Newsmax's Hirsen Thinks Pixar Film is Evil And 'Occult' For Showing Non-Christians Topic: Newsmax
James Hirsen spent an entire March 22 Newsmax column lashing out at the new Pixar film "Seeing Red" for, essentially, dealing with a girl going through puberty and not being Christian enough:
Disney, via Pixar, is currently streaming a movie that is over-the-top in terms of its unsuitability and potential to cause outright harm to our youth.
The film "Turning Red" is being marketed as a coming of age story.
The setting is a Chinatown community located in Toronto, Canada. Lead character Meilin "Mei" Lee is 13 years-old and is in the process of transitioning to full-fledged womanhood.
Curiously, in this new state of transition, Mei discovers that whenever she feels angry, upset, or otherwise emotionally charged, she turns into a giant red panda. This condition is frequently accompanied by an unpleasant scent and some unfortunate occurrences.
The cinematic tale is apparently meant to be an allegory about female puberty, a kind of symbolic representation of the physiological, psychological, and emotional changes that occur in a female’s life as she journeys from youth to adolescence.
The panda manifestation, red in color, problematic, and emotionally intense, only happens to the women in Mei’s family.
The representation of the menstruation process is disrespectful and debasing in nature. But this is far from the worst of the film’s flaws. Adding to the potential mind, body, and soul-altering mix are the exploration of sexual urges and blatant participation in occult practices.
Wait, what? "Occult practices"? Yes, as Hirsen huffs further: "Christian parents should be especially concerned with the depictions of ancestor worship, polytheism, ritualistic practices, and supernatural transformations."
Actually, those things are better known as Chinese culture and Buddhism (the latter of which the right-wingers at MovieGuide similarly lashed out against). Millions of people follow those beliefs, but Hirsen seems obllivious to that. Instead, he found a pastor named Mike Signorelli to spread hate on the movie because shows people who areb't Christian:
During his clerical tenure, Pastor Signorelli has had extensive experience in a deliverance ministry, one in which he has had a key role in confronting evil itself.
This enables him to recognize imagery in the film that is not merely inappropriate, but dangerous to the spiritual well-being of our young ones.
"Even within the first eight minutes, you have chanting, communication with ancestors, and immediately a red flag should start to go off," he stated.
Additionally, he noted that scenes in the film contain numerous concepts that conflict with a biblical worldview. He warns of danger in the fact that "the movie contains an intermingling of spirituality and ritual."
[...]
"I cannot in good faith allow you to show this to your children knowing what I know about demonic spirits, knowing what I know about the cultures that demons create," he said.
Parents, relatives, and guardians of children and teens would be wise to take heed of Pastor Signorelli’s words regarding this film and other youth-oriented media that have hidden agendas embedded within.
Films are not inherently evil for showing how non-Christians live, but that's what Hirsen seems to believe.
CNS Keeps Up Highly Biased 'News' Coverage Of Jackson Nomination Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com's wildly biased "news "coverage of Ketanji Brown jackson's Supreme Court nomination continued after the hearing and in the runup to the Senate vote.
Susan Jones used a March 30 article to lament that the ideologically driven Repuiblican blockade against Jackson was broken withone senator defecting:
Sen. Susan Collins of Maine is the first Republican to announce support for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court.
She may not be the last. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) says he's still reviewing her record.
[...]
All 50 Democrats will vote to confirm Judge Jackson, and Collins' vote means they can now describe Jackson's support as "bipartisan."
Jones made sure to add that Brett Kavanaugh "was confirmed by a vote of 50-48 on October 6, 2018. One Democrat, Sen. Joe Manchin of Virginia, made his confirmation "bipartisan" as well.
On April 4, Jones dug up a response by Jackson to a written question she didn't like: "Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, in response to written questions, has told the Senate she does not hold a position on whether individuals have natural rights that come from God, not the law." This was followed by a couple more attacks on Jackson from Repubican senators, including CNS' most quotable senator, Ted Cruz:
CNS published no articles focused on what a Democratic senator had to say in favor of Jackson.
When Romney similarly confirmed that he would vote in favor of Jackson, an anonymous CNS writer took swipes at him and rehashed its anti-Jackson talking points:
Republican Sen. Mitt Romney, who now represents Utah but formerly served as the governor of Massachusetts, was one of three Republican senators who voted today to confirm Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the United States Supreme Court.
The other two Republican senators who voted for Jackson were Sen. Susan Collins of Maine and Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. The final vote on the confirmation was 53 to 47.
Romney had announced he was going to vote to confirm Judge Jackson in a written statement he released on Monday in which he called her a “person of honor” who “meets the standard of excellence and integrity.”
[...]
At her confirmation hearings, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R.-Tenn.) asked Judge Jackson: “Can you provide a definition for the word woman?”
“Can I provide a definition? No, I can’t,” Jackson responded.
“You can’t,” Blackburn retorted.
“Not in this context. I’m not a biologist,” Jackson said.
In written questions submitted to her by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Ted Cruz (R.-Texas) asked her: “Do you hold a position on whether individuals possess natural rights, yes or no?”
Judge Jackson responded: “I do not hold a position on whether individuals possess natural rights.”
The anonymous writer did not explain the relevance of mentioning in the lead paragraph that Romney used to be governor of Massachusetts.
A Democrat didn't make it into a headline on the Jackson vote until CNS could find somnething to complain about, and Melanie Arter found it in an April 8 article:
In a speech prior to the confirmation of Judge Kentanji Brown Jackson to the U.S. Supreme Court, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) on Thursday mentioned “notable moments in America’s history” for African-Americans, pointing out the confirmation of Thurgood Marshall, as the first black U.S. Supreme Court justice but omitting the confirmation of Justice Clarence Thomas, who currently serves on the high court.
Another anonymously written CNS article that day seemed to be complaining that too many women were being made judges, including Jackson:
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D.-N.Y.) delivered a speech on the Senate floor on Thursday in which he provided a breakdown by race and gender of the people confirmed to the federal judiciary since Democrats gained functional control of the Senate in January 2021.
Super-majorities of confirmed judges, Schumer explained, have been women and people of color.
On Thursday, the Senate voted to confirm Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who is African American, to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Yes, CNS seems less than thrilled about all those women in high places -- though apparently not so committed to that opinion that the writer would sign his or her name to it.
MRC's Anger At Jackson Nomination Slowly Winds Down With Senate Vote Topic: Media Research Center
It has been a long road for the Media Research Center to act as a right-wing narrative machine over the Supreme Court nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson, from ranting she would be a radical even before anyone was nominated to emphasizing her first name to otherize her to slavishlyhypingfalseright-wingattacks on her. Having failed in doing so -- enough Republican senators refused to buy into the hate and announced they would vote for her confirmation -- the MRC was reduced to whining that non-right-wing outlets accurately noted the historic nature of her nomination while still complaining that Republicans' harsh, factually deficient questioning of Jackson was being criticized -- even though a Quinnipiac poll found that only 27 percent of Americans approved of how Republians treated Jackson.
