MRC Loves Hurling 'Grooming' Smear To Defend Fla. Law Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center absolutely hated that the Florida "Parent's Rights In Education" bill was dubbed by its opponents as the "don't say gay" bill. Kevin Tober, for instance, huffed in a March 28 post that is was "mislabeling" to use that term "despite the fact that not only does the word gay not appear anywhere in the text of the legislation but it doesn’t prevent children from using the word." (The bill does not outline where, exactly, use of the word is permitted.) By contrast, the MRC went overboard in labeling the bill an "anti-grooming" bill despite the fact that the word "grooming" also appears nowhere in the bill -- which not only ramped up its use of the smear that it had embraced in previous months but also seems to put the lie to its bashing of the "don't say gay" terminology.
Kathleen Krumhansl called the bill an "anti-grooming law" in the headline of her March 13 post, complaining that one Telemundo host "fell for calling the bill 'Don´t Say Gay'" and that other hosts "chose to go along with has been aptly decried as the grooming of the youngest in a subject they cannot fully comprehend: sexuality and gender."
Matt Philbin served up his own weird definition of the bill in a March 17 post: "Dishonestly dubbed by the media the 'Don’t Say Gay' bill, the legislation would ban FLA teachers discussing or teaching sexuality to children five to eight years-old. This is some sort of gay rights outrage. Apparently grooming is a First Amendment right." Philbin huffed a March 22 post that Disney is being "bullied by lefty employees for not more forcefully endorsing the sexual grooming of grade schoolers" and whined that the bill was "dishonestly dubbed by media lefties the 'Don’t say Gay' bill."
John Simmons called it an "anti-grooming bill" in a March 23 post, and Elise Ehrhard called it an "anti-grooming law" in a March 27 post. The next day, in the same post complaining about the "don't say gay" terminology, Tober huffed that bill opponents were using "a familiar leftist media talking point that wanting to protect young children from being sexually groomed is somehow waging a 'culture war.'"
On March 30, Tober got mad that MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle called out the "grooming" smear as used by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis spokesperson Christina Pushaw, pointing out that he was trying "to equate the mere acknowledgment of LGBTQ identities to child abuse," labeling Ruhle "unhinged" for doing so. Simmons returned to suggest on April 1 that LGBT people deserve no rights because there aren't enough of them to be concerned about: "School boards everywhere are rising up to combat Florida’s anti-grooming bill. And America fawns over this agenda and its proponents, despite the fact that LGTBQIA+ people make up less than six percent of America’s population."
Tober went on a rant in an April 3 post defending the right-wing culture war against LGBT actvists like him as exhibited by the Florida bill:
On Sunday’s Reliable Sources, host Brian Stelter opened his show with a bizarre segment complaining about Florida’s anti-child grooming “Parental Rights in Education” law, and defending Disney’s self-destructive turn towards wokeness and in support of sexually indoctrinating their young audience.
Just as crazy was the chyron that ran on the bottom of the screen which read “LGBTQ Community Latest To Be Caught In Culture War” as if the “LGBTQ community” wasn’t the one who started this whole controversy in the first place, as NewsBusters' Tim Graham prudently pointed out.
Stelter demonized his own country when claiming "there is an ugly history in the United States of portraying gays, lesbians, transgender people as perverts, as predators who are preying on children” while alluding to his favorite target Fox News of the Disney controversies: “when I see some of the coverage in the last week, seems to me they are just repeating an ugly history.”
Tober never disproved anything Stelter said about the "ugly history" in the country about demonizing LGBT people -- presumably because he knows it's true and that he himself is actively involved in that demonization by pushing the "grooming" smear.
Krumhansl gushed in an April 6 post about "The anti-grooming laws being enacted throughout the nation, and which grant parents the right to educate their young children on the subjects of sex and gender identity-as opposed to teachers at school," then lied that the the bills were not about inciting anti-LGBT hate, insisting that the bills "are not about grownups, or even remotely fostering any kind of hatred; they simply give parents the right to decide when and where to talk to their children about sexual orientation and gender identity."
Tober embraced the right-wing culture war again in an April 14 post, declaring that if the midterm elections are seen as "a choice between Democrats who are 'focused' on the economy that has led to 40-year high inflation, or Republicans who seek to protect children from sexual abuse and grooming, the contest won’t even be close."
The capper on this campaign, though, was an April 6 post by Philbin that not only defended the "grooming" smear, it bizarrely pretended the only coordinated campaign comes from people criticizing the smear, not the people forwarding it:
So it’s more than a little amusing when the left complains it’s being “smeared” over its opposition to the Florida law against talking sex and gender with K-3 students. Woke folk resent being called “groomers.” Just because they deem it imperative that school libraries include dirty books doesn’t mean they’re pedophiles.
Even better is the coincidence of timing with these complaints. Somebody’s press shop woke up to the unpopularity of the progressive position, the talking points started flying and here comes the deluge of outraged takes.
[...]
That last question is a hoot: “Why are conservatives so concerned about ‘grooming’?”
It’s really quite simple: because we can’t imagine any other reason to be upset about not talking sex with kindergartners. For thousands of years parents have gotten through their children’s 9th birthday without uttering “gender-queer” or “pan-sexual.” This is due to a variety of factors, including prepubescent children’s mental and emotional immaturity and the rarity of such disorders. Oh yeah, and because talking about that stuff to tee-ballers is f**cking creepy.
If you’re hopping mad about legislation that enjoys the support of 61% of people (including 55% of Democrats) and simply codifies common-sense and decency, maybe take a step back.
If you feel compelled to discuss sex with someone else’s child, you might be a groomer. Take it from a racist.
Philbin identified no person who was "talking sex with kindergartners" before the law was approved, in florida or anywhere, that would have justified the law's implementation. He was also silent about the right-wing press shop that advised right-wingers like himself to spread the "grooming" smear.
If you're pretending there is no coordinated strategy behind right-wingers suddenly smearing all LGBT people as groomers for simply mentioning the fact that they exist, you might be a homophobic right-wing hack.
CNS Keeps Up Cruz Stenography To Start The Year Topic: CNSNews.com
We've documented CNSNews.com's enthusiam for serving as a stenographer for Republican Sen. Ted Cruz -- 46 articles about his pontifications in 2020 and 72 in 2021. That PR effort continued in the first three months of 2022:
That's 17 stenography articles, keeping him on pace to achieve his 2021 total. There was no fact-checking, of course, and Cruz's critics were rarely granted an opportunity to respond to his attacks by CNS writers.
