The MRC's Year Of Being Triggered By Lil Nas X Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center -- always a haterofallthingsLGBT -- spent a good part of 2021 being triggered by things that rapper Lil Nas X did (which showed that Lil Nas X knew what he was doing). Veronica Hays kicked things off in a March 26 post with a meltdown over the "optics of heinous gay stuff" in Lil Nas X's latest video:
Lil Nas X’s latest music video is an abomination that may have just prompted the coming of the next extinction age of humanity. Prepare accordingly.
Rapper Lil Nas X -- real name is Montero Hill -- released the highly-anticipated music video for his most recent self-titled single “Montero (Call Me by Your Name)”, on Friday March 26. Nas’ creation consists of surreal and provocative visuals that include a stripper-pole extending from heaven to hell, and a gay lap dance with the devil.
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The pornographic take on the Christian themes present are twisted blasphemy that brainwashed libs on twitter are greeting with an “outpouring of love and support.” The Root calls it a “gorgeous video” and applauds Nas’ vulnerability and courage for unapologetically showcasing his authentic self. It is sad that as we approach Holy Week and Easter, the holiest time of the year for Christians throughout the world, he drops this piece of trash to peddle deviant smut to the masses.
Nas embodies the left’s progressive fantasy: a flamboyant and young black man, overtly homosexual, highly favored among the masses, and who acts as a mouthpiece for their poisonous ideology. It would almost lend one to think that his sudden skyrocketing to fame in 2019 over his insanely popular single “Old Town Road” and his coming-out as gay was purposely maneuvered as an industry plant. Regardless if that's true, Nas can certainly be considered an evil pawn meant to disrupt the already bankrupt morality of today’s society. Perhaps that's giving him too much credit.
ABC’s Nightline on Monday proved, yet again, that journalists have no concept of religion or what might be offensive. The late-night news program promoted Lil Nas X and his “Satan Shoes,” as well as the singer's new video in which he “slides down from heaven to hell on a pole and twerks on Satan.” This, apparently, is only offensive to “conservative Christians,” a label that reporter Ashan Singh uses twice.
As though this were all normal, Nightline co-host Juju Chang hyped, “Lil Nas X taking the old town road to hell. Going viral again and igniting controversy. How the 'Call Me By Your Name' singer is confronting homophobia and selling out a special edition of Satan shoes.”
Sounding like PR for the Satan-loving song, Singh touted, “It's these words and these images where Lil Nas X, who is openly gay, is seduced in the garden of Eden and then slides down from heaven to hell on a pole and twerks on Satan, that has people glued to their scenes.”
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Remember when Nightline used to be a news program? It's been quite a while since the era of Ted Koppel. Twerking with Satan makes Nightline's fascination with "bootleg butt injections" look positively classy.
In a March 31 post, Curtis Houck complained that MSNBC's Joy Reid refused to hate Lil Nas X's video: "During a rant that reveled in the R-rated Lil Nas X video and Satan-themed Nike sneakers as a way to own Christians, Reid ruled that opposition to thing such as Lil Nas X’s sexuality, transgenderism, and even China’s communist government would encourage violence against Asian Americans and LGBT people." Hays returned on April 5 to complain about a fictional version of Lil Nas X after "Saturday Night Live" satirized the right-wing freakout over him:
Saturday Night Live paints a perfect portrait of today’s tragic cultural landscape by opening the April 3 episode with a fictional talk show “Oops, You Did It Again," “that will shine light on the social pariahs of the week.” Lil Nas X, Pepe Le Pew, and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), appear as this week's worthy candidates who explain themselves before the host Britney Spears, played by cast member Chloe Fineman. She then decides if these most-discussed cultural figures are “innocent or not that innocent.”
Rightly so, the first guest to join Spears is Lil Nas X, played by Chris Redd. The 21-year-old rapper has been the topic of much controversy in recent days surrounding the explicit lap dance he administered to Satan in his “Montero” music video along with the “Satan shoes” he designed and which Nike sued him for. In order to even the playing field, Spears suggests Nas also gives a lap dance to God. He agrees and immediately a guy dressed in a white cloak with long white hair and a beard is summoned for him to dance on.
Lil Nas X knew this would happen, and he was definitely trolling right-wing Christian like the folks who staff the MRC with the video and the shoes, as a little payback for having to grow up in a homophobic Christian environment.
But rather than feel ashamed for getting played so easily, the MRC doubled down on the hat. When Lil Nas X did something else controversial in June, Gabriel Hays was right on cue with the performative hate and outrage:
Proud anti-religious homosexual Lil Nas X continued his war against the Catholic Church and traditional marriage at the 2021 BET Awards.
Appearing on the red carpet for the annual BET Awards, Nas X, whose real name is Montero Lamar Hill, turned heads with his ball gown. Though the homosexual man wearing a dress with a plunging neckline wasn’t the controversy of the moment, believe it or not. It was that the blue and white pattern on his dress featured a message attacking the Catholic Church by equating it with Nazi-ism.
For full outrageous effect, Hays also devoted three paragraphs to recounting the events in the months-old "Montero" video.
When Lil Nas X got named to a position at Taco Bell in August, it was Joseph Vazquez's turn for performative outrage, complete with insisting on calling him by his birth name instead of his stage name:
Infamous rapper Lil Nas X, who made an anti-Christian statement by straddling the Devil in a hellish music video, is now being promoted by a famous fast-food company as its chief impact officer.
Taco Bell, in its infinite wisdom, picked Lil Nas X — whose real name is Montero Lamar Hill — to become “the brand’s first Chief Impact Officer,” according to Adweek. The outlet described the new position for Hill, who has allegedly worked at Taco Bell in the past, as an “‘honorary’ gig that’s expected to run for several months and fan out over the release of his much-anticipated record, Montero, and the restaurant’s scholarship program for young creatives.”