Kevin Tober complained that MSNBC guest "Elie Mystal doubled down on his claims that the criticism Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson received from Republicans was designed to get her killed. He even suggested Republicans oppose her nomination because she's black." He concuded by hypocritically huffing, "This kind of talk isn't just deranged, it is dangerous and should be called out by all sane people who value civil political discourse."
Clay Waters actually suggested that people should stop complaining about what Republicans did to Jackson because she'll be approved anyway -- even as he nursed grievances about the treatment of Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas more than 30 years ago:
After his repulsive front-page piece March 25 excoriating Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee for their supposedly racist treatment of Biden’s Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson, New York Times reporter Carl Hulse announced some Republicans would vote yes in the upcoming confirmation vote on Tuesday’s front page: “Cracks Appear in G.O.P.’s Opposition to Jackson.”
Even as Jackson stands on the precipice of victory, Hulse is still bitterly attacking committee Republicans for daring to question her record.
[...]
Hulse hypocritically longed for the good old days when Congress reliably rubber-stamped a president’s Supreme Court nominees. (Does he not remember the treatment of the Republican-nominated Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas, and Brett Kavanaugh?)
Alex Christy tried to soft-pedal things by claiming that Jackson merely faced "tough" and "sharp" questions from Republicans while getting upset that they were (accurately) described as rigbht-wing culture war issues: "Apparently previous Supreme Court nominees have never had to deal with culture war questions. Only when Republicans do not get out of the way of “history” are such questions considered going too far."
Later, when NBC's Chuck Todd pointed out that the GOP attacks were driven by the “echo chamber conservative media,” Christy uniroinically retorted, "Irony is dead at MSNBC." Of course, that's exactly what someone stuck in the right-wing media echo chamber would say.
Then, on the day of the Senate's vote on Jackson, there came the MRC whining about something historical being accurately reported as such and the non-right-wing media's refusal to hate Jackson like the MRC clearly does:
Tober lost it when CNN pointed out that some Republican senators couldn't be bothered to dress like a senator to cast their vote:
Even after Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson has been confirmed the leftist media cannot stop whining that she was treated unfairly by Republican Senators. They are even playing the race card in their attacks on the GOP, with CNN’s Lauran Coates suggesting that some Senators not wearing neckties to the vote was disrespectful to the first African American woman to be appointed to the Supreme Court.
[...]
Coates didn’t mention which Senator or Senators committed the unforgivable sin of not wearing a tie. Regardless, this is a petty complaint even for CNN.
Tim Graham, meanwhile, was still stuck on his Kavanaugh grievance kick in his April 8 column:
The shamelessness of liberal politicians and journalists is displayed by their unique outrage at the treatment of Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson, as if everyone forgot the smearing of Brett Kavanaugh with unsubstantiated sexual allegations, including teenaged gang rape.
Graham used his podcast the same day to whine that non-right-wing media "complained that Republicans were somehow rude to walk out of the Senate chamber once the vote was over, like everyone was supposed to surround Judge Jackson like she was the hero at the end of Top Gun."
Brad Wilmouth continued the MRC's anger at Republicans being criticized by complaining that "CNN analyst Errol Louis suggested that Republicans are opposed to and bitter about the acquisition of civil rights for African Americans as he reacted to Republican resistance to Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's appointment to the Supreme Court," then "suggested that Judge Jackson's Republican critics represent a backlash to the Civil Rights Movement and oppose "progress" like the appointment of Judge Jackson." Wilmouth did not rebut any of Louis' claims.
Which kind of sums up the MRC's entire strategy against Jackson -- make a lot of noise, keep the narratives in play, and deny they have been discredited. That's not "media research," that's a partisan political organization.
CNS' Right-Wing Catholic Priest Denounces Social Justice, Buys Into Conspiracy Theories Topic: CNSNews.com
Rev. Michael Orsi has been continuing to put right-wing politics ahead of his mission as a Catholic priest in his CNSNews.com columns. He used his March 21 column to rant that the idea of social justice and equity is not Christian:
Christians are justified by Jesus Christ — living according to his Word, following his teaching. Our faith in him demands that we treat others justly. This not only involves a commitment to being charitable, but to inviting others to join us in adhering to the standards he set.
Social justice, on the other hand, holds up abstract and highly ideological conceptions of “right.” It calls us to excuse (or even to encourage) ways of living that are not at all consistent with the nature by which we are made and the behavior that Jesus modeled.
A stark example of this difference is the ideology of gender that’s such a prominent aspect of current social justice thinking. The very fact that God chose to come among us in the distinctive form of a man demonstrates the reality that human beings are created in his image with the complementary qualities of maleness and femaleness.
Social justice offers us an alphabet-soup assortment of gender characteristics and sexual inclinations (LGBTQ+). This is a false idea. It’s heretical. And Christians are not being just when they encourage, or even accept, such a proposition.
[...]
Social justice is not Christian. It does not reflect a Christian understanding of justice. It does not fit the Christology of Jesus. It’s a distorted attempt to create a “perfect” world, according to a vision of perfection that’s cast in the image of man, and is quite aside from what God understands as perfection.
Sometimes even people within the Church persist in believing there are valid “truths” other than those Jesus shows us. When that happens, those “Christians” are in danger of losing their identity as human beings. They are in danger of losing their moral compass. They are in danger of losing their souls.
Orsi spent his April 28 column buying into right-wing "new world order" and "great reset" conspiracy theories:
For some time now, we’ve been hearing about a so-called new world order. This concept has been referred to by several names. The terminology currently favored is the Great Reset. But by whatever label, it’s a way of living designed and controlled by human beings, in which God has little or no part.
Indeed, God’s true world order is disparaged and rejected, because it’s detrimental to the vision of the new world order based on human will.
The new world order claims a great vision for a just and equitable future, but in reality its focus is always on the now. Its dream is to make humanity conform to an image conjured up by an elite leadership. So its ongoing challenge is controlling human behavior in the present.
God, on the other hand, offers us eternity. And in the true world order, he’s in charge. This imposes a cap on human efforts to exercise control.
[...]
Throw in population control initiatives, of which promotion of abortion is the most visible component. Add open borders, by which cultural identity and civic peace are weakened and people lose control of their own communities.
And don’t forget about our current celebration of gender fluidity and the whole LGBT menu of sexual adventurism, an assault on marriage and family life that’s unprecedented in our history.
All of this shows how intent are the advocates of the new world order on destroying God’s true world order.
The essence of Christ’s resurrection is freedom — the ultimate expression of which is eternal life. As Christians we are called to hold up the truth of that great event memorialized in the Octave of Easter. We’re called to defend God’s true world order.
