NEW ARTICLE: CNS' Holy War Against Nancy Pelosi Topic: CNSNews.com
The uber-Catholics who run CNSNews.com despise Pelosi so much, they've declared her insufficiently Catholic, similar to their attacks on President Biden -- and have even attacked her for advocating prayer. Read more >>
MRC Marks 30 Years of Anita Hill Derangement Syndrome Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has spent30years hating Anita Hill, smearing her as a liar over her allegations of sexual harassment against Clarence Thomas (despite offering no substantial proof to back it up). Indeed, we've noted one potshot the MRC has taken at her already this year; another occurred in an April column by Tim Graham, who wrote that a reporter "cited Justice Clarence Thomas noting 'the media often seeks to titillate rather than to educate and inform.' If you consider the role NPR and the “Democratic Party broadsheets” played in the titillating (and still-unproven) Anita Hill charges of sexual harassment against Thomas during his confirmation battle in 1991, you might understand his skeptical viewpoint."
So when the 30th ammiversary of Hill's testimony against Thomas came around on Oct. 11, the MRC was ready to flood the zone with more Hill-hating. First up wasGeoffrey Dickens, who served up a flashback item complaining that "the Democrats brought forth Anita Hill to accuse Thomas of sexual harassment, in a last ditch attempt to derail his nomination" and that "the media rallied around Hill":
While Thomas and his congressional defenders were demonized, Hill was instantly canonized as a Rosa Parks for her time by the likes of Time’s Nancy Gibbs — and she’s been celebrated as a truth-telling activist since then.
During the height of the #MeToo movement in 2018 PBS anchor Judy Woodruff, on the January 4 edition of NewsHour, pressed then-former Vice President Joe Biden to speak on his role in the Hill-Thomas hearings: “We have watched this incredible MeToo movement. In connection with that, you have said that you owe Anita Hill an apology about what happened back in 1991, the Clarence Thomas episode. Have you contacted her, number one? And, number two, do you think, this time, it’s different, that we are seeing with the MeToo movement something that is truly going to lead for change, to change for women?”
This was followed by a post from Scott Whitlock fawning over Thomas' response at the time to Hill's accusations:
It was 30 years ago today that Clarence Thomas demolished the left — and the liberal media’s — attempt to destroy him, condemning smears as a “high tech lynching.” On October 11, 1991, the then-Supreme Court nominee finally got to speak for himself and respond to the charges that he sexually harassed Anita Hill. It was a moment of high drama when the conservative icon called out his attackers.
After unceasing vitriol by journalists and politicians like Joe Biden, Thomas blasted back at the process, calling out the left’s “high tech lynching” against “uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves.” One of the targets hit by the devastating reply was Biden himself, then a Senator and Committee Chairman.
[...]
Biden's call for Thomas to stop complaining is a contrast to when he was accused of sexual assault by Tara Reade in 2020. Then, the Democratic presidential nominee had a compliant press to defend him.
The MRC didn't explain why it has refused hold Reade to the same factual standards it's holding Hill.
Next up was Kyle Drennen, who wasn't completely rehashing the past:
On Monday, CBS Mornings devoted nearly 10 minutes of air time to promoting a new podcast that marks the 30th anniversary of Anita Hill smearing Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas during his 1991 confirmation hearing and also celebrates Christine Blasey Ford doing the same to Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018. Appearing on the network broadcast, one of the podcast hosts noted how impressed she was with the “patriotism” of both women.
“We’re going to begin this hour with a look back at a stunning moment in history involving a very high-profile allegation of sexual misconduct,” co-host Gayle King announced at the top of the 8:00 a.m. ET hour. She explained: “Now, today marks 30 years since law professor Anita Hill went before a Senate committee to accuse Judge Clarence Thomas, then a Supreme Court nominee, of sexual harassment.”
Drennen claimed the accusations of Hill and Ford were promoted by "bitter leftists" and were "failed, sleazy attempts by Democrats to take down conservative Supreme Court nominees."He didn't say whether anyone at the MRC was "bitter" and "sleazy" for their failed attempt to take down Biden in its enthusiastic, hypocriotical promotion of Reade's accusations.
Graham went down memory lane in his Oct. 11 podcast, where he made a point of rehashing polls claiming that people believed Thomas over Hill -- as if popularity was the same thing as truth -- and claiming that "not one co-worker of both Hill and Thomas of the Department of Education or at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission -- and she followed her so-called harasser from one agency to the other there in the Reagan years -- not one co-worker testified on her behalf."He went on to rant that Hill "hasn't produced any more evidence than the lame claims she made back then, and they don't remember now that she was trotted out in the '90s to make excuses for Bill Clinton after the Monica Lewinsky thing broke out," and then whined that Paula Jones' accusations against Clinton were treated like she was a "Dogpatch Madonna" -- you know, not unlike the MRC treated Stormy Daniels' claims against Donald Trump.
Graham concluded by huffing: This was one of those defining events that underlined why the media isn't trusted, that it's viewed as an entrenched public relations arm of the Democrat [sic] Party."
Look for the MRC's collective case of Anita Hill Derangement Syndrome to fester for another 30 years.
That's 11 articles over those two months, boosting the 2021 total to 48 articles, which remains well off the pace of previous years.