And just as is the case with another favorite CNS stenography subject, Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, CNS rarely reports any criticism of Cruz or anything that might make him look bad. For instance, when Cruz took his infamous 2021 vacation to Cancun while the Texans he represents were suffering the effects of a freak winter storm that knocked out power to many parts of the state, CNS did no article about that. It did get a couple mentions in other articles, though; an article by Melanie Arter about Texas Democratic politician Beto O'Rourke quoted him noting that Cruz "is vacationing in Cancun right now, when people are literally freezing to death in the state that he was elected to represent and serve," and an anonymously written article complained that longtime CNS target Bette Midler "sent out a couple of tweets at the end of last week attacking Sen. Ted Cruz (R.-Texas) for briefly accompanying his wife and children to Cancun, Mexico when a winter storm was hitting his home state of Texas."
Tim Graham's Jill Biden Derangement Syndrome Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has a weird complex over first lady Jill Biden, hating for acting like a first lady instead of whatever Melania Trump did (which the MRC, of course, aggressively defended). MRC executive Tim Graham in particular seems to have developed a case of Jill Biden Derangement Syndrome -- a weird affliction because Graham may be the only person in whom she has engendered that kind of irrational rage.
Last October, Graham melted down over a "softball" TV interview Biden did: "There were no difficult questions about how Attorney General Merrick Garland wants to investigate angry parents who attend school board meetings (as the National School Boards Association compares them to domestic terrorists)." Of course, Graham's depiction is a lie, but nobody has ever accused Graham of being a stickler to facts that are inconvenient to his right-wing narratives. Graham spent another October post lashing out at a different "largely softball interview" with Biden and how "the liberal anchor gushed over how 'real' and 'approachable' the First Lady was." (Two words that are rarely associated with Melania Trump, by the way.)
Graham used a December post to grumble that a newspaper wouldn't use the TV celebrity brand "Dr. Oz" to describe Mehmet Oz in its coverage of his Pennsylvania Senate campaign, though "many papers rush to honor 'Dr. Jill Biden,' who has a Ph.D., but isn't a physician."
In a Jan. 17 post, Graham complained that an Associated Press article didn't trash her like he would: "AP should stand for Associated Publicists when they write on Democrat first ladies. ... There’s no space here to write anything negative or critical, like how Jill Biden was expected to lead an effort to reunite separated illegal-immigrant families, but then she wasn’t." He concluded bhy huffing: "AP's journalism reads more like a marketing ploy. Or a charity run to assist the Democrats." Says a guy who receives a six-figure salary to help run a charity that assists Republicans.
In his March 2 column, Graham comes weirdly close to sounding like Vyvyan ranting about Felicity Kendal by complaining that people are too bloody nice to Jill Biden (bolding in original):
On February 27, CNN anchor Pamela Brown (whose father John Brown served as the Democrat [sic] governor of Kentucky) robotically read a Twitter thread from Jill Biden. She introduced it like this: “First Lady Jill Biden addressed the anxiety so many of us are feeling about the ongoing war in Ukraine and the uncertainty of the future.” She can speak for “so many of us,” if she’s talking about CNN’s audience full of Democrats.
Then Brown spent nearly a minute and a half reading 198 florid First Lady words (duplicated on screen) about how parents and teachers and military families are coping, and where to find mental-health resources, and how “Joe and I continue to pray for the brave and proud people of Ukraine.” CNN White House reporter Kate Bennett also had a brief article about this on CNN.com.
The Russians are bombing Ukraine, and CNN wants you to feel grateful that we have the Bidens in the White House to help us cope with the disturbing results of the president’s geopolitical fecklessness.
[...]
There they go again, that “so many people” are cheered and charmed by Jill Biden. The apples in the “Facts First” commercials have been replaced with the image of CNN planting Valentine’s hearts on the White House lawn.
He went on to complain about the existence of coverage about Melania Trump's weird decision to get into the scammy-seeming NFT market, which didn't exactly work out the way she hoped, as if such an obvious grifter move wasn't newsworthy.
Graham should really get that Jill Biden Derangement Syndrome treated before it metastasizes throughout the entire MRC the way Obama Derangement Syndrome has. If he gets studs embedded into his forehead, it's time to really worry.
WND's Mercer Thinks Insulting Trudeau's Manhood Is A Proper Way To Defend Canadian Trucker Protest Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily columnist Ilana Mercer has a weird fixation on her idea of manhood, so it's no surprise that one of the things she did in support of the trucker protest in Canada was insult the manhood of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, as she did in her Feb. 17 column:
Where, in the story of the travails of the world's heroes, the Canadian Truckers for Freedom, are we?
Justine Trudeau, who fled like a girl into hiding when the lorry drivers, kids in tow, first arrived in Ottawa, has done what this writer had feared he'd do: After instituting some of the most diabolical COVID restrictions in the world, Justine has the dubious distinction of invoking "the never-used Emergencies Act," martial law, in essence, to quash peaceful, democratic civil disobedience, with nary a democratic debate in the People's House of Commons.
"With the emergency powers," warns legal scholar Jonathan Turley, "Trudeau can now prohibit travel, public assemblies, conduct widespread arrests and block donations for the truckers. This also includes freezing bank accounts and ramping up police surveillance and enforcement."
Been there done that, Mr. Turley, Esq.: Trudeau had already instituted some of these measures through COVID restrictions. Countrywide, unvaccinated Canadians have been locked out of society, turned into untouchables. They cannot travel within their own country, work for their own government, attend university without being shamed and segregated, or take employment in the health sector, public or private.
And he's done this evil with vim and venom. Never before have I heard a Western leader boil over with bile for his mostly-white, working-class countrymen. With his daily invective, Trudeau outdoes the Democrats, stateside. Having libeled the truckers as racists, misogynists, insurrectionists and confederate sympathizers – Trudeau likewise regularly calls the unvaccinated racists, misogynists and anti-science extremists, even pondering whether he should "tolerate these people."
Mercer didn't exactly debunk Trudeau's assertion; instead, she whined that "Not only is the tinpot dictator Trudeau currently moving to arrest protesters – but he is freezing private property in the form of funds belonging to these brave, working-class individualists." In reality, the protests interfered with business in Ottawa and blocked U.S.-Canada trade, costing local businesses millions of dollars in revenue and blocking billions of dollars in trade.
When Trudeau finally cracked down and dispersed the disruptive protesters, Mercer went the white nationalism route (with another dose of insulting Trudeau's manhood) in her Feb, 24 column:
Although our side won the first round – Canadian dicktator Justine Trudeau having suddenly caved and revoked the unconstitutional emergency powers seized for no good reason shortly after extending them – the battle is just beginning. We are not afraid to say that this is part of a war on whites.
Conservatives persist in pretending the Canadian Convoy for Freedom, which has served as a lodestar for liberty lovers across the West, was purely class-based and a multicultural affair. The anti-white impetus convulsing the Anglosphere continues to be a blind spot papered-over on our side, although it is an unspoken reality.
