Morris Quiet After Red Wave Midterm Prediction Failed Topic: Newsmax
We've noted how Newsmax pundit Dick Morris confidently predicted a red wave in the midterm elections, with Republicans seizing both the House and the Senate and Democrats losing all 60 close congressional races. Well, that didn't happen, making this yet another failed Morris prognostication. Perhaps he saw this a bit on election day, when he played the election-fraud card in a Nov. 8 Newsmax TV appearances:
Former adviser to Presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, Dick Morris, joined Newsmax on Election Day to weigh in with his take. Morris told Newsmax that it would be "horrific" if the election were to be "stolen" by election officials; alluding to Arizona's current secretary of state and Democratic candidate for governor, Katie Hobbs.
Speaking with "American Agenda" Tuesday, Morris said, "'It's deja-vu all over again,' as Yogi Berra said. Maricopa County, Philadelphia, that has a certain ring to it."
"It would be horrific if this election was lost or was stolen by election officials: particularly horrific when the democratic candidate for governor is the former secretary of state; to whatever extent anyone was at fault in 2020 in Arizona, it was Katie Hobbs, the democratic candidate for governor."
If Morris appeared on Newsmax TV elsewhere that night there's no record of it on the website; Newsmax didn't see to memorialize them with a stenography piece. But in a Nov. 9 appearance, Morris insisted there really was a red wave because Republicans didn't lose as badly as they could have:
The mainstream media is performing "ultimate acts of obfuscation" concerning Tuesday's midterm elections, but as the week moves on, it will be clear that there was a red wave, Dick Morris, the author of "The Return: Trump's Big 2024 Comeback" said on Newsmax Wednesday.
"This morning, they'll all tell you there was no red wave," Morris said on Newsmax's "John Bachman Now." "Wake them up tomorrow morning or the morning after, and they'll have to say maybe there was one because Republicans took the House and the Senate and came very close in a number of states and advanced their vote totals."
"I think this is like 'The Hunt for Red October,'" Morris added. "This is a red wave rising."
His comments come after Ric Grenell told Newsmax that same-day ballots will deliver wins in vital Arizona GOP races, including the one for the U.S. Senate pitting GOP contender Blake Masters against incumbent Democrat Sen. Mark Kelly, who as of Tuesday afternoon was holding a five-point lead in the race.
The next TV appearance Newsmax sought to document came on Nov. 12, when Morris talked a lot more about Trump than about the midterms:
Former President Donald Trump won't only officially announce his 2024 presidential race Tuesday, but he'll surround himself with his "success stories" from the 2022 midterm races, Dick Morris, author of the bestselling "The Return: Trump's Big 2024 Comeback" said on Newsmax Saturday.
"The Democrats are launching an anti-Trump disinformation campaign saying he lost everything, and he didn't," Morris said on Newsmax's "Saturday Report," adding that there are several GOP candidates who would not have won their senatorial races, including J.D. Vance in Ohio, Ted Budd in North Carolina, Markwayne Mullin in Oklahoma, Eric Schmitt in Missouri, and Sen. Ron Johnson in Wisconsin.
He also said Kari Lake will likely pull out her win for governor in Arizona, once the ballots are counted, and she'll be part of his announcement celebration Tuesday to kick off a "very good, very strong campaign that, as I predicted in my book, will result in his big 2024 comeback."
Morris also played the bogus election-fraud card again:
Fewer than 1,000 votes now separate Laxalt and incumbent Democrat Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, and Morris pushed back at suggestions that the elections system in Nevada might simply be "dysfunctional.'
"It's dysfunctional in one direction, which is toward the Democrats," said Morris.
Morris continued the Trump suck-up work in a Nov. 14 appearance in which he insisted that Trump wasn't to blame for the red-wave failure due to his extremist candidates:
"Those who blame Trump for this, it's just wrong," Morris said during "American Agenda."
"Mitch McConnell, the [minority] leader of the senate, absolutely failed to fund the Republican Senate candidates who were backed by Trump. Anybody who won the primary, who is trump's endorsed candidate, was shut out of money from the Senate committee, or from McConnell's PAC. The Democrats spent an aggregated $360 million Republicans spent only $190 million in specific races," Morris added.