Following up on its role as part of the promotional machine its parent, the Media Research Center, cranked upover the summer to tout Levin's new book, a Sept. 23 article by Rob Shimshock gushed that "Conservative author Mark Levin has sold one million copies of his July book "American Marxism," which analyzes how the media, Hollywood, corporations, and various other American institutions have become infested with central ingredients of Marxism." Neither CNS nor the MRC have publicly discussed the terms under which they agreed to so aggressively promote Levin's book.
MRC Fawns Some More Over Fox News' Right-Wing Late-Night Host Topic: Media Research Center
A subgenre of the Media Research Center's "Mean Girls"act in gloating over Fox News' ratings while sneering at the lower ratings of other non-right-wing news channels is its love for Grag Gutfeld's recently launched, right-wing-hack-filled nighttime show on Fox News. Curtis Houck has been the early leader in Gutfeld sycophancy at the MRC, as he has been as the chief ratings Mean Girl, but right-wing film critic Christian Toto has decided he wants in on that sweet sycophancy action too.
In an Aug. 28 post, Toto touted that The Fox News program Gutfeld!, a cable show with zero A-list stars and a modest budget, just beat Colbert’s “Late Show” in the ratings for the first time," adding: "The fact that it happened while Colbert ran defense for what might be the biggest foreign policy blunder of the modern age may not be coincidental. Chances are more than a few viewers were curious what a right-leaning comic had to say about President Joe Biden’s blunder as opposed to Colbert’s typical fawning."
In dismissing Colbert as a "far-left propagandist," it's clear Toto prefers the stylings of a far-right propagandist like Gutfeld. So he served up a full-throated love letter to Gutfeld -- whom he describes only as a "comic provocateur" -- in a Sept. 18 post:
The right-leaning outlet unleashed Gutfeld! earlier this year. The news-driven comedy show offered exactly what’s missing on late night TV, albeit without A-list stars and broadcast-level cash:
Jokes aimed at progressives.
A few weeks ago Gutfeld! rose to the top of the ratings heap. The moment came after President Joe Biden’s Afghanistan debacle, suggesting audiences would rather hear someone snark about it than play defense for the indefensible.
Toto was referring to the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, but Fox News reflexively defended Trump for four years no matter how indefensible his actions were and Toto never criticized that. He called Colbert a "liberal hack" in his headline, but he didn't explain why Gutfield shouldn't be considered a right-wing hack. Nevertheless, he went on to huff:
Will audiences eventually tire of Gutfeld! and restore Colbert to his late night throne?
Perhaps. Here’s what’s clear, though.
Consumers finally have a late night alternative, a program willing to call out politicians on both sides of the aisle. And since Netflix, Hulu, ABC and the rest have no interest in telling jokes that might hurt Democrats, there’s a good chance Gutfeld! will remain on top for some time.
Of course, Toto can't even admit Gutfeld is at least as biased as the "far-left" late-night hosts he loves to attack. He simply an't see any bias when it comes from his ideological fellow travelers.
WND Cheers Anti-Vaxxers' 'Rebellion' Against COVID Vaccines Topic: WorldNetDaily
The October issue of WorldNetDaily's sparsely read Whistleblower magazine is all about cheering anti-vaxxers who would rather destroy their lives by quitting their jobs rather than behave reasonably by getting the COVID vaccine, which WND still insists on describing as "experimental" even though millions of millions of Americans and people worldwide have been vaccinated without serious side effects.
From hero to untouchable – what a difference a year makes. A year in which America has been ruled by a corrupt, dishonest and cognitively disintegrating puppet of a president totally subservient to secret handlers and even-more-secret anti-American agendas.
But healthcare heroes being disposed of en masse is just the beginning.
[...]
In reality, what the Biden administration has put into motion resembles a galactic game of “Chicken” between the “government-medical complex” and tens of millions of Americans who simply choose not to be vaccinated. It’s a harrowing, death-defying contest to see which will happen first: Either millions give in and allow their bodies to be injected with the controversial experimental medicines, or the entire nation loses perhaps a quarter of its most essential workers who are forbidden from working, causing the nation to grind to a halt – crippling everything from law enforcement to airlines to commercial supply chains, even hospitals. The shutdowns are already happening – from an obstetric hospital wing in New York to a neonatal intensive care unit in Maine to nursing homes announcing their imminent closure. And much more is sure to come, as many mandate deadlines haven’t even been reached yet.
The good news is that tens of millions of Americans realize all of this and are now fighting back – bravely and boldly. Many are not waiting to be fired and are instead resigning in protest – from nurses to police to pilots. Demonstrations by yesterday’s “frontline heroes” are breaking out everywhere, with participants carrying signs saying, “I call my own shots,” “No forced vaccines,” “My body, my choice” and “Yesterday's heroes, today's unemployed.”
Needless to say, this attitude of rebellion -- which is taken from managing editor David Kupelian's essay for the issue -- extends to other conspiracy theories WND has promoted:
Attorney General Merrick Garland recently weaponized the Department of Justice against America’s parents when he issued a memo characterizing those speaking up at school board meetings as extremists and potential terrorists, directing the FBI to work with each U.S. Attorney's office and federal, state and local leaders to convene meetings addressing "threats against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff."
