Newsmax Writer Plugs His Old Employer Topic: Newsmax
An Oct. 19 Newsmax article by John Gizzi seized on an obscure anniversary to go off on a tangent about a conservative opinion publication:
Last week was the 35th anniversary of the storied summit in Reykjavik, Iceland, between then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, then-General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
In what initially was considered a failure when both men left without an arms agreement, Reykjavik soon became a synonym for the beginning of the end of the Cold War.
Three years later, the USSR split like a giant amoeba and Gorbachev became the last leader of the Communist colossus.
Little known is the role that Human Events, the nation’s oldest conservative news weekly played in the events of the summit of Oct. 11-12, 1986.
Founded in 1944, Human Events was the nation’s oldest conservative publication — and Reagan’s favorite, something on which biographers of the 40th president universally agree.
"I’m addicted to it," then-former President Reagan told me during a visit to his Los Angeles office in June of 1992.
It's not until the very endof his article the Gizzi finally hinted at the reason for his piece: "John Gizzi was a correspondent and later political editor of Human Events from 1979-2013."
The print version of Human Events ceased publication in 2013, moving to a limited online schedule. The website was purchased by new owners in 2019 with the goal of pushing it farther right. CNSNews.com editor in chief Terry Jeffrey is a former Human Events editor.
CNS Flip-Flops On The Johnson Amendment To Own The Libs Topic: CNSNews.com
As part of its efforts to get a Republican elected Virginia governor, CNSNews.com tried to play gotcha in an Oct. 19 article by Megan Williams:
George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley questioned whether Vice President Kamala Harris deliberately tried to violate the law by creating a video played to black Virginia churchgoers, urging them to vote for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe.
"The Biden Administration has to enforce our tax laws, including rules governing 501(c)3 organizations, including churches," Turley told Laura Ingraham on Monday's "The Ingraham Angle." "Now part of those regulations include what’s called the Johnson Amendment, and that prohibits direct politicking in churches in order to be tax-exempt."
Williams added a Turley quote in a transcriopt: "So, if churches play this video, they would be in violation of federal law. If the White House participated in this plan to have direct politicking, they would have assisted in that violation. Now that puts them in a rather awkward position since their administration has to enforce this very rule."
But Williams left buried in the transcript another statement by Turley:
What’s interesting, Laura, is President Trump really did not like the Johnson Amendment, insisted that he was going to get rid of it.
“And when he did, many Democrats, many legal experts cried foul, and they said this is destroying the separation of church and state, this is encouraging the violation of federal law. And yet, after this video played, there was nothing but crickets from many of those areas.”
But if Trump got rid of the Johnson Amendment, why is Turley accusing Harris of violating something that doesn't exist? That's because Trump didn't actually get rid of it; he just issued an executive order that basically didn't do anything and left the statute on the books.
This was followed by an Oct. 27 column by Star Parker, who declared: "According to some opinions, Harris' politicking for McAuliffe in churches violates either or both the Johnson Amendment, which prohibits tax-exempt entities such as churches from electioneering, and the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal government officials from using their position to influence the outcome of an election."
But like it was with the Logan Act, CNS is being hypocritical about the Johnson Amendment: the desire to see it enforced depends on which party is controlling the White House. Indeed, it aggressively cheered efforts by Trump and its fellow conservative to blunt to repeal the amendment. Let's look at how that was done:
An August 2016 article by Susan Jones touted then-candidate Trump telling evangelicalpastors that "we're going to get your voice back" because, he said, "he told his people to add repeal of the Johnson amendment into the Republican Party Platform."
A column the next day by Alliance Defending Freedom's Erik Stanley declared that "Pulpit freedom won’t truly exist in America until something is done about the Johnson Amendment."
An October 2016 column by Family Research Ceouncil president Tony Perkins huffed: "Today, many pastors and churches have been intimidated into silence by guidance from the Internal Revenue Service that relies on the Johnson Amendment to repress speech from the pulpit. This is not right, and it must change."
A November 2016 column by John Stonestreet gushed that in a meeting with Trump and his aides, it was clear that one of the definitions of "religious liberty" they had was "=repealing the Johnson Amendment."
A February 2017 article by Melanie Arter touted how then-Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan said he endorses "Trump’s plan to get rid of the Johnson amendment, which bars pastors from endorsing political candidates from the pulpit." Another article that month highlighted Trump's claimed desire to, in the words of Vice President Mike Pence, "take action on the Johnson amendment."
