Conservatives normally love criminals who rehabilitate themselves -- but only if they become conservatives. If not, well, that crime is an irreversible scar that will be held over your head for the rest of your life. And that's what mystierious Media Research Center sports blogger Jay Maxson does in an Oct. 19 post trying to manufacturing outrage that the longtime manager of the Michael Jordan brand at Nike served prison time as a youth for killing another teen:

The inconsistencies in what's acceptable in sports are beyond bizarre. Las Vegas Raiders coach Jon Gruden just watched his career fizzle away over 10-year-old text messages on race and gender. Meanwhile, NBA and NHL players are being punished for not getting coronavirus vaccinations. Also, the man who’s led Nike’s Jordan brand for 40 years has been hiding a murder secret for 56 years, and he is “beloved.”

In 1965, Larry Miller shot and killed Edward White in Philadelphia. Now 72, Miller has guarded this secret from Jordan, Nike founder Phil Knight and NBA executives. The black executive is spilling his guts in the book Jump: My Secret Journey From the Streets to the Boardroom, co-written with his daughter Laila Lacy. It will be published by William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins, next year.

Now living a life of luxury, Miller told Sports Illustrated writer Howard Beck he wants to share his secret on his own terms. How convenient for him! He says the book release “will free him to discuss his experiences with at-risk youth and people in prison, and perhaps help steer others away from violence and toward a productive life.” Not to mention the advice he can give to young people convicted of crimes to dishonestly hide their secrets for half a century.

Maxson gives Miller no credit whatsoever for rehabilitating himself to become a successful businessman. Instead, he (or she) whines that "celebrating criminals is now normal for the NBA, whose players boycotted games last year in support of criminals like Jacob Blake who clashed with police," then once again runs to the defense of former NFL coach Jon Gruden, fired for bigoted and racist emails:

Then there’s Gruden, whose NFL coaching career was quickly over because of remarks he made about people’s lips and gender in 2011. Of the objects of Gruden’s criticism, one is the president of the United States, one is the head of the NFL players union (DeMaurice Smith) and others are working as NFL game officials. Gruden’s choice of words was careless, but he didn’t murder anyone and then deceive anyone about it for half a century. The wild inconsistencies of sports punishments are utterly absurd.

Note that Maxson describes Gruden as merely "careless" and not hateful. Also note, since Maxson didn't that Miller paid his debt to society a long time ago, while Gruden's debt-paying has just started. Maxson clearly doesn't believe that Gruden should face any consequences at all for his hateful words.

Posted by Terry K. at 9:12 AM EST

Updated: Saturday, December 4, 2021 9:57 AM EST

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Michael Brown reminds us that he still hates LGBT people in his Oct. 20 WorldNetDaily column:

In their landmark 1990 book "After the Ball: How America Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the 90's," gay strategists Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen laid out a brilliant plan for changing American attitudes toward homosexuality. They stated that "to desensitize straights to gays and gayness, inundate them in a continuous flood of gay-related advertising, presented in the least offensive fashion possible. If straights can't shut off the shower, they may at least eventually get used to being wet."

Looking back from the vantage point of 2021, we can now say that this was not a matter of shutting off a shower and thereby getting wet. It was a matter of not shutting off a continual downpour, thereby getting soaked. And the soaking continues by the hour, with transgender taking the place of gay in the bombardment.

That's why it is imperative that we refuse to get used to this new normal.

It is not normal. It will never be normal. And we must not accept it as normal.

It violates natural law, and it violates God's design for humanity. Surely, He has a better way.

Brown then followed WND in attacking transgender health official Rachel Levine:

What about the latest news concerning Richard "Rachel" Levine? He has now been promoted to four-star admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, earning praise from outlets like the Washington Post, which celebrated the "organization's first-ever female four-star admiral."

Except that Levine is a biological male who identifies as female. Yet this is somehow a breakthrough for women? Isn't it really a slap in the face of other women, since the first "female" to reach this rank is not a female at all?

Sorry, but I refuse to accept this as the new normal, let alone celebrate this as some kind of big moment for women. Not a chance.

His screed concluded:

The world has gone mad, which is why I continue to use scare quotes when referring to gay "marriage," not to insult gay couples, but to refuse to accept this as "marriage."

And that's why, as much as there were other things I would rather write about, yet again, I needed to raise my voice.

I urge you, my friend. Do not accept this as normal.

In his Oct. 30 column, Brown raged against a candy bar commercial because it featured a boy wearing a dress on Halloween:

There is nothing covert about the message, nothing sublime, nothing cryptic. Quite the contrary, the message is clear and in your face. If you have a problem with a little boy wearing a princess dress and believe that people who dress like witches with spiked collars look weird, you will be blown away – meaning, literally blown away. As in swept away by a gust of wind produced by a dark, angry witch. And this is a Twix commercial for Halloween?

The ad itself is slow moving and hardly compelling, not the kind of commercial that would make you want to eat a candy bar.

It features a boy in a princess dress with his new nanny, dressed all in witch-like black, as they go to a park for the boy to play.

But the pace picks up when another boy says to the boy in the dress, "You look like a girl" (which he does). The boy then asks, "Why are you wearing that?"

The boy in the dress replies, "Dressing like this makes me feel good," which apparently is supposed to be a powerful line in defense of trans identity.