Just as the Biden administration characterizes those who cried foul after the fraud-plagued November 2020 election as insurrectionists and terrorists, it has now enlarged the “violent extremist” dragnet to include nurses, pilots, teachers and Navy SEALs who choose not to receive the experimental COVID vaccines, as well as parents protesting schools traumatizing and brainwashing their kids.
This is the first time an American government has turned against its own people, essentially branding them as public enemy No. 1.
WND has thus joined in pushing the right-winglie that all parents who merely complain to school board will be considered terrorists. And it seems to be totally cool with threats and violence being directed at school board members who won't capitulate to angry parents whipped into a frenzy by right-wing activists.
Of course, it's merely selfishness on the part of these anti-vaxxers who refuse to get vaccinated, showing they care nothing about this country or anyone other than themselves -- and, ironically, their actions hurt mainly themselves from intentional loss of a job and increased exposure to COVID. Kupelian and WND are feeding that selfishness -- and still they wonder why Google no longer wants to do business with them anymore.
MRC Cheers Ex-Editor Going On CNN To Describe How She's Being Silenced By The Media Topic: Media Research Center
Bari Weiss has been a cause celebre ever since she made a big public show of resigning as a New York Times columnist because of criticism of her work from outside and inside the paper -- though, as one observer noted, Weiss was actually "literally asking the Times to prevent people at the paper from criticizing her, on the grounds that she dislikes the criticism, and thinks it is wrong. That doesn’t sound like free speech." Nevertheless, at the time of her resignation, Nicholas Fondacaro gushed that Weiss "has been one of the scant few voices of fairness" and that she was criticized "because she didn’t toe the liberal line. Fondacaro followed up a few days later by weirdly depicting Weiss as having been "abused" and touting the idea that "she had the requisite receipts needed to bring serious legal litigation against the paper."
So when Weiss popped up last month on CNN, Kristine Marsh was on it to do some serious Weiss stenography in an Oct. 18 post:
Despite hosting a show that supposedly scrutinizes the media, Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter is pretty sensitive to any media criticism not aimed at Fox News. So naturally, he couldn’t understand why his guest, Bari Weiss, claimed the media self-censored stories that didn’t fit a certain political framework.
Weiss, a former opinion editor and writer for the New York Times famously left behind her career at the prestigious outlet in 2020 because of the paper’s intolerance to any view but the far left’s. She now publishes a popular newsletter on Substack called “Common Sense.” On Stelter’s Sunday show, Weiss argued the world had “gone mad” and the media was complicit:
Marsh then regurgitated Weiss' right-wing-friendly interpretation of "the truth the media doesn't want to admit":
When you're not able to say out loud and in public that there are differences between men and women, the world has gone mad.
When we're not allowed to acknowledge that rioting is rioting, and it is bad, and that silence is not violence, but violence is violence, the world has gone mad.
When we're not able to say that Hunter Biden's laptop is a story worth pursuing, the world has gone mad. When in the name of progress, young school children, as young as kindergarten, are being separated in public schools because of their race, and that is called progress rather than segregation, the world has gone mad.
Marsh then added, "That sure hits close to home for CNN" -- though it probably hit closer for Marsh because she gets to invoke Weiss to push right-wing narratives. But as Wonkette responded to Weiss' talking points:
What? Is she planning on issuing a new version of Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus sometime soon?
[...]
Oh yeah, nowhere did we hear anything in the summer of 2020 about how rioting is bad. Not once, ever.
Of course, the vast majority of Black Lives Matter protests were entirely peaceful, but the media focus was primarily on the ones that briefly turned violent (sometimes due to Trump supporters and other right-wing agitators).
[...]
Where? I searched and searched and was able to find exactly two examples somewhere in the ballpark of this story. One involved seventh and eighth grade students who, for one year, at one private school in New York City with about 80 students, were separated by race for part of the day, so that the few Black children attending the school did not always have to be the only Black person in their class. Another involved a couple of diversity meetings at one magnet school in Jacksonville to discuss recent issues that had come up at the school. Both made headlines everywhere, so clearly people were "allowed" to talk about them.
Marsh continued:
Stelter feigned confusion. “Who’s the people stopping the conversation?” he asked, puzzled. Weiss suggested, “People let work at networks, frankly, like the one I'm speaking on right now who try and claim that you know, it was -- it was racist to investigate the lab leak theory. It was, I mean, let's just pick an example.”
The CNN host pretended he had no idea what Weiss was talking about. “[Y]ou say -- you say we're not allowed to talk about these things. But they're all over the internet.”I can Google them and I can find them everywhere. I've heard about every story you mentioned.”
Ironically, Stelter just made Weiss’s case for her.
Not so ironically, Marsh was trying to avoid pointing out the fact that Weiss was complaining about not being about to talk about these things on CNN during an interview on CNN -- which certainly doesn't make Weiss' case for herself.And as we've seen, the MRC must always twist things in order to make Stelter the bad guy.
All we see is Weiss desperately trying to play the victimhood card, which is a narrative Marsh and the MRC are certainly down with.
MRC Distorts Segment Exposing OAN In Order To Attack CNN's Stelter Topic: Media Research Center
Lydia Switzer does a lot of playing dumb in an Oct. 8 post:
Brian Stelter, host of the ironically titled “Reliable Sources” on CNN, was a guest on New DayThursday morning to talk about other news networks that he wishes would be taken off the air.