A column that month by Bill Donohue lamented that Trump was being "criticized for his desire to repeal the Johnson Amendment" and attacked one critic's claim that it might open a "dark money loophole for political donations."
In May 2017, Craig Bannister hyped Trump's executive order that "directs the IRS to exercise maximum enforcement discretion to alleviate the burden of the Johnson Amendment" and how "Priests, nuns, the largest women’s public policy group in the U.S., and the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. all gave thanks" for the order -- though, as noted above, it didn't really do anything.
That was followed by Arter gushing over Trump's signing of the order, which she falsely claimed repealed the amendment:
President Donald Trump marked the National Day of Prayer on Thursday by signing an executive order repealing the Johnson Amendment, which targets religious leaders who engage in political speech by threatening their tax-exempt status.
“For too long, the federal government has used the power of the state as a weapon against people of faith - bullying and even punishing Americans for following their religious beliefs,” the president said.
A column by Stonestreet, however, surprisingly admitted that Trump's executive order was largely for show: "the Johnson Amendment is bad law, but it’s rarely, if ever, enforced. So the order effectively tells the IRS to continue doing what it is already doing." A column by Ryan T. Andersaon a few days later similarly conceded that "legislation is required to actually address the Johnson Amendment—which isn’t the prime priority on religious liberty."
Nevertheless, Arter returned to gushing in a June 2017 article that in a speech, Trump "talked about how he repealed the Johnson Amendment, which made prohibited nonprofits - including churches - from endorsing political candidates and participating in political campaigns or risk losing their nonprofit status." A separate article the following uncritically quoted Trump saying, "I just signed an executive order following -- and this is something that makes me very happy and very proud -- following through on my campaign pledge to stop the Johnson Amendment from interfering with your First Amendment rights."
The confusion over what exactly Trump did, and CNS' failure to consistently report the facts, continued:
An October 2017 article by Arter uncritically quoted Trump claiming that his executive order "followed through on one of my most important campaign promises to so many of you - to prevent the horrendous Johnson Amendment from interfering with your 1st Amendment rights."
A February 2018 article by Craig Bannister quoted Pence saying that " we’ll continue to free up the pulpits of this country by repealing the Johnson Amendment, because freedom shouldn’t stop at the doors of our churches, synagogues, or places of worship.”
A May 2018 article by Arter uncritically quoted Trump: "Last year on this day, I took executive action to prevent the Johnson Amendment - a disaster- from interfering with our First Amendment rights. I was so proud of that."
Patrick Goodenough similarly quoted Trump saying in August 2018, “We have stopped the Johnson Amendment from interfering with your First Amendment rights,” though he did parenthetically add: "(Trump signed an executive order in May 2017 instructing the Treasury Department not to enforce the provision against religious organizations. Initiatives are underway in Congress to repeal it.)"
That same month, a column by Alveda King listed "Rescind the Johnson Amendment" among Trump's campaign promises, misleadingly suggesting he has fulfilled it.
In a May 2019 article, Arter uncritically wrote that "Trump said he’s most proud of repealing the Johnson Amendment, a provision in the U.S. tax code that prohibits non-profit organizations from endorsing or opposing political candidates," adding Trump's false claim that "we got rid of the Johnson Amendment. That’s a big thing."
Why would CNS want a Democrat prosecuted under a law it and its allies want repealed? Because they're a bunch of hypocrites.
MRC Crams A Lot Of 'Big Tech' Victimhood Into A Single Post Topic: Media Research Center
Alec Schemmel puts every bit of the Media Research Center's "big tech" victim narrative he could muster into a Sept. 21 post:
Big Tech overwhelmingly censors Republican members of Congress by a rate of 53-to-1 compared to congressional Democrats.
That censorship has hit Republican Senators Rand Paul (KY) and Ron Johnson (WI), Rep. Jim Jordan (OH) and other Republicans in Congress. Facebook and Twitter have used their censorship mechanisms at least 30 separate times against Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA), including five Twitter suspensions and the flagging of at least 24 tweets with some type of warning label. Democrats have had just one member from the last two U.S. congressional delegations censored.
YouTube has deleted content posted by Senators Rand Paul (KY) and Ron Johnson (KY) and suspended both their accounts.
But besides censoring those Republicans already in Congress, Big Tech has also reportedly taken measures that impact new Republicans attempting to join the legislative body. Republican candidates running for U.S. Congress have been censored at least 15 times since November of 2019. Free Speech America could not find a single example of Democrat candidates facing censorship.