“Young creatives” for the taco giant clearly include overtly gay artists who get a kick out of giving Satan a lap dance. Hill also caused a media firestorm this year when he announced his “>Satan Shoes,” allegedly made with a drop of human blood. Maybe Taco Bell was trying to tell consumers something when it first started selling its now-popular “Diablo” sauce.
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Hill wrote a letter accompanying the video to his 14-year-old self and tweeted it with the admission that he had an agenda behind his Satanic indiscretion: “[T]hey will say i’m pushing an agenda. but the truth is, i am. the agenda to make people stay the fuck out of other people’s lives and stop dictating who they should be.” It’s worth noting that Hill’s target audience has been reported to be “children.”
Welcome to Taco Hell.
for Lil Nas X's appearance at the MTV Video Music Awards in September, the performative outrage baton passed to Karen Townsend. After noting that he "recreated a gay prison shower scene from the music video for "Industry Baby" in his performance of the song," she went on to lament that he won an award:
Alas, Lil Nas X won the award for Video of the Year for “Montero (Call Me By Your Name).”
Lil Nas X: Wow! Let's go! Wow, oh my God!Okay, first I want to say thank you to the gay agenda! Let's go, gay agenda!
He thanked “the gay agenda” as he accepted the award for a video of him riding a stripper pole to Hell to give a gay lap dance to Satan, so it was very appropriate.
If that wasn't enough -- and it clearly wasn't -- Matt Norcorss spent an Oct. 9 post lamenting "an increasingly debased and woke culture," with his main exhibit being you-know-who, complete with yet more performative outrage over the "Montero" video:
And you won’t believe the praise that piece of garbage got from liberal publications. Also, guess who promoted Lil Nas X to “Chief Impact Officer” after he released this filth? Does the name Taco Bell sound familiar? That’s definitely going to alienate a lot of potential customers.
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And all of this is just fine with the liberal media, which celebrates filth like Lil Nas X, as well as the smut and woke lectures that go along with it. Even worse, if you think any of this content is offensive or disgusting, you’re a right-wing gasbag with partisan outrage in the eyes of organizations like MSNBC.
That's rich coming from someone whom (we assume) got paid to write about his outrage. Of course, it is partisan -- the MRC is a partisan organization with a specific agenda to oppose LGBT rights. And it spent the past year targeting someone for his sexuality -- which, of course, Lil Nas X knew would happen. The MRC played their hateful role because hating is their job -- they couldn't do otherwise. And Lil Nas X reeled them in so easily.
Before the rise of the Omicron variant, CNSNews.com -- as it likes to do -- labored to downplay the COVID pandemic ... with one exception.
An Oct. 11 commentary by Ryan McMaken of the libertarian Mises Institute insisted that the COVID pandemic is nowhere near as severe as the 1918 influenza outbreak, and those who claim otherwise are wannabe tyrants trying to "justify unprecedented increases in state power and violations of human rights": "And to what end? Apparently, to rob people of their livelihoods if they refuse to receive a vaccine. It’s to attempt to make pariahs of anyone who makes health decisions of which the regime does not approve. It’s to continue to justify 2020’s ineffectual lockdowns. It’s to justify government spending at levels unprecedented in peacetime. It’s to deny that natural immunity provides meaningful resistance to the disease."
Susan Jones -- who had spent much of 2020 massaging COVID death numbers to make President Trump look good -- returned to the number-massinging business in an Oct. 26 article, presumably to deny the need for children to get vaccinated:
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration was meeting on Tuesday to consider authorizing Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 5 to 11 years old.
As part of the daylong presentation, Fiona Havers, a member of the CDC's COVID-19 Response Team, gave an overview of COVID-19 in children ages 5–11, noting that children are at least as likely as adults to be infected with SARS-CoV-2, but they are far less likely to die:
Jones pushed that claim again in an Oct. 20 article:
As soon as federal health authorities approve the Pfizer vaccine for young children -- a decision that hasn't been made yet -- the White House is ready to get shots in arms, President Biden's COVID team announced on Wednesday.
As of October 13, CDC counts 513 COVID-involved deaths among children 0-17 since the pandemic started. That's 0.071 percent of the total 712,930 people who have died of COVID complications since January 2020.
Nevertheless, the Biden administration made it clear this morning that the push is on to vaccinate young children:
Jones went on to complain that in a Biden administration news conference on the subject, "No one asked about myocarditis, a rare heart inflammation that has occurred "especially in male adolescents and young adults" after the mRNA COVID vaccination."
There was one place that CNS felt free to fearmonger about COVID: when "illegal aliens" have it. We've already documented how CNS has spread the false fear that undocumented immigrants coming across the southern border; that attitude continued ina Sept. 10 article by Melanie Arter complaining that "White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki couldn’t explain Friday why the Biden administration is mandating COVID vaccinations for people who work but not for migrants crossing the southern border." An Oct. 13 article by Arter uncritically quoted Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham ranting that "illegal immigrants are getting preferential treatment, because people traveling into the U.S. from other countries must be vaccinated and have a negative COVID test, unless they cross the southern border."
MRC Cheers How Its Bogus Research Was Cited At Congressional Hearing Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Catherine Salgado squeed in a Dec. 1 post:
The Heritage Foundation technology policy research fellow Kara Frederick in congressional hearing testimony cited Media Research Center ground-breaking analysis on the political impacts of Big Tech’s censorship, including how Big Tech stole the 2020 election. “You have the Media Research Center, which is acting as a lion in this regard,” Frederick said, explaining how tech companies dishonestly pretend they are not biased.
Frederick testified at a hearing on Big Tech “reforms” of the House Energy and Commerce Communications and Technology Subcommittee on Dec. 1. Frederick explained how she worked for Facebook like leftist activist “whistleblower” Frances Haugen.
Frederick’s viewpoint on Big Tech was very different from censorship-supporting Haugen’s, however. Frederick said she joined Facebook because she believed in “the democratization of information,” but now Big Tech just engages in “viewpoint censorship.” Frederick cited original MRC research and polling to prove her point.