While normally Stelter focuses his vitriol and contempt at Fox News, which leads the nation in cable news viewership, this time he targeted One America News, or OAN: “OAN makes Fox News look liberal…It’s some of the worst of the worst content out there…Even saying the word News with One America doesn’t really seem fair. This is a opinion channel with extremist content.”
However, rather than actually address the disagreements he has with specific OAN segments, Stelter bashed AT&T (CNN’s parent company) for covering the network and for paying its carriage fees – which AT&T does for CNN as well.
AT&T responded to the original reporting from Reuters by explaining that it does not fund OAN and does pay carriage fees for OAN, along with numerous other channels.
That's a completely dishonest framing of the segment by Switzer. Note that Switzer does not mention the Reuters report on OAN that formed the basis of this discussion until the fourth paragraph; she did not link to the article itself at all, let alone reference the article's contents. She also liked in claiming that Stelter did not address "specific OAN segements," the tightly edited clip that accompanied her post -- eliminating most context and discussion from the full segment -- starts off with Stelter calling OAN "conspiracy-laden, in denial about the riot, sometimes pretending that Trump is still president." Switzer did not dispute any of that OAN content or even the way Stelter presented it.
Instead, Switzer cherry-picked a quote to complain about: "'There is a difference between real news and conspiracy crap,' he said. Undoubtedly, Stelter would consider his own show to be 'real news,' while calling for the deplatforming of news on the other side of the aisle." But at no point does Switzer provide any evidence that OANengages in "real news" or dispute Stelter's contention that OAN is "conspiracy crap."
Switzer may know that that there's no defense for OAN and that there's nothing wrong with the Reuters article -- which may be why she felt the need to distort and twist this segment into an attack on Stelter, which always plays well at the MRC.
It's also worth noting that this is the only MRC post that even references the Reuters article on OAN; no other attempt is made to attack or even discuss it. Sounds like a backhanded vote of confidence -- though the MRC would never, ever admit that.
MRC Writer Lashes Out At James Murdoch's Donations To Non-Right-Wing Media Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Joseph Vazquez has been on a kick lately of attacking James Murdoch for the sin of not following in the footsteps of his father, Fox News financier Rupert Murdoch, by funding non-right-wing causes. (even though the MRC loves to complain when right-wingers' political donations are exposed). The assaults continued in an Oct. 6 post that began by claiming "The ABC, CBS and NBC evening news shows ignored climate activist James Murdoch using his company to invest millions of dollars in leftist media this year that promote grotesque content."
That's a non sequitur, since Vazquez gave us no reason why Murdoch's donations to "leftist" media warrant are singularly important news events that trump things ike, say, crime and genocide and natural disasters.Oneoutlet that received Murdoch investment is Vice News,and Vazquez listed as part of its "grotesque" content a video that refused to hate transgender people as much as he apparently does:
The type of media that Vice News pushes is extremely abhorrent, which makes the Murdoch investment into its parent company all the more egregious.
Vice News released a grotesque video in 2018 promoting how “Trans Kids And Their Parents Are Deciding When To Start Medical Transition.” The description for the pro-child abuse video was just as disgusting. It propagandized how“[a]s the debate continues over which bathroom transgender people should use, a more complex question is emerging about how early the medical transition begins for trans kids.” It continued: “Families and doctors are rewriting the rules as they decide when and how to start medical intervention before transgender youth hit puberty.”
Vazquez similarly hated on Brut, a French-based outlet that also received Murdoch money, for also refusing to spew hate at transgender people:
The Hollywood Reporter released a story June 29 that the estranged son of News Corporation Executive Chairman Rupert Murdoch was part of a whopping $75 million fundraising haul by the leftist digital media firm Brut. The French company, which reportedly makes “‘socially conscious’ news,” posts leftist extremist videos that range from attempting to redefine language like the word “racism” to promoting the defunding of police. It even pushed the condemnation of the U.S. Constitution as racist and sexist.
[...]
Brut has been just as leftist. Brut America’s documentary filmmaker Eléonore Hamelin released a documentary earlier this year headlined, “House of Grace: Meet the Trans Youth of Puerto Rico.” Brut America’s Twitter account promoted a bonkers quote in its tweet of the video: “'You can have facial hair, a mustache, a beard, and still be very feminine. You can be a hairy femme queen.'" In the video description, the video promoted a “a collective of trans and non-binary youth of color in Puerto Rico, that has built a safe haven from the scourge of anti-LGBTQ+ violence with art, mutual aid, and healing.”
Catering to Murdoch’s more climate-obsessed bona fides, Brut also released a video condemning America’s “environmental racism.”
Promoting sex transitions for children and whining about “environmental racism” seem to be content that Murdoch endorses, but this wasn’t worth any coverage by the Big Three. Perhaps it's time the evening networks start giving his activism in leftist media the airtime it deserves.
Strangely, Vazquez does not demand that Fox News expose James Murdoch's "leftist media" investments. Wonder why that is.
Vazquez ranted about another Murdoch media investment in an Oct. 20 post:
Climate activist James Murdoch is set to make a multimillion-dollar investment in the Associated Press climate journalism as if AP didn’t already have a big enough left-wing bias.