As is usual for the MRC, Schemmel is being deliberately dishonest. Social media did not "censor" these people; they simply enforced their pre-existing rules, polices and terms of service on their users. (The MRC, normally a supporter of private property rights, has tried hard to avoid acknowledging that these are private companies that have the right to set policies and enforce them.) Schemmel offers no evidence to support his assertion mainstream conservatives are exclusively being "censored" for expressing mainstream conservative views. While he claims that "Free Speech America could not find a single example of Democrat candidates facing censorship," he provides no documentation to prove that FSA made any actual effort to find those examples. After all, the MRC has no interest in demonstrating ideological parity on this issue. It may very well be that, unlike Republicans, Democrats care about following the terms of service of social media operations -- something Schemmel has apparently not considered.
Further, Schemmel portraying Greene has a prolific "victim" of "censorship" is particularly dishonest. The MRC loves to do that while, ironically, censoring the extremist views and offensive behavior that repeatedly get her in trouble with social media. Again, it serves the MRC's narrative better to not to tell the full truth about her.
Schemmel went on to complain:
Facebook is aiding incumbent candidates, according to a Sept. 13, article. The Wall Street Journaluncovered internal Facebook files indicating the platform was keeping a so-called “whitelist” of powerful figures that it was “shielding” from its typical censorship procedures. “While the program included most government officials, it didn’t include all candidates for public office,” The WSJ reported, “at times effectively granting incumbents in elections an advantage over challengers.”
Schemmel didn't mention that one of the chief beneficiaries of that Facebook policy was Donald Trump, who was repeatedly given a pass to violate the platform's rules until the Jan. 6 insurrection demonstrated his violaions could no longer be ignored -- something the MRC censored in a separate post on it. Also, it was later revealed that the Journal's source for this and other claims made about Facebook is Frances Haugen, whom the MRC is trying to denigrate for not being a right-winger.
And it wouldn't be the MRC if Schemmel didn't portray Donald Trump as the ultimate victim:
Big Tech began labeling virtually everything being posted by former President Trump and his campaign around the 2020 election. Platforms dispensed one of several censorship labels used to challenge and suppress information. The former president was eventually universally deplatformed by Big Tech and is still fighting to return.
Note that Schemmel is completely silent on the nature of the Trtump content that was "censored" -- because he knows that Trump was spreading lies and conspiracy theories about election fraud. Schemmel -- as MRC writers are wont to do -- conflates merely labeling a Trump post as false as "censorship," even though in most cases the original post could still be read.
A slight amount of comfort can be taken in that Schemmel didn't repeat the MRC-promulgated lie that Trump was removed from social media because he called for "peace" after the Jan. 6 riot (which he helped incite).
CNS' Donohue: Columbus Day Justified Because Native Americans Were Violent Thugs Topic: CNSNews.com
Leading up to Columbus Day, CNSNews.com published a three-part series by dishonest Catholic Bill Donohue on why Americans should celebrate Columbus Day enthusiastically and without guilt.
In his Oct. 6 column, Donohue complained about Howard Zinn and other professors who stray from the narrative that Columbus was a univerally good person:
The fact is that many professors, especially in the humanities and social sciences, hate Western civilization; they have a particular animus against the United States. That this is happening at a time when many poor people from Latin America are crashing our borders is perverse. Yet the pampered professors still keep railing against the U.S. They just don't get it.
[...]
To top things off, those who are bashing Columbus are simultaneously lauding the legacy of Indigenous peoples. Yet a closer, and independent, examination of their historical record raises serious questions about their assigned "oppressed" status. But given the Manichean dualism that is operative—the good guys are non-whites and the bad guys are white—the outcome is predictable.
On Oct. 7, Donohue railed at the National Education Association for favoring changing Columbus Day to Indigtenous People's Day:
This is not a healthy situation. A country that cannot agree on whom to honor is in trouble. Worse, a country whose public officials take no action against those who destroy statues on public land of those who have made significant contributions to American society are sending the wrong message. When a nation's historically renowned figures become part of our throw-away culture, it does not bode well for instilling patriotism in young people.
Judging past historical figures through today's lens will likely mean that some of those in favor of excising tributes to legendary persons will themselves be erased from history. So be it.