We believe that the crackdown in Canada is anti-white in essence and that such an assertion is axiomatically true. Was it not self-evidently clear every time the camera panned out? Put it this way: Do you think Trudeau would have boiled over with such bile as he did, bringing the full weight of the Security and Surveillance State down upon these good, hard-working trucker families, if this protest were brown and black in sizable numbers? Please!
Do you think that the "man," Justine, would have labeled and libeled the truckers as racists, extremists, misogynists, insurrectionists and confederate sympathizers if a good chunk of them were brown and black? Neva! In operation is the bias that dare not speak its name – for to point out anti-white racism is itself considered racist.
[...]
Imagine if Donald Trump had declared a state of emergency under the U.S. National Emergencies Act during the 2020 race riots. Imagine how the degenerate progressives who framed BLM-wrought destruction as a form of national cleansing and renewal would have reacted. This columnist had actually called for bringing in the Feds to uphold natural rights, on the grounds that "protection of natural rights trumps federalism." But nothing materialized. Trump left law and order up to states and localities. He and the useless GOP impressed upon us that if we expected our natural right to live unmolested by mobs be upheld, we Deplorables would have to relocate to states like Florida or South Dakota.
Trudeau has implemented the Jan. 6 playbook in Canada.
Mercer seems to think that criminals shouldn't be treated like criminals. Again, she doesn't disprove Trudeau's claims about some of those in the protest. And those petty insults of Trudeau's manhood make her look silly.
MRC Psaki-Bashing, Doocy-Fluffing Watch Topic: Media Research Center
Curtis Houck's job at the Media Research Center is to bash Jen Psaki and act as a fawning cheerleader for Peter Doocy and other right-wing reporters. He filled that role as expected in his summary of the March 9 White House press briefing:
A day after President Biden announced a ban on Russian oil and as gas prices surged to record highs, The Psaki Show featured hardballs Wednesday afternoon on the impact of the Biden economy on consumers. Chiefly, questions from Fox News’s Peter Doocy and Fox Business’s Edward Lawrence led Psaki to struggle to defend the White House’s policies on inflation, gas prices, and a refusal to support expanded domestic energy production.
First, to Lawrence’s fact-checking of Team Biden. He began by calling out their continued flaunting of “green energy” as Americans struggle to stay afloat, let alone purchase an electric car.
[...]
Doocy Time arrived a few minutes later and started with a simple question:“Why did you guys decide to rebrand the rise in gas prices as the ‘#PutinPriceHike.’” That was followed by a second part:
[W]e have heard the President warn for months that gas prices were rising because of the supply chain and because of post-pandemic demand. If you guys knew for months that this was going to be the #PutinPriceHike, why are we just hearing that now?
After Psaki doubled down, Doocy shifted to drilling, with the Biden flack suggesting permitting was all that needed to happen before drilling (which the American Petroleum Institute has fact-checked)
Houck then linked to an article from the MRC's "news" division, CNSNews.com, that pretended a lobbying group's PR campaign was a "fact-check."
Houck also dutifully transcribed how Doocy pushed his employer's right-wing talking points about the Keystone pipeline:
Doocy tried to make things simpler, wondering “a restart of the Keystone XL construction” is “completely off the table as long as Joe Biden is President.”
When Psaki replied that Doocy should “tell” her “what that would help address,” the Fox correspondent noted that the administration has said “all options are on the table” amid an energy crisis.
Doocy also wondered why we’re not partnering with “a friendly ally,” but Psaki maintained “the pipeline is just the delivery mechanism” and “not an oil field.”
Doocy tried one last time on Keystone restarting, but Psaki sniped that “it would not address any of the problems we’re having.”
Only a right-wing hack like Houck would describe a factual statement as "sniping." (And no mention, of course, of Rosen being a credibly accused sexual harasser.)
For his writeup of the March 14 briefing, Houck had a new pair of right-wing reporters to gush over:
Monday’s episode of The Psaki Show featured Fox News’s Jacqui Heinrich and Newsmax’s James Rosen grilling Press Secretary Jen Psaki over the Biden administration showing weakness when dealing with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the lead up to his invasion of Ukraine as well as their reluctance to provide Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy with the military support he needs.
The first one out of the gate was Fox's Jacqui Heinrich who, in light of the news her Fox colleague Benjamin Hall had been injured, wanted to know how the Biden administration would respond now that it appears that Russia is now shooting at American journalists:
[...]
Henrich was ready to take the gloves off, pressing Psaki that if the United States doesn’t draw a “red line at something like chemical weapons” wouldn’t it make it easier for Putin or other bad actors to use them in the future not worry about consequences?
In her typical style, Psaki gave Heinrich an attitude claiming that “you heard the President say on Friday that there would be severe consequences and the world would respond if they were to use chemical weapons.”
Later on in the briefing, Psaki called on Rosen, and you could tell she immediately regretted it because Rosen really took it to her:
[...]
Rosen’s follow-up question was just as brutal. Rosen argued that Biden and NATO allies never let Putin doubt what consequences he might face if he invaded Ukraine, Putin was told upfront what would happen, so Rosen wanted to know “why a greater effort wasn't made to leave Mr. Putin in doubt about the consequences he might face?”
Psaki responded that the reason why is because Biden is “the President of the United States of America, and he felt it was important to be clear with the American people about what his intentions were and what they were not.”
Notice that it's always Psaki who has an "attitude" and never the right-winbg reporters hurling biased questions at her.
Houck gushed over Heinrich again playing pedantic word games in his writeup of the March 16 briefing:
If you can believe it, Wednesday marked the 200th episode of The Psaki Show (as per the AP’s Chris Megerian) and it featured some of everything, including a quintessential softball question about whether President Biden’s a morning or evening person and hardballs from Fox’s Jacqui Heinrich and Gray TV’s Jon Decker on the latest Biden White House word games.
[...]
A few reporters later, it was Jacqui Time and she picked up on an argument Psaki had made throughout the briefing that the guns, missiles, and other military equipment and firepower supplied to Ukraine in the war against Russia were merely “defensive” weaponry and not “offensive”
Asking her to “lay out for us why the administration sees MiGs as provocative and javelins and stingers as not provocative,” Psaki said with a straight-face that “javelins and stingers are defensive weapons” whereas “MiGs are planes — are offensive weapons, which are a different type of military system.”
It's weird that Houck would tacitly credit Psaki's dedication to her job by holding her 200th briefing; he made sure not to mention that Donald Trump's White House went more than a year without holding a press briefing, or that his beloved Kayleigh McEnany abandoned her job by refusing to hold briefings after the Capitol riot.
Fake News: WND Thinks Obama Is Lying About Being Vaccinated Topic: WorldNetDaily
Just because Barack Obama left the White House more than a year ago doesn't mean that WorldNetDaily has stopped pushing Obama conspiracy theories . On March 13, Joe Kovacs embraced a wacky conspiracy theory about Barack Obama catching COVID despite being vaccinated:
J.D. Rucker at the Liberty Daily suggested Obama may, in fact, be lying about his vaccination status.