Is it a good thing that ministers are so immersed in right-wing conspiracy theories? It seems not.
MRC's War on NewsGuard Continues Its Lame Gotcha Phase Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's war on website rating service NewsGuard has been descending into lame gotchas for a while now. That trend is continuing. Catherine Salgado actually wrote this in a March 9 post:
Does biased NewsGuard automatically favor state-affiliated media? The liberal online “credibility” arbiter gave seven traditionally non-autocratic state-affiliated media outlets around the world an average score of 98.6/100.
MRC Free Speech America looked at seven traditionally non-autocratic state-affiliated media outlets from Germany, the U.S., France, the United Kingdom and Canada. Biased NewsGuard didn’t allow government affiliation to harm journalistic credibility.
America’s National Public Radio (NPR) and Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), France’s Radio France Internationale (RFI) and France 24 and Germany’s Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF) all received perfect scores of 100/100.
The UK’s British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and Canada’s Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) both received excellent NewsGuard scores of 95/100.
Salgado doesn't explain why this government affiliiation must automatically be in conflict with journalistic credibility or even dispute the ratings or provide examples of why those outlets should be downgraded. Instead, she tried to play false equivalence and rehash old complaints about state-owned outlets in authoritarian countries getting better ratings that right-wing misinformers like One America News.
Salgado returned on March 11 to whine about NewsGuard's mission again:
NewsGuard co-CEO Steven Brill claimed that NewsGuard’s goal is “not to block anything,” but “just [to] give people straight information.” However, in a recent interview, he revealed NewsGuard’s real game of demonetizing anything the “credibility” arbiter deems “misinformation.”
Brill went on on March 8 to discuss NewsGuard and how the self-appointed online “credibility” arbiter works, especially how it restricts social media, with podcast host Molly Jong-Fast.
Brill explained that Facebook’s two top executives, Meta (formerly Facebook) CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg, apparently ultimately rejected the idea of using NewsGuard for Facebook, though a Facebook executive had originally helped NewsGuard raise money.
[...]
He then summarized NewsGuard lists dividing supposedly “legitimate journalism” outlets from supposedly illegitimate media companies, so advertisers can choose what quality of news to affiliate with. “They can advertise there using our inclusion list, and can use our exclusion list to make sure they’re not on” sites that are presumably not “legitimate journalism,” he said. When leftist podcast host and Bulwark contributor Molly Jong-Fast suggested that NewsGuard could “stop fake news” on Facebook, Brill agreed, bragging, “You could do it in a minute.”
Brill said that Facebook executives originally endorsed NewsGuard as a tool that it could use instead of algorithms to regulate content, and helped the company fundraise. “One of the senior executives there even helped us raise money by encouraging investors,” Brill said. NewsGuard does not work like social media, Brill insisted, because it is “transparent.”
Again, Salgado offered no rebuttal beyond rehashing old attacks and hyping "a recent letter signed by MRC founder and President Brent Bozell and dozens of free speech advocates warned all U.S. governors about NewsGuard’s bias and influence." As if Bozell and his fellow letter-signers -- which, as we documented, include officlals from misinformation-laden operations like WorldNetDaily, LifeNews and the Western Journal -- aren't peddling their own bias and influence.
Because NewsGuard calls out misinformation, it's a threat to the MRC and its fellow right-wingers. That's why it has been waging war on the company.
NEW ARTICLE -- Fake News At WND: Coronavirus Edition, Part 3 Topic: WorldNetDaily
Even as it's fighting to stay alive after all the fake news and conspiracies it has promoted, WorldNetDaily just can't stop publishing false claims and misinformation about COVID vaccines. Read more >>
MRC Defends Republicans Accused of Racist Questioning of Jackson Topic: Media Research Center
With the actual confirmation hearing over for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson, it was time for the Media Research Center to try and get a handle on the post-hearing narrative, starting with blanket denials that Republicans' aggressive and deceitful questioning of Jackson. First up, whining that said questioning was considered to have at least a tinge of racism:
Then it was Tim Graham whine time. First, he insisted that what Jackson faced was nowhere near as bad as what happened to Brett Kavanaugh:
Was this epic shamelessness or remarkable amnesia? (Pick A.)
Washington Post deputy editorial page editor Ruth Marcus penned a piece in the Sunday paper headlined "Confirmation hearings? More like defamation hearings." Online, the headline was "Forget advise and consent. This is smear and degrade." It's like nothing ever happened to Brett Kavanaugh.
[...]
In this case, the words "Brett Kavanaugh" never appeared, as if Marcus didn't have to address the Fake News about teenaged gang rape. In 2018, Marcus took after Kavanaugh for daring to get angry when he was accused of teenage rape. The headline then was "Ford’s testimony was devastating. Kavanaugh’s was volcanic." No "smear and degrade" or tarnish.
Oh no, "the fundamental wisdom of the Constitution’s approach was on display Thursday. Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh was confronted with the witness against him — one of them, anyway — and it was devastating." What a Democrat rag this paper is!
Graham offered no evidence that the sexual assault claims made against Kavanaugh were "fake news."
Then, Graham dedicated his March 30 column to issuing his usual complaint about fact-checkers fact-checking Republicans too much:
Now that the Ketanji Brown Jackson hearings are complete, we have collected another fascinating exhibit of the leftist tilt of “independent fact checkers.” Just try and find a single fact check on anything Judge Jackson said. Try and find a single evaluation of any statement by a Democratic politician touting Jackson – from Biden and Dick Durbin on down.
Checking liberals and Democrats is apparently not listed among their job duties.
On March 28, White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates addressed Judge Jackson’s qualifications. Bates claimed what speaks to the strength of her public record “is the multitude of fact-checks from the press, from retired judges, and from former prosecutors who have dismantled attacks brought by a small group of GOP senators.”
“Dismantling” Republican critiques is the job of the Fact Check community? That’s what it looks like.
Graham went on to disingenuously rant:
Add to that one bizarre attack on a Trump fan on Facebook with 2,700 friends. He was ruled “False” when he claimed the Kavanaugh hearings drew more live coverage than the Jackson hearings. That is “True,” and PolitiFact is “False.” Once they started throwing around shoddy rape claims, The Price Is Right and The View had to take a hike.
Graham conveniently didn't link to the PolitiFact fact-check in question so we could see it for ourselves. And it turns out that Graham is misleading about the fact-check; it actually said: "The coverage is comparable to how news networks reported on the initial days of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing. After four days of hearings, sexual assault allegations against Kavanaugh emerged and another hearing was scheduled on Sept. 27 to address them. News networks canceled their regular programming to air that hearing live."