Yes, as any parent knows, if your child feels good doing something, then by all means, you should encourage them to do it, regardless of what lines are crossed and what boundaries are transgressed. After all, isn't that the key to effective parenting, namely, determining if your values and rules and guidelines make your children feel good? If not, well, we know the old adage: children know best! (Apologies for the sarcasm.)

What makes the Twix scenario all the more tragic is that there is a rapidly growing body of evidence against children acting out their trans identities, especially with the help of puberty blockers and then sex-change surgery.

Brown's response to the commercial's depiction of bullying was to say that he would teach his children not to bully quite so overtly, and besides, transgender people are the real bullies:

To be sure, if I were raising a child today I would teach that child not to insult other kids, let alone adults. That means I would not be encouraging my son or daughter to tell others that they were "weird."

At the same time, I would teach my child that a boy who wears a princess dress is confused, in need of love and prayer rather than affirmation and praise.

And while I would not want my child to tell a witch that she was weird, I would certainly tell my child that the devil was real, that demons were real, and that witches were playing with unholy fire, needing to be saved and redeemed.

For Twix, however, the synopsis of the ad was, "With a little magic, the new nanny helps a non-binary child deal with bullies and find self-acceptance."

So, the way to deal with a child bully is to be a bigger bully, in this case, an adult bully, more specifically an adult witch bully with destructive powers. That's how you help a trans child find self-acceptance: by destroying, or at the least endangering and terrifying, another child who makes fun of him.

Don't you just love the voice of tolerance?

For his Nov. 10 column, Brown finally got around to complaining there was a gay character in a Disney movie released months earlier:

Forgive me for being late to the party, but it was only this week that I saw most of Disney's new movie "Jungle Cruise." The movie is rated PG-13 and is based on the Disney theme park ride of the same name. It features mega-star Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and tells the story of a courageous single woman in search of a healing cure located on the Amazon. Johnson is the boat captain, and the woman (Emily Blunt) is accompanied by her utterly wimpy, fear-filled brother (Jack Whitehall), who, it turns out, is gay.

But why, oh why, must the brother be gay? What is gained by it? How is the plot enhanced? If anything, Whitehall's character plays right into negative gay stereotypes. And of what value are the vulgar, double entendre sexual jokes? Disney studios, why, oh why?

[...]

The reality, of course, is that LGBTQ characters abound on TV and in the movies. And if you identify as LGBTQ and want to see someone like yourself on the screen, you can readily do it, right up to being a gay or bi or trans superhero.

Disney would do best to give up throwing "gay bread crumbs" to their LGBTQ viewers and simply make family-friendly movies that will not offend the historic moral sensibilities of their viewers – unless they have pushed most of them away already.

Nothing so offends the "moral sensibilities" of people like Brown than to be shown that gay people exist.

Posted by Terry K. at 12:24 AM EST

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Curtis Houck apparently got bored with his relentless Jen Psaki-bashing and his man-crushing over Peter Doocy -- after writing his highly biased review of what dismissively calls "The Psaki Show" on Oct. 22, he didn't write one for more than three weeks. Part of that time, though, Psaki was off duty after being diagnosed for COVID, though briefings continued under deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, whom Houck has denigrated as nothing more than a beneficiary of "diversity bingo." Apparently Houck hates Jean-Pierre so much that he refuses to even review her hearings for the same lashing-out screeds he piles on Psaki.

Thus, it was the duty of Scott Whitlock to look at a Nov. 8 briefing by Jean-Pierre, albeit only to complain that the "liberal media" aren't covering questions from the briefing about "the latest terrible polls for Joe Biden" (whom Whitlock apparently still won't acknowledge won the election and is president).Whitlock complained that Jean-Pierre served up "talking points" for one question and "stonewalled" another, but he didn't explain how that was any different from how any given Trump White House press secretary had behaved.

Houck didn't return to briefing writeups until Psaki did. In writing about the Nov. 12 briefing, he seemed sad that "Fox’s Peter Doocy wasn’t in attendance" but happy that someone asked about "Let's Go Brandon" chants. But he did latch on to another biased right-wingh reporter in Doocy's stead:

And with Doocy not in attendance, it was Jacqui Time in the Briefing Room as Fox colleague Jacqui Heinrich drew lengthy Psaki word salads with denial dressings on gas prices and then a study from the Tax Policy Center that revealed Biden’s so-called human infrastructure plan would lower taxes on wealthy Americans rather than raise them[.]

For the Nov. 15 briefing, though, Houck was in full Doocy-gasm mode:

After not having been around for Friday’s return of The Psaki Show, Fox’s Peter Doocy made the most of his first crack at Press Secretary Jen Psaki on Monday’s installment with hardballs on President Biden’s past comments smearing Kyle Rittenhouse, new reports about tension between the White House and Vice President Harris, and whether the U.S. government will boycott the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.

Doocy started his turn by getting right to the chase on China: “Ahead of this meeting with President Xi, is President Biden considering a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Olympics this winter?”

Just as she did on Friday when asked by Reuters’s Andrea Shalal, Psaki ducked and refused to stand up for human rights, saying she doesn’t “have anything beyond that for you.”

[...]

Doocy wrapped by drilling down on President Biden’s attacks on Rittenhouse just after the August 25, 2020 shootings: “Why did President Biden suggest that Kyle Rittenhouse, on trial in Kenosha, is a white supremacist?”

