CNS Loves Right-Wing Rabbi Going Godwin On Protesters Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com managing editor Michael W. Chapman is quitefond of the right-wing, pro-Trump Coalition for Jewish Values for its partisan attacks on non-conservatives -- heck, it even nonsensically bashed the Anti-Defamation League for failling to adhere to right-wing dogma, and Chapman was its servile stenographer. Chapman praised the group's leader for going Godwin in an Oct. 11 article:
Commenting on the left-wing protesters who followed Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) into a bathroom to denounce her opposition to the high price tag of the $3.5 trillion Build Back Better bill, Rabbi Yakkov Menken, managing director of the Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV), compared their actions to Nazi stormtroopers, saying, "you don’t have to go back too far to find German people who acted exactly as these protesters did."
"Early in the Nazi era they [stormtroopers] would go into where people were congregating and shout them down, and make sure no other voices could be heard except the Nazis," said Rabbi Menken.
“That’s how you lose dialogue," he added. "That’s how you lose a First Amendment. That’s how you welcome in totalitarianism."
Rabbi Menken made his remarks during an Oct. 5 interview on the True Story with Mike Slater, broadcast on thefirsttv.com. After showing a video of Sen. Sinema being accosted by activists while she used a restroom, Slater asked the rabbi, “What do you think when you see activists like this act the way they act?”
Rabbi Menken said. “It’s incredibly scary. If we lose the ability to distinguish between people rallying and expressing their own voice, and intimidation and bullying and shutting down the voices of others. I mean, you don’t have to go back too far to find German people who acted exactly as these protesters did."
As we've noted, the protesters' tactics against Sinema weren't all that different from those used by anti-abortion activists against abortion doctors and clinics and even other clinic employees. We don't recall Chapman or anyone from the CJV being bothered by that.
Even though Chapman was defending Sinema against her critics, he wanted to make sure readers knew he wasn't a fan of Sinema herself. So his final paragraph read: "Senator Sinema is a moderate Democrat, but on some 'social' issues, she is very liberal/left. Sinema is the first openly bisexual member of the U.S. Senate and the first woman from Arizona elected to the upper chamber. She is ranked among the top conservative voters in the Democrat [sic] caucus."
WND Misinformer Hirschhorn Still Spewing Hate At Fauci Topic: WorldNetDaily
COVID misinformer Joel Hirschhorn has a weird, hateful obsession with Anthony Fauci, and he let his anti-Fauci flag fly once again in his Oct. 14 column:
Sometimes it pays to step back in history to understand exactly how something monumental was created. This is the story of how one Big Lie turned our world upside down and ruined the lives of millions of people.
It's hard to believe that one Big Lie could have created all the pandemic controls, especially lockdowns, school closings and quarantines, that devastated our lives, our economy and our society. But it happened.
A very powerful, influential person told the world in early 2020 that the new China virus that leads to COVID-19 infection was especially lethal. That claim quickly pushed a fast, enormous response to protect public health. Was the truth was being told? It was not. There was an exaggeration of the new virus's lethality for the entire population. In truth, it was only severe for the oldest age category. Helped by corrupt data from the CDC, overstatement of COVID lethality continues today. To maintain public fear.
[...]
During a March 11, 2020, hearing of the House Oversight and Reform Committee on coronavirus preparedness, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, put it plainly: "The seasonal flu that we deal with every year has a mortality of 0.1%," he told the congressional panel, whereas coronavirus is "10 times more lethal than the seasonal flu," per STAT news. [0.1% also expressed as .001]
He also said: "The bottom line: It is going to get worse." And this: "The stated mortality, overall, of [the coronavirus], when you look at all the data including China, is about 3%."
That figure of 3%, far from reliable, is 30 times greater than the figure given for the seasonal flu. Fauci exaggerated to create a crisis – simply by implying great lethality for everyone infected by the new COVID virus.
And it should be noted that CDC has found the flu IFR ranged from 0.1% (the figure cited by Fauci) to 0.17% [.0017] from 2014 to 2019, because seasonal deaths vary significantly.
What Fauci said put the country, with the help of big media, into convulsions. It created the foundation for authoritarian contagion controls driving a spike into the lives of Americans. Fauci intentionally created the pandemic by creating fear.
[...]