To repeat: The assault allegations against Kavanaugh weren't made until after the same round of hearings, and those were covered comparably to Jackson's hearing. The allegations were covered in an additional hearing, and that's the one that got widespread coverage. Graham's declaration of "false" is, well, false.
The MRC's parade of whining that Republicans are being criticized continued:
In that last one, Clay Waters made a lame attempt to throw shade at Democrats by suggesting Republicans treated better than Democrats treated Amy Comeyt Barrett: "At least Republicans stayed to vote against Jackson. The Democrats on the Judiciary Committee simply boycotted the vote for Trump nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett in 2020." Waters conveniently omitted the context -- which was actually noted in the NPR article he linked to as backup -- that Democrats boycotted the vote to highlight how Barrett's nomination was being hypocritically rammed through by Republicans during a presidential election despite Republicans blocking Merrick Garland's nomination in 2016 by claiming that it was too close to a presidential eleciton.
CNS Serves Up Wildly Biased 'News' Coverage of Jackson's Confirmation Hearing Topic: CNSNews.com
We've shown how CNSNews.com's coverage of Ketanji Brown Jackson's Supreme Court nomination started out balanced then began to revert to its anti-liberal right-wing bias. Nowhere was this more pronounced than its coverage of Jackson's confirmation hearing, which was largely devoted to echoing anti-Jackson narratives as expressed by Republican senators -- particularly hammering on the discredited attack on her sentencing of those convicted of child porn offenses and the gotcha question of what a woman is.
Here are the articles devoted to Republican senators asking Jackson questions and otherwise pontificating:
By contrast, CNS devoted no articles whatsoever to questions to Jackson from Democratic senators. The only time a Democratic senator's name appeared in the headline of a hearing-related article was a piece by managing editor Michael W. Chapman, "Durbin Interrupts Cruz to Stop Questioning SCOTUS Nominee Over Child Porn Cases" -- though it was clear by the transcript of the exchange in the article that Durbin was trying to get Cruz to stop talking over Jackson so she could actually answer the question he was badgering her with.
CNS also devoted a few articles to cherry-picked answers from Jackson largely framed to portray her as an evil liberal or focus on other right-wing obsessions:
CNS then sent intern Emily Robertson out to do her intern thing of pestering senators about the manufactured child-porn issue, asking them: "“Sen. Hawley yesterday listed seven child-porn cases in which he thought Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson had given sentences that were too lenient. Do you agree?” She wrote four articles compiling their reponses:
At no point did Robertson tell her readers that the child-porn talking point has beendiscredied, with even conservative National Review legal expert Andrew McCarthy denouncing it as "meritless to the point of demagoguery."
Roberetson was made to do the same with the other right-wing narrative, hurling this biased question at senators: “Senator Blackburn asked Judge Jackson to define the word ‘woman’ and Judge Jackson said, ‘No, I can’t.’ Should someone who does not know what a woman is serve on the Supreme Court?” These senators responded:
By focusing almost exclusively on Republican senators, it's clear that Robertson's mission wsa to advance right-wing talking points, not engage in journalism. Driving the point of her intent home even further, she even did an article on how Republican Newt Gingrich -- who hasn't been a senator for more than two decades -- huffed that Jackson "should be disqualified" from consideration on the Supreme Court "unless she can come back in and explain what a woman is and she can explain whether words like 'he' and 'she' are acceptable pronouns."
MRC Sports Blogger Pretends There's No White Supremacism Problem In MMA Topic: Media Research Center
Media Research Center sports blogger John Simmons complained in a March 24 post:
If you look hard enough for a problem, you’ll find it. MSNBC published an op-ed by Cynthia Miller-Idriss that attempted to condemn home fitness as a potential breeding ground for white supremacists.
Citing a mere handful of mixed martial arts training groups in Canada and Europe that have been flagged for neo-Nazi rhetoric, Miler-Idriss is worried that the growing trend of home fitness in the United States will lead to a rise in white supremacy-minded MMA gyms within our own borders.
[...]
Pushing through pain, heroism, solidarity, and brotherhood are values and attributes you learn to appreciate if you participate in any sport. There is nothing unique or inherently special about physical fitness training providing these things, and certainly nothing that even hints at white supremacy. Maybe these people just want to stay fit and learn some valuable life lessons along the way.
Actually, MMA has been a breeding ground for racists for years -- the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote about it back in 2008, and it didn't have to go to Europe or Canada to find it, and others havefound white nationalism and racism in the MMA scene in America as well. Indeed, the day after Simmons' post, MMA news site Bloody Elbow reported that a collection of neo-Nazi MMA & fitness fight clubs called Active Club are spreading white supremacist and anti-Semitic propaganda across the U.S.
Instead admitting this is an actual problem, Simmons attacked the writer for having "an economic interest in finding right-wing boogiemen in new and interesting places," then pretened
MMA is not a hotbed for fostering white supremacists. For those that care, lots of black, Hispanic, and African fighters have achieved and sustained incredible amounts of success in MMA. Perhaps the only reason why people think white supremacists thrive there is because a great many people within the sport - like UFC figure and based podcaster Joe Rogan - who supported Donald Trump when he was president. But being a Trump supporter does not make you a white supremacist (although the left has an interest in claiming there's no difference between the two.)
So if you’re thinking about getting into physical fitness or even MMA at a more serious level, go enjoy yourself. Just don't let the Nazis get you.
Simmons didn't mention that, as a paid MRC blogger, he has an economic interest in discrediting anyone who doesn't adhere to right-wing narratives -- even if they're telling the truth. And maybe citing Rogan wasn't the best example of reasonableness in MMA given that the MRC had just spent weeksdefending him from the fact he loves to spread COVID misinformation.
WND's Root Wants You To Think Trump Will Save Us All Topic: WorldNetDaily
Wayne Allyn Root is a patheticsuck-up to Donald Trump, and he continues to be in his WorldNetDaily column.
Root started his March 18 column by recounting the purported hellscape America has become under President Biden -- including a prediction of how "our nation collapses into 'Mad Max' territory," then declared that "an election that I believe was rigged has changed everything":
Think of America with former President Donald Trump in charge. We had perhaps the greatest and most prosperous economy in history; the highest increase in middle-class incomes ever; the lowest unemployment ever – including the lowest black and Latino unemployment ever; inflation and interest rates at historic lows; a perfect supply chain with a plethora of everything; and peace all over the world. But some Americans didn't like Trump's tweets.
What would you give to have Trump back right about now?
Everything is at risk now. America is a disaster now. All because we might have allowed Democrats to rig a presidential election with millions of mail-in ballots; no voter ID; little or no signature matching; plus an insane idea called "ballot harvesting" that used to be illegal in all 50 states; ballot drops in the middle of the night; ballots counted for days after the election until the desired result was achieved; and every Republican witness kicked out of the room while the votes were being counted in key battleground states.