"I say he is 'allegedly' triple-jabbed because I've started questioning whether any of the globalist elites are actually getting the COVID injections or if they're lying," Rucker said.
"It's conspicuous that despite the massive number of adverse reactions being reported every day, we never hear about the people at the top of the globalist food chain experiencing negative effects from the jabs they allegedly get. It's just as easy to get jabbed with saline as it is with the so-called 'vaccines.'
"Of course, Obama used this positive test result as an opportunity to claim he's grateful for getting injected and to encourage others to do the same. As we've noted many times, there is no way to know if getting injected mitigated the damage done by COVID on an individual, so when they say they're better at fighting the infection than if they were not vaccinated, they're gaslighting."
Kovacs made no effort to fact-check Rucker, of course -- he offers no evidence whatsoever to back up his conpsiracy theory -- nor was there any mention of the fact that the dominant Omicron strain is so contagious that people who are vaccinated can still catch it, though they usually have less severe symptoms than an Omicron victim who isn't vaccinated.
MRC Gets Predictably Triggered By 'After School Satan Clubs' Topic: Media Research Center
After School Satan Clubs don't actually worship Satan; they're a cheeky response to things like after-school "Good News Clubs" foisted upon children by right-wing evangelicals and, unlike those clubs, teach critical thinking skills and a non-religious worldview. The mere idea of the club is enough to trigger right-wingers into apoplectic rage. And just like Lil Nas X's provocations, the MRC fell for it. Gabriel Hays cranked up the manufactured rage in a Jan. 13 post about one such club:
Remember guys, conservative parents concerned about what their children are exposed to might be extremists, or worse, domestic terrorists. On the other hand the staff teaching kids pernicious CRT lessons, disturbing LGTBQ and trans orthodoxy and allowing Satanic afterschool programming are noble victims of the militant parents.
Yes, you read that correctly: a Satanic after school club is the latest abomination to pop up in a public school.
[...]
Really, they’re invoking Satan for the destruction of Christian imagery. And, whether they worship Satan or not, they’re still doing the job for him at the end of the day.
Back to the diabolical after school program. The club’s flier features a disturbing tagline which reads, “Hey kids, let’s have fun at after School Satan Club!” Yeah kids, that doesn’t sound weird at all.
The paper then tries to reassure parents that at the club they will teach kids “Benevolence and empathy, Critical thinking, Problem solving, creative expression, and personal sovereignty” – of course outside the Judeo-Christian framework of morality. That sounds like a recipe for disaster.
You know who else pursued “personal sovereignty” outside of God’s kingdom? Yeah, the devil himself.
Also what systems of “benevolence and empathy” divorced from Christianity have we seen crop up in recent years? Black Lives Matter and Antifa. And we all know what kind of fulfillment those groups brought to our society.
The MRC is notalone on the right-wing outrage beat; Fox News similarly melted down over the club, so much so that Satanic Temple spokesperson Lucien Greaves got to appear on Tucker Carlson's show.
When the club was discussed at a Pennsylvania school, it was John Simmons to serve up the performative outrage in an April 20 post:
Most schools offer things like sports teams, book clubs, or music lessons for kids after school. But one school in Pennsylvania is considering offering an extracurricular activity that is literally demonic.
The Northern Elementary School board in York, PA will hold a probationary vote to allow an After School Satan Club in the school, continuing a disturbing trend by self-proclaimed Satanists to weasel their way into elementary and grad schools. This particular club was pushed by a parent who was upset that the school allowed a Bible study in the school during operating hours (oh, the horror!).
Sponsored by the Satanic Temple, the club would offer "activities such as science and crafts projects, puzzles and games and (students) would learn about benevolence, empathy, critical thinking, problem-solving and creative expression." The organization at large is making a concerted effort to establish chapters in response to the Christian Good News Clubs that are currently in many schools across the country.
While benevolence, empathy, etc. , sound nice, no organization that supports abortion and opposes the good morals taught in the Bible should be teaching any of those things.
Furthermore, the fact that an organization that named itself after the father of all evil wants to teach young children these things is more unsettling than the transgender ideology that is infiltrating our schools.
[...]
Organizations like this do not belong in schools, and children should not be trusted to men like Greaves. There is no middle ground and there should be no compromise.
Congratulations, boys, on being appropriately triggerred and feeding the MRC's outrage machine as you're paid to do.
Before The War, CNS Loved Gay-Bashing From Putin, Russian Orthodox Church Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com may be questioning the Russian Orthodox Church now that it is Vladimir Putin's handmaiden in keeping the Russian people supporting its war against Ukraine. But it will not surprise you to learn that CNS -- particularly managing editor Michael W. Chapman, who is already on record as endoring Putin's gay-bashing moves -- thought the Russian Orthodox Church was pretty cool when they expressed a similar hatred of LGBT people and was getting cozy with Putin.
A November 2015 article he wrote featuring Franklin Graham bashing then-President Obama for not hating gay people enough featured a photo (though only the caption remains) showing Graham "meet[ing] with Patriach Kirill of Moscow and All Russia," and it also quoted Graham cheering how he "very much appreciate[s] that President Putin is protecting Russian young people against homosexual propaganda, if only to give them the opportunity to grow up and make a decision for themselves."
When asked his opinion of laws promoting homosexual "marriage" and LGBT "rights" in Western Europe and the United States, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, said such laws "are at odds with the moral nature of human beings" and cause people to rebel against them, and he stressed that perverting marriage and reproduction -- children in families -- "poses a significant threat for the existence of the human race."
"What’s happening in the Western countries is that, for the first time in human history, legislation is at odds with the moral nature of human beings," said Patriarch Kirill in a Nov. 21 interview on RT.com (Russia Today).
He added that the legal and social pressure to accept homosexual marriage and related phenomenon "is very reminiscent of what was happening under Soviet totalitarianism."
Chapman even touted another Orthodox leader's Russian leanings. A May 2017 article featured Greek Orthodox bishop Metropolitan Seraphim of Piraeus demanding that Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan "convert to Orthodoxy or face 'eternal and unending' suffering in Hell, along with Muhammed and his followers," adding that he "further advises Erdogan to be instructed and then baptized in the Orthodox church and to ask his ally, Russian President Vladimir Putin, to be his godfather."
Pat Buchanan -- for whom CNS editor Terry Jeffrey worked during his presidential campaigns in the 1990s -- has also long been a fan of Putin and the Russian Orthodox church's entanglements with him. He defended Putin's land grabs in a 2014 column:
Is Russia really reconstituting the Soviet Union? True, Putin seeks to bring half a dozen ex-Soviet republics, now nations, into an economic union to rival the EU. But where the state religion of the USSR was Marxism-Leninism, i.e., communism, Putin is trying to restore Russian Orthodox Christianity.