Understand this. Fauci is not a trained public health expert, nor a trained epidemiologist or virologist. He was a plain physician who over many decades as a top NIH bureaucrat accumulated enormous power. He never did what true public health experts have an ethical obligation to do. That is to tell the public both the positives and negatives of public health policies and actions.
The point is this: By pushing the need for pandemic actions to address a very lethal virus a host of government actions produced so much economic, social and personal hardships and dislocations. And many analyses have concluded that more Americans died from the government actions than from the COVID virus. Perversely, pandemic public health actions actually harmed public health. But with widespread mainstream media support, Fauci got away with everything.
Hundreds of thousands of Americans died unnecessarily. Fauci is guilty of criminally negligent homicide stemming from his initial and very public overstatement of the lethality of the COVID virus. Those who have screamed for his prosecution have a valid case.
Hirschhorn, it should be noted, has never been a working physician or, it seems, a physician at all -- he calls himself "Dr." but it appears to be a Ph.D. and not an M.D., and the closest thing to direct medical experience he mentions in his bio is that he was "an executive volunteer at a major hospital." That means, by his own definition, he's even less qualified to speak out on public health issues than Fauci. His irrationaly hatred of Fauci -- remember, he once tried to "indict" Fauci based on a "grand jury"empaneled in his fevered brain -- overshadows any potentially legitimate point he might be able to make about Fauci.
Of course, Hirschhorn has his own agendas to push, and hating Fauci is only one of thiem:
COVID was intentionally over-hyped by Anthony Fauci as a very deadly disease to justify the most extreme public health actions. This was the Big Lie. Most valid data now show COVID lethality is similar to that for seasonal flu for the vast majority of people. But accepting that truth would not have justified the array of excessive government actions used for the false pandemic.
Yes, many people have died from COVID, but deaths have been over-reported and infections under-reported. And most deaths – at least 85% – could have been prevented by using generic medicines, such as ivermectin. There is no doubt that a great many people die with COVID but not from COVID, also arguing for a low IFR. At one point CDC said that only 6% of deaths resulted only from COVID, making the IFR much lower than the flu IFR.
Finally, recognizing the true lower IFR for COVID the whole rationale for mass vaccination collapses, especially in view of very high levels of adverse effects and deaths from the vaccines themselves.
Hirschhorn pulls the conspiracy theorist's trick of burying said conspiracy theories in a bunch of numbers to make them appear more plausible to people susceptible to be baffled by this blizzard of BS. Which, of course, makes him a perfect WND columnist.
MRC Uses Trump's Pollster To Push Its Version Of The Big Lie Topic: Media Research Center
For the past year, the Media Research Center has pushed its own version of Donald Trump's Big Lie that hed actually won last year's presidential election: It claimed that pre-election polls showing Joe Biden ahead of Trump were made up, and it commissioned a poll from McLaughlin & Associates -- the pollster who worked for Trump -- claiming that Trump might have won had more people known about obscure Hunter Biden scandals that right-wingers have been obsessed about. The MRC was even selling bumper stickers stating "Biden Won ... And Pigs Fly" and "Roses Are Blue. Pigs Fly. And Biden Won" (until we busted them on it; it's still selling one stating "Biden 'Won' Because The Media Lied").
The MRC is still clinging to that lie, and it called in Trump's pollster again to push it, as detailed in an Oct. 27 item by Alexander Hall:
A new poll commissioned by MRC with McLaughlin & Associates shows 51.8 percent of voters blame Big Tech for “election interference” in the 2020 presidential election.
The Post uncovered emails indicating that then-candidate Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, “pursued lucrative deals involving China’s largest private energy company — including one that he said would be ‘interesting for me and my family.’” The story hit shortly before the 2020 election and Twitter and Facebook both took action against the Post China bombshell much like they had for a similar Hunter Biden scandal involving dealings in Ukraine. The Post account was censored, sharing the story was restricted and Twitter suspended users for even sharing the story.
Americans’ reactions to the social media censorship were part of the National Omnibus survey of 1,000 voters, and the findings spoke volumes. When asked “Do you believe Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites' censoring of the now-confirmed Hunter Biden email story constitutes election interference?” 51.8 percent responded, “Yes.” Just 32.2 percent responded, “No” — nearly a 20 percent difference. An additional 15.9 percent said they didn’t know.