No evidence of a rigged election there, right?
When much of that is demonstrably false, then no, Wayne.
Root used his March 25 column to repeat right-wing narratives against Supreme Court nomineed Ketanji Brown Jackson about allegedly being "soft on pedophilia and child porn cases," going on to rant: "Jackson was chosen only based on the color of her skin. To pick someone based only on being black and female is disgraceful, blatantly racist, insulting and disrespectful to every qualified American of any race or gender. Yet it appears Jackson will be confirmed for the highest court in the land. He then proclaimed that "Donald J. Trump is back to lead the battle, bigger and bolder than ever before," cioting polls that show him doing well despite his not having done anything for the past year and a half but spread lies about how the election was stolen from him. He then served up his "personal testimony" about Trump:
Now to my personal testimony.
My wife, Cindy, and I just returned from our honeymoon at Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump's estate and private club in Palm Beach, Florida. This amazing trophy property may be the most valuable residential property in America.
saw Trump each night for dinner. I spent time up close and personal with the man. And I can tell you several things that should scare the heck out of liberals ...
Trump looked healthy, strong and confident.
Trump was carefree; he was actually spinning records during dinner. He has eclectic taste ranging from opera to rock to rap to pop tunes. I have no doubt he could make millions per night as "DJ PREZ" at Las Vegas nightclubs!
I also watched as Trump, the former leader of the free world, personally gave out the awards to the winners of the men's, ladies' and seniors' golf tournaments at his Trump International Golf Club. By the way, the senior tournament winner was ... Donald J. Trump! How's that for carefree?
Given that Trump has a well-earned reputation for cheating at golf, "carefree" might not be the proper word here. Nevertheless, Root concluded:
Trump is very much back in the game. He's got his mojo back. He looks very much like President Nos. 45 and 47.
I have no doubt Trump is the winner in 2024. But that's only if we make it to 2024.
As I said to Trump, "I love and appreciate you. I believe you were the winner of the 2020 election. After the disaster of Biden, I believe you'll win the 2024 election by a large margin. But the real question is, can America survive another three years?"
That's the most important question in the history of America.
Root asserted in his April 8 column that "Biden and Democrats have produced a toxic combination of stupidity, insanity and evil," then presented Trump as a force of goodness and light who must try to win Black and Latino votes by holding his rallies in urban areas:
President Trump, while there are many things I love about you, one stands out: You don't see people by the color of their skin, but you instead see them only as fellow Americans. You proved that as president when the policies you pursued and actions you took to "Make America Great Again" were clearly for the benefit of ALL Americans, and not just the privileged elite. You were great for working class Americans, middle class Americans and most importantly, black and Latino Americans. While Democrats were calling you "racist," your policies created the lowest unemployment in history for blacks and Latinos.
With that said, the most important task now is to ensure that not only are you reelected in 2024, but that you are reelected with overwhelming political support in Congress. I believe you are uniquely positioned, in the history of America, to do that.
And the time to start is now!
Mr. President, I know you love rallies in stadiums with 20,000 to 80,000 screaming, adoring fans. And that's great. We all love your rallies. But the fact is that you've already got the votes of virtually every conservative in America, of almost every Christian, of an overwhelming majority of working class and middle-class voters and a huge majority of white voters. They're all coming out for the GOP House and Senate in November ... and for you again in 2024.
[...]
What is this tour called? You already named it: "The Trump 'What Have You Got to Lose?' Tour." Yes, I want you to tour the USA for the next three years appealing to black, Latino and minority voters! Fill stadiums with black and brown supporters. You've already got all the rest. Adding just a few million minority votes will win countless House and Senate seats, lead to a Trump-GOP landslide in 2024 and cement your legacy as the greatest president in history.
And it will drive Democrats and the mainstream media into fits of rage and insanity. Liberal heads will explode. That's a pretty fun bonus.
Best of all, once you're reelected in 2024, you'll have a Trump-friendly GOP House and Senate ready to get to work passing everything we've ever dreamed of – especially a national voter ID law and a ban on ballot harvesting.
President Trump, it's time to bet on black ... and brown. This is how we change America, take America back and make America great again.
Instead, Trump was planning to rally for a Nebraska gubernatorial candfidate who, like hjim, has been accused of sexual harassment. Not quite the power play Root had in mind.
MRC Loved Narrative-Pushing 'Woman' Question To Jackson Topic: Media Research Center
When Republicans hurled the gotcha question to Ketanji Brown Jackson during her Supreme Court confirmation hearing about defining what a woman is, the Media Research Center knew what to do -- exploit it for maximum partisan impact. Kevin Tober set the tone:
On Tuesday night, during her confirmation hearings, Biden Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson was asked by Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) if she could define the word woman. Proving how woke she is, Jackson said she couldn’t define the word because she isn’t a biologist. As shocking as this answer was, only NBC Nightly News managed to air the exchange. With ABC’s World News Tonight and CBS Evening News ignoring the whole controversy.
[...]
ABC & CBS were obviously too embarrassed to inform their viewers that Biden’s Supreme Court nominee either didn’t know or refused to answer what a woman is.
Alex Christy got mad at Jimmy Kimmel for pointing out the partisan gotcha nature of the question:
ABC late night host Jimmy Kimmel had a hard time on Wednesday comprehending why Republican Senators Marsha Blackburn and Ted Cruz would quiz Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson on the definition of a "woman." Kimmel resorted to personal attacks to defend Jackson, but only ended up making himself the butt of the joke as he also couldn’t come up with a definition.
Kimmel began by lamenting: “[Jackson] said the fact that she was even nominated shows how far we’ve come as a country, and so some of the Republican senators on the committee have been hard at work to show how far we haven’t.”
Eventually, Kimmel would try to make it seem as if Blackburn was the one who was clueless on what constitutes a woman: “The award for most original question of the week so far goes to Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, who is the only Republican woman on the Judiciary Committee. And yet is still trying to figure out what that word means.”
After playing the video of Blackburn and Jackson going back and forth on the issue, with Jackson pleading ignorance because she’s not a biologist, Kimmel attempted to answer the question: “Hold on. I know the answer. 'You are a horrible woman.' Is that--?”
No, Jimmy, it isn’t.
Christy also got mad that Kimmel used "name calling" toward Republican Sen. Ted Cruz -- as if hurling insults at people it doesn't like (i.e. cheering Joe Rogan calling Brian Stelter a "motherfucker") wasn't the MRC's modus operandi.
Tober lashed out at MSNBC's Joy Reid again for critizing that gotcha question: "It's obvious why Reid was furious, Jackson was exposed as woke since refused to define something so simple." He further complained that "Reid said that the GOP Senators were 'constantly saying child pornography because they know that triggers QAnon and they want them to vote Republican.' Which of course is false." Tober offered no evidence to disprove that statement.Christy was similarly upset that CNN linked Republicans' obsession with smearing Jackson with discredited child porn questions as originating with QAnon, but he too failed to disprove the claim.
