshock has let stand without comment Malkin's descent into conspiracy theories and white nationalism. In November, Malkin touted white nationalist Nick Fuentes,  complaining that she "was accused of promoting 'Holocaust denialism' and 'white nationalism' based on brief clips of Fuentes accumulated by anonymous sources culled from 500 of his hours-long shows." CNS didn't think it was news that this and an earlier assertion that she would stand by white nationalists like Fuentes got her removed from the speakers bureau of the decidedly conservative Young America's Foundation.

In a March column published by CNS without further comment, Malkin ranted that "amnesty" of some undocumented immigrants already in the U.S., "on top of uncontrolled mass migration of legal immigrants, aren't just turning California and Virginia and Texas blue. They are turning all of America blue. Every American should be seeing red about it and raising their voice against the coming, unforgivable betrayal of the MAGA doctrine. This isn't making American great again. It's making America disappear."

And in a May 13 screed published by CNS, Malkin promoted Judy Mikovits, a conspiracy theorist whose film "Plandemic" and conspiratorially accused infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci of being a liar. That was also published without further comment from Shimshock or anyone else at CNS.

CNS does itself no favors to being the mainstream conservative outlet it likes to think of itself as -- and, in fact, accentuates its creeping WND-ization -- by continuing to publish Malkin.

MRC Thinks 'Gone With The Wind' Was 'CANCELLED'
Topic: Media Research Center

Alexa Moutevelis huffed in a June 10 post headlined with the word 'CANCELLED' in all caps:

Gone With the Wind is gone from HBO Max's video library after the classic film was effectively "cancelled" in today's racial climate.

On Monday, 12 Years a Slave screenwriter John Ridley wrote an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times calling for HBO Max to remove Gone With the Wind from its library because it “glorifies the antebellum south,” “ignore[s] the horrors of slavery,” and “perpetuate[s] some of the most painful stereotypes of people of color.”

[...]

Within a day, HBO Max responded by removing the film that won 8 Oscars in 1940, including the first for a black actress, and releasing a statement:

Gone With the Wind is a product of its time and depicts some of the ethnic and racial prejudices that have, unfortunately, been commonplace in American society. These racist depictions were wrong then and are wrong today, and we felt that to keep this title up without an explanation and a denouncement of those depictions would be irresponsible. These depictions are certainly counter to WarnerMedia’s values, so when we return the film to HBO Max, it will return with a discussion of its historical context and a denouncement of those very depictions, but will be presented as it was originally created, because to do otherwise would be the same as claiming these prejudices never existed. If we are to create a more just, equitable and inclusive future, we must first acknowledge and understand our history.

This comes on the heels of HBO Max removing Elmer Fudd’s rifle from their new Looney Tunes Cartoons as well as Paramount Network canceling Cops and others calling for the cancellation of cop shows in the wake of the killing of George Floyd and subsequent anti-police protests.

The cancellations are coming fast and furious – what will be next? “After all, tomorrow is another day.”

Moutevelis didn't tell you that "Gone With the Wind" is readily available from numerous other streaming services. And temporarily withdrawing something to add a disclaimer is not "CANCELLING." Indeed, the film has since returned to HBO Max with said disclaimer -- but Moutevelis could't be bothered to write that up, since that doesn't pump up the right-wing activists that are the MRC audience.

Chuck Norris Upset Over Texas Ranger Statue Removal -- But Hides Full Story
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Chuck Norris complained in his June 8 WorldNetDaily column:

When [wife] Gena and I also read that airport authorities in our own Lone Star State of Texas took down the Texan Ranger statue at Dallas Love Field Airport on the basis of racism, we retorted, "Really?" Take down a representation of law and order from a tried-and-true agency of criminal justice, of which my brother Aaron and I are honorary members? Are they next going to discontinue showing daily rerun episodes of my longstanding acting role as "Walker, Texas Ranger"? I oppose all threads of racism in anyone who shows them. I equally oppose demeaning agencies of justice through which good men and women fight against evil and for law and order.

Note that Norris is deliberately vague about the "racism" accusation, suggesting that it's an overreaction to the current racial strife. In fact, even the Fox News article to which he links tells the real story:

The 12-foot tall bronze statue is of Ranger Capt. Jay Banks and has greeted travelers since the 1960s.

Banks is part of a soon-to-be-released book on the history of the famed law enforcement agency.

Part of the book details how Banks was involved in trying to stop integration of public schools in North Texas in the late 1950s and how he left a black man to be lynched in 1930.

So it's not a general concern about "racism" -- it's a very specific accusation against the person depicted in the statue. And the Rangers as a whole have something of a checkered past in dealing with minorities.

But Norris didn't want to talk about those specific allegations; he otherwise mostly spoke in platitudes about trying to heal the racial divide.

MRC Writer Melts Down Again Over Colors On A Map
Topic: Media Research Center

Last year, Media Research Center writer Scott Whitlock had a meltdown because a "CBS Sunday Morning" segment about the Reconstruction period after the Civil War used a map in which the former Confederate states were colored in red, even though "the Confederacy was made up of Democrats," who are apparently supposed to be blue. (Of course, Whitlock didn't mention that the Democrats of the Reconstruction period have morphed into the Republicans of today.) Well, Whitlock has melted down again over another map in a June 13 post:

The History Channel in late May produced a mostly laudable documentary series on Ulysses S. Grant, rightly hailing the legacy of the victorious Union general and the president who fought for civil rights. However, the series contained what’s become a recurring problem in some historical reflections on the Civil War. Throughout the three part series, the production repeatedly showed the slave-holding Confederates as red states and the Union north as blue states. In reality, it's the reverse. 