We at the Catholic League are taking off Monday, in honor of Christopher Columbus. Sorry NEA, you carry no weight with us.
Donoue used his Oct. 8 column to serve up what he promised two days earlier would be "a politically incorrect look at Indigenous Americans," which started off this way:
Just as bad, some promote the idea that virtually all the Indians were kindly souls who respected the land and treated each other with dignity. This is a romantic fairy tale having no basis in history. The truth is that some were gentle while others were brutal.
It is also part of the conventional wisdom that almost all the Indians were massacred by the white man. Wrong.
He then disproved his own point by citing a researcher who admitted that nearly all Indians died after "the coming of the white man," and that it "occurred through such factors as the importation of virulent diseases previously unknown in the Americas, the destruction of settled life-styles, enslavement, and the psychological effects of conquest rather than through overt murders and slaughters, although plenty of these took place." Just because a large number weren't outright massacred doesn't mean that the "white man" didn't kill them.
Donohue then denigrated the idea that Native Americans were "indigenous":
Before detailing the dark side of Indigenous peoples, as a corrective to the prevailing notion that only the white man acted unjustly, it is important to note that the term "Indigenous" is misleading. The Indians were immigrants who came here from Asia. In "prehistoric times," they "crossed the land bridge across the Bering Strait to the lands of the Western Hemisphere."
Donohue followed that with a list of alleged Native American atrocities; while some were between tribes, others were against British and American settlers. He didn't explain why Native Americans should not have fought to defend their lands and livelihood. In his final example on the series of U.S.-Indian wars, Donohue seemed to be blaming Native Americans for their demise because defeating Custer at Little Big Horn led to the U.S. increasing its military activity, which "culminated in the Wounded Knee Massacre on December 29, 1890," which he frames as at least somewhat justified because U.S. troops feared "a repeat of Little Big Horn" so they fired on a tribe of disarmed Lakota tribe, killing 250 Lakota men, women, and children.
And that, Donohue wants you to believe, is why Americans should celebrate Columbus Day.
Flip-Flop: MRC Hypes Murdoch Scandal It Once Tried To Hide Topic: Media Research Center
Media Research Center writer Joseph Vazquez has been lashing outof late against James Murdoch, son of Fox News chief Rupert Murdoch, for ceasing to be as right-wing as his father and other siblings and donating money to -- gasp! -- environmental causes and non-Fox media ventures. Vazquez tried to serve up a lame "non-conservative media ignored thing that advances right-wing narratives" gotcha in an Oct. 13 post:
CNN’s cable shows have salivated at least seven times over climate activist James Murdoch’s virtue-signaling against Fox News in the past year, all while ignoring any mention of an atrocious media scandal that nearly nuked his career.
News blew up in 2011 on how the now-defunct U.K. newspaper News of the World< was set to publish its last issue following a massive phone-hacking scandal that occurred in the mid-2000s, which ultimately led to its demise. News Corporation Executive Chairman Rupert Murdoch’s estranged son James was executive chairman for News International — then-parent company of News of the World — at the time. James Murdoch would later resign. The newspaper “presided over a large-scale policy of hacking cell phones and computers belonging to celebrities, politicians, and private citizens,” according to the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs. The scandal even involved hacking the communications of Prince Harry.
But CNN has all but ignored the phone-hacking scandal while propping up Murdoch’s attacks against Fox News. A Nexis search of CNN transcripts mentioning James Murdoch between September 30, 2020, and September 30, 2021, found that none of the CNN cable shows mentioned the phone-hacking scandal whenever they cited Murdoch’s anti-Fox News stances.
But as we reported at the time, the MRC did its best to downplay the News of the World scandal in order to protect Fox News. When the scandal first broke, MRC executive Tim Graham dismissed a British paper that reported on it as "socialist" and NPR's reporting as suspect because of alleged ties to George Soros. When the scandal exploded later that year, the MRC spent days ignoring it, then tried to deflect from it.
First, it tried to play whataboutism by arguing that far lesser actions in the so-called "liberal media" were just as bad as hacking cell phones. Then, it insisted that the investigation into the scandal was being driven by "politics ... not rational detective work." Graham later got himself quoted by the Washington Post claiming that "It’s blatantly obvious that this pile-on . . . is all about Murdoch and his perceived noxious effect on American politics and media."