[...]

Doocy tried again, pointing out the fact that Biden did weigh in and “Kyle Rittenhouse’s mom came out saying that the President defamed her son and...she claims that when the President suggested her son is a white supremacist, he was doing that to win votes.”

Questioned whether that was the case, Psaki made it clear she was done: “I just having nothing more to speak to — an ongoing case where the closing arguments were just made.”

Houck then went on another vacay from his brief-bashing duties. He didn't return until Nov. 23, when he could have another Doocy-gasm under the ridiculously hateful yet word-salady headline "Doocy Stuff's Psaki's Gobbles":

In the final episode of The Psaki Show before Thanksgiving, Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy went into the break with a bang as he grilled Jen Psaki over far-left Democratic Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib’s proposal to abolish prisons, pressing for answers on whether President Biden will apologize for impugning Kyle Rittenhouse’s character, the record costs for Thanksgiving dinner, and Biden’s holiday vacation to Nantucket.

[...]

The Fox reporter moved on to Rittenhouse and followed up on questions he asked from November 15: “Would the President ever apologize to the acquitted Kenosha shooter Kyle Rittenhouse for suggesting online and on TV that he is a white supremacist?”

Predictably, Psaki made it all about Donald Trump: “[T]his is about a campaign video release last year that used President Trump's own words during a debate as he refused to condemn white supremacists and militia groups.”

Without stating it, Psaki appeared to give oxygen to Biden’s lie, saying he’s called out “the tragic consequences of” extremists feeling emboldened to the point “when people think it is okay to take the law into their own hands instead of allowing law enforcement to do its job.”

Houck refused to highlight that there is evidence of Rittenhouse having white supremacist sympathies, in the form of him hanging out with the Proud Boys and flashing hate symbols shortly after he killed two people and wounded another, so Biden is not "lying" at all. Psaki did point that out in her response to Doocy, but Houck left that buried in a transcript.

There was more sucking up to Doocy for the Nov. 29 briefing:

The Psaki Show returned Monday following the Thanksgiving holiday with a packed show on the heels of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus and a host of new travel restrictions. So, it fell to Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy to question Press Secretary Jen Psaki on, among other issues, President Biden’s hypocrisy on Covid travel bans and his latest mask faux pas.

Doocy cut right to the chase with a question no one had asked Biden following his Covid remarks or Psaki prior to his turn: “Before Joe Biden was President, he said that Covid travel restrictions on foreign countries were ‘hysterical,’ ‘xenophobia,’ and ‘fearmongering.’ So, what changed?”

Possessing zero shame, Psaki insisted he “put it in full context,” which was supposedly about Biden being “critical of was the way that the former President put out, I believe, a xenophobic tweet, in how he called — what he called the coronavirus, and — and who he directed it at.”

Psaki added that Biden “has not been critical of travel restrictions” since “we have put those in place ourselves” to “follow the advice of health and medical experts.”

As our friend Matt Whitlock pointed out, Psaki’s response should be torn to pieces by the so-called fact-checkers in the establishment press as Biden did indeed denounce the China ban.

Actually, Houck's friend is wrong -- not once did Biden reference the China travel ban when he accused Trump of xenophobia, and he later expressed support for travel bans.

In the midst of more Doocy-gasming, Houck actually got mad at Psaki for pointing out that Biden is following the law on thte southern border:

Touching on two other topics before wrapping, Doocy applied the same pressure he did on travel bans with one about the Remain in Mexico policy: “Joe Biden once described the Remain in Mexico policy as ‘dangerous,’‘ inhumane,’ ‘goes against everything we stand for as a nation of immigrants.’ So, why is he keeping it?”

Psaki affirmed Biden “continues to stand behind exactly those comments and statements,” but the administration has had to reimplement it due to a court order, which Doocy took as time to move to the last question.

Pointing out that Biden said last week his “administration is monitoring the situation in Waukesha closely” and how it’s since “revealed by prosecutors that the assailant — the assailant swerved his truck side-to-side as part of an intentional act to run over as many people as possible,” Doocy wondered why Biden hasn’t gone to visit the victims.

Using a line that would have been ridiculed if uttered by a Trump official, Psaki emphasized that “our hearts go out to this community” and they were “in touch...with officials,” but there’s no trip to announce because “any president going to visit a community requires a lot of assets” and “requires taking their resources.”

Because Houck and the MRC remain Trump stans, he would never have ridiculed Trump for saying such a thing, because we know that unlike Biden, Trump is a attention-glomming egomaniac who has a pathological need to insert himself in the middle of everything.

Posted by Terry K. at 9:48 PM EST

Updated: Wednesday, December 15, 2021 9:10 PM EST

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We noted that a WorldNetDaily column by Wayne Allyn Root resurrected the old Cloward-Piven bogeyman to rage against vaccine mandates. But he was not the first WND writer to do so. That honor, such as it is, goes to Joseph Farah in his Oct. 14 column:

We haven't been hearing possible explanations for Joe Biden's actions over the last nine months other than stupidity, a cognitive disorder, misguided thinking, even insanity.

But is it possible that he's being guided by some close to him who are following a scheme much more malign – the Cloward-Piven Strategy?

[...]

The Cloward-Piven Strategy has been adopted as part of mainstream leftist ideology. It's the Rosetta stone for understanding what progressives do and why they do it. It seems to make no sense on the surface to non-leftist ideologues. It seems like irrationality, stupidity or even insanity. But it's not. It's pure evil from the pit of hell.