Frederick cited original MRC research. “The confluence of evidence is irrefutable. Twitter and Facebook censor Republican members of Congress at a rate of fifty-three to one, compared to Democrats. Twitter suspends conservatives twenty-one times more often than liberals,” Frederick stated. “These practices have distinct political effects.”
Frederick then cited MRC’s explosive polling on the 2020 election. “The Media Research Center found in 2020 that one in six Biden voters claimed they would have modified their vote had they been aware of information that was actively suppressed by tech companies. Fifty-two percent of Americans believe social media suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story constituted election interference.
Salgado will not tell her readers about the shadiness and dubious methods of the MRC's "research." The "explosive polling on the 2020 election" she cited were actually numbers bought from Trump's election pollster, McLaughlin & Associates, who arguably has a vested interest in promoting Trump and trashing Biden (just like the MRC does), meaning those numbers cannot be considered reliable. The poll find that "Fifty-two percent of Americans believe social media suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story constituted election interference" is also from poll data manufactured by McLaughlin for the benefit of the MRC. The MRC has never disclosed in any of its promotion of these polls that McLaughlin was Trump's election pollster.
Its claim about Republican members of Congress being "censored" much more than Democratic ones (the more accurate description is that the Republicans violated social media terms of service much more than Democrats did) is even more dubious because, as we noted, while the MRC is aggressive in finding Republican examples, no evidence was offered that it was similarly aggressive -- or even made any effort at all -- in seeking Democratic examples. The MRC also weirdly revised the ratio upward, from 53-to-1 to 54-to-1, a couple weeks later without explanation -- also something legitimate researchers don't do.
And Salgado's attack on Haugen as a "leftist" whistleblower seems to be sour grapes that her claims about Facebook -- which the MRC repeated when the Wall Street Journal reported them and didn't know Haugen was the source -- are getting much more traction than the MRC's long war against Facebook has gotten.
Uncritically repeating such shoddy "research" -- especially at a congressional hearing -- doesn't make the Heritage Foundation look credible.
WND Columnist Backs Insurrectionist As 'Peaceful,' Censors Threat He Made Topic: WorldNetDaily
Andy Schlafly ranted in a Nov. 23 WorldNetDaily column:
When an Antifa protester used an ax to violently crash through Republican North Dakota U.S. Senator John Hoeven's office window, the attacker recently received a sentence of merely probation, a small fine and a return to him of his ax. His attack was captured on video, and there was no doubt about his guilt.
But when a peaceful man engages in a pro-Trump rally inside the Capitol on Jan. 6, and makes every apology imaginable afterward to the sentencing court, he receives a shocking 41-month prison sentence. He has also been held in jail all year without ever receiving a trial to which he was entitled.
His real offense and those of others receiving long prison sentences is to dare to humiliate the pompous Deep State in D.C. The message is clear: Do not embarrass the Swamp creatures or else they will retaliate as harshly as they can.
Trump seems headed to win back the White House in less than three years, and will probably pardon all of them. But in the meantime the 41-month sentence of the harmless Jacob Chansley raises doubts as to why any of the hundreds charged should be pleading guilty before a merciless, anti-free-speech court.
Schlafly offered no proof that the assailant at Hoeven's office, Thomas Starks, is a member of Antifa. A local news report on Starks' sentencing made no mention of Antifa; his attorney stated that Starks was frustrated that action on a COVID relief package had been blocked. Near as we can tell, the claim that Starks is a member of Antifa stems from an article at the right-wing site the Post Millennial, which claimed that a Facebook account under the name "Paul Dunyan" is Starks -- but no evidence is offered to support that link. A "Dunyan" post suggests the ax was returned to Starks, but the ax in the picture doesn't quite look like the ax Starks was wielding in security videos.
Meanwhile, Schlafly continued to push Chansley's alleged victimhood as a purported political prisoner:
The colorful Chansley had a winnable case had it gone to a jury trial, but he was brutally confined all year in a D.C. jail, often in solitary confinement that many consider to be a form of torture. He was denied a speedy trial even though required by federal law, and he endured hunger strikes to protest his inhumane detention.
Essentially, Chansley was tortured by the confinement until he could be misled to plead guilty in the expectation that he would be released for time served. Instead, the court punished him incredibly harshly for engaging in a form of political protest.
Colonial patriots would be turning over in their graves if they could see how the freedoms they died for have been usurped by this deprivation of fundamental rights. Chansley is being punished for humiliating the powers-that-be.
There are copious amounts of video of Chansley committing his crime. Schlafly didn't mention the threat he scrawled on a piece of paper he left on Pence's desk inside the House chamber: "It's Only A Matter of Time. Justice Is Coming."
Chansley broke the law by entering the Capitol in the manner he did, with his fellow rioting thugs, and by breaking into the House chamber, but Schlafly thinks that's totally cool: "The Capitol is a public building that should be accessible to the public. Peaceful political protests in the Capitol should not result in long prison sentences that are not imposed on leftist protesters."
Schlafly went on to rant: "The lengthy sentence of the Shaman protester is a setback to all Americans who value our First Amendment rights. When sentences are enhanced because a protester is outspoken or humiliated public officials, all Americans suffer from that retaliation." The only proof he offers that Chansley was punished for being "outspoken or humiliated public officials" was an interview Chansley conducted with "60 Minutes" a couple months after the riot, for which he failed to obtain the proper clearance that all other prisoners must receive.
Schlafly places himself firmly on the side of lawlessness and insurrection with his support of Chansley -- a sad position for a lawyer to take.
Despite Declaring Her Irrevelevant, MRC Still Bashes Bette Midler Topic: Media Research Center
For someone it has deemed irrelevant, the Media Research Center sure continues to spend an inordinate amount of time monitoring what Bette Midler says and attacking her for it. the MRC published 20 articles referencing Midler in 2021 (a drop from the 40 articles that referenced her in 2020), some of which we noted here.Tim Graham whined in a Sept. 6 post:
Sister Toldjah at RedState is reminding us that actress Bette Midler is once again expressing her outrage at pro-life legislation (this time in Texas) by demanding all the ladies engage in a "sex strike" until the liberals win and abortions are as easily available as a manicure.