Nearly half of the respondents — 49.2 percent — also said it wasn’t “appropriate for Facebook and Twitter to block this story about Joe Biden from being seen by their users before the election.”
There were other interesting findings in the poll. Some American voters appear to have bought the media’s storyline at the time that the since-confirmed Hunter Biden story was the result of Russian disinformation.
Actually, the Hunter Biden laptop story has exactly not been "confirmed." Right-wing media in September pounced on a Politico report in September about a book on the Bidens claiming only that an anonymous "person who had independent access to Hunter Biden’s emails" and other anonymous people received emails found on the laptop, though Politico also pointed out that "While the leak contains genuine files, it remains possible that fake material has been slipped in."That's hardly convincing confirmation, and it comes nearly a year after the New York Post's original report, and it certainly doesn't disprove that the story was Russian disinformation.
Hall is also being dishonest in suggesting that Twitter and Facebook block the story because made Biden look bad; in fact, the story was blocked because it was apparently hacked material of dubious origin. And there were many other reasons to distrust the story, as the Columbia Journalism Review summarized: "the owner of the repair shop contradicted himself multiple times, and also referenced conspiracy theories in an interview; the emails made their way to the Post via some questionable sources—former Trump advisor Steve Bannon and Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani; and the Post story was co-written by a former producer on Sean Hannity’s Fox News program, in her first published article for the newspaper."
Hall didn't tell his readers any of that, of course -- no need to confuse readers with the facts. He also failed to disclose that McLaughlin was Trump's pollster, a fact that raises questions about the poll's objectivity. We know the poll was misleading and skewed because the Hunter Biden questions parroted the right-wing narrative by declaring in a question that that "Politico recently confirmed the authenticity of the Hunter Biden emails" and the narrative that "Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites' censoring of the now- confirmed Hunter Biden email story."
In other words, there's still no reason to treat the MRC's Big Lie seriously. That, of course, doesn't mean the MRC will stop telling it. You know what they say about big lies -- tell 'em often enough and people start believing them.
WND Offended That Transgender Official Named To Public Service Corps Topic: WorldNetDaily
Bob Unruh complained in an Oct. 19 WorldNetDaily "news" article:
The Biden administration this week announced the appointment of Rachel Levine, a man who has presented himself as a woman for much of his career, as an admiral of the Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service.
That agency is one of a number of uniformed services the nation has, but is unlike the military in that it deals only with health issues, and has no bases, camps, forts or anything like that.
[...]
Levine's position in the Biden administration is that of assistant secretary for health.
Tom Fitton, of government watchdog Judicial Watch, dismissed the Biden administration's brouhaha over the appointment with, "Biden gang playing quota politics with public health service."
Levine, at his appointment, said," I'm doing this because of my dedication to service … [and] with the utmost respect and honor for the uniform that I will be wearing."
Note that Unruh deliberately misgenders Levine and obsesses over the fact she's a transgender woman. He also makes sure to add an irrelevant, denigrating remark from a right-wing activist who offers no proof that Levine's appointment equates to "playing quota politics."
Unruh continued to lecture about Levine:
The scientific facts are that transgenders can alter their physical appearance, manners and presentation, but being either male or female is embedded in the human body down to the DNA level.
Formerly Richard Levine, the new officer made the "transition" to Rachel after having been married with a family.
None of Unruh's hate-based lecturing has any reason to be in this article, which is not about Levine being transgender -- however much Unruh would like it to be. That's fundamentally dishonest journalism, and it's hard to see why anyone else would want to publish it, even though that's what WND wants in order to remain viable, something that is not succeeding.
Newsmax Takes More Potshots At The Fox News Competition For Not Being Far-Right Enough Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax likes taking potshots at Fox News for not being as fanatically right-wing and pro-Trump as Newsmax is. They ramped up with an Oct. 23 article by Sandy Fitzgerald complaining that Fox's new weather channel might actually stick to weather-related things:
Fox Weather, the new 24-hour sister network of Fox News, is launching Monday and will strongly embrace climate change as part of its coverage, according to multiple press reports.
The all-weather channel will become a competitor to The Weather Channel and Accuweather, but will be available free on OTT systems and platforms.
"If you're asking about climate change, climate change is part of our lives," Sharri Berg, the Fox executive who will head the division, told Variety.
"It's how we live. It's not going to be ignored. We will be reporting facts."