From there, the MRC went into full protect-Fox News mode, defending Fox News' paltry, late-to-the-game coverage of the scandal -- it averaged three segments a day, actually not a lot for a 24-hour "news" channel -- even though Fox's then-Sunday morning media watch program explicitly stated it would not cover the story when it broke (though it eventually did).The MRC's "news" division, CNSNews.com, weighed in as well, complaining the scandal was being used to target Fox News, which "is pegged as a conservative news outlet (perhaps because it is, in fact, a conservatrive news outlet?).
Rather than admit that his employer once labored to downplay the scandal he's now trying to exploit because it can be used to bash a new MRC enemy, Vazquez spent the rest of his post grumbling about "pro-James Murdoch fanboying" on CNN over him ceasing to be rabid right-winger. But it's the MRC's job to protect Fox News at all costs -- even when it involves flip-flopping on a major story.
NEW ARTICLE -- Fake News At WND: Coronavirus Edition, Part 2 Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily is still publishing falsehoods and misinformation about COVID and its vaccines, as if it believes that's not contributing to its continuing financial crisis. Read more >>
MRC Continued Hyping School Assault To Push Anti-LGBT Agenda, Get Republican Elected Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center was quick to embrace the case of an alleged sexual assault of a girl in a Virginia high school -- not because it cares about the girl, of course, but because the alleged perpetrator was "a boy in a skirt," which fits the MRC's anti-LGBT narrative, and because it could help get Republican Glenn Youngkin elected Virginia governor. In doing so, the MRC all but censored the full story of the case -- namely, that the students had a history of consensual sex before the assault occurred and that the encounter in question began as consensual sex before the girl withdrew consent -- that complicates the story and blows up the simplistic narrative of a depraved transsexual that the MRC wanted the story to be about.
As the Virginia gubernatorial election drew closer, the MRC tried to stay laser-focused on putting the narrative before facts. Nicholas Fondacaro ranted in an Oct. 28 post:
Thursday was a rough one of the liberal media’s blackout of the heinous and criminal behavior allowed to happen in schools by the liberal Loudoun County School Board. There were more alleged sexual assaults at a middle school involving groping and there was new evidence that Critical Race Theory was being peddled in by the Virginia Department of Education, plus reports of the law enforcement assets the school board wanted to bear against parents. All of it went ignored by the broadcast networks.
In his Oct. 29 column, Tim Graham hyped "actual sexual assaults in the high schools of Loudoun County" and that "a Loudoun County judge ruled the assault occurred," going on to play whataboutism to attack the Associated Press for an early story calling the story around the assault "murky":
A quick search of AP archives in 2018 shows their reporters never used the word “murky” to describe Christine Blasey Ford’s completely unproven charges of sexual assault by a teenaged Brett Kavanaugh. They did report “the conservative jurist's prospects of Senate confirmation remained murky.”
Peoples and his AP team added “Youngkin’s final-days focus on sexual predators in schools, hardly a widespread issue, will test the limits of his suburban outreach,” and “Youngkin’s dark message represents a new front in his monthslong push to repair the Republican Party’s standing in the suburbs” after Trump.
You can guess the AP didn’t describe the Democrats in the Kavanaugh hearings claiming rape was a “dark message” or “hardly a widespread issue.”
You can guess that Graham didn't tell his readers the full story of the assault.
The same day, Geoffrey Dickens cranked out a summary item:
On October 11, The Daily Wire’s Luke Rosiak dropped a bombshell report that exposed how the Loudoun County, Virginia School Board covered up the rape of a 15-year-old girl in the girls’ bathroom at the hands of a boy in a skirt just so they could pass a transgender bathroom policy. It was a horrific case of an out-of-control liberal school board putting their leftist agenda ahead of the safety of students.
Since the story broke, the boy was found guilty by a judge, there have been protests and student walkouts and it’s become a key issue in the closely watched Virginia governor’s race. So how much of their primetime programming has CNN and MSNBC spent on this explosive story?
Just 3 minutes, 8 seconds.
[...]
While Fox News aired 1 hour, 44 minutes, 38 seconds on the Loudoun sex assault case, CNN spent zero seconds on it. MSNBC primetime viewers saw just 3 minutes, 8 seconds total on the topic.
Dickens didn't explain why the story justified the nearly two hours of coverage on Fox News, or why he's using that as the benchmark for what other news channels should have done on the story.
The media are desperately trying to salvage Democrat Terry McAuliffe’s chances in Virginia’s governor's race, after his alarming comments about parents and education have cost him in the very tight election.