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>Bitter Bette is the same Hollywood scholar who tweeted in 2018 after the Kavanaugh accuser parade failed to defeat him that “‘Women, are the n-word of the world.’ Raped, beaten, enslaved, married off...enduring the pain and danger of childbirth and life IN SILENCE for THOUSANDS of years...”
Graham sure seems quite well versed in all things Bette, even though we're not supposed to care about her or anything she has to say.
Graham returned to whine on Dec. 4 that the New York Times did an article on Midler's current book-reading habits, pettily complaining that the drawing of that that accompanied the article "was also very complimentary."
Gabriel Hays devoted a Dec. 21 post to ranting about something else Midler tweeted:
Bette Midler has a history of mean-spirited and obnoxious tweets, even by the standards of Hollywood progressives. But Midler has outdone herself.
After West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin (D) refused to vote for President Biden’s massive government spending package – dubbed the $1.75 trillion “Build Back Better Bill” and its various radical leftwing policy proposals and purchases – Hollywood wench Bette Midler cracked her knuckles and typed a furious and demeaning message to the senator and his constituents in West Virginia.
She began by tweeting, “What #JoeManchin, who represents a population smaller than Brooklyn, has done to the rest of America, who wants to move forward, not backward, like his state, is horrible.” Yep, a nearly $2 trillion spending package filled with Democrat regulations and policies is the only way forward. How could Manchin not see the light!
The message revealed exactly what Hollywood elitists think of middle America and was very much in line with the stereotype. Midler loathes middle Americans and by loathe we mean gleefully thinks about them as illiterate morons who can’t help but be “strung out” on opioids in their free time.
[...]
The tweet did not go over well, especially with conservatives. One influencer, Catturd, responded to Midler’s tweet, saying, “This is one of the most horrible tweets in history - pure evil.” He might be right.
Conservative comedy duo, The HodgeTwins tweeted, “You suck as a person.” And while we can’t condone that, it’s hard not to agree.
So Hays is following the orders of someone named Catturd? That sounds like him.
The MRC concluded the year by giving Midler the "Celebrity Freak-Outs Award" for the offense of reminding people what a terrible person Rush Limbaugh was upon his death, declaring her "soulless" for doing so. Then again, Limbaugh showed how soulless he was while he was alive by viciously smearing a woman as a "slut" because she took birth control -- and the MRC was just as soulless in defending him by running an "I Stand With Rush" campaign.
But somehow Midler is the evil person here. And is apparently so irrelevant that the MRC can't stop writing about her.
Fake News: WND Publishes Bogus Story About Pelosi Buying House In Florida Topic: WorldNetDaily
Bob Unruh wrote in a Nov. 24 WorlddNetDaily "news" article:
California has serious water problems, housing costs that are simply a joke for many families, a reputation for life-ending forest fires, a social agenda that leads the nation in attacks on traditional marriage and people of faith, and more.
And don't forget the possibility of the "Big One," an earthquake that films portray as turning the San Andreas fault into another Grand Canyon and leveling cities.
No wonder House Speaker Nancy Pelosi apparently wants to leave, even though she's done much in her decades in Congress to make the state what it is.
After all, she's represented in Congress one of the state's prominent districts since the 1980s – before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
And she undoubtedly can afford it, because even though her congressional salary has been what most families would consider great, it doesn't nearly add up to the hundreds of millions of dollars in assets she, along with her businessman husband, have reported.
So now there are reports that she's purchased a $25 million beach estate in Hobe Sound, Florida, about half an hour away from President Trump's estate in Palm Beach.
The proximity of the property to the ocean reveals clearly that she has no concern for rising sea levels caused by global warming – or climate change as it's now known.
[...]
The property she reportedly has acquired recently was listed as sale "pending" rather than available.
Unruh's source for his "reports" is just a single one, a far-right websitenotorious for the misinfiormation it publishes.
Unfortunately for Unruh, the story is not true. As conservative site The Bulwark documented:
So random people on Twitter said that Pelosi had already bought a $25 million dollar house. Pelosi’s office called the story “completely false.” And the Washington Examiner could only say that the story “may just be too juicy to be true.” After all, can any of us truly know anything?
[...]
The good news is that someone was willing to do actual journalism.
The bad news is that the someone was Realtor.com, where a writer named Claudine Zap—who does not appear to be an “investigative reporter” at Fox News—actually made some calls, got to the truth, and wrote a responsible piece headlined “No, Nancy Pelosi Did Not Buy a $25M Mansion in Jupiter Island, FL.”
That's right -- a real estate site did the journalistic legwork Unruh -- an employee of a "news" operation -- couldn't be bothered to do. The Bulwark went on to write of the right-wing outlets thatmindlessly pounced on this story:
As is usually the case, after these fringe outlets write vague, unsourced stories, slightly more respectable conservative sites aggregated them under the guise of “according to” various “reports” without noting how disreputable the sources of the reports are, or making any attempt to confirm them. These aggregations exist solely to farm clicks.
A disreputable fringe click farm, you say? That's pretty much what WND has become these days. Needless to say, Unruh's story remains live and uncorrected.
MRC Bashed Biden For Not Tapping Oil Reserve -- Then Bashed Him When He Did Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Joseph Vazquez huffed in a Nov. 4 post:
New York Times economist Paul Krugman claimed President Joe Biden has no control over the rise in gas prices. This, of course, comes after Krugman pilloried former President Donald Trump a year earlier for allegedly exercising the same control he said Biden didn’t have.
Krugman took to Twitter to try to explain away the abysmal election results for Democrats Tuesday in an attempt to protect Biden: “One issue that seems to have influenced voters Tuesday was the price of gasoline — over which Biden has no control.”