It's the kind of thinking that led to the gas chambers. It's the kind of thinking that led to the gulags. It's the kind of thinking that led to the guillotines.

I fear it comes from the evil nature of those who plan to finish the job of fundamentally transforming America.

Let's recall that the Obama administration, which included Joe Biden, first set out to kill the flawed but greatest health care system the world had ever known. Obama lied repeatedly about what he was doing. He misrepresented his intentions and his goals. Once he got what he wanted and people could see it didn't work the way they thought it would work, he told them they just didn't understand. He told them it was their imaginations that they were losing their health insurance, paying more for medical services and being denied treatment.

You see, in this example, if you followed the Cloward-Piven Strategy, your goal was never to provide better and more affordable health care. It was to destroy the system and replace it with complete government control.

Farah went on to claim without evidence that "New York City went bankrupt in the 1970s because of the Cloward-Piven Strategy specifically designed to precipitate a crisis in the welfare system. No one made the direct connection back then. It took years to figure it out."

Farah concluded by ranting:

If it's not error, bad judgment, misguided thinking, irrationality, ideological and multicultural blindness or insanity that explains what Biden and the cabal of pseudo-scientists, ideologues and population-control activists are doing on the China virus front, what does?

I fear it's something much worse – Cloward-Piven.

Will it bring America to its knees as it brought down New York City in the '70s? Only if we recognize it's intentional – rather than the work of just a goofball, senile president.

Spoken like a true -- and truly untrustworthy -- conspiracy theorist.

Posted by Terry K. at 5:29 PM EST

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Media Research Center executive Tim Graham is so desperate to discredit fact-checkers for daring to fact-check his fellow conservatives that his fails in that area keep piling up. He did this again in an Oct. 14 post:

PolitiFact gets very defensive when Republicans attack the Biden administration. On Monday, PolitiFact's Jon Greenberg gave Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) a "False" for an October 5 tweet about Attorney General Merrick Garland's controversial orders to investigate parents as potential violent criminals. 

Rick Scott wrongly warns FBI coming after loud parents at school board meetings."

The clear answer is that the FBI is not targetng parents for merely speaking out at school board meetings, and Garland has never said otherwise. Even Graham's own MRC could find no evidence of such in the National School Boards Association's letter to Garland expressing their concerns, claiming only that the letter "suggested" such a claim. Rather than admit the evidence doesn't support him, Graham demanded that things outside Scott's claim be fact-checked and insisted that someone's speculation is just the same as a debunking:

Greenberg quoted from Garland's memo....but never imagined whether he should check the liberal argument, if there has in fact been a "disturbing spike" in threats or violence at school administrators. Does anyone have a count?

[...]

The only note of balance in this piece is law professor Eugene Volokh arguing "Garland mentioned harassment and intimidation. If he had stopped with criminal threats, we would agree. But I’ve seen the terms ‘harassment’ and ‘intimidation’ used very broadly. I can see someone at a meeting worrying that if they get up too often, or they say too much, they might be charged."

Graham didn't explain why law enforcement isn't allowed to be proactive and that they must wait until a school board member is injured or killed before anyone is allowed to question the actions of parents whipped into a frenzy by right-wing activists pushing dubious claims (like the MRC). Instead, he launched a personal attack on the researcher for daring to fact-check Scott, then lashed out at PolitiFact for fact-checking conservatives at all:

Greenberg has pounced on Scott seven times this year -- all of them "Mostly False" or "False." Overall, in 2021, Jon Greenberg has fact checks on Republican politicians or entities, and just seven on all Democrats. Four of those were on President Biden. Greenberg's two fact checks on Senate Democrats (Tim Kaine and Sherrod Brown) were both rated "True."

Overall, Rick Scott has 172 fact checks from PolitiFact -- 80 of them Mostly False or worse. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer has... 23.

Let's guess this is because Scott is from Florida, and PolitiFact is a project of the Poynter Institute in Florida. Nelson has only 30 fact checks. Fully half of those were "True" or "Mostly True," and only six were "Mostly False" or "False."

As much as Graham loves to whine about conservatives being fact-checked, he has never provided evidence to back up his unspoken contention that Democratic politicians lie at least as much as Republican ones in a way that would justify the fact-checking equity he's effectively demanding. It seems as if he's afraid that inconveneient facts would get in the way of his narrative.

Posted by Terry K. at 1:59 PM EST

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During both impeachments of Donald Trump, CNSNews.com was a fierce advocate for him, denouncing the procedure as frivolous and stupid. But when frivolous attempts to impeach Presdient Biden and his administration officials came from Republican members of Congress and its favorite right-wing radio host, CNS was more than happy to uncritically promote them, even though they're nothing more than political stunts that come from a desire by Republicans for political revenge against the Democrats who impeached Trump.

Indeed, CNS was pushing for Biden's impeachiment even before he took office. We've noted that Susan Jones cheered that extremist Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene planned to file articles of impeachment against Biden on Jan. 21, the day after he took office, though there were few coherent details to offer as far as a reason -- which is to say, it was being done out of pure spite (which apparently was totally cool with CNS). As the year went on, less fringe voices made impeachment a talking point -- and CNS was glad to help. Jones helped Mark Levin prime the pump in an Aug. 5 article:

It's time for "tough guy Republicans" to discuss impeaching President Joe Biden, conservative radio host, lawyer, author and constitutional scholar Mark Levin told Fox News's Sean Hannity Wednesday night.