It's inevitable that questions would be asked about how the fledgling network will handle the controversial subject of climate change, given Fox News Channel's long history of discounting it, reports The Washington Post.
Fitzgerald went on to note that "Fox News, controlled by media mogul Rupert Murdoch, has long allowed his outlets to cast skepticism on climate change claims and initiatives that would limit traditional carbon-based fuels," then blamed money for the alleged changes:
As Murdoch's sprawling Australian media empire faced the possible loss of millions of dollars in ad revenue for not signing on to a liberal climate change agenda, his outlets did a 180-degree pivot.
[...]
The pro-global warming policy is expected to reach Murdoch's other properties as well, including Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post, according to media experts.
The newfound emphasis on climate change may put Fox Weather at odds with Fox News’ traditional conservative base, many of whom harbor strong doubts as to the causes of global warming and potential remedies.
Fitzgerald didn't disclose that Newsmax is a direct competitor of Fox News and that her article is little mord than a shot at the competition.
Two days later, Michael Reagan appeared on Newsmax TV to complain that Fox Weather was about "Going after the global warming crowd, getting the money in from there; it's all about money. It's not about a belief system as much as it is follow the money." He didn't explain why weather should put a "belief system" ahead of fats. Host Chris Salcedo claimed the channel would be "embracing the religion of man-made global warming," calling it "all kinds of wrong."
In an Oct. 24 article, Fran Beyer complained that Fox News host Chris Wallace said something nice about White House press secretary Jen Psaki:
Fox News Anchor Chris Wallace says that current White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki is “one of the best press secretaries ever.”
In remarks Fridayand while reminiscing about the heated grillings former press secretaries have endured, Fox News’ Wallace praised colleague Peter Doocy for handling a tough back-and-forth with Psaki.
“Honestly, as somebody who’s spent six years in the White House, my immediate reaction was, 'Those are two people at the top of their game,'" Wallace said of the sparring, in a clip posted by Mediaite, and tweeted by another ex-press secretary and current Newsmax TV host Sean Spicer.
“I mean this as a compliment,” Wallace said of Doocy. “I think he has become the Sam Donaldson of this White House press corps.” ABC’s Donaldson was famously aggressive in questions to then President Ronald Reagan.
But conservatives, who long have loathed Wallace’s attacks on former President Trump and disdain Psaki’s frequent dodging of tough questions, went on social media to hit back at Wallace.
Conservative activist Brigitte Gabriel re-tweeted Wallace’s Psaki comments with her own: “TURN OFF FOX NEWS.”
Radio and Newsmax host Sebastian Gorka tweeted, “Chris Wallace, @FoxNewsSunday you’re a clown.”
Wallace has come under repeated fire from for leaning too far left. Trump says he has a political bias like CNN and MSNBC.
Beyer -- and Newsmax -- wants you to believe that merely complementing the press secretary of a Democratic president for doing her job well is evidence that Wallace is "too far left." Beyer would also rather not have you dwell on the fact that Spicer -- who only lasted six months in the job -- was considered among the worst White House press secretaries.
Jack Gournell gave Trump a platform to whine about Fox News in another Oct. 24 article:
Former President Donald Trump on Sunday slammed Fox News for running commercials that are critical of him while guests and hosts say positive things about him and his ideas.
"What good is it if FOX News speaks well of me when they continually allow horrible and untruthful anti-Trump commercials to be run — and plenty of them," Trump said in a statement released through his Save America PAC.
"In the good old days, that would never have happened and today it happens all of the time," he continued. "Ratings-challenged CNN and MSNBC would never run a positive Trump ad — never. With so many forces against us, Big Tech, the Fake News Media, the Radical Left, the RINOs, and more, we are at such a disadvantage, but we will win anyway!"
Seems like Newsmax wants to show Trump it will be loyal to him and censor any criticism.
Charile McCarthy once again lived up to his name by parroting what a former Fox news host said on his current Newsmax show in an Oct. 26 article:
Newsmax host Eric Bolling blasted former employer Fox News on Monday night for abandoning the conservative right.
Bolling, who left Fox in 2017, offered his old network a backhanded compliment for its ability to fool viewers.
"Think about what Fox is doing, though. It's brilliant," Bolling said on "Eric Bolling The Balance."