Vazquez went on to cite self-proclaimed environmentalist (though more of a dubious contrarian and, thus, a right-wing favorite) Michael Schellenberger as saying that Biden "may open the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to lower prices." Never mind, of course, that it is true that Biden has very little direct control over oil prices
Well, Biden tap the SPR later that month -- and the MRC rushed to dismiss the action as ineffective. Nicholas Fondacaro grumbled in a Nov. 23 post:
During ABC’s World News Tonight on Tuesday, anchor David Muir and congressional correspondent Rachel Scott were President Biden’s personal cheer team as they praised him for releasing 50 million barrels of oil from the strategic reserves; after he had to be dragged kicking and screaming to do it. Meanwhile, on the CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News, they warned it was just a “drop in the bucket” and would be used up in less than three days.
Fondacaro censored the fact that the SPR release was coordinated with releases from other countries to have a greater impact on prices.
It's as if the MRC will criticize Biden no matter what he does, and that perhaps the Biden White House should stop trying to please such constant bad-faith critics whose support it will never win because they are more about partisan politics than helping the country.
CNS Embraces Convoluted Fantasy To Return Trump To White House Topic: CNSNews.com
Remember the convoluted fantasy promulgated by Steve Bannon and WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah that Donald Trump could be named House speaker if Republicans take the House in the 2022 elections, then a Republican-controlled Congress impeaches President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris (for reasons yet to be identified), thus forcing them out of office (never mind that no impeached president has ever been successfully removed from office) and, thus, elevating Trump back to the presidency? Well, it seems that CNSNews.com has now bought into it. Craig Bannister wrote in a Dec. 10 CNS article:
Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz says he’d like Donald Trump to be the next Speaker of the House and analysis by NBC News says there’s nothing prohibiting the former president, or anyone else, from serving in the position.
On Tuesday, a reporter asked Rep. Gaetz if he wants Trump to be elected Speaker, if Republicans win back control of the House.
Grinning ear to ear, Gaetz didn’t just say that he likes the idea, he added that he’s even discussed it with Trump himself. But, when pressed for further details, Gaetz simply smiled and said the content of the conservation is privileged information:
[...]
The congressman liked the exchange so much, he tweeted out video of it, along with the hashtag “#SpeakerTrump.”
Gaetz appeared to be heartily enjoying the opportunity to strike fear in the hearts of liberals, as The Western Journal explains:
“Unlikely as this all is, the question of Trump becoming speaker has gained enough steam for a reporter to ask Gaetz about it during a news conference. This may indicate that even the slightest inkling of a Trump resurgence is causing the left to panic.”
“As speaker, Trump would have the authority to bring impeachment articles against Biden and/or Vice President Kamala Harris,” the Journal reports.
Of course, it's less about the idea of a "Trump resurgence" and more about how far Republicans would go to abuse the Democratic process to return Trump into office, knowing that he could not return in any legitimate way -- and how in thrall they remain to a man who incited a riot at the Capitol based on lies about the election. Bannister will never admit any of that, of course -- he's in thrall to Trump as well and desperate enough to want this goofy fever dream to work.
Bannister was also gracious enough to Gaetz to not mention the fact that he's under investigation over his skeevy sex life, which reportedly includes having sex with a minor.
MRC Sports Blogger Loves Herschel Walker, Dismisses Credible Abuse Allegations Topic: Media Research Center
Like its "news" division CNSNews.com, the Media Research Center has been a cheerleader for ex-football player, Trump buddy and now carpetbagging Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker. Unlike CNS, though, mystertious MRC sports blogger Jay Maxson made an effort to whitewash spousal abuse allegations agaist Walker.
Maxson's cheerleading for Walker began last April by helping Trump encourage a Senate run:
We don't know what kind of U.S. senator Herschel Walker would make, but all the right people already hate him. Deadspin and Democrat partisan Dustin Foote is on high alert over news reports that former President Donald Trump urged the football great to run for the U.S. Senate in Georgia. Walker was selected as one of Deadspin’s 2020 “Idiots of the Year,” he believes in God and is a good friend of Trump’s. In other words, he’s a real nightmare.
Taking a shot at current Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock, Maxson huffed, "Walker’s considerable fame and reputation in his home state of George greatly surpass that of Sen. Warnock." Unlike Walker, though, Warnock currently lives in Georgia, something Maxson didn't see fit to mention.
Maxson slobbered all over Walker in a Sept. 27 post under the gushy headline "Herschel Walker Shines for Conservativism at Save America Rally":
Former University of Georgia and National Football League star Herschel Walker is fast becoming one of the leading ball-carriers for the conservative movement. He appeared in Perry, Ga., Saturday with former President Donald Trump and other conservatives at a “Save America” rally.
It only makes sense for Americans to support conservative ideals, Walker told the fired-up audience: "People always ask me what qualifies me to run for this office, and I said, 'Well you’re right, I’m an American.’" The former Heisman Trophy winner said being conservative is just part of being an American. He had the crowd firmly with him, as people chanted “run, Herschel, run:”
[...]
Formalizing his decision last month to run for the U.S. Senate and take out radical lefty Sen. Raphael Warnock, Walker said it’s “Because I love America. And I’ve got to fight for America. It is time for us to stop wondering what we’re going to do but do it because what we’ve got now — we’re fighting over the same things we were fighting over when Jimmy Carter was in office. Have you noticed that?”
Trump told the crowd that Walker is a "special man" and a "great” man. He endorsed the candidacy of the man who’s expected to win next year’s Georgia GOP primary. Walker is polling at a whopping 75 percent among Republican Senate hopefuls in his home state.
"Welcome a man who really knows how to win the United States of America. So proud of this man,” Trump exclaimed. “One of the greatest athletes of our country's history. The greatest running back that I've ever seen.
"Not only an American hero, he is an American legend born and raised in this state," Trump said.
Maxson again failed to mention that Walker has not lived in Georgia for years. Nor did he metion that a guy who help foment an insurrection against the government of the United States is perhaps not the best character witness for anyone, let alone a potential political candidate.