The MRC once again got mad that the hostile Republican questioning of Jackson was being called out as such, and that there was coverage of Jacksonthat wasn't as hostile as that coming from the MRC and other right-wing media while invoking the nomination ghost of Brett Kavanaugh:
Christy -- who has apparently decided that Kimmel is his mortal enemy --melted down over him again for making Republicans look bad:
On his Thursday, ABC late night host Jimmy Kimmel summarized Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings with a parody of Hollywood award shows. For his final award, he bestowed on Jackson the “award for Outstanding Poker Face While Listening to Idiots.”
[...]
Kimmel specifically couldn’t hide his contempt for Ted Cruz, who received the “Outstanding Sitting Stone-faced While Your Colleague Calls You a Jackass” and “Outstanding Supporting Actress” awards. Of course, Kimmel wasn’t intelligent enough to see that the latter award confirmed Cruz’s concern about the definition of “woman.”
Other awards included the “Outstanding Skeptical Chin Rub” and “Outstanding Putting on and Immediately Removing Glasses” which went to Louisiana Senator John Kennedy and the “Outstanding Indignant Hand Chop” which was given to South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham.
Columnists Jonathan Capehart and David Brooks joined PBS NewsHour host Judy Woodruff on Friday for their weekly panel discussion to recap Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings. Together, the duo would accuse Republicans of putting her through hell so that they could get on Fox.
Christy conveniently failed to mention that all four Senate Republicans who hectored Jackson aout child porn sentencing were all rewarded with airtime on Fox News shortly afterward -- meaning that Capehart and Brooks were correct in their assessment.
Jeffrey Lord defended Cruz hammering Jackson on the child porn narrative and denied he had any racist motive in doing so:
Cruz’s “message” had zero to do with Brown Jackson being, as the Times described her “A Black woman.” Cruz’s point had everything to do with left-wing jurisprudence. The latter a longtime issue between left and right that has zero to do with race and has been raised in one Court nomination after another involving white nominees and the issue of crime.
It's weird that Lord is so upset that the Times described a Black woman as "a Black woman."
Tober was upset again that the QAnon link was brought up once more:
ABC continued to prove that for the leftist media any criticism of them has some ulterior motive, during the “Powerhouse Roundtable” segment on Sunday’s This Week, co-host Jon Karl claimed that the GOP questioning Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson on her light sentences to child porn offenders was “a message to QAnon.”
[...]
Karl replied whining about the GOP Senator’s “focus on child pornography and pedophiles.” To which Brazile shot back “QAnon.”
Unsurprisingly, Karl agreed “it was a message to QAnon, wasn't it?” Arguing that “these are not major cases, these were sentencing decisions.”
And again, Tober offered no evidence to counter the claim.
NEW ARTICLE: A Black-Out At Newsmax Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax columnist Conrad Black seems to feel he needs to justify the pardon Donald Trump gave him for financial crimes by buying into his Big Lie and sucking up to him at every opportunity. Read more >>
CNS' Donohue Has A Belated (And Ahistorical) Meltdown Over 'Maus' Topic: CNSNews.com
A good couple of decades late to the party, dishonest Catholic Bill Donohue tried to capitalize on the current right-wing obsession with banning the graphic novel "Maus" in his March 23 CNSNews.com column:
Over 200 leaders of Polish American organizations have signed a letter to members of Congress asking that a book which offers a vile depiction of Poles during the Holocaust be discontinued in the schools.
The letter has been distributed to members of the House Committee on Education and Labor, Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education. It follows a decision by a Tennessee school district to drop the book from its curriculum.
The best-selling graphic novel, "Maus," by Art Spiegelman, which is targeted at children, features illustrations that are outrageous and needlessly offensive. But it is the lies, and the vicious insults hurled at Poles, that merit the most serious condemnation.
The letter by the Polish American coalition, led by Edward Wojciech Jeśman, president of the Polish American Strategic Initiative, lists several reasons why "Maus" does not belong as an assigned or recommended book in the schools.
The book offers a flagrantly inaccurate account of the Polish experience during the Holocaust. Poles are portrayed as Nazi sympathizers, which is a lie — they were the victims of Hitler's genocidal agenda. Polish deaths were proportionately the greatest of any nation in World War II, which is why the deaths of Poles and Polish Jews constitutes a double Holocaust. Moreover, many Poles, drawing on their Catholic upbringing, risked their lives to save Jews.
Poles are depicted as pigs. "Pigs in popular culture are viewed as disgusting, filthy animals," the letter notes, "while in Jewish culture, pigs and pork are unclean in a way other animals are not. 'Maus' employs the same imagery of Poles found in Nazi propaganda, where they are routinely referred to as 'Polish pigs.'"
The takeaway for Polish schoolchildren who are required to read this book is that their people are morally debased and that their heritage is evil. No child deserves to be psychologically raped by educators.
It's clear that neither Donohue nor any of those Polish-Americans have read the book or even bothered to look into the story behind the depiction. Spiegelman himself explained it in an interview that pointed out his Polish-Jewish heritage as he discussed being asked about the depiction by a Polish embassy employee:
The day came, I went up to talk with the guy—entirely cordial. He indicated that they would be granting the visa, but he, too, wanted to know, very concerned: Why Poles as pigs?
“My initial reply, I suppose, was a bit facetious: ‘At first,’ I told him, ‘I tried to render Poles as noble stags, but I eventually found it just too hard inking in all those antlers.’ But then I went on, trying to explain how in the American cartoon tradition, pigs simply don’t carry any particular negative connotation: Porky Pig, for instance, is every bit as cuddly and beloved a figure as Mickey Mouse. Although it wasn’t lost on me that as far as my mother and father were concerned, the main thing about pigs is that they weren’t kosher. Beyond that, in terms of the narrative conventions of the text, the main thing to be noted about pigs is that they are not part of the book’s overriding metaphorical food chain. Pigs don’t eat mice—cats do. Pigs are relatively innocuous as far as mice are concerned.
“The embassy guy nodded politely, but clearly he wasn’t buying my explanations. ‘Mr. Spiegelman,’ he said gravely, at length, ‘the thing you don’t seem to understand is that in Poland calling someone a swine is a much, much greater insult than seems to be the case here in America. Swine, you see, is what the Nazis called the Poles.’
“‘Exactly!’ I replied. ‘And they called us vermin. That’s the whole point.’ You see, I didn’t make up these metaphors, the Nazis did. I was just trying to explore them, to take them seriously, to unravel and deconstruct them. I must say, I keep waiting for some Pole to take umbrage at the fact that I portray Jews as rodents—I mean, I’m not holding my breath or anything, though it would be nice.