Levin called Biden "the most disastrous president in modern American history."

"Isn't it time to remove this guy from the Oval Office or at least make an effort?" Levin asked. "So you tough guy Republicans who come on here, you tough guy Republicans on radio, how about it? The I-word, impeachment -- let's start to talk about it. Or the 25th amendment. It will never happen, but let's start to talk about it. He's doing more damage to this country as far as I'm concerned than any single one of our enemies."

On Aug. 11, Jones parroted a Republican congressman's desire to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, whose first name she couldn't bother to put in the lead paragraph her article, which is basic journalistic style:

"Secretary Mayorkas is a threat to the sovereignty and security of our nation," Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) said on Tuesday, as he filed articles of impeachment against the Homeland Security Secretary.

"As a result of his actions and policies, America is more in danger today than when he began serving as Secretary. He is willfully refusing to maintain operational control of the border and is encouraging aliens to enter our country illegally," Biggs said in a statement.

Jones did concede that Biggs admitted his impeachment attempt is a stunt: "In the Democrat [sic] controlled House, the attempt to impeach Alejandro Mayorkas is unlikely to go anywhere, but it does serve to highlight the crisis in border communities, Biggs told One America News Network." However, she made no attempt to contact Mayorkas for a response.

In an Aug. 26 article, Melanie Arter transcribed an appearance by former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows on Sean Hannity's Fox News show, where he delcared that "I think he is unfit, and quite frankly, there are talks of impeachment going on, on Capitol Hill right now." an Aug. 30 article by Megan Williams touted Levin ranting some moare about impeaching Biden: "But should not Republicans start to talk about the removal of this president, or the fact that the cabinet needs to start considering the 25th Amendment; otherwise, what is the point of impeachment and the 25th Amendment?"

Patrick Goodenough used a Sept. 1 article to hype how "members of the House Freedom Caucus on Tuesday said President Biden, Defense Secretary Gen. Lloyd Austin and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley should resign" over the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and that "caucus members are also calling for the impeachment of Secretary of State Antony Blinken."

Jones gushed over another GOP imperachment stunt in a Sept. 23 article:

Four Republican House members are calling for the impeachment of President Biden, based on "clear violations of his duties as president."

They admit the effort won't go anywhere in a Democrat-controlled government, but they describe it as a "shot across the bow" for "when" Republicans take back the House in 2022.

Again, Jones couldn't be bothered to contact the target of the impeachment attempt for a response.

Jones devoted an Oct. 18 article to yet another fearmongering impeachment call made on Fox News:

"Joe Biden is criminally negligent. His administration, I think, is criminally negligent when it comes to controlling our border," Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said in a Saturday interview with Fox News’s Judge Jeanine Pirro.

Graham said Biden should be impeached for failing to secure the United States:

[...]

Graham said the terrorists now roaming freely in Afghanistan may one day take advantage of the open southwest border -- "come here and kill a bunch of us if we don't change."

"Our men and women in the Border Patrol and I.C.E. are under siege. They are American heroes. You just would not believe what it's like to work along the border. I don't know how they do it, and they've been completely abandoned by President Biden, and he should be impeached over this.

“This is dereliction of duty, and a bunch of Americans are going to get killed if we don't change our policies quickly."

As usual, Jones remained in stenography mode and sought no comment from the White House.

Posted by Terry K. at 12:38 AM EST

Updated: Friday, December 3, 2021 9:05 AM EST

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We've documented how the Media Research Center sided with Dave Chappelle over his transphobic humor, and it was nowhere near done doing so. Tim Graham whined in his Oct. 22 column:

The Left claims that their most urgent battle is to save democracy, but when it comes to any questioning of the LGBT lobby, they are the ones that sound like authoritarians. The overtones are unmistakable in the “news” coverage promoting “dozens” of employees walking out of Netflix in Los Angeles on October 20 in protest. The target? A popular Dave Chappelle comedy special titled The Closer.

Tens of thousands of pro-lifers can assemble against abortion and be ignored, but assemble two dozen transgender lobbyists, and NBC and PBS treat it as momentous.

If an anti-abortion protest occurs once a year every year for 40-plus years, it ceases to be news. Graham simply wants the "liberal media" to serve as propagandists for right-wing causes.

Graham went on to complain about a NBC report about the Netflx protest: "NBC’s stilted story failed to offer one clip or quote or explanation of what Chappelle said that was offensive. We can guess it’s because the comedian said 'gender is a fact' and 'Every human being on Earth had to pass through the legs of a woman to be on Earth. That is a fact.' Is that somehow too horrific for NBC to include?" Graham is cherry-picking a remark that conveniently echoes right-wing narratives; Chappelle said many other transphobic things.

Graham had right-wing movie critic Christian Toto on his Oct. 22 podcast to defend Chappelle some more. Toto fawned over Chappelle as "the most popular, most talented stand-up of his time" and complained that Chappelle's critics weren't quoting what Chappelle actually said -- though he didn't call out Graham for selectively quoting Chappelle in a way that advances right-wing narratives.Tot went on to grouse that non-famous people drew attention to Chappelle's transphobic humor: "Chappelle has millions of fans. People love the work he does. And you know, he's a liberal guy -- it's not like conservatives are rallying for a fellow conservative. But, you know, why should this small group of people have say and sway over what Dave Chappelle is able to do?"