When a Walker supporter was criticized for backing a guy credibly accused of spousal abuse, Maxson's response in a Nov. 5 post was, essentally, that if he never faced criminal charges, it must not have happened:
It should not be considered “news” that a Major League Baseball owner donates money to Republican political candidates. But then there’s California’s wildly left-of-center media that contends it is newsworthy. The San Francisco Giants’ owner Charles Johnson supported the Georgia Senate campaign of Herschel Walker, and now he’s getting raked over the coals.
The San Francisco Chronicle disparaged Walker, the former football star and Heisman Trophy winner, as a “stop the steal enthusiast” who suspected voter fraud in the 2020 election. Walker has announced his candidacy for a U.S. Senate seat in Georgia for the 2022 election, and he leads polling among Republican candidates in that Georgia Senate primary race. Walker’s support from former President Donald Trump also soured the Chronicle on his reputation.
Though Walker has never been charged with domestic abuse, the Chronicle and Associated Press both accused him of that crime against his former wife.
Maxson conlcuded with this bizarre assertion: "Give the Chronicle well-deserved 'F' grades for journalistic fairness and failing to recognize Johnson's right to free association, along with an 'A' grade for doing the Democrats’ bidding." What grade to we give a guy who's so in the tank for Walker he might as well be on the campaign payroll -- and who so blithely dismisses credible accusations that he's a spousal abuser?
Is WND 'News' Article An Ad In Disguise? Sure Looks That Way! Topic: WorldNetDaily
An anonymously written Nov. 24 WorldNetDaily "news" article claimed:
You've seen the legacy media and network reporting on Jan. 6 at the U.S. Capitol: those hordes of sword-waving, window-smashing (likely drooling) President Trump supporters who assaulted not just the entire nation but democracy itself.
Democrats have said, maybe 10,000 times, it was an "insurrection."
A new movie, "Capitol Punishment," is being released on Thanksgiving Day that reveals first-person accounts of what looked, on that day at that location, like "a trap."
The plain facts of what happened support suspicion. There were tens of thousands at a rally with Trump that day, and hundreds then went to the Capitol. Many protested peacefully about Congress' adoption of those still-suspect 2020 presidential election results that gave the White House to Joe Biden.
Since then, an analysis has confirmed that the legacy media suppressed damaging information about Joe Biden and son Hunter enough that the actions likely changed the results from a Trump victory to a Biden win.
[...]
Filmmakers Nick Searcy and Burgard said they wanted to expose the truth – and the government's politically driven tactics, in the movie.
Searcy told the Western Journal, "As shooting progressed, it became more evident that our real story had to be about the people who were being persecuted for nothing, for just going to Washington, basically for just saying out loud that they believe the election is stolen."
There is no "analysis" of Hunter Biden's purported lack of impact on the election, though there is a bogus poll the Media Research Center bought from Trump's election pollster making that claim. But that shoddiness is expected. More interesting is the fact that on the same day this article was published, WND sent a "sponsorship" email to its mailing list that sounds not unlike that article:
The establishment media tells the story of Jan. 6 as one of domestic terrorists threatening American democracy. They hope you will believe them and not look too closely at the man behind the curtain because it could foil their plans for America.
There is another side to the events of Jan. 6 and people need to know what happened. The stakes have never been higher! Award-winning TV star and unashamed conservative Nick Searcy and filmmaker Chris Burgard set out on a deep investigation to determine what really happened on Jan. 6 and what is still happening. Their finds will shock you!!!
The film Capitol Punishment: Everything They Told You Is A Lie is a riveting documentary told through the eyes of the people who were there on the ground in our nation’s Capital on Jan. 6, 2021. Jan. 6 was years in the making and the threat to the survival of America as we know it has never been greater.
In pother words: If that WND article reads like an ad, it appears that's because that's what it is. WND has a longhistory of runnings ads in the form of thinly disguised "news" articles, and it does nothing whatsoever to inspire confidence in the journalistic integrity of its "news" product.
It should also be noted that the movie, made by right-wing filmmaker Nick Searcy, is little more than pro-insurrectionist claptrap. As the Daily Beast noted in highlighting Will Sommer's podcast aboiut it: "The film really wanted to feature the Twisted Sisters song 'We’re Not Gonna Take It,' but since they couldn’t get permission to use it, they had to settle for pleading with viewers to sing along at home. Sommer’s professional review: 'I mean, it really is the lowest budget operation I’ve ever seen.'"
NEW ARTICLE: Loving The Fringe To Own The Libs, Part 2 Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center finds even more right-wing extremists to try and mainstream into conservative "victims" of "censorship" by "big tech" -- all while hiding their extremism. Read more >>
CNS Deflects From Boebert's Latest Insult By Playing Whataboutism Topic: CNSNews.com
We noted how CNSNews.com continued to protect extremist Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert's latest outrageous act -- depicting Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar as a suicide bomber -- by playing whataboutism and making it about Omar. That's not the only way CNS labored to minimize Boebert's insult.
A few days earlier, on Nov. 30, CNS' Susan Jones -- author of the above-noted whataboutism piece -- focused an article not on Boebert but on Democratic Rep. Debbie Dingell commenting on it:
"I'm really concerned about what we're watching and witnessing happening in this country," Rep. Debbie Dingell, a Michigan Democrat, told CNN's "New Day" on Tuesday morning.
She was asked for her reaction to the insult lobbed by Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert at Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar -- an insult for which Boebert later apologized (but not to Omar’s satisfaction).
Jones curiously didn't repeat what Boebert's insult was; she merely linked to an article at another website. Isn't CNS supposed to a news organization that reports things rather than offer links elsewhere to them? It seems, however, that Jones wanted her own hatred to take center stage here. She took a needless potshot at CNN host Brianna Keilar, who was interviewing Dingell (and whose name Jones spelled wrong):
"I wish more people were reading Gandhi, Congresswoman," responded CNN anchor Briana Keillar -- an ironic statement, given Keillar's often contentious interviews with and snide comments about anyone who doesn't share her leftist world view.