“But actually, it’s interesting when you look at those metaphors in the context of the sort of suffering competition that so seems to define Jewish-Polish relations nowadays. Because if you think about the Thousand-Year Reich as a sort of animal farm, to borrow a metaphor, Jews as rodents or vermin were pests to be destroyed and exterminated first thing, indiscriminately, as a matter of course. Whereas Poles as pigs, like all the Slavic races in the entire Nazi conception, while not to be coddled, weren’t to be indiscriminately destroyed: They were to be put to use and worked for their meat. Neither status was enviable, but it’s a distinction worth noting nevertheless.
Polish critics who rejected Spiegelman’s work seemed unable to see themselves in this story of a Polish Jewish man who survived the Holocaust and encountered both kind and cruel Polish people along the way. For some, the simpler response was to reject the cartoon image of themselves. As [researcher Biz] Nijdam put it, “Instead of being upset about the history, they’re upset about the pigs.”
Because Donohue couldn't be bothered to do basic research, he doesn't understand that Spiegelman had a reson for doing what he did. Instead, he gives in to his usual historically ignorant performative outrage and demands that the book be banned:
Removing books from a school's curriculum should never be taken lightly, but when the book in question (a) maligns an entire ethnic group (b) is historically indefensible and (c) is aimed at innocent, unsuspecting children, then to make it available in the schools is nothing short of educational malpractice.
Those who defend assigning "Maus" would not assign a book which characterized blacks as pit bulls or American Indians as piranhas, never mind distort their historical heritage by depicting them as savages.
Interestingly, Donohue ended his column with this note: "Many thanks to Ronald Rychlak, Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Mississippi, for bringing this issue to my attention. He is a member of the Catholic League's board of advisors." Rychlak was the public face of onetime Soviet Bloc spymaster Ion Mihai Pacepa, who served for many years as a useful tool for WorldNetDaily for anti-communism and Clinton-bashing, even endorsing Donald Trump for president despite his sketchy ties to Russian operatives. So it's not a surprise to see Rychlak have a hand in this ahistorical rant.
MRC Still Mad False GOP Attacks On Jackson Were Exposed As False Topic: Media Research Center
When we last left off, the Media Research Center was hyping Josh Hawley's bogus attack on Ketanji Bown Jackson's sentencing record in child porn cases while pretending it hadn't been discredited. That obsession coninued, with a couple of additions.
Now, the MRC has been obsessed with Jeffrey Toobin's peener ever since he got busted pleasuring himself on a Zoom call, referencing the incident at every opportunity, and Nicholas Fondacaro kept the penner obsession up(!) in a post criticizing Toobin for criticizing Republican questioning of Jackson:
Day two of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings brought direct and pointed questions from Republican Senator Josh Hawley (MO) about her history of going easy on child porn cases. But CNN masturbation expert and chief legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin took strong issue with Hawley’s focus on the serious issue many Americans care about.
[...]
“This is about appealing to the QAnon audience, this cult that is a big presence in Republican Party politics now, that is – where Senator Hawley is trying to ingratiate himself with that group and run for president with their support,” Toobin asserted.
Adding: “This has very little to do with Judge Jackson who, as has come out throughout the hearing today, is one of many judges who have found the sentencing guidelines in these child porn possession cases excessive.”
Perhaps the concerning takeaway is that “many judges” think “the sentencing guidelines” for pedophiles and child porn offenders are “excessive.”
Is that more or less concerning than demandinbg that judges hand out only maximum sentences and not take individual circumstances into consideration?
Curtis Houck followed by rehashing right-0wing grievances of the treatment of Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Comey Barrett in defending Republican attacks in Jackson:
During an afternoon break Tuesday in Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearings, CNN Newsroom mocked and dismissed questions from Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) about critical race theory (CRT) as “below the line” and “reek[ing] of desperation” from “a clown” who “put on a performance” in “the surreal.”
To be clear about how CNN views things, it’s out of bounds to ask about matters of race and concerning a place where Jackson serves on the school’s board, but it was perfectly fine to smear someone’s deeply-held personal beliefs and accuse another of being a serial gang rapist who threw ice, didn’t deserve due process, and had racist and sexist supporters.
He too rembraced the peener obsession and referenced "Chief legal analyst and infamous masturbator Jeff Toobin," then insisted that Cruz was just "asking a Supreme Court nominee about major issues in American society." He didn't mention that the sentencing attacks have been discredited.
When the U.S. Senate confirmation hearings for Judge Ketanji Brown's nomination to the Supreme Court wrapped up Tuesday, MSNBC's Joy Reid only had five minutes left of her show,The ReidOut, to squeeze in as much venom and hatred against Republicans as she could. To her credit, she was successful. In the five minutes she had to react to Tuesday's hearings she managed to call Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) "thuggish" multiple times and accused Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) of never attending law school classes at Harvard.
How does that compare to the bnumber of times the MRC references masturbation every time it brings up Toobin? Tober didn't say. Instead, he again huffed that "it's a complete bald-faced lie to say Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was credibly accused of rape."
Tim Graham, meanwhile, embraced the idea of Republicans trashing Jackson as revenge for how he thinks Kavanaugh was treated -- not to mention indulging in the MRC's 30-year-oldbitterness at Anita Hill:
Monday's edition of The NPR Politics Podcast sounded a little bizarre to conservatives. NPR congressional reporter Susan Davis marveled at "just how much bitterness lingers among Republican senators over the nomination process of Brett Kavanaugh." It was mildly comical that their discussion of Kavanaugh didn't describe the actual subject of the bitterness -- unproven allegations of teenage sexual assault. Would NPR reporters be bitter if they were accused of rape?
[...]
Nina Totenberg -- who slimed Clarence Thomas in 1991 with Anita Hill's unproven charges of crude sexual banter -- somehow sounded mournful about the bitter partisan tone, as if she and NPR had nothing to do with it.
Graham rehashed that bitterness again in his March 23 column complaining about how Clarance Thomas was treated:
The liberal media have treated the Supreme Court nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson as a glorious and historic occasion. Nobody needs to care about where she stands on things, since she and the media share all the “correct opinions.”
Associated Press issued a story under this tweet: “For Black girls, the possibility of Ketanji Brown Jackson being the first Black woman on the Supreme Court is a moment of promise, hope and the breaking of yet another barrier.”
But on July 1, 1991, when President Bush nominated Clarence Thomas, the networks were horrified. He was a conservative, so he wasn’t black. On ABC’s World News Tonight, reporter Tim O'Brien said that a “prominent black legal scholar called Thomas’s nomination to the Supreme Court insulting.” It was Harvard's Derrick Bell, the architect of Critical Race Theory, who angrily claimed “To place a person who looks black, and in conservative terms thinks white, is an insult.”
[...]