"Everything they truly believe is aired in the middle of the day when everybody is at work. Then they get home from work and watch evening commentary hosts say the complete opposite of what they reported just hours prior."
A prime example of that, Bolling said, has to do with vaccine mandates, which generally are blasted by Fox News Channel evening hosts.
"Fox hosts rage against the vaccine mandates, yet they work for a company that demands their employees get vaccinated or get tested," Bolling said.
This happened before Newsmax tried to impose a vaccine mandate on its own employees, including Bolling. And McCarthy didn't mention what made Bolling a former Fox News employee.
McCarthy wrote that Bolling also complained about Fox News' "early call of Arizona for President Joe Biden in the November election" -- though he didn't explain why correctly reporting the news was a bad thing -- as well as his own hotshot at Wallace:
Bolling called Fox's Chris Wallace a "leftist excuse for bipartisanship" and showed a clip of the host moderating a presidential debate last year when he admonished then-President Donald Trump for interrupting then-candidate Joe Biden.
Wallace recently said Biden White House spokesperson Jen Psaki "is one of the best press secretaries ever."
"The best? Really, Chris?" Bolling said. "You’ve been working in news since the '70s and she’s the best? Really makes me wonder what you’ve been paying attention to all these years."
In Bolling's -- and Newsmax's -- hyperpartisan, hypber-biased world, saying even a slightly nice thing about Psaki makes one suspect as a "leftist."
Pope Spur CNS Intern To Pester Senators About Whether They Think Abortion Is Murder Topic: CNSNews.com
When CNSNews.com was beating up on President Biden for his meeting with Pope Francis, it was pushing a parallel storyline. Editor Terry Jeffrey used an Oct. 19 article to highlight how "Pope Francis said in an address given to the Pontifical Academy for Life at the Vatican on Sept. 27 that abortions 'is truly murder,'" going on to reproduce the pope's remarks in both Italian and English, even though CNS has no Italian readership of note and even though the pope's native language is Spanish (though he also speaks Italian).
That was all the impetus CNS needed to send its fall intern out to pester members of Congress -- as is the CNS intern's job -- with the question "Pope Francis recently said that abortion is ‘truly murder,’ do you agree with him?" That came with another gotcha follow-up: "Is the unborn child killed by an abortion a human being?" The intern harangued the following senators:
The point is to allow the Republican-heavy roster of senators to virtue-signal to CNS' right-wing audience about how much they oppose abortion, while trying to catch Democratic senators if they choose to answer at all; for example, the headline on the article about Kaine reads "Sen. Kaine Affirms His Support for Legalized Abortion."
The intern also made sure to get CNS' anti-Biden and anti-Pelosi talking points in the boilerplate of most of those articles:
Because of the Catholic Church’s immutable teaching on abortion, when a Catholic politician, especially President Joe Biden, publicly endorses and votes for pro-abortion legislation, it causes widespread scandal in the church and among the faithful.
[...]
The Archbishop of San Francisco, Salvatore Cordileone, encouraged Catholics to pray the rosary for the conversion of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), a pro-abortion Catholic, who is seeking to codify Roe v. Wade in federal law.
CNS even did a non-intern example of the question, in a Oct. 27 article by Melanie Arter highlighting that "When White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was asked at her briefing on Wednesday whether President Joe Biden agrees with Pope Francis that abortion is murder, she responded that Biden 'believes in a woman's right to choose.'" Arter refused to name the reporter for some reason, but it was Owen Jensen of the biased anti-abortion Catholilc channel EWTN.
MRC Is Mad NBC Exposed Texas School District's Bigotry Topic: Media Research Center
We'vedocumented how the Media Research Center aggressively hyped an alleged sexual assault between students in a Virginia high school with the explicit goal of getting a Republican elected Virginia governor -- all the while censoring facts about the case that make it much more complicated than its preferred anti-transgender narrative. At the same time, it was whining about a series by NBC News about an increasingly extremist battle about critical race theory and other educational ideas between parents and a Texas school district. Nicholas Fondacaro whined in an Oct. 14 post:
For months now, NBC News has been assailing the concerned parents of Southlake, Texas because they’ve been standing up to the tide of critical race theory being crammed down the throats of their children. And on Thursday, despite new details in the already outrageous Loudoun County high school rapes story, NBC Nightly News continued their assault on the community that has had enough of liberal propaganda. They even deceptively edited audio to make it seem as though the parents were support of the Holocaust.