The MRC is a pretty small group too; why should it have say and sway over anything? But Toto never asked Graham that.

Graham responded by arguing that only "fans of Chappelle" or "people who think comedians should have free speech" have the right to tell people why they find Chappelle offensive. He went on repeat his charry-picking, insisting that Chappelle wasn't "mocking transgenders" but his saying "things they can't stand to hear, which is gender is a fact, every one of us came out of a woman."

An Oct. 23 post by Toto rehashed another Chappelle-related thing he talked about in Graham's podcast, that the Associated Press and Variety "brazenly lie[d] about a Chappelle protest. He offered no evidence that the incorrect AP claims he called out were delibarate. Toto had to append an update admitting that the AP corrected its account of the protest.

On Oct. 27, Lydia Switzer unusually praised a CNN host for defending Chappelle:

On Tuesday’s New Day, CNN’s John Avlon surprisingly stood up for free speech: even speech he doesn’t like. He was part of a discussion, along with fellow liberal Mara Schiavocampo, about Dave Chappelle’s new comedy special The Closer, which has faced intense pushback and outrage from the cancel culture mob, especially from Netflix employees who claim that some of Chappelle’s jokes were offensive and transphobic. 

Netflix has refused to take down Chappelle’s special, which has high audience ratings and has been extremely popular on the streaming service since its release.

That would seem to undercut the MRC's narrative of CNN as relentlessly "liberal," but Switzer didn't bring that up. Instead, she brought up how Schiavocampo said she thought Chappelle's special was "mean," adding, "Unfortunately for Schiavocampo, mean and even offensive language is still speech worth protecting." Funny, the MRC doesn't seem to think so when that "mean and even offensive language" is directed at conservative.

Posted by Terry K. at 9:32 PM EST

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COVID misinformer Art Moore wrote in an Oct. 14 WorldNetDaily article:

Amid the controversy over basketball superstar Kyrie Irving's refusal to take a COVID-19 vaccine, a former NBA player says his season ended early last year after he developed blood clots he attributes to a COVID shot.

Brandon Goodwin, who was a point guard for the Atlanta Hawks, recently told his side of the story on a Twitch stream, SB Nation reported.

A team report said the player's season ended in May due to a "minor respiratory condition." But Goodwin said his health problems began after his received a COVID-19 vaccine.

"I got sick and I never quite recovered from it," Goodwin said on the stream, as posted on YouTube. "I would always have back pain, I was just super tired in the games."

He eventually decided to go see a doctor.

"That’s when I found out I had blood clots. That all within the span of a month," he said.

"I was fine until then," Goodwin said. "I was fine up until I took the vaccine, I was fine."

Moore didn't report two key pieces of information: 1) Goodwin seemed to walk back his cliam in a tweet stating, "I got sick. Maybe it was the vaccine maybe it was covid (i don’t know) I’m not a expert", and 2) blood clots are extremely rare complications; PolitiFact computed the occurrence of the most severe kind of blood clot linked to a COVID vaccine at 0.0003 percent.

It's a questionable story that WND decided to hype because it fit its anti-vaxx narrative. But not telling readers the full story is irresponsible, and it makes other websites not want to republish WND content -- thw whole point behind the WND News Center, its scheme to have donors pay for its reporting -- because it can't be trusted.

Posted by Terry K. at 7:43 PM EST

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Just as CNSNews.com took marching orders from its Media Research Center parent in hyping false right-wing attacks claiming that school offricials and the Department of Justice want to brand all parents who merely speak out at school board meetings while whipped up over conservative narratives about critical race theory and other subjects as domestic terrorists, it also promoted another related MRC narrative regarding a sexual assault that occurred in a Virginia school. Managing editor Michael W. Chapoman dutifully wrote in an Oct. 14 article:

In May, the 14-year-old daughter of plumber Scott Smith reportedly was raped in the girls’ bathroom at a Loudoun County, Va., public school by a boy wearing a skirt. The boy subsequently was transferred to another Virginia school where he reportedly attacked another female teen last week. All the while, the Loudoun County School Board was pushing a transgender bathroom policy, which it approved in August and has begun implementing.

Yet the major news outlets – ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC – aren’t covering the story, so far. The alleged rapist reportedly is a “gender-fluid individual,” according to Fox News.

[...]

As all this was occurring, the school board was enthusiastically supporting making accommodations for transgender students. Finally, in August, despite numerous parents’ objections, the board approved (7-2) a transgender rights policy, which requires teachers to call students by their preferred pronouns. It also mandates renovating the bathrooms in Loudoun County public schools to allow for “gender-inclusive” and “single-user restrooms.”

Chapman also not-so-helpfully added a stock photo of someone in a colorful skirt to illustrate his article, creepily suggesting this was the skirt the assailant wore during the attack. But he censored the fact that -- as even the MRC had to admit -- the alleged assault happened before the school board started discussing transgender rights. And as a loyal MRC employee, he made sure to add that his boss, Brent Bozell, went on Fox Business to whine that a local story wasn't getting national coverage, though he apparently never explained why this story deserved it -- although the unspoken reason was to push culture-war buttons to get a Republican, Glenn Youngkin, elected Virginia governor.