The Murdoch investment is going toward “the formation of a new climate reporting hub at the Associated Press,” according to an Axios scoop. The hub will reportedly employ 20 journalists backed by multiple donors. This is a stunning development, given the leftist causes that Murdoch — the estranged son of News Corporation Executive Chairman Rupert Murdoch — currently funds.
Vazquez provided no evidence to back up his claim that the AP is "left-wing" beyond his claim that it "published a pro-Biden puff piece Oct. 15 headlined, 'White House targeting economic risks from climate change,'" but even then he can't be bothered to explain what, exactly, is explicitly "left-wing" about reporting on the White House's policy initiatives.
Instead, he whined some more about Murdoch's other donations. He claimed that "Murdoch has funded the anti-Trump group Defending Democracy Together," which "was at one point reported as the top “dark money” spender of the 2020 election cycle." Yet Vazquez has yet to express any similar concerns about dark money funding right-wing causes.
MRC Defends Anti-Vaxxer Rock Legend Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center justloves it when musicians start spouting right-wing talking points -- so much for "shut up and sing." It normally sticks to the washed-up old ones, but it has found a bona fide guitar legend to spout those narratives in Eric Clapton.
In November 2020, Gabriel Hays touted a song ranting against COVID-related lockdowns that he made with legendarily cranky musician Van Morrison:
Ok so maybe Clapton isn’t actually “god,” but neither is big government during the height of the Chinese plague. The English blues guitar virtuoso teamed up with legendary songwriter and vocalist Van Morrison to write an anti-lockdown song and provided some words on how the next wave of COVID lockdowns in the U.K. will be terrible for his industry.
[...]
Not only providing his talent to Van Morrison’s track, Clapton has united his political perspective to that of Van Morrison, telling Variety that Britain’s lockdown measures have been “deeply upsetting” to him as well.
In addition to praising the “Moondance” singer’s political stance as a source for “inspiration,” Clapton urged his fellow British citizens to fight to get out “of this mess.” He claimed, “We must stand up and be counted because we need to find a way out of this mess. The alternative is not worth thinking about. Live music might never recover.”
[...]
“Stand and Deliver” will be available for download and streaming on all major platforms by December 2. To hear that one of the all time greats is anti-big government, as opposed to all the useful idiots in his industry, makes his new song essential listening.
In a May 17 post, Hay promoted Clapton's screed against vaccines:
A recent bout with extreme COVID vaccine side effects has inspired another searing rebuke of government pandemic mandates from the guitar legend Eric Clapton.
In a lengthy missive reposted by multiple users across social media, the 76 year-old “Layla” singer spoke of dealing with western governments’ handling of coronavirus as the “greatest dilemma of his life,” one which he claimed has been worse than him overcoming “addiction and alcoholism.”
[...]
After all these years, it’s clear that Clapton hasn’t sold out. The same can’t be said for most famous musicians relevant today.
But when Rolling Stone called out Clapton for his anti-vaxx nuttiness, Matt Philbin rushed to his defense in an Oct. 11 post:
For Eric Clapton, all it took to go from rock legend to canceled was to rebel against the establishment. And the establishment’s enforcer is Rolling Stone magazine.
When it’s not publishing lies about college rapes and hicks swallowing horse medicine the once-cooler than you’ll ever be chronicle of counterculture is cracking heads for Biden and Boris. Clapton had a bad experience with one of the vaccines, and he’s using his platform to warn people about it.
Bad idea. Rolling Stone has archives, and they’re not afraid to use them. In an article titled, “Eric Clapton Isn't Just Spouting Vaccine Nonsense—He's Bankrolling It,” Rolling Stone couldn’t simply disagree with Slowhand, explain why he’s wrong and that his fans should be skeptical about his claims. No, the Blues Breakers, Cream, Derek & the Dominoes guitarist must be punished.
Despite the fact that the MRC has never stopped bashing Ted Kennedy over Chappaquiddick, Philbin whined that Rolling Stone brought up some xenophobic things Clapton said back in the day, then sought to give him a pass for them:
During a 1976 concert in England, Clapton said some impolitic things about immigration to Britain and used what Rolling Stone calls “offensive slurs.” Did I mention this was back in 1976?
Clapton long ago apologized and blamed it on his drinking. Which seems kind of reasonable, and given that the incident was in 1976 … Hah! Rolling Stone anticipated your weak-willed forgiveness and found somebody who was at that concert 46 years ago to tell you what a bad guy EC really is. “Drink just makes you tell the truth too loud at the wrong time to the wrong people,” according to English Beat founder Dave Wakeling, who was there in 1976.
[...]
Anybody who’s read rock journalism from the 60s and 70s knows musicians and the people interviewing them spoke very differently than they do today.
But that doesn’t matter to the current gang of propagandists at Rolling Stone. All they know is Clapton stepped out of the vaccine line and their job is to make sure everyone knows he’s one of those MAGA-hatted, science-denying racists.
Would Philbin still be giving Clapton this pass if he wasn't being useful to right-wing narratives through his anti-vaxx rantings? Doubtful. But then, the MRC has no problem defending terrible people as long as they remain useful to its agenda.