Morris said that Trump's endorsement picks won in nine of the 15 "tough" races, including Senator-elect JD Vance in Ohio, Sen. Ron Johnson in Wisconsin, and Rep. Ted Budd's GOP Senate win in North Carolina.
Morris apparently didn't reference his own failed midterm predictions.
That was followed by a Nov. 16 appearance in which Morris bragged that a GOP-controlled Senate will grind the Biden administration to a halt:
Dick Morris, author of "The Return: Trump's Big 2024 Comeback," told Newsmax that a GOP-controlled House could stop President Joe Biden's agenda and investigate his White House.
During a Tuesday interview with John Bachman, the political insider pointed out that Republicans still won last week's midterm elections after garnering 53 million votes and beating Democrats by five points in the generic ballot.
"We took the House back. Of the 15 tough Senate races, we won nine of the 15. So, explain to me how this is a defeat," Morris stated, adding that with the lower chamber, Republicans can accomplish a litany of tasks that they sought to do.
"Once we have the House, we can stop him from passing bills, and we can get a gavel and investigate this cesspool of corruption that Joe Biden calls an administration," he continued. "We can put Hunter [Biden] under oath. We can put his people under oath. We can really get somewhere."
Meanwhile, Morris wrote no Newsmax columns explaining how he predicted so badly yet again.
By contrast to its uncritical stenography of Republican attacks on Democrats before the midterm elections, CNS articles on Democrats who criticize Republicans -- and especially articles quoting President Biden -- tended to include criticism and fact-checking. It's something that, as we've noted, CNS rarely did to Donald Trump when he was president.
A good example of how this works is an Oct. 27 article by Susan Jones. First came the complaining:
Who's lying? Republicans are, according to President Joe Biden, who -- according to the Democrat-friendly New York Times -- "spins yarns that often unravel."
In a teleconference fund-raiser on Thursday, Biden said the midterm election is "not a referendum" on Democrat leadership -- "it's a choice," he insisted.
"And this is not your father’s Republican Party," Biden said, according to the White House transcript.
When Biden noted the MAGA extremists "who were breaking down the doors — literally, the doors and the windows of the Congress and two cops ended up dying," Jones did a selective fact-check:
The only person killed on January 6 was a protester, Ashli Babbitt, who was shot by a police officer as she climbed through a window. Four other people died of natural causes, including one police officer.
The D.C. Medical Examiner says Capitol Police Office Brian Sicknick died of natural causes following the riot. And press reports say four police officers who were at the Capitol on January 6 committed suicide much later.
Jones ignored that the medical examiner looking into Sicknick's death said that “all that transpired played a role in his condition,” or that at least two Capitol Police officers who died by suicide had their deaths declared to be in the line of duty.
Then came the whataboutism:
According to a New York Times article published on Oct. 10, 2022, "President Biden has been unable to break himself of the habit of embellishing narratives to weave a political identity."
[...]
The article adds that Biden’s “stories” have been “repeatedly and publicly challenged, as far back as his 1987 campaign for president, when his attempts to adopt someone else’s life story as his own, and his false claims about his academic record, forced him to withdraw.”
Funny how Jones suddenly considers the Times to be a credible source when it criticizes a Democrat -- even though doing so undermines the agenda of CNS and its Media Research Center parent to portray the Times and other outlets as having a hopelessly liberal bias.
In contrast to CNS' uncritically repeating GOP talking points attacking Democrats, Jones spent a Nov. 3 article whining about the attacks Biden issued against "extreme MAGA Republicans:
In a speech that bounced from warnings about political violence, to warnings about "autocrats," to warnings about election deniers, to warnings about “extreme MAGA Republicans” and to the premise that "democracy" is on the ballot, President Joe Biden seemed to be telling the country Wednesday night that unless they vote for Democrats, they can kiss the republic goodbye.
He echoed Abraham Lincoln; he slammed Donald Trump; and he urged Americans to prioritize "democracy" over "policy."