Continuing their smears suggesting the town was made up of rabid racists looking to drive minorities out of their community, anchor Lester “fairness is overrated” Holt chided the town for being the “center of a firestorm over diversity and inclusion efforts. Now, secretly recorded comments from a top administrator about books on the Holocaust are sparking new outrage.”
That’s right. NBC wanted to claim the town was now either made up of Holocaust deniers or Nazi sympathizers.
But it's not until after the 8th paragraph of his item -- buried in a transcript excerpt -- that Fondacaro got around to noting the background of that not-inaccurate descriptor: The school district's director of curriculum told teachers to "Make sure that if you have a book on the Holocaust, make sure that you have one that has other perspectives." Foondacaro then tried to soften that statement by blaming NBC for editing audio:
Notice where NBC and Hylton decided to cut off the audio. In a more complete, but still highly-edited version on their website, Peddy responded by saying, “[B]elieve me, that’s come up.” But who’s bringing that up? The audio ended without an answer but it seemed as though it was a question brought up in an attempt to sink opposition to critical race theory.
Earlier this year, NewsBusters has caught NBC deceptively editing 911 audio to make a police officer look like a murderer.
Still, Fondacaro doesn't explain why it's a good idea to teach "the other side" of the Holocaust and give it equal weight. Nor did he explain that it was a logical, if severely misguided attempt to follow a new Texas law requiring teachers to present multiple perspectives when discussing “widely debated and currently controversial” issues, a law that was a direct response to ginned-up fears about critical race theory. Finally, Fondacaro didn't dismiss out of hand the idea that there is another side to the Holocaust that should be taught in schools. He did, however, sneer at an "anti-racism" book as "CRT propaganda" and dismissed the NBC Southlake series as "nonsense."
Fondacaro continued whining about the NBC series in an Oct. 19 post, complaining that it was pushing that story instead of one that forwards a false right-wing narrative that "radical Attorney General Merrick Garland" was "unjustly suggesting parents protesting at school board meetings were committing 'domestic terrorism'":
Meanwhile, NBC continued its months-long crusade against the Texas town of Southlake, which ousted the liberal membersof the school board in an special election earlier this year. And for the second week in a row, they used one person’s gross misinterpretation of Texas law to suggest the anti-CRT board was trying to downplay the Holocaust.
[...]
Hylton once again played a highly edited soundbite of one administrator’s misinterpretation of the Texas law to suggest it was designed to downplay the Holocaust. And she once again refused to have a comment from a member of the board or a parent that opposed CRT. And they would likely declare the Loudoun County rapes story (which the networks were still ignoring) was just local news.
Then again, “fairness is overrated” for NBC.
Note that Fondacaro is still trying to blame NBC for editing the clip while also condeding ithe clip isn't inaccurate and just a "misinterpretation" of the law.
Fondacaro repeated his attacks on NBC in an Oct. 21 post with Geoffrey Dickens that otherwise whined that its pet Virginia school assault story was being ignored by non-right-wing media: "While NBC Nightly New has YET to report on the Loudoun County, VA sexual assault scandal, they DID find time to devote five stories (totaling 14 minutes, 8 seconds) to (mostly) deriding parents in local school districts in Southlake, Texas and Rockwood, Missouri for their resistance to leftist teaching materials. In fact, NBC News has devoted an entire podcast to the Southlake story."
When NBC's reporting resulted in a federal civil rights investigation, the MRC complained about that too.Kyle Drennen huffed in a Nov. 18 post:
After spending months relentlessly attacking the Carroll Independent School District in Southlake, Texas for not implementing radical Critical Race Theory curriculum, on Wednesday, NBC Nightly News eagerly touted how the network’s smear campaign had been rewarded. Earlier in the day, the Biden Department of Education announced that it would be launching multiple civil rights investigations into the not-sufficiently-woke school district.
“The Texas schools in a firestorm over race. The new civil rights investigation,” anchor Lester Holt teased at the top of the evening newscast. Minutes later, he breathlessly proclaimed: “Tonight, there’s developing news in Southlake, Texas following the in-depth reporting NBC News has done there on the issue of race and education. A new federal investigation is now underway.”
[...]