There is a difference, as there is a difference between Stalin murdering priests and Putin prosecuting Pussy Riot for blasphemous misbehavior on the high altar of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior.
(CNS reporter Penny Starr cheered in a 2014 article that Pussy Riot members were "convicted in 2012 of hooliganism after desecrating Cathedral of Christ the Savior, a Russian Orthodox church, by dancing and chanting obscenities on its altar" and complained that members of Congress hailed their bravery in taking a stand against the church's closeness with Putin.)
Buchanan gushed in a November 2016 column that "With Communism dead, Vladimir Putin invokes the greatness and glory of the Russian past and seeks to revive the Orthodox faith."
Buchanan did even more sucking up to Putin in a July 2017 column: "Putin is not Pope Francis. But he is not Stalin; he is not Hitler; he is not Mao; and Russia today is not the USSR. Putin is an autocrat cut from the same bolt of cloth as the Romanov czars." He added that "The Russia of Tolstoy, Pushkin, Solzhenitsyn and the Orthodox Church belongs with the West."
Buchanan hyped the ties between Putin and the church in a May 2018 column:
After being sworn in for a fourth term, Vladimir Putin departed the Kremlin for Annunciation Cathedral to receive the televised blessing of Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church.
The patriarch and his priests in sacred vestments surrounded Putin, who, standing alone, made the sign of the cross.
Meanwhile, sacred vestments from the Sistine Chapel were being transported by the Vatican to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art to adorn half-clad models in a sexy show billed as "Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination." One model sported a papal tiara.
The show proved a sensation in secular media.
[...]
One Europe is turning back to God; the other is turning its back on God.
And when Vladimir Putin and Belarus' Alexander Lukashenko are standing up for traditional values against Western cultural elites, the East-West struggle has lost its moral clarity.
In a July 2018 column that particularly didn't age well, Buchanan tried to portray Putin as benig: "The ideology that drove its imperialism is dead. There are parties, demonstrations and dissidents in Russia, and an Orthodox faith that is alive and promoted by Putin. Where, today, is there a vital U.S. interest imperiled by Putin?
One vary rare voice of dissent, however, was a September 2016 column by Eric Metaxas warning his fellow conservatives against cozying up to Putin over his anti-gay edicts because he was trying to shut down non-Orthodox religions, including other Christian sects.
MRC Claims YouTube Is 'Censoring' Gabbard (By Making You Click A Button First) Topic: Media Research Center
Like its "news" division CNSNews.com, the Media Research Center has always had a soft spot for Tulsi Gabbard as a Fox News Democrat who would appear on the channel for saying Fox News-friendly things while pretending to be a Democrat. In 2019, it came to Gabbard's defense after Hillary not-inaccurately called out her pro-Russia leanings.
Gabbard's embrace of right-wing social media earned the MRC's approval as well. Last August, Alec Schemmel touted her as among the "thought leaders" joining right-wing video site Rumble, and a December post by Gabriela Pariseau hyped right-wing radio host Dan Bongino listing Gabbard as a "liberal Rumble user."
So when Gabbard got in trouble again for her pro-Russia leanings after Russia invaded Ukraine, the MRC was more than happy to turn her into the latest "victim" of "big tech." Alexander Hall did exactly that in a March 14 post under the headline "YouTube CENSORS Gabbard’s Fox Interview: ‘They Wanna Turn Ukraine into Another Afghanistan’":
YouTube labeled a Fox News interview featuring former Hawaii congresswoman Tulsi Gabbardas being potentially “offensive” or “inappropriate.”
Since when is calling for peace inappropriate?
Ingraham Angle host Laura Ingraham asked Gabbard in an early March interview, “Congresswoman, why are we talking about no-fly zones instead of the fact that for the first time we have President Zelensky stepping back from his earlier NATO wishes and even demands?”
Gabbard indicated shock that few people are discussing a statement by Zelensky on ABC News that “he's open to the fact of saying, ‘Hey, yeah, maybe we'll set this NATO membership thing aside,’ and he's willing to talk with Putin directly to negotiate.”
Hall went on to complain that YouTube "slapped the Fox News video with two layers of censorship" -- none of which are actually censorship since the video could still be watched on YouTube; it simply put filters on it for viewers to click through. Hall also hid the fact that Gabbard used her fox News appearance to effectively demand that Ukraine capitulate and unconditionally surrender to Russian demands over NATO in order to stop the war,though there's no guarantee Vladimir Putin would do so even after getting what he wanted.
Hall devoted a March 17 post to letting Gabbard whine about being a victim:
Former Democratic Rep.Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii skewered Big Tech for having “CENSORED” an interview of hers where she criticized Western interference in Ukraine.
“YouTube/Google are offended by my criticism of the Military Industrial Complex and my advocacy for negotiated settlement in Ukraine, because they are the social media arm of that warmongering Power Elite/MIC,” Gabbard explained in a March 16 tweet. Her tweet features a video of an internet user having to go through several complicated steps to see anIngraham Angle interview with Gabbard.
[...]
YouTube smeared the Fox News video with two censorship filters: one suggesting that “This video may be inappropriate for some users,” requiring viewers to click or even sign in to verify their age, according to Gabbard’s video. Another filter claimed “the following content has been identified by the YouTube community as inappropriate or offensive to some audiences.”
What's so "complicated" about clicking through a couple (non-censorship) filters? Hall doesn't explain.And given the MRC's support for Florida's "don't say gay" law, it's nonsensical for Hall to demand that age restrictions be lifted on a video that discusses the bloody business of war and goes into paranoid rantings about the "Military Industrial Complex."
Hall's manufactured victimhood for Gabbard resumed in a March 24 post:
At it again? Former Democratic presidential candidate and Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard torched Big Tech companies, saying she was censored again for cautioning against the U.S. going to war.
Fox News’s Ingraham Angle host Laura Ingraham asked Gabbard in a late March interview: “Why is calling out what many have called the Military Industrial Complex now offensive to Big Tech?” Gabbard acknowledged that a previous interview of hers was censored with multiple filters, but also said she was censored yet again: “Just before coming on your show today, I found out that Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, is also suppressing my voice.” She said her reach on the platform for that particular post shrunk by approximately 90 percent.
Like CNS before him, Hall didn't mention that Gabbard's Instagram traffic drop coincided with Instagram being banned in Russia, where Gabbard had an audience for her pro-Russia, anti-Ukraine rantings, which seems relevant.
A few weeks later, when Russian TV argued that Gabbard should be Donald Trump's running mate in 2024, the MRC remained silent.