(CNS also devoted a separate article to Bozell's rantings. He's the boss, after all.)

Chapman also censored the full story of the assault: The boy and girl had previously had consensual sex, and the encounter in question began as consensual, with both agreeing to meet in the bathroom for sex, until the girl withdrew consent. It's no less of an assault, but it's much more complicated than Chapman's simplistic, transphobic narrative of "a boy wearing a skirt" randomly assaulting a female student.

Nevertheless, Chapman followed up in an Oct. 26 article:

Given that parents in Loudoun County, Va., were not informed about an alleged sexual assault of a ninth-grade girl in a public school bathroom by a boy wearing a skirt, five former state attorneys general have questioned the inaction of Virginia AG Mark Herring and "called for him to immediately open an investigation."

"The Loudoun County School Superintendent and the School Board chose not to report two sexual assaults to parents," the former attorneys general wrote. "With this failure, the school system places other girls at risk in Loudoun County and broke reporting regulations.”

[...]

As the battle between parents and the school board carried on, a 14-year-old girl reportedly was raped in the girls bathroom of Stone Bridge High School in Ashburn, Va., on May 28 by a male teen wearing a skirt. The teen was later arrested on July 8 and charged with two counts of forcible sodomy. 

Again, Chapman refused to tell readers the full truth about the assault and the history behind it.

Meanwhile, Hans Bader tried to inflame things again in his Nov. 8 column in order to peddle hate over transgender rights as expressed through a "wear a skirt to school day":

A skirt-wearing boy in Loudoun County, Va. was recently found guilty of sexual assault in juvenile court for anally raping a girl in a school restroom. Prior to the school board's passage of a transgender bathroom policy, the school superintendent falsely claimed there was no record of sexual assaults in school bathrooms. The superintendent had inaccurately stated, "We don’t have any record of assaults occurring in our restrooms." But the sexual assault by the skirt-wearing boy had already occurred.

Like Chapman, Bader censored the full story of the assault.

CNS is being less and less like a "news" organization and more and more like a dishonest, partisan right-wing advocacy group. If there ever was a line between CNS and the MRC, it has largely disappeared.

Posted by Terry K. at 12:16 AM EST

Updated: Thursday, December 2, 2021 11:22 PM EST

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If you hate transgender people, the Media Research Center will automataically love you and immediately memory-hole any previous criticism of you. We saw that with Ricky Gervais and J.K. Rowling when they turned transphobic, and now we're seeing it with comedian Dave Chappelle. Back in 2019, the MRC rushed to defend Chappelle after he was caught ttelling mean-spirited transgender jokes, and they're rushing to defend him again after a new round of transphobic humor.

In an Oct. 7 post, Matt Philbin mocked an NBC News article on Chappelle, sneering that the complaints came from one transgender person with only a thousand followers and "some other LGBT something something activist." But the complaints turned out to have more staying power than Philbin planned, so he did another mocking post the next day:

The woke left has reached peak absurdity. Yesterday, I noted that NBC got the vapors because Dave Chappelle spoke sense on his new Netflix special, “The Closer.” Today, Variety ;has more on the fallout of Chappelle saying “Gender matters.”

Jacklyn Moore, who was a writer and showrunner on Netflix’s Dear White People, is angry, and vows not to work with Netflix again. On Instagram, Moore said the streaming platform is “promoting and profiting from dangerous transphobic content.”

They’re jokes, but never mind. Variety said “Moore transitioned during the pandemic, a journey she has chronicled across her social media platforms.” Like ya do. Sounds more like a career move than anything else.

Funny, the MRC never gives the "they're jokes" defense to comedians when they make jokes about conservatives.

As criticism of Chappelle increased, so did the shrill MRC posts defending him. Alex Christy groused in an Oct. 11 post:

Irony died during Monday's edition of At This Hour on CNN as guest host Boris Sanchez and "transgender D.J. and actress" Lina Bradford urged viewers to reconsider their Netflix subscriptions in the aftermath of Dave Chappelle's latest comedy show, where he took on cancel culture and woke gender theory.

[...]

In his show, Chappelle said that he didn't care if he got dragged on Twitter, "because Twitter is not a real place." In his next show, maybe he can throw in a joke about not caring that CNN was trying to cancel him, because CNN was not a real news organization.

In an Oct. 13 post, Scott Whitlock could have given Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos for credit for saying that  "We don’t allow titles on Netflix that are designed to incite hate or violence, and we don’t believe The Closer crosses that line" -- but instead he ranted that Sarandos waslying because "Netflix produces shows encouraging hate against Christians routinely and without remorse or the same level of uproar." Whitlock, however, cited only two examples of such from the dozens of shows Netflix has produced.

Right-wing movie critric Christian Toto ran to Chappelle's defense in an Oct. 16 post while also lashing out at critics of right-wingers like himself who like to say "woke" and "cancel culture" a lot:

Call it a polite bullying, or more proof that the journalist (or editor in charge) wants to embarrass the star even more. An industry aghast at Cancel Culture would do no such thing. Today’s news editors behave otherwise.

And we’re seeing it again, courtesy of Dave Chappelle. The comedy icon released his latest Netflix special, “The Closer,” Oct. 5 on the streaming giant. The special lets Chappelle explain, and by most measure double down, on jokes deemed beyond the pale by woke activists. His critics dubbed the material “transphobic,” just like they did two years ago when he uncorked similar barbs on “Sticks & Stones.”