A Dec. 9 article by Melanie Arter rather lazily played whataboutism by serving as stenographer to Republcan Rep. Steve Scalise. First, though, she offered the first full account at CNS of what Boebert said:
Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) said Wednesday that he’s never seen a Democrat apologize for something that they’ve said, yet they go after Republicans for saying something offensive.
“So the other night on the House floor was not my first jihad squad moment," Boebert told a crowd in November. "I was getting into an elevator with one of my staffers, and he and I were leaving the Capitol, we're going back to my office and we get in the elevator and I see a Capitol Police officer running hurriedly to the elevator. I see fret all over his face. And he's reaching. The door is shutting. I can't open it.
"What's happening? I look to my left and there she is, Ilhan Omar, and I said, 'Well she doesn't have a backpack, we should be fine,'" Boebert continued. "So we only had one floor to go and I say, do I say it or do I not? And I look over and I say, 'Look, the jihad squad decided to show up for work today.' Don't worry, it's just her staffers on Twitter that talk for her. She's not tough in person."
Boebert apologized for her remarks on Nov. 26 on Twitter:
"I apologize to anyone in the Muslim community I offended with my comment about Rep. Omar. I have reached out to her office to speak with her directly. There are plenty of policy differences to focus on without this unnecessary distraction,” she tweeted.
Note that Boebert's apology wasn't to Omar but to "anyone in the Muslim community I offended." That's not a satisfactory apology, no matter what Jones thinks. Then, it was onto Scalise's whataboutism:
At a Capitol Hill press conference on Wednesday, Scalise was asked whether he believes Rep. Lauren Boebert’s (R-Colo.) Islamaphobic remarks about Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) were wrong.
“First of all, if you look at what Lauren Boebert said, she came back and apologized, and I do think this gets lost too often, because we’ve had members of both sides that have said things that we disagree with. I don’t know if I’ve seen a time where a Democrat’s apologized for their statement,” Scalise said.
“Lauren apologized for what she said, and the fact that on the Democrat’s side they want to only go after Republicans, they don’t even ask their own members to apologize for things that were said let alone go after their members,” the congressman said.
“They want it to be a one-sided thing, and I think that hypocrisy is showing, so let them call out what they see wrong as we do, but when a member apologizes, I think you ought to respect and appreciate that, and ultimately, call for a higher standard, but it starts with the members themselves acknowledging if they said something that they shouldn’t have to come and apologize for it and then move on,” he said.
Then, linking to Jones's whataboutism piece, Arter added: "As CNSNews.com previously reported, Omar herself was forced to apologize for anti-Semitic remarks she made on social media."
MRC Attacks Coverage Of Waukesha Incident, Proves The Converse Is True Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Bill D'Agostino made an interesting declaration in a Nov. 30 post: "If Darrell Brooks were a white man who drove a car into a crowd of black people, the media would still be talking about Waukesha."
If that's true, then the opposite is true as well: The MRC and other right-wing media gave disproportionate attention to the incident in Waukesha, Wis., in which Brooks allegedly ran down people on a parade route, killing six, is precisely because Brooks is black. D'Agostino seemed to confirm that in hissubsequent rant:
The name Darrell Brooks hasn’t been uttered a single time on CNN since last Thursday, November 25. Today marked the first time anyone on MSNBC mentioned Brooks by name since last Wednesday, November 24. The scant coverage came in the form of a hasty (34 seconds) news brief that ran once each on the network’s two morning programs, Way Too Early with Jonathan Lemire and Morning Joe.
How about the fact that Brooks is a felon who has reportedly expressed hatred for white and Jewish people? Or the fact that witnesses report he appeared to be swerving his vehicle so that he would hit as many pedestrians as possible? Nope, those facts apparently aren’t important enough to make it onto CNN or MSNBC. Nobody on either network has breathed a word about any of that.
Why?
You know why – everybody knows why. It’s because the media are peddling a nasty portrait of America in which countless violent white supremacists and racist police officers run rampant, carrying out calculated attacks on people of color with alarming frequency.
This simplistic narrative has no room for any person of color who hates white people. Those people, even if they did exist, somehow couldn't be racist.
D'Agostino has clearly bought into theright-wing narrative that people like himself should be scared of black people and that it's not racist to push that idea.
A search of the NewsBusters archive showed that it published 16 articles that reference Waukesha, a good number of which were dedicated to perpetuating that notion that the "liberal media" wasn't pushing right-wing evil-back-guy narratives about the tragedy:
By contrast, the MRC treated a school shooting in Michigan much differently -- we could find only seven articles referencing the shooting at Oxford High School in which three students were killed. By D'Agostino's logic on Waukesha, we can only assume that's because the alleged student shooter is white and that the shooter's parents had voiced support for Donald Trump. In contrsst to the MRC's evil-black-guy tone on Waukesha, it scoverage of the Michigan shooting was defensive:
That eagerness to downplay the Michigan shooting could be found across right-wing media: Fox News gave nearly twice as much coverage to its own Christmas tree catching fire than to the shooting.
When the MRC complains about something, it usually means that it's doing the same thing, albeit ideologically opposite.
Newsmax Pretends Doug Wead Was A Real 'Presidential Historian,' Not A Right-Wing Hagiographer Topic: Newsmax
A Dec. 13 Newsmax article by Charlie McCarthy reported:
Conservative historian and political commentator Doug Wead died Friday after suffering a massive stroke a week earlier. He was 75.
Doug, a New York Times bestselling author, wrote the 2019 book "Inside Trump's White House: The Real Story of His Presidency."
The author of more than 30 books, Doug had been hospitalized in Fort Myers, Florida. He was removed from a ventilator and died of heart failure Friday.
"He will be remembered as a great American historian — and not a woke left winger," conservative author Craig Shirley told Newsmax Monday after learning of Doug’s death.