As anyone familiar with history knows, the Confederates were Democrats. It was Abraham Lincoln’s Republican Party that fought the war to preserve the union and ultimately to end slavery. As Marine and retired U.S. Army War College professor Daniel Douds astutely explained Grant’s strategy to defeat the Confederates, the on-screen graphic showcased the (incorrect) blue state/red state dynamic.

[...]

Now, a charitable person might say the choices were unintentional and not meant to associate modern red states with slavery. But if so, why not just use blue and gray, the actual colors of Civil War uniforms?

Note that Whitlock invokes the shopworn "liberal media" conspiracy here; after all, his long MRC tenure means he is well marinated in perpetuating that narrative, so he plays thet conspiracy card first and only later avers the "charitable" thought that it's not a conspiracy. But once again, this is a guy who's being triggered by colors on a map, and again, he doesn't acknowledge that the Democrats of the Civil War era have become the Republicans of today -- which would make the map colors ultimately accurate.

The fact that Whitlock thinks map colors is such a winning issue that he's written about it twice in a year tells you how little the MRC cares about actual "media research" and is much more about finding ever-more-obscure ways of trying to own the libs.

Didn't Age Well: CNS Claimed Reports Of Tear Gas At Lafayette Square Were 'Discredited'
Topic: CNSNews.com

Following in the footsteps of its Media Research Center parent, CNSNews.com tried to tried to peddle the fiction that the Park Police didn't use tear gas to clear protesters out of Lafayette Square so President Trump could do a photo op with a Bible in front of a church.

A June 3 article by Craig Bannister highlighted Nancy Pelosi's claim that police and security were "using clubs to beat people" when, in Bannister's words, "the president walked over to the burned remains of St. John’s Church" off Lafayette Square. Actually, damage from the fire was minor and the church remained almost entirely intact. Bannister then wrote:

And, even if it’s true that White House security didn’t actually use tear gas, as discredited liberal media reports initially claimed, “They had elements of it,” Pelosi said.

Bannister apparently missed his colleague Melanie Arter's report from earlier that day in which she noted that the Park Police "did acknowledge using smoke canisters and pepper balls on the protesters." And while Arter didn't point this out, smoke canisters and pepper balls are the functional equivalent of tear gas.

Meanwhile, an actual news outlet discovered tear gas canisters at the scene, further undermining the Park Police's story. Ultimately, the Park Service tried to walk back the claim.

So, no, those "liberal media reports" have not been "discredited" -- indeed, even Fox News, which Bannister would never describe as part of the "liberal media," pointed out the botched claim and attempted walkback. Bannister's kneejerk use of right-wing anti-media propaganda backfired on him.

Meanwhile, Bannister's article remains live and uncorrected.

MRC's Attempt To Own NY Times Reporter On Twitter Fails Miserably
Topic: Media Research Center

Being quick and snarky is the coin of the realm on Twitter, but the Media Research Center was a little too quick in an attempt to attack a New York Times reporter -- and then refused to admit its error.

Maggie Haberman of the New York Times tweeted out a link to a story she co-wrote on the questionable effectiveness of President Trump's divisive rhetoric in the 2020 presidential campaign that stated:

Trump is “the Rod Stewart of politicians — he may keep coming up with new material but deep down he knows his fans just want to hear ‘Wake Up Maggie,’ so he keeps playing the same tune because he can’t stand the thought of them not loving his performance.”

The MRC's response, from its NewsBusters account, was to huff: "Dear Maggie: The song is 'Maggie May,' not 'Wake Up Maggie.'"

The MRC's social media guy or gal clearly did not read the Times story before he or she tweeted; otherwise, he or she would have known that this was not a quote from the writers but, rather, the writers quoting Republican strategist Terry Sullivan.

Also, "Wake up, Maggie" are the first three words of "Maggie May," so those words are exactly what Rod Stewart fans want to hear.The fact that Sullivan got the song title wrong is irrelevant since everyone knows it anyway; Haberman and her co-writer accurately quoted what Sullivan said.

The MRC's response to this was, unsurprisingly, not to admit it had screwed up. Instead, it blamed the Times for its refusal to fully read the story it was trying to snark on. After Haberman pointed out to the MRC that it was a person being quoted as saying "Wake Up Maggie" instead of the formal song title, the MRC doubled down: "So why is The New York Times lacking the copy editors to suggest the quote isn't a good one to use?"

Haberman snarked in return, since she seems to know how the MRC operates: "Will take that as the rare acknowledgement you're wrong. We will all strive to be as perfect as you going forward." But the MRC still wasn't admitting it screwed up and was still blaming others for its own screw-up like a common Trump: "We'll admit when we're wrong. But you tweeted out the inaccurate quote, like it was brilliant."

The MRC is in utter denial that it was wrong, even though it can't prove Haberman wrong. Just take the L, guys.