Note many of the same outlets will deploy the scare quotes around terms like “woke” and “Cancel Culture” as if neither may only exist in the minds of their critics. It’s laughable.

The media attack against Chappelle came in several waves. Sometimes reporters weaponize a modest number of social media posts – as little as three – to build the narrative that the comedian had stepped out of bounds.

Toto doesn't explain how that's any different from how right-wingers attack non-conservative content they disagree with.

Jeffrey Lord used his Oct. 16 column to warn of "organizations with staffers who are in reality leftist totalitarians. Totalitarians with zero regard for the free speech that in fact is what enables their respective institutions do what they were created to do, whether that means producing TV specials and movies (Netflix) or reporting the news of the day and various opinions on that news of the day." Lord went on to give the praise for Sarandos that Whitlock denied him: "Three cheers for Netflix in standing firmly behind Dave Chappelle. Co-CEO Sarandos is refusing to be bullied into silencing the comedian."

Lord added: "The real problem here is that the fight for free speech, even - especially even - offensive free speech, is raging across America. Giving in and appeasing the bullies, no matter where they show up, is never the answer." He didn't mention that shouting down free speech they don't agree with and acting like bullies is the MRC's entire reason for existence.

Posted by Terry K. at 9:01 PM EST

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Newsmax columnist Conrad Black has long been a Trump suck-up -- after all, doing so resulted in Trump pardoning him for his tax and perjury crimes. So it's nor a surprise that Black embraced Trump Big Lie about the electionin his Oct. 5 column:

In an election where there were more than 40 million harvested and dropped and otherwise unverifiable ballots and where, if 53,000 ballots in Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Arizona had gone for Trump instead of Biden, Trump would have won the election, suggestions of Democratic skulduggery are not the demented fabrications of the candidate whom Sullivan compares (none too favorably) to Hitler and Mussolini.

There were 19 serious lawsuits contesting the constitutional integrity of the election — as opposed to individual voters complaining about the treatment of their own ballots — but the judiciary, for improvised process reasons, declined to hear any of them.

The thought that the Trump campaign might have had a legitimate grievance is discounted as a complete fantasy if not a manifestation of outright insanity.

Conveniently, the disorganized, over-hyped, and rather unserious efforts of Sidney Powell (who was a public advocate and not retained by Trump) and Rudolph Giuliani made Trump’s claims of a tainted election easier to ridicule and dismiss.

The huge number of unverifiable ballots and undoubted lapses of scrutinization standards in a very narrow result in key states while the election was without significant incident in 44 of the 50 states, raises very serious questions about the integrity of the election and the vote-counting system.

Black also laughably insists that Trump's pushing of the Big Lie has been "reasonably civil" (but has to go to ancient Rome to make it look that way):

Given the doubtful result and the judicial abdication, Trump’s response has been reasonably civil. When the majority of the Roman Senate condoned the murder of the distinguished reformers Tiberius and Gaius Gracchi in the late second century B.C., they eliminated the possibility for the republic to continue to evolve sensibly.

When the senators, by their incompetence, squandered armies and left Rome vulnerable to invaders, and generals the Senate suspected of not being malleable (Marius, Sulla, Pompey, and Caesar) repelled Rome’s enemies and acquired for themselves the loyalty of the armies that they had led successfully, the Senate surrendered the republic to political generals.

[...]

Trump, in fact, has been quite moderate in response to the questionable 2020 result and to what is now being unearthed as the politicization in 2016 of the national intelligence agencies and the FBI as they unconstitutionally assisted the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign in trying to cheat Trump out of the 2016 election.

Black completed his suck-up hat trick by absolving Trump of all blame for "the events of Jan. 6":

Biden is a failure and the Bidenization of America is a disaster.

The phenomenon of wokeness and the self-loathing of America are fraudulent, and the indulgence of them is disgusting. Apart from calling for a large peaceful protest, Trump had nothing to do with the events of Jan. 6 and certainly nothing to do with any law-breaking at the U.S. Capitol.

The attempt to defame Trump as a putschist and hype Jan. 6 as a traumatizing event on the scale of Sept. 11, 2001, or Pearl Harbor is a total failure.

Finally, Black invoked "the Russian collusion smear, the abuse of the impeachment process, the espionage and defamation conducted against one candidate with the imprimatur of the national intelligence and federal police, the influence-peddling of the Biden family, the attempted vote-rigging in 2020" to declare: "Donald Trump was the chief victim, and with all his failings, nothing is more natural than that he should lead the forces of responsible opposition to almost all the damage to the American political system that Peggy Noonan, Andrew Sullivan, and Robert Kagan — all esteemed people — have mindlessly cheered and promoted these last five years."

Trump has more than demonstrated himself to be anything but a "responsible" leader, but Black is too busy sucking up to notice.

Posted by Terry K. at 7:05 PM EST

Updated: Wednesday, December 1, 2021 7:11 PM EST

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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:

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."

Posted by Terry K. at 1:36 PM EST

Updated: Wednesday, December 1, 2021 1:45 PM EST

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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.

Posted by Terry K. at 1:00 AM EST

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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.

Posted by Terry K. at 9:25 PM EST

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