While NBC has been happy to spend nearly a year stoking racial tensions in a single school district, it willfully ignored multiple scandals – including two student sexual assaults – rocking the entire Loudoun County, Virginia school system, which had a major impact on the commonwealth’s closely-watched governor’s race.
Actually, as a transcript excerpt showed, the civil rights investigations involve "allegations of discrimination based on race, nationality, and gender," not about being insufficiently "woke."And only the MRC would describe reporting that doesn't slavishly reinforce right-wing partisan narratives as an "attack."
WND's Root Ramps Up Extreme Rhetoric Against Vaccine Mandates (And Also Wants You To Buy His Book) Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily columnist has longbeen a COVIDmisinformer, and the idea of vaccine mandates has sent him further into meltdown mode. He ranted in his Sept. 27 column:
I have bad news and good news.
I'll save the good news for the end – because you need to know there is hope.
The bad news is that the country is on fire, thanks to the brain-dead, feeble, old man with dementia (aka President Joe Biden). If you don't believe me, just see the 14,000 Haitian migrants hiding under a bridge in Texas, now released into America by Biden. That should help the COVID-19 pandemic.
But the worst is yet to come. I'm referring to Biden's vaccine mandate. This is the most dangerous threat to our national security in history.
As a nationally syndicated radio host, I get thousands of emails a week. The ones I'm getting right now are downright tragic. I'm getting heartfelt letters of anguish from police officers, firefighters, paramedics, nurses, corrections officers, active-duty military, military fighter jet pilots, even Navy SEALs.
They're all getting ready to quit or be fired because of vaccine mandates. They do not want the vaccine. Even if they have to give up their pensions. Even if they are one year away from retirement and a six-figure pension.
They've studied the vaccine. They know the dangers. They know it's crippling, killing and weakening the immune systems of millions of Americans. They've seen the Project Veritas undercover videos of U.S. government health care workers admitting the COVID-19 vaccine is killing and injuring Americans – and admitting our government is covering it up.
[...]
So, maybe, just maybe this whole vaccine mandate disaster is "made in China." Dividing America, weakening our economy, gutting our military and creating a shortage of front-line first responders is a dream come true for China.
This is how China wins WWIII without firing a shot.
Root seems quite excited that his fellow right-wing minions have been eating up his anti-vaxx propaganda. And that "good news" he was claiming? It involves giving him money:
So, what's the good news? I have a solution. You can read about it in my brand-new No. 1 bestselling book, "The Great Patriot Protest & Boycott Book." It's the conservative version of "Rules for Radicals." It teaches conservatives how to use protest, boycotts, intimidation and civil disobedience – just like liberals have done to us for decades. Two can play at that game. It teaches conservatives how to become the LOUD MAJORITY.
This book even includes the actual phone numbers and emails to contact the top liberal and woke CEOs in America.
Root used his Oct. 4 column to misleadingly liken anti-vaxxers like himself to Martin Luther King (oh, and buy his book!):
Sadly, it's now time for conservatives, Christians, patriots and 80 million-plus Trump warriors to adopt the mentality, strategy and tactics of Dr. Martin Luther King and other black civil rights leaders. Because we are now the persecuted. It's our civil and human rights being violated.
In response to the communist takeover of America; to the destruction (at record pace) of everything that made our country great; and to the clear civil-rights and free-speech violations of the Constitution aimed at conservatives and patriots (and in particular, the unvaccinated), I wrote a brand-new bestselling book titled, "The Great Patriot Protest & Boycott Book" to teach conservatives how to use protest, boycotts, intimidation and civil disobedience – just as liberals and civil rights activists have done for decades.
The loud minority has outplayed and steamrolled the silent majority for decades with this strategy of intimidation. Two can play at this game. We can't be silent anymore. We can't play nice anymore.
With the strategy in my book, conservatives can now play the same game as Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and other liberal activists. If you can't beat 'em, copy them. Use their tactics. Fight fire with fire.
And the main tactic we need right now is civil disobedience – to prevent restaurants and retail stores from falling in line with clearly illegal and unconstitutional vaccine mandates and vaccine passports.
In his Nov. 8 column, he brought up the old Cloward-Piven bogeyman to rage against vaccine mandates:
Open borders is Cloward-Piven strategy updated for 2021. And as the greatest bonus ever, Democrats know these millions of foreigners will loyally vote for the party who lets them in and then promises to give them the biggest welfare checks. These are lifetime Democrat voters.