The fake-news hits on COVID just keep coming from WorldNetDaily. Like this March 13 article by Art Moore:
CDC data show the Millennial generation suffered a "Vietnam War event," with more than 61,000 excess deaths in that age group from March 2021 to February 2022, according to an analysis by a former Wall Street executive who made a career of crunching numbers to make big-dollar investment decisions.
Edward Dowd, who was a portfolio manager for the multinational investment firm BlackRock, posted the results of an analysis he did with an insurance industry expert on the social media platform Gettr.
In an interview Thursday with Steve Bannon on "War Room," he said that what they found was "shocking."
The Millennials, about ages 25 to 40, experienced an 84% increase in excess mortality over that period, he said, describing it as the "worst-ever excess mortality, I think, in history."
It was the highest increase in excess deaths of any age group last year, seven times higher than the Silent Generation, those who are older than 85.
And the increase coincided with the vaccine mandates and the approval of the booster shots.
"Basically, Millennials experienced a Vietnam War," Dowd said, noting 58,000 people died in the conflict.
Moore liked Dowd's spiel so much, apparently, that he interviewed Dowd for a March 16 article in which he repeated those conspiracy theories:
In a video interview Wednesday with WND, a former Wall Street executive whose analysis of CDC data shows an alarming rise in deaths among Millennials over the past year amid the COVID vaccine rollout said he's hoping to start a national conversation that will penetrate an establishment media "blackout" by emboldening people across government and private industry to speak out.
"That's my goal, to just change the conversation, to give people cover," said Edward Dowd, a former portfolio manager for the multinational investment firm BlackRock.
[...]
Dowd said the implications of his conclusions are "grim" and "mind-boggling."
"If I am correct – and let's assume I am for the sake of this argument – we have the greatest, colossal financial and human fraud endeavor in the history of the globe."
Unlike Moore, Reuters fact-checked what Dowd -- who is not a medical professional -- said on Bannon's show, and given WND's track record of promoting fake news, it's totally wrong:
While Dowd claims the deaths are due to vaccine rollouts, this CDC data represents excess deaths from COVID-19.
The CDC also notes on the page that there are several limitations to the data, saying it is provisional and incomplete. “The estimates presented may be an early indication of excess mortality related to COVID-19, but should be interpreted with caution, until confirmed by other data sources such as state or local health departments,” the CDC says on the page.
CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) told Reuters via email that the provisional data on CDC’s WONDER database ... does not show that the percent increase since 2019 reaches 84% in any month for the 25-44 age group.
“And these excess deaths should most certainly not be attributed to specific events or causes – they just represent an overall higher number of deaths in this age group relative to previous years and could be due to any number of different factors (missed COVID-19 deaths, missed emergency care for conditions like heart disease, increases in drug overdose deaths and motor vehicle traffic fatalities, etc.),” NCHS said.
[...]
Kyle Sheldrick, a medical doctor and researcher, also debunked the video in a Twitter thread (here). Sheldrick explains how Dowd and the unidentified man who examined the data created their graph using CDC data (here), and points to the spread of the dangerous Delta variant as the more likely reason for spikes in deaths in the second half of 2021.
WND really should know better than to give a platform to sketchy anti-vaxxers with questionable, easily debunked data. But it doesn't, and that's why it's on the verge of extinction.
NEW ARTICLE -- Out There, Exhibit 81: Upbeats And Beatdowns At The MRC Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center loves washed-up musicians who spout right-wing political and COVID narratives -- and lashes out at the ones who won't. Read more >>
Gabbard's DINO And Pro-Russia Leanings Get More CNS Love Topic: CNSNews.com
A while back, we highlighted how CNSNews.com was giving a platform to Democrat-in-name-only and Russia enthusiast Tulsi Gabbard to push anti-Biden and pro-Russia narratives. Litterally the same day we published that, CNS published a March 11 article by Emily Robertson serving up more of her schtick:
“It’s all about the Kamala Harris show,” former Hawaii Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard told Fox News Host Sean Hannity Thursday night. “This shows that the suffering of the Ukrainian people really are just – they’re actors in her– in the Kamala Harris show.”
Gabbard appeared as a guest on "Hannity," grading Harris’ fulfilment of the roles of vice president. Harris would receive lower than an "F" if possible, according to Gabbard, due to what she characterized as a lack of effort on issues ranging from illegal immigration to inflation and the Russia-Ukraine war.
A March 25 article by Craig Bannister let Gabbard play the victim by making the typical right-wing complaint that she was being "shadow banned: on social media:
“I’ve gotten some questions from people who are not familiar with the term ‘shadow banning’ and are asking exactly what it is. So, I want to take a minute to show you,” former Democrat [sic] Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) says in a video posted to social media Friday.
In the video, Gabbard shows screenshots of how her account didn’t show up in an Instagram search, how attempting to “@” her account yielded a “misinformation” warning, and of how an attempt to tag her resulted in an error message saying the activity is restricted in order to protect the Instagram community.
But as Mediaite noted, her drop in Instagram traffic coincided with the banning of Instagram in Russia, where she had fans due to her anti-Ukraine rhetoric; "Gabbard has taken a hardline stance against assisting Ukraine as it fends off an invasion by war criminals. That might have turned off some of her followers." Neither Gabbard nor Bannister mentioned that relevant fact.
Bannister returned for an April 5 article that took refuge in her DINO status to let her repeat right-wing anti-LGBT arguments:
“Parental rights are under attack all across the country as the government tries to usurp parents’ rights and responsibility to raise their own children,” former Democrat [sic] presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard warns in a video defending Florida’s new Parental Rights in Education law.
Gabbard doesn’t just defend Florida’s new law, which her fellow Democrats have dubbed “Don’t Say Gay,” she says the law doesn’t go far enough to protect children and the rights of their parents:
"We should all support the Parental Rights in Education bill that recently passed in Florida which very simply bans government and government schools from indoctrinating woke sexual values in our schools to a captive audience. A captive audience that is, by law, is required to attend.
"But, as I read the legislation, I’ve got to tell you, I was shocked to learn that it only protects kids from kindergarten to third grade. Third grade? What about twelfth grade? Or not at all?"
In none of these articles did Robertson or Bannister permit a dissenting voice to rebut what Gabbard said. So much for CNS' mission statement that it "endeavors to fairly present all legitimate sides of a story."
MRC Loves Tossing Around 'Grooming' Smear Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Reserach Center has been tossing around the "grooming" smear about anything that doesn't denigrate the LGBT community long before thecontroversy over Florida's "don't say gay" law. Last May, for instance, Elise Ehrhard threw around the S-word while melting down over a drag queen reading a children's book on a public TV station:
Drag queens continue to groom preschoolers with the help of entertainment media and woke "educators."
This spring, a PBS Station in New York aired a drag queen storytime and sing-along with "Little Miss Hot Mess" on a program for children aged 3-8.