Journalists tout black “lived experience” for the high court, but they savagely attack minorities who are conservative. Forget their experiences. The outpouring of media hostility felt like what Thomas described as a “high-tech lynching of uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves.”
The MRC continued to whine that Republicans' bad-faith attacks were getting called out:
Graham returned to have a meltdown over a Republican senator's attacks on Jackson getting fact-checked:
The Democrat-backing “fact checkers” of PolitiFact jumped to the defense of Ketanji Brown Jackson by slapping conservative Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee with two negative verdicts on Tuesday:
First, Tom Kertscher rated Blackburn “False” and in a headline said she was “wrong” on Jackson’s citation of critical race theory in sentencing.
When PolitiFact pointed out that Jackson was talking about sentencing policy, not critical race theory, Graham huffed: "Huh? Isn’t sentencing a crucial part of judges making decisions on the bench? Obviously, Judge Jackson’s alleged leniency in sentencing is a vital part of these hearings." Of the other fact-check, Graham complained that Blackburn was called out for cherry-picking Jackson's words but that she "quoted Jackson accurately."
The whining that Republicans were being busted for repeating discredited attacks continued in another post by Houck:
Wednesday’s CBS Mornings went above and beyond to prop up Biden Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson with almost 11 minutes of eye-rolling spin, denouncing Republican queries as unrelated to Jackson and instead to please their base, mocked concerns about her history on sentencing child sex predators as having “no there there,” and described Republicans as having failed to “strike a match.”
Worse yet, one CBS liberal even questioned the need for the confirmation hearings and process because there’s so much “grandstanding” (by which they meant Republicans, not Democrats).
[...]
Congressional correspondent Nikole Killion adopted liberal spin, offering zero pushback to insane assertions about GOP questions being beyond the pale: “[T]he White House and Democrats are dismissing some of these questions from Republican senators. They say they cross the line and are even pushing on smears based on conspiracy theories.”
Killion hyped that Jackson “addressed the elephant in the room” about sentencing in child sex crimes, “refut[ing] debunked claims by Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley that she issued lenient sentences in child pornography cases.” In the clip used, Jackson played up the emotional argument that she still views sex crimes as “egregious” and “heinous.”
Houck offered no evidence to dispute the fact that the claims have been discredited.
WND Touts Anti-Vaxxer Haranguing Scientist For Admitting Ivermectin Doesn't Work Topic: WorldNetDaily Researcher Andrew Hill has told the tale of how he initially highlighted how ivermectin seemed to be effective for treating COVID -- but turned against that conclusion when he discovered medical fraud in previous pro-ivermectin studies and that the remaining non-tainted ones showed no benefit for the drug. He wrote of the abuse and threats he received in response to that finding:
I was sent images of Nazi war criminals hanging from lamp-posts, Voodoo images of swinging coffins, vivid threats that my family were not safe, that we would all burn in hell. This was happening most days – I opened my laptop in the morning to be confronted with a sea of hate and disturbing threats. Twitter did nothing after I reported these threats. So I had to shut down social media.
There were also threats to my scientific reputation on email. I know many other scientists who have been threatened and abused in similar ways after promoting vaccination or questioning the benefits of unproven treatments like ivermectin. If scientists cannot communicate for fear of threats and abuse, how can all the misinformation be controlled?
Back in December, WorldNetDaily columnist Jack Cashill touted a harangue against Hill by Tess Lawrie -- whom Cashill insists is "a world-renowned data researcher from the U.K. with an international reputation for integrity" but who is in fact a rabid anti-vaxxer and equally rabid ivermectin enthusiast -- made in a Zoom call between the two. In it, she screeched that Hill was bought off by lobbyists, insisted that "All other countries are getting ivermectin except the U.K. and the USA and Europe are owned by the vaccine lobby," and sneered to him, "I don't understand how you sleep at night, honestly."
Well, that harangue has been compiled into a video, and Art Moore devoted a March 8 article to promoting it, with an emphasis on attacking Hill:
At a time when the nations of the world were recording about 15,000 COVID deaths per day, Dr. Andrew Hill of the University of Liverpool was about to publish a meta-analysis for the World Health Organization and other leading health agencies indicating the remarkable effectiveness of a repurposed drug in treating COVID-19, reducing hospitalization by some 80%.
But when he published his highly influential pre-print paper on Jan. 18, 2021, his stated conclusion didn't match the study's findings.
Instead of urging physicians around the world who were desperate for solutions to try the safe and effective drug, Hill wrote: "Ivermectin should be validated in larger appropriately controlled randomized trials before the results are sufficient for review by regulatory authorities."
The English researcher's turnabout didn't go unnoticed.
A colleague, Dr. Tess Lawrie, confronted Hill in a remarkable Zoom video conversation that was recorded and featured in a short documentary produced by Oracle Films.
Lawrie, the director of the Evidence-Based Medicine Consultancy at the University of the Witwatersrand in Bath, South Africa, got Hill to admit that his non-profit sponsors, UNITAID, pressured him to alter his conclusion.
[...]
Lawrie noted to Hill that he is not a clinician.
"You're not seeing people dying every day. And this medicine prevents deaths by 80%. So, 80% of those people who are dying today don't need to die because there's Ivermectin."
Hill argued that the National Institutes of Health would not agree to recommend ivermectin.
"Yeah," Lawrie replied, "because the NIH is owned by the vaccine lobby.
"This is bad research. So at this point, I am really, really worried about you," she said.
Needless to say, Moore made no effort to contact Hill for his response to being targeted in such a way, nor did he report on the death threats he received for following the science.Nor did he subject Lawrie's claims to any sort of fact-check -- he supports her narrative, being an ivermectin enthusiast himself, and is more than happy to be her stenographer.
James Hirsen spent an entire March 22 Newsmax column lashing out at the new Pixar film "Seeing Red" for, essentially, dealing with a girl going through puberty and not being Christian enough:
CNSNews.com's 
It has been a long road for the Media Research Center to act as a right-wing narrative machine over the Supreme Court nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson, from 
Rev. Michael Orsi has been continuing to 
The Media Research Center's war on website rating service NewsGuard has been 
With the actual confirmation hearing over for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson, it was time for the Media Research Center to try and get a handle on the post-hearing narrative, starting with blanket denials that Republicans' aggressive and deceitful questioning of Jackson. First up, whining that said questioning was considered to have at least a tinge of racism:
We've shown
Media Research Center sports blogger John Simmons complained in a March 24 
Wayne Allyn Root is a 
When Republicans hurled the gotcha question to Ketanji Brown Jackson during her Supreme Court confirmation hearing about defining what a woman is, the Media Research Center knew what to do -- exploit it for maximum partisan impact. Kevin Tober 
A good couple of decades late to the party, 
When we 
Researcher Andrew Hill 