This week, MSNBC went so far as to call Loudoun County Public Schools in VA covering up a sexual assault as a “manufactured” and “made up” controversy.
[...]
On MSNBC’s Morning Joe the next morning, it wasn’t much better. Co-host Joe Scarborough and New York Times’ columnist Michelle Goldberg mocked the Loudoun County rape case as a “big lie”:
Scarborough complained that the first sexual assault by a boy wearing a skirt in the girls’ room happened before the transgender policy was in place, so any anger over it was inconsequential:
“This was a guy that went in and sexually assaulted a girl. There is no controversial bathroom policy regarding trans students. This is just a controversy that you and your column point out that's just been made-up,” he sneered.
Scarborough insisted again that the school’s transgender policy had nothing to do with the rape. (Does he think that allowing boys into girl’s locker rooms and bathrooms will diminish sexual assaults?)
Marsh didn't tell her readers that the encounter began as consensual, with the boy and girl agreeing to meet in the bathroom -- making it completely irrelevant to any transgender policy the school district is contemplating.
Having achieved its goal with Youngkin's election on Nov. 2, the MRC largely stopped caring about the assualt case, except to cite it in criticizing non-Fox coverage. A Nov. 4 item by Scott Whitlock complained that ABC pointed out the right-wing button-pushing that helped Youngkin win:
The media blame game for Tuesday’s Democratic election losses intensified on Thursday as ABC’s Jon Karl pinned the losses in Virginia on Republicans “exploiting parents's fears” when it came to issues like crime. What, specifically, could Karl be referring to? Perhaps the rape of a young teen by a boy in the girl’s bathroom? Karl didn’t explain and the networks have been hiding the Loudoun, Virginia rape story that galvanized the governor’s race in Virginia.
Like his colleagues, Whitlock hid the full story of the assault from readers.
Graham used his Nov. 10 column to complain that CNN's Brian Stelter pointed out Fox News' obsession with the case and Loudoun County school politics in particular:
Stelter complained about all the “propaganda and grifting” from the right about local school-board issues in Loudoun County, Virginia. He claimed there were more than 400 references to the county on Fox News in 2021. But he never mentioned the sexual assaults in high schools there as an issue. Was that “grifting” to mention? This misses the fact that the left makes national news out of local crimes and controversies all the time. See George Floyd in Minneapolis, or Michael Brown in Ferguson.
There are worlds of difference between those stories, and Graham does not explain why the deaths of George Floyd and Michael Brown should not have received national notice. Nor did Graham admit that Fox and right-wing media glommed onto the Loudoun assault story to exploit their own agendas and get Youngkin elected.
On Wednesday afternoon, Loudoun County parents, via the organization Fight for Schools, filed their petition to recall their corrupt, radical leftist school board after the members and the superintendent tried to cover up a rape in a girl’s bathroom by a “gender-fluid” boy wearing a skirt. It was the latest development in a county that has garnered national attention; but yet again, the broadcast networks skipped it during their flagship evening newscasts.
[...]
NBC can claim the outrage wasn’t genuine all they wanted but clearly, it was as Fox News noted the parents were sticking it to the school board.
Because crowing about how well Fox News is exploiting the tragedy is more important than the tragedy itself.
We've already noted that Kyle Drennen used a Nov. 18 post to complain that NBC essentially did what Fox News did by focusing on issues in a school district in Texas while "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." Of course, Drenne would never admit that Fox was exploiting the Loudon situation for political purposes the way he claims NBC was "relentlessly attacking" the Texas school district.
It appears the MRC has little further use for the female victim in the assault as a victim -- only as a partisan tool. Its agenda not only comes before the truth, it comes before basic human decency.
CNS Fully Boards Youngkin Bandwagon Only After He Wins Va. Governor Race Topic: CNSNews.com
We documented how CNSNews.com wasn't enthusiastic about Glenn Youngkin's candidacy for Virginia governor and even attempted a horribly botched hit job on him early in his candidacy. CNS did, however, push storylines that were designed to boost Youngkin's campaign regarding threats against school boards and a sexual assault at a Virginia school. As the Nov. 2 election approached, CNS did ramp up enthusiasm for the race. In a Nov. 1 article, Craig Bannister touted how Youngkin praised a rally-goer's T-shirt stating "I do not co-parent with government" and pushed his right-wing narratives:
“Terry McAuliffe wants to put government between parents and their children,” Republican Glenn Youngkin said at a campaign rally Sunday, warning of his Democrat [sic] opponent in Virginia’s race for governor ahead of Tuesday’s vote.