"Doug believed in just telling the facts of history as they were," he added.
Shirley said his passing will leave a great void because "the world is filled with left-wing historians but has very few conservative historians."
As Shirley all but admits, Wead was a biased "historian." And that book on what happened "Inside Trump's White House"? That was a ridiculous hagiography:
Doug Wead’s Inside Trump’s White House goes further, advancing to enraptured fantasy. Wead, a veteran Republican toady, acclaims Trump for “the magic of thinking big”; his own padded, puffy volume is an exercise in magical thinking.
Like a sun king freshly solarised on the tanning bed, Wead’s Trump radiates “beauty and intellect”. His sons are “well groomed”, his daughters “statuesque”, and his consort bends down from her spike-heeled altitude to “reach out to the suffering”. While Melania is cast as a stilettoed Madonna, Trump functions as a universal paterfamilias. “It’s a father thing,” smarms Jared Kushner to explain Kim Jong-un’s attachment to Trump: Kim’s actual begetter was a maniacal despot, so the chubby ogre has chosen a fitting surrogate.
Acclaimed by Wead as the creator of his own “immortal brand”, a lucrative logo that is “etched into the marble of history”, Trump the mass-market Midas dispenses product placements at every turn. Wead, briefly alarmed, sees him press “a big, fat red button” on a table; the command produces one of the dozen Diet Cokes he swills each day, not a missile strike.
Wead's fawning tone is apparently how conservatives should be written about, according to Shirley. Indeed, in a 2018 Newsmax column, Wead gushed all over Melania, proclaiming that she is "a dedicated mother who puts her child ahead of other justifiably demanding, distractions" and "whose life will one day cover entire bookshelves in libraries." We would ask if Wead actually died of embarassment for writing things like that, but it's clear he was not capable of shame.
Wead was a hater of Barack Obama and lover of both Ron and Rand Paul. He was also not afraid to do something competent, credible historians never do: peddle conspiracy theories. We've noted that a 2017 WorldNetDaily column by Wead pushed an unsupported claim about a "Bill and Hillary Clinton list of women" accompanied by a video that was more self-promotional than anything else.
In continuing to praise him, McCarthy inadvertently admitted Wead wasn't a real historian:
Credited with coining the phrase "compassionate conservative," Doug served in the White House as special assistant to then-President George H.W. Bush.
A devout Christian, he served the Bush White House and later the Republicans in helping to build their alliance with evangelicals, now a key constituency in GOP politics.
Newsmax was proud to have Doug as an Insider, and he weighed in on all matters Washington, D.C., since 2009.
Real historians would not be that partisan and that overly fawning. Let's not pretend that Wead was one.
CNS Again Embraces Gabbard As A Not-Very-Democratic Democrat Topic: CNSNews.com
In the 2020 presidential election cycle, CNSNews.com embraced (along with its Media Research Center parent) Tulsi Gabbard as a Democratic presidential candidate because wasn't a real democrat -- she loved Donald Trump and hated Hilary Clinton (but don't mention her unusual closeness with Russia). Well, Gabbard is acting like the MRC's version of a Fox News Democrat again, and CNS is happy to be her stenographer.
Craig Bannister gushed over Gabbard in a Nov. 4 article:
Tulsi Gabbard, who campaigned against Joe Biden to become the Democrat Party’s 2020 presidential candidate, cheered Republican Glenn Youngkin’s upset win in Tuesday’s Virginia gubernatorial election.
Gabbard, a veteran and former Hawaii Democrat congresswoman, did not run for election in 2020. She is currently serving as a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve.
In a Wednesday Twitter post, Gabbard described Youngkin’s defeat of Virginia’s incumbent Democrat Gov. Terry McAuliffe as a win for all Americans:
CNS loved Gabbard's tweet so much, it made its fall intern Megan Williams write a story about it a week later, under nearly the exact same headline as Bannister's article:
Former Democratic House Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii) called Democrat Terry McAuliffe’s Virginia gubernatorial loss a “win for all Americans.”
“McAuliffe’s loss is a victory for all Americans. Why? Because it was a resounding rejection of efforts to divide us by race, the stripping of parental rights, and arrogant, deaf leaders. This benefits us all,” Gabbard tweeted on Nov. 3.
Bannister returned on Nov. 29 to devote another article to Gabbard sounding like a Repuiblican:
Americans are struggling to buy the things they need, due to rampant inflation, and Democrats’ multi-trillion “Build Back Better” (BBB) bill will push costs even higher, Former Democrat Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard says.
What’s more, the bill would fund “87,000 more IRS agents harassing regular folks,” Gabbard warned Monday in a tweet introducing a video of her analysis:
[...]
While Americans are struggling to make ends meet, they’re also frustrated that Democrats in Washington are ignoring their needs and, instead, are pushing a spending bill that would make products even more expensive, Gabbard says in her video:
To emphasize the point that Gabbard sounds like a Republican, Bannister linked to Republican talking points on Build Back Better. That sort of gives away the game, no?
The Media Research Center -- always a hater of all things LGBT -- spent a good part of 2021 being triggered by things that rapper Lil Nas X did (which showed that Lil Nas X knew what he was doing). Veronica Hays kicked things off in a March 26 post with a meltdown over the "optics of heinous gay stuff" in Lil Nas X's latest video:
Before the rise of the Omicron variant, CNSNews.com -- 
The Media Research Center's Catherine Salgado squeed in a Dec. 1 
Andy Schlafly ranted in a Nov. 23 WorldNetDaily 
For someone it has 
Bob Unruh wrote in a Nov. 24 WorlddNetDaily "news" 
The Media Research Center's Joseph Vazquez huffed in a Nov. 4 
Remember the 
Like its "news" division 
An anonymously written Nov. 24 WorldNetDaily "news" 
We 
The Media Research Center's Bill D'Agostino made an interesting declaration in a Nov. 30 
A Dec. 13 Newsmax 
In the 2020 presidential election cycle, CNSNews.com 