Lil Miss Hot Mess read her "children's book" The Hips On the Drag Queen Go Swish Swish Swish on the preschool program Let's Learn, for WNET, a New York PBS affiliate. Let's Learn is a partnership of WNET and the New York City Department of Education.
Ehrhard didn't say what the drag queen was "grooming" children for, perhaps thinking it was best to not define the term for maximum psychological horror for her right-wing audience.
In June, Veronica Hays similarly lost it over a "Pride Parade Sing-Along" posted on the "Blue's Clues" YouTube channel, in which she not only used the G-word, she hatefully insisted that LGBT people are mentally ill:
You children can sing along: “this family has two mommies” and “this family has two daddies” and “these babas are non-binary.” And “Ace, BI and Pan grown-ups you see can love each other so proudly.”
Won’t it be fun to hear them chant, “This house is a family of kings and queens, they love each other so proudly.” At last, as if to signal the completion of your child’s brainwashing, the song concludes with “Love is love is love you see, and everyone should love proudly.”
This seemingly innocent kid’s cartoon looks like an aggressive grooming campaign. There’s an astonishing level of attention to detail within each moment of the video to push blatant LGBT motifs.
[...]
Of course, if you disagree with a kid’s show teaching your susceptible children that mutilating perfectly healthy bodies is okay and rejecting your God-given sexuality is right and proper, you are a bigot. Celebrating and encouraging mental illness in such a glaring manner should be enough to radicalize every person against these sickos. In the meantime, hide your kids, hide your wives, hide your husbands, and throw the TVs out.
A couple days later, Gabriel Hays lashed out at actress Stephanie Beatriz, who purported "will be grooming her new baby with LGBTQ propaganda as soon as possible" by taking it to a pride march, further huffing: "Here we go with the early indoctrination of children into the immoral sexual milieu. It’s one thing for a consenting adult to choose these things, but for a kid who has no real concept of sexuality at a young age to be thrown into it is depraved." Hays didn't explain what, exactly, the "grooming" is. Later in the month, Veronica Hays returned to bash a children's show in Australia for having a drag queen on, quoting an anonymous person allegedly commenting, "This is disgusting. Little kids don’t need big talks. Let kids be kids and leave the perverted grooming out of it."
Another June post, by Alexa Moutevelis, freaked out over a Washington Post op-ed writer who claimed that she hoped her children would "encounter kink" at a pride march so they can "learn about the scope and vitality of queer life": "And, there it is. She said the quiet part out loud and pretty much admitted grooming; copping to what conservatives have long feared but told their fears were not only unfounded but homophobic." Actually, Moutevelis remains quite the homophobe, since she doesn't complain about depictions of heterosexual behavior being shown to children and doesn't explain what "grooming" means in her fevered, homophobic brain.
In an August post whining about the existence of new sequel series to "The L Word," Ehrhard let her hate flag fly: "Watching The L Word: Generation Q feels like older LGBTQIA writers gasping for relevance as the child-grooming drag queens and trannies taking over women's sports (and yelling at shopkeepers) get all the pop culture attention."
The following month, Ehrhard rushed to defend Sean Hannity from a "Family Guy" quip that he "peddle[s] hate for money," huffing in response: "The attack on Hannity's views on immigration and sexual ethics particularly missed the mark considering the country is facing an immigration crisis at the border and parents are having to fight off radical LGBT grooming in schools and the larger culture."
In a Dec. 27 post, Ehrhard lashed out at actress Busy Philipps (whose name she can't be bothered to spell correctly) for the offense of having a child who "came out as a lesbian at the age of 10" and and "uses they/them pronouns": "That is what happens when your mother, an abortion-loving fanatic, grooms you for 'genderqueer' parts on Amazon Prime shows."
Even fictional children came be "groomed" in Ehrhard's hateful world. A Jan. 18 post scramed "Child Grooming!" in the headline about a TV show plot:
For a show based on the concept of protecting victims from sexual predation, you would think NBC's Law and Order: SVU would not encourage the early sexualization of children. But in the contemporary wave of Gay Inc., madness and child grooming is just "LGBTQUIA+ affirming."
Thus, in the episode, 'Burning with Rage Forever,' on Thursday, January 13, Capt. Olivia Benson's (Marisa Hargitay) 8-year-old son, Noah (Ryan Buggle) came out as bisexual.
[...]
Once again, Noah is prepubescent and as yet has little sense of what having a "boyfriend or girlfriend" means in a deeper romantic and sexual sense. The words being used by the boy in that scene don't even sound like the dialogue of an early elementary school student. It's ideological brainwashing spewing out of a vulnerable child.
Its clear that "burning with rage forever" is Ehrhard's default mode when it comes toher dealings with anyone who's not a right-wing hater like herself. It's apparently a requirement of being employed at the MRC.
CNS Parrots MRC Parent In Trying To Defend Ginni Thomas' Right-Wing Activism Topic: CNSNews.com
Like its Media Research Center parent, CNSNews.com has taken stabs at defending Ginni Thomas and her husband, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, as evidence of Ginni's behind-the-scenes agitation in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election becomes known. CNS devoted no "news" space to the growing scandal, however; the defenses of the Thomases were all given in commentaries.
A Feb. 28 commentary by Ed Meese and Ken Blackwell sought to praise the Thomases for purportedly exuding "integrity in public service":
The militant Left is attacking the principled public service of Justice Clarence Thomas again, this time by targeting his wife Ginni in a malicious attempt to delegitimize Supreme Court decisions that are faithful to the original meaning of the Constitution.
[...]
This is cancel culture taken to a level that threatens our institutions of government. What began years ago as the politics of personal destruction has metastasized into attempts to delegitimize a distinguished and senior member of the best-functioning branch of the federal government by smearing his wife for making a private-sector career out of her principles and patriotism, doing it in a manner that avoids an appearance of impropriety by not engaging in her husband’s realm of responsibility.
Such demonization must end. Citizens will no longer want to participate in our constitutional republic if they conclude that doing so will incur years of relentless harassment targeting their spouses. And federal judges in particular have lifetime appointments so they can rise above politics, and not be subject to a lifetime of political attacks. We must rise above this noxious miasma and frame these facts truthfully, starting with the Thomases.
That truth is this: Clarence and Ginni Thomas show how a top federal judge can have a patriotic spouse with a public career, where both can faithfully pursue their respective callings with honor and integrity. We should commend their example to our fellow citizens.
On March 23 -- following new revelations that Ginni Thomas attended the "Stop the Steal" rally that turned into the Capitol riot -- it was Star Parker's turn to play cleanup, with a heavy dose of whataboutism that in part invoked right-wingers target du jour, Hunter Biden:
Liberal journalists only look for smoking guns when conservatives are the target.