MRC's Houck Takes More Petty Potshots At CNN, Lionizes Fox News' Ratings Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center wants to be taken seriously as "media researchers," but any casual observer knows that its sloppiness, viciousness and m=immaturity makes that impossible. One example of that final attribute is the way it goes all Mean Girls on non-right-wing news outlets by gloating about how much better Fox News' ratings are (as if popularity equated quality or accuracy). Curtis Houck indulged in that juvenile trait in a Sept. 2 post:
In a hilariously epic fail for the liberal media, Fox News finished the month of August with 94 of the top 100 cable telecasts in total viewers amidst a monumental month of news with Gutfeld! scoring its first-ever victories over CBS’s The Late Show while, at the other end of the spectrum, MSNBC scored its lowest total day and primetime in the 25-54 demo since December 2015.
And despite the attempts from Jeff Zucker PR flunkie Brian Stelter, CNN also had a difficult month with its worst month in weekday primetime total viewers since June 2019. It’s safe to say they desperately miss Donald Trump.
According to an FNC press release, they “notch[ed] 94 of the top 100 cable telecasts for the month and 13 of the top 14 cable news programs in overall viewers and the younger A25-54 demo, according to Nielsen Media Research.” Not surprisingly, this also included a sweep of the top five spots.
Fox’s successes stood head and shoulders above MSNBC, which had not only the worst demo month since December 2015, but its worst in total viewers since 2017 and has experienced a drop of 40 percent from last year across all measuring sticks.
Note that Houck is literally regurgitating a Fox News press release, showing how much of a slave he is to right-wing narratives.
In what might be one of the least shocking developments to be published on NewsBusters, CNN carnival barker Jim Acosta’s tenure as late weekend afternoonCNN Newsroomhost has gone less than swimmingly as, since he took over April 3, the timeslot has lost almost half its viewership.
Nielsen Media Research measured the three months prior to Acosta taking over (December 28, 2020 to March 28, 2021) versus Acosta’s tenure thus far (up through August 28) and found that there was a whopping 42 percent loss in total viewers (1.151 million to 668,000) and an equally astounding 46 percent hemorrhage in the 25-54 demographic (249,000 to 135,000).
Houck was up for moregloating in a Sept. 29 post, again sourced from a Fox News press release:
The more things change, the more things stay the same. Such was the case with this week’s ratings release for the third quarter of 2021 as, to the shock of no one, the Fox News Channel was victorious with its 79th straight quarter as the top cable news channel while CNN and MSNBC saw numbers tank to levels not seen since Barack Obama’s second term as President.
Of course, Zuckerville (otherwise known as CNN) and MSNBC will see zero reason to change their divisive and poisonous yet tiresome business models.
According to an FNC press release from Tuesday, the ratings win coincided with its 25th anniversary as it was also “the most-watched network in all of basic cable with total day and primetime viewers” and “its highest-rated quarter of the year in both total viewers and the coveted 25-54 demo.”
[...]
As for CNN, Zuckerville had its worst quarter in the 25-54 demo since 2014 with year-over-year total day ratings tanking 36 percent for all viewers and 41 percent in primetime via the same metric.
We've noted Houck's weird -- and vaguely anti-Semitic -- obsession with depicting CNN president Jeff Zucker as a "puppet master," though we don't recall anyone at the MRC portray Fox News as "Ailesville."
Houck had a fit of Stelter Derangement Syndrome as well in an Oct. 20 post:
On the latest edition of CNN’s lead Fox hatefest known as Reliable Sources, the Brian Stelter-helmed show suffered another pitiful showing in the ratings as, amongst all viewers in the 25-54 demographic (and not just those inside his elitist, far-left bubble), Stelter fetched only 85,000 viewers.
And when examining a variety of other shows that aired on Sunday before, during, and after Stelter, the results weren’t pretty as, according to Nielsen Media Research, he drew fewer people than the likes of Nick Jr.’s Paw Patrol and Peppa Pig, Bravo’s Below Deck: Mediterranean and syndicated reruns of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Golden Girls to name a few.
Before going any further, it should be noted that Stelter’s audience grew to 706,000 if you add in total viewers, which still lost to CNN’s documentary on the late Princess Diana and 13 Fox News Channel shows. This included a head-to-head thrashing against FNC’s MediaBuzz, which pulled in, as per our friend RoadMN on Twitter, 1.473 million total viewers.
[...]
No matter how Stelter and his boss Jeffrey Zucker slice it, his niche show will continue to bear little to no control over how the American people view the news media. And for that, America is far greater place.
And if there's ever a remake of "Mean Girls" focused on media criticism, Houck would have a starring role, as someone who has nothing better or more productive with his life than to take petty potshots at people he's paid to hate -- and believes that this is substantive "media research."
MRC's Graham Agonizes Over Whether To Be A Decent Person Topic: Media Research Center
We've documented how Media Research Center executive Tim Graham hates actor Alec Baldwin so much that he was eager to be a jerk in the face of Baldwin accidentally killing a crew member with a prop gun on the set of a movie he was filming. Graham went on to devote an entire column to agonizing about whether to be a decent person in the face of Baldwin's tragedy, an Oct. 27 piece that was literally headlined "Does Alec Baldwin Deserve Decency?":
It was probably the worst day of Alec Baldwin’s life when he accidentally shot and killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of the movie Rust on October 21. It’s a time to feel terrible about a 42-year-old woman with a husband and a young son.
Then CNN’s Jake Tapper used it in one of his commentaries to denounce the entire Republican Party for making this tragedy an occasion for jokes. “There's something about our politics right now that is driving people away from our shared humanity.”