But there is now a powerful Part Deux to Cloward-Piven. Democrats aren't content to just welcome tens of millions of foreign welfare addicts into the USA. They want to make tens of millions of American-born citizens unemployed and dependent on government too.
So, Part Deux of Cloward-Piven is the vaccine mandates.
These COVID-19 vaccine mandates are destroying the country, creating chaos, crisis and division. They are wiping out the ranks of the police, fire, paramedics, nurses, prison guards, border patrol and military. Our middle class is being ripped to shreds. These front-line heroes and defenders don't want this dangerous, experimental, for-emergency-use-only jab. There will soon be no one to answer your 911 call. The police will be defunded – without voters ever getting a vote.
The military will be left weak and crippled. Wanna bet China is directing this plan? We all know China owns Biden and his family. Biden is serving up the country on a platter to China.
The vaccine mandates also make the supply chain problems much worse. Truck drivers don't want the jab. They're quitting in droves. Jet pilots don't want the jab. They're basically on strike now – ask Southwest and American Airlines why thousands of flights were grounded recently. If these pilots are fired, the tourism industry will be devastated. Shipping cargo by air will be devastated. Without pilots and truckers, food and supplies won't make it to stores. Shelves will be empty – just like the old communist Soviet Union. Coincidence?
Like I said, this is a communist takeover of the USA. Empty shelves are the hallmark of communism.
Root plugged his book again and insisted that his right-wing brad of "civil disobedience" is the way forward. But the end of his column sounded like he would be open to more drastic actions:
The choice is clear: We either resist, or we lose America, our jobs, our careers, our middle-class quality of life, our health and everything that made America great. It's time to fight like animals, fight like it's the end of America, fight like our lives and the lives of our children are at stake …
Because they are.
Does that sound like someone who will stop at mere "civil disobedience"?
MRC Censors Data, Facts In Soundbite Study Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Geoffrey Dickens complained in an Oct. 13 article:
Is there any surprise our national debt keeps climbing when the voices calling for fiscal responsibility are almost completely drowned out by the national media?
In the network evening news show coverage of stories about the infrastructure bill, increasing the debt ceiling and President Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better” spending boondoggle Republican voices were almost completely shut out.
MRC analysts looked at 30 stories on the ABC, CBS and NBC evening programs covering the most recent budget debates from September 23 to October 10 and discovered a whopping disparity in soundbites with Democrats overwhelming Republicans by a 115 to 16 count.
Yes, viewers of these programs were seven times more likely to hear from hardcore big spending Democratic lefties such as Sen. Bernie Sanders, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rep. Pramila Jayapal than Republicans like Sen. Mitch McConnell or Rep. Kevin McCarthy.
While the evening news shows did allow for “moderates” like West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin to speak, it's important to note they were still calling for more spending, just not as much as President Joe Biden and his big spending allies like Cortez were demanding.
Dickens didn't mention that there are two big reasons for the lack of Republican quotes in these stories. First: He doesn't provide the raw data in the form of the stories examined -- the MRCnever does, acting as if it has something to hide -- but it's highly likely that those stories were about negotiations between Democrats about the size of the bills. Republicans were not involved in those discussions, so their views are irrelevant. There is no reason to insert a Republican soundbite in a story about Democratic negotiations.
Second: Republicans' views are irrelevant beause every Republican senator and House member has stated in advance they will not vote for Build Back Better and never will no matter what concessions are made to appease them, while all Republican senators will oppose the infrastructure bill and nearly every Republican House member voted against it. Everybody knows that; there is no news value in hearing Republicans spout the same talking points day after day.
It's that failure to disclose basic facts and hide the data that makes the MRC's "media research" so untrustworthy.
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.
CNSNews.com managing editor Michael W. Chapman is quite fond of the right-wing, pro-Trump Coalition for Jewish Values for its partisan attacks on non-conservatives -- heck, it even nonsensically bashed the Anti-Defamation League for failling to adhere to right-wing dogma, and Chapman was its servile stenographer. Chapman praised the group's leader for going Godwin in an Oct. 11 article:
COVID misinformer 
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When CNSNews.com was 
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The Media Research Center's Geoffrey Dickens complained in an Oct. 13 
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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 