Where were all the liberal journalists when The New York Post broke the story 17 months ago about emails on Hunter Biden's laptop showing he was doing business deals, profiting on his vice president father's position? He even cut his father a piece of one of the deals. The story went unreported through the presidential election. Only now is The New York Times reporting it as real.
[...]
There is no decision that Clarence Thomas has ever made on the Supreme Court than cannot be traced directly to his rigorous and principled scholarship and commitment to the U.S. Constitution. Period.
Similarly, Ginni Thomas, who sat on the board of my organization, the Center for Urban Renewal and Education, for some 15 years, is motivated by one thing — preservation of our nation as a free nation under God.
The real bottom line is one liberals don't want to hear. The way to limit questions about ethics in government is to keep government limited and small. It's exactly what America's founders had in mind and the exact opposite direction in which liberals have taken our nation.
We owe thanks to Clarence and Ginni Thomas for their relentless struggle to preserve the integrity of our Constitution and the principles that keep our nation free, despite being under endless siege by the liberal media.
Shortly after that, emails from Ginni Thomas to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows were released that show her directing agitating for the election to be overturned. That resulted in an April 1 column from Tony Perkins in full defense mode:
To most people watching the spectacle made by the Washington Post and CNN over her exchanges with former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, the motives were obvious: embarrass Ginni Thomas and damage her husband.
"There are text messages that had nothing to do with Jan. 6," Ken Blackwell of my organization, Family Research Council, argued on "Washington Watch." Like a lot of Americans, she was concerned about the integrity of the election and, as a fixture of the conservative movement, wanted to make sure everything was being done to fight the suspected fraud. The two friends texted on and off the next couple of months -- including through the riots, which Ginni insisted "are not representative of our great teams of patriots."
The Wall Street Journal predicted that this was all a plan to de-legitimize Justice Thomas -- and within hours, they were proven right. Squad Democrats Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN) wasted no time kicking a smear campaign into gear, whipping up the mob over a possible "conflict of interest."
[...]
At the end of the day, this is a nothing burger meant to give desperate Democrats a chance to finish what they started three decades ago. At Thomas's confirmation, which was a few handmaidens shy of Brett Kavanaugh's scorched-earth circus, people accused the Left of a high-tech lynching.
It says something that CNS left it to opinion writers to handle this growing scandal and refused to let its "news" reporters, such as they are, do anything on it.
Newsmax Continued To Promote Greitens Until New Abuse Allegations Surfaced Topic: Newsmax
Last year, Newsmax and columnist Bernard Kerik gavepromotion to Eric Greitens, who had resigned in disgrace as Missouri's governor over allegations of blackmailing a mistress with sexual photos and election spending shenanigans and is now running for a Senate seat in the state. That promotion continued in the first part of this year.
A March 4 article by Charlie McCarthy hyped how "Donald Trump is telling people he's open to endorsing Eric Greitens in the Missouri U.S. Senate race despite having criticized the former governor over the scandal that forced him from office," adding that "Trump allies say the former president's flirtation with Greitens largely centers on the candidate's opposition to McConnell – something other Missouri candidates haven't expressed." McCarthy did note Greitens' record of scandal and fears he would lose the election if nominated.
Perhaps as a sweetener aimed at Trump, the Trump-fluffers at Newsmax also gave Greitens a March 9 column to rant about a foundation funded by Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg funding election efforts in Missouri in 2020 and that where the money was given"Democratic candidates far out performed their traditional turnout while Republican candidates did not." He cited no source for this claim beyond obliquely and weirdly referring to "the reportage of the present day."
Newsmax's coverage wasn't completely devoid of reality, though. A Dec. 8 article featured right-wing radio host Hugh Hewitt begging Trump not to endorse Greitens because he "will lose the seat," The article noted that Greitens "resigned from the statehouse in 2018 amid a scandal that involved alleged misuse of a mailing list for a charity he founded to benefit fellow veterans and an affair with his hairstylist at the same time he was married to his second wife."
The positive coverage Greitens was receiving, however, came to a screeching halt a couple weeks later when Greitens' ex-wife came forward with new allegations of domestic abuse. Newsmax turned against him quickly after that:
A March 22 article by Eric Mack featured Republican Sen. Ron Blunt, who currently holds the seat Greitens is running for, calling on him to drop out of the race.
An article the next day by Sandy Fitzgerald featured Missouri's attorney general calling on Greitens to drop out, declaring that "Eric Greitens belongs in a prison cell, not on the ballot for U.S. Senate. He should withdraw his candidacy immediately."
A March 28 article by John Gizzi noted that Greitens has dropped in polls since the accusations went public, adding that sources claimd that "Trump — once thought to be leading toward an endorsement of the former governor's comeback bid — would now remain neutral in the primary on Aug. 2."
Gizzi also arote a March 31 article stating that "Two days after St. Louis beer heiress Trudy Busch Valentine entered the Democrat [sic] primary for U.S. senator from Missouri, there were increased calls on the Republican side for controversial former Gov. Eric Greitens to exit the race," adding that "Busch Valentine's surprise entry into the race comes as a just-completed Trafalgar Poll shows the charges against Greitens have taken their toll."
The Media Research Center absolutely hated that the Florida "Parent's Rights In Education" bill was dubbed by its opponents as the "don't say gay" bill. Kevin Tober, for instance, huffed in a March 28 post that is was "mislabeling" to use that term "despite the fact that not only does the word gay not appear anywhere in the text of the legislation but it doesn’t prevent children from using the word." (The bill does not outline where, exactly, use of the word is permitted.) By contrast, the MRC went overboard in labeling the bill an "anti-grooming" bill despite the fact that the word "grooming" also appears nowhere in the bill -- which not only ramped up its use of the smear that it had embraced in previous months but also seems to put the lie to its bashing of the "don't say gay" terminology.
We've documented
The Media Research Center has a 
WorldNetDaily columnist Ilana Mercer has a weird fixation on her idea of manhood, so it's no surprise that one of the things she did in support of the trucker protest in Canada was insult the manhood of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, as she did in her Feb. 17 
Curtis Houck's job at the Media Research Center is to bash Jen Psaki and act as a fawning cheerleader for Peter Doocy and other right-wing reporters. He filled that role as expected in his 
Just because Barack Obama left the White House more than a year ago doesn't mean that WorldNetDaily has stopped pushing Obama conspiracy theories . On March 13, Joe Kovacs 
After School Satan Clubs
CNSNews.com 
Like its "news" division 
The fake-news hits on COVID just keep coming from WorldNetDaily. Like this March 13 
A while back, we 
The Media Reserach Center has been tossing around the "grooming" smear about anything that doesn't denigrate the LGBT community long before thecontroversy over Florida's "don't say gay" law. Last May, for instance, Elise Ehrhard 
Like its 
Last year, Newsmax and columnist Bernard Kerik 