Tapper was upset that Rep. Lauren Boebert recalled a tweet from December 5, 2014 where Baldwin wrote “I’m going to make bright, banana yellow t-shirts that read ‘My hands are up. Please don't shoot me.’ Who wants one?” This was about the false claim that Michael Brown said “Hands up, don’t shoot” in Ferguson, Missouri in August 2014, when in reality, Brown was reaching into a car for a policeman’s gun.
Yes, Graham is mad that the cruelty of his fellow Republicans in the face of Baldwin's tragedy was called out.The whining continued:
In our decency, we would hope Baldwin doesn’t have to go to court for this shooting. But the title of Baldwin’s 2006 opus was “Will Cheney and Whittington go to court? I would imagine if a guy with a few beers in him shoots you in the face...”
This isn’t the only Cheney-and-death “humor” Baldwin composed for Arianna Huffington. On the Fourth of July, 2006, Baldwin cooked up a double-murder fantasy, in which he dispatched Osama bin Laden with a box-cutter and “I gather up the body of the world’s most notorious terrorist and hurl it over the balcony. Then, in the final stroke of luck, bin Laden lands on Dick Cheney. God bless America.”
[...]
Jake Tapper made almost no attempt to factor in Baldwin’s well-known penchant for hate speech beyond this: “Baldwin, is, of course, not only a progressive but very aggressive and outspoken about liberal issues, including gun control.”
He even brought up Liz Cheney as the example of the Decency Republican in contrast to bomb-throwing Marjorie Taylor Greene. But he couldn’t recall 2006!
Of course, in today's Trumpified Republican Party -- and even in Graham's MRC, where his boss maliciously labeled Barack Obama a "skinny ghetto crackhead" -- decency is not a value to be honored, it is one to be mocked as a sign of weakness. Yet Graham referred to "our decency," as if he still has some. He's petty too, which is why he's mad Tapper didn't nitpick something Baldwin wrote 15 years ago as justification to be nasty to him now, as Graham wants.
By the end of his column, Graham is still fighting to reconcile the Trumpified hateful partisanship with the religious faith he wants us to think he still has: "Does Alec Baldwin deserve decency now? In the spirit of Christian charity or “shared humanity,” yes. But armed with the memory of Baldwin’s long record of indecency, that would be extremely kind and merciful."
It's clear that Graham does not possess that kindness and mercy.
Meet Rep. Bennie Thompson, the little-known Mississippi Democrat who chairs the congressional commission that blames the Jan. 6 "insurrection" on Donald Trump, on you, on the MAGA crowd – not on FBI provocateurs.
Who is Thompson?
For 50 years, he's been a radical's radical – openly sympathizing with a secessionist group known as the Republic of New Africa that blamed law enforcement for instigating violence that resulted in the killing of a police officer and wounding of an FBI agent.
Back then, the shoe was on the other foot.
Back then, FBI counterintelligence memos warned of imminent "guerrilla warfare" against the United States by the Republic of New Africa – or RNA. You probably never heard of the RNA, yet Bennie Thompson kept it alive until 2013 when he campaigned for the group's former vice president to be mayor of the biggest city in Mississippi.
All of this is still on the public record – documented in newspapers, video footage and state and FBI archives. John Solomon did some awesome reporting on Thompson for Just the News.
That's the rap on the congressman – a subversive, a true and proud insurrectionist!
Actually, Solomon's article made no such claim; the closest it gets to it is digging up a 1971 quote from Thomnpson saying that "My utmost concern in this matter is to see that people who reside or pass through the town of Bolton [Mississippi] are treated fairly and given every opportunity afforded them by law. ... My position is that people are entitled to live as they choose, so long as they are law abiding and peaceful."
Farah laughably claim that Thompson "kept" the Republic of New Africa "alive" in 2013 when he endorsed former VP Chokwe Lumumba to be mayor of Jackson, Miss. He didn't menion that Lumumba had become an attorney and civil rights activist, and he won the election (though he died eight months into his term) on less revolutionary promises like fixing potholes.
(Much of Farah's attack on Thompson, by the way, is simply rehashed from an anonymously written WND article earlier that day.)
In his Oct. 18 column, Farah lashed out at the committee again for seeking contempt charges against Steve Bannon for refusing to cooperate, spouting more conspiracy theories:
But the big fish is Donald Trump, the former president and the leading candidate for president in the next election – and the undeniable winner in the LAST election!
The sole purpose of this witch hunt is to smear Trump, once again, as a rogue president who is somehow unworthy of serving as our chief executive.
This committee has overseen the unconstitutional proceedings that have locked up at least 40 demonstrators who participated Jan. 6, holding them in solitary confinement for months – some with a mere trespassing charge!
Farah then interestingly added:
As an attendee at this rally, it was one of the largest demonstrations I have ever attended in Washington, which include those as a then-leftist protesting the Vietnam War.
I did not accept invitations to enter the Capitol, assuming it was a trap. And it was.
That's a bit of a narrative shift. Farah was originally cheering the riot as an example of how it made politicians "fearful" of far-right activists like himself. Farah is not saying who issued those "invitations" to "enter the Capitol" or why he has not mentioned them before now. Seems like something the Jan. 6 committee might want to look into, no?