Youngkin issued the warning as Virginia school boards, such as that in Loudoun County, seek to silence parents who object to the imposition of liberal ideologies – such as transgender school bathrooms and the teaching of Critical Race Theory – upon their children.
The same day, Megan Williams echoed the talking point, transcribing a Youngkin appearnce on the Fox News show of CNS' favorite right-wing radio host, Mark Levin, invoking Martin Luther King Jr. and declaring that he will "ban" critical race theory on his first day as governor.
Another Nov. 1 article, by Melanie Arter, pushed an anti-McAuliffe, anti-Democratic narrative: "Democratic pollster Cornell Belcher predicted Sunday that if former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, (D) loses the governor’s race to Republican Youngkin, it will be 'catastrophic' for Democrats, because the last time a Democrat lost Virginia, they lose 60 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives."
The only article CNS published the day of the election was a piece by Patrick Goodenough quoting President Biden stating that the race wasn't a referendum on his policies. When Youngkin ended up winning, however, CNS was absolutely effusive in its praise (and its bashing of McAuliffe), devoting more articles to reaction to the results over the next couple of days than it did before the election itself:
When President Joe Biden was asked at a press conference on Wednesday “how much responsibility” he took for the bad results the Democratic Party saw in Tuesday’s election, Biden responded that he had called Virginia’s defeated Democratic gubernatorial nominee Terry McAuliffe “to congratulate him.”
The article later appended an editor's note to rub that talking point in further: "This story has been updated to note that President Biden's claim that "no governor in Virginia has ever won when he is of the...same party as the sitting president" is incorrect. When McAuliffe was elected governor of Virginia in 2013, Democrat Barack Obama was the sitting president."
A Nov. 11 article by Williams featured former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard calling McAuliffe's loss a “win for all Americans” because Democrats are purportedly trying to divide the country. We've noted CNS' flip-flopon Gabbard, suddenly embracing her because of her newfound support for Donald Trump and hatred of Hillary Clinton, while ignoring her coziness with murderous dictatorial regimes in Russia and Syria.
Youngkin's running mate for lieutenant governor, Winsome Sears, got some after-the-fact CNS love too. A Nov. 3 article by Susan Jones touted how "Winsome Sears will become Virginia's first black Republican lieutenant governor" and how she parroted right-wing talking points on Fox News, while an article by Bannister later that day was even gushier:
“I love this country so much, I’m willing to die protecting it,” Republican Virginia Lt. Gov.-Elect Winsome Sears, a Jamaican-born Marine Corps veteran, said Wednesday, introducing a Twitter video, in which she declares her love for America and leads a crowd in chanting “U-S-A!”
CNS helped Sears even less than it did Youngkin, but now it wants on her bandwagon too now that she won.
MRC Sports Blogger Won't Give Ex-Teen Criminal Credit For Rehabilitating Himself, Becoming Nike Exec Topic: Media Research Center
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.
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.
MRC Psaki-Bashing, Doocy-Fluffing Watch, Extended Vacation Edition Topic: Media Research Center
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.
WND's Farah Also Revived Cloward-Piven Bogeyman Topic: WorldNetDaily
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.
The Fact-Check Fails Continue for MRC's Graham Topic: Media Research Center
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 keeppilingup. 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.
Now That Trump's Gone, CNS Suddenly Enthusiastic About Impeachment Topic: CNSNews.com
During both impeachments of Donald Trump, CNSNews.com was a fierceadvocate 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.
MRC Can't Stop Complaining That Chappelle's Anti-Trans Humor Was Called Out Topic: Media Research Center
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.
An Oct. 19 Newsmax article by John Gizzi seized on an obscure anniversary to go off on a tangent about a conservative opinion publication:
As part of its efforts to get a Republican elected Virginia governor, CNSNews.com tried to play gotcha in an Oct. 19 
Alec Schemmel puts every bit of the Media Research Center's "big tech" victim narrative he could muster into a Sept. 21 
Leading up to Columbus Day, CNSNews.com published a three-part series by dishonest Catholic 
Media Research Center writer Joseph Vazquez has been 
The Media Research Center was 
We 
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 
Michael Brown reminds us that 
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 
We noted
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 
During both impeachments of Donald Trump, CNSNews.com was a 
We've documented