But with real people facing real consequences for their real actions during the riot, it appears Farah has decided to embrace the tried-and-true right-wing victimhood narrative, though he provided no evidence of anyone being held in "solitary confinement" merely for "trespassing."
But as we all know, the narrative comes before the truth where Farah is concerned -- though he might be forced to be factual if the committee ever decides to look into those "invitations."
CNS Portrays Pelosi As A Murderer Because She Supports Abortion Rights Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com believes that Nancy Pelosi is a murderer. Why? Even though she has never had an abortion, let alone performed one,she doesn't support prohibiting other people from getting one. And that, in the twisted and hateful minds at CNS, is no different from murder. Take this Sept. 28 column from anti-abortion activist Judie Brown, under the screeching headline "Grandma Death":
She has five children and nine grandchildren, but her real devotion is to the practice of killing babies before they are born. Who is this woman? Her name is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and her game is murder.
Oh, we know that many folks are turned off when we say that direct abortion is an act of murder, but really, what else would you call it? A human being is alive and growing within her mother one moment, and the next moment she is dead. Why? Because she is murdered.
In Pelosi’s world, you must reject that fact and call it Women’s Health Protection instead. Then you, along with your Democrat cronies, pass a bill that enshrines abortion into law from one end of the nation to the other. The pro-aborts call it protection for the right to access abortion care throughout the nation. We call it the right to murder members of the human family on-demand.
[...]
Grandma Death’s comments callously disregard truth, and she has convinced herself that abortion is not the act of killing people but rather a political and/or personal matter that has nothing to do with human beings, killing, or child safety prior to birth. Sadly, Grandma Death has been infected with the sin of pride.
Brown, apparently, has been infected with the sin of shamelessness and not with the virtue of moderation and reason.
Not to be outdone, CNS editor in chief Terry Jeffrey had his own hateful invective to sling at Pelosi in his Oct. 13 column:
During the first four years that Nancy Pelosi served as speaker of the House (2007 through 2010), approximately 4,676,300 unborn babies were aborted in the United States, according to estimates published by the Guttmacher Institute.
To put that in more precise language, adopting the accurate wording to describe abortion that Pope Francis recently used, 4,676,300 unborn American babies were murdered in those four years.
[...]
So, how does Pelosi, who describes herself as a "devout Catholic," and who is one of the top lawmakers in the United States, deal with this form of murder?
She is for it.
[...]
In other words, she voted "as a Catholic" for what the church correctly calls the murder of "absolutely innocent" human beings.
Given that abortions killed approximately 4,676,300 unborn American babies during Pelosi's first four-year stint as speaker, and that she now supports legislation to legalize abortion on demand nationwide, she not only supports the murder of innocent human beings but their mass murder.
Weird, we remember being lectured by right-wingers that people were not allowed to call Kyle Rittenhouse a "murderer" because that is a legal term that one must be convicted of in a court of law for it to accurately apply. If Brown and Jeffrey want to call Pelosi -- or any woman who chooses to have an abortion -- a murderer, they should charge her with murder in a court of law, then amass the evidence beyond a reasonable doubt to make that case.
This, of course, is not a a serious philosophical argument but a partisan one; Brown and Jeffrey see that Pelosi has power so she must be destroyed by any means possible, including maliciously false claims of "murder." And is part of theholywar being waged against Pelosi by the uber-Catholics who run CNS.
NEW ARTICLE -- The MRC's War on Jen Psaki (And Man-Crush On Peter Doocy): September 2021 Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Curtis Houck keeps up his biased schtick of lashing out at the White House press secretary and fawning over a Fox News reporter. Read more >>
Another CNS Attack On Pelosi Fails For Citing Wrong Bible Topic: CNSNews.com
Remember that time we caught CNSNews.com sneering at Nancy Pelosi for quoting the Bible but linking to a version of the Bible that Catholics like Pelosi don't use (something the uber-Catholics who run CNS ought to know)? Well, we found another example. From an anonymously written Oct. 18 article:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) quoted from the Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins from the Gospel of Matthew at a press event focused on public housing that she held in San Francisco on Friday with San Francisco Mayor London Breed.
“Madam Mayor, it's always a joy to be with you while we're talking about low-income housing, affordable housing, public housing and the rest, and to hear you speak from your own personal experience about it,” Pelosi said.
“‘When I was hungry, you fed me. When I was homeless, you gave me shelter. When I was naked, you clothed me.’ All of those things in the Gospel of Matthew, the Mayor brings to the experience,” Pelosi said.
“Madam Mayor, thank you for your tremendous leadership and how that experience has benefited so many people,” she said.
But the article's links on the "Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins" and the "Gospel of Matthew" go to an online edition of the New King James Version of the Bible. As we documented, the Catholic Church does not use the King James Version because it was commissioned for the Church of England and it omits certain books from the Old Testament that Catholics recognize but Protestants don't.
Again, this is all malicious partisan pettiness on CNS' part. But you'd think that it would know better than to try and own Pelosi with a Bible that Catholics don't use.
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CNSNews.com believes that Nancy Pelosi is a murderer. Why? Even though she has never had an abortion, let alone performed one,she doesn't support prohibiting other people from getting one. And that, in the twisted and hateful minds at CNS, is no different from murder. Take this Sept. 28 
Remember that time we caught CNSNews.com 