Biden also contradicted himself on the topic of voter suppression -- giving a nod to the "record" turnout in early voting, but also warning that "extreme MAGA Republicans" are "denying your right to vote."
"Once again we’re seeing record turnout all over the country," Biden said in his speech.
Jones then whined that Biden invoked the Constitution and Abraham Lincoln:
Biden also contradicted himself on the topic of voter suppression -- giving a nod to the "record" turnout in early voting, but also warning that "extreme MAGA Republicans" are "denying your right to vote."
"Once again we’re seeing record turnout all over the country," Biden said in his speech.
Abraham Lincoln also used the phrase in his First Inaugural Address, noting that "in 1787, one of the declared objects for ordaining and establishing the Constitution was 'to form a more perfect Union.'”
Lincoln was making the point that no state can lawfully get out of the Union -- "that resolves and ordinances to that effect are legally void, and that acts of violence within any State or States against the authority of the United States are insurrectionary or revolutionary..."
Biden also echoed Lincoln by saying, "What we’re doing now is going to determine whether democracy will long endure."
(Speaking at Gettysburg in November 1863, President Lincoln said: "Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.")
Unlike with the attacks from Republicans CNS uncritically presented, Jones gave space to a Republican responding to Biden:
In response to Biden's partisan speech, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell tweeted: "President Biden is desperate to change the subject from inflation, crime, and open borders. Now he's claiming that democracy only works if his party wins. What nonsense. Americans aren't buying it. Ask how the last two years have affected your family, and then get out and vote!"
Jones used a Nov. 7 article to hype Biden's response to a question in which he called for "no more drilling" and replacing coal plants with wind and solar. She then blockquoted Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin's "blistering response to Biden's remarks about coal," then added that "As with many of Biden's remarks, the White House tried to walk back the one about coal plants." We don't recall CNS ever promoting walkbacks of remarks made by Donald Trump. We've already noted how Craig Bannister used a diferent Nov. 7 article to criticize Biden denouncing the violent attack on Paul Pelosi by claiming that he was "ignoring times in recent years when prominent Democrats have been criticized" for glorifying violence.
Jones adopted a whining tone in reporting more remarks from Biden in a Nov. 8 article:
Speaking to a group of Democrat [sic] Party officials by teleconference Monday night, President Joe Biden explained what "being a Democrat is all about."
He said Democrats want "power" only to "help people," and he described the opposition as "some of the darkest forces we've ever seen in our history."
"You know, you guys represent everything that’s good about our party, the reason why we got into politics in the first place," Biden told the Democrat National Committee [sic] National Finance Committee, according to the White House transcript:
[...]
Biden then quoted "my dad," as he does so often: "As my dad used to say, 'I don’t expect the government to solve my problem, but I ex- — I just expect them to understand my problem.'"
Jones somehow refrained from adding her usual huffy commentary to what is supposed to be a "news" article. But she did so stealthily by deliberately getting the name of both the Democratic Party and the Democratic National Committee wrong. It's sad that CNS employs someone who deliberately misspells words to advance a political agenda.
MRC Gives The Same Pass To Kyrie Irving's Anti-Semitism It Gave To Kanye Topic: Media Research Center
As with Kanye West, the Media Research Center hated NBA star Kyrie Irving before it loved him. It was, however, for a much briefer time than the MRC hated Ye: The only early criticism of Irving we found was a June 2020 post by Jay Maxson complaining that Irving was among NBA players considering boycotting the rest of the 2020 season (which would eventually be played in a bubble in Florida to protect against COVID infections) over social justice concerns following the death of George Floyd.
Then Irving became an anti-vaxxer, and the MRC loved him, with its two sports bloggers, Maxson and John Simmons, gushing over his supposedly prinicipled stance.It has continued to lionize Irving's anti-vaxxer attitudes: An Aug. 31 post by Simmons whined that the NBA "made Kyrie Irving an outcast because he did not want to get vaccinated," while a Sept. 10 post by Simmons helped Irving play victim because no team would give him a long-term contract over his anti-vaxx selfishness:
Brooklyn Nets guard Kyrie Irving claimed that he turned down a massive contract extension before the 2021-22 season in large part to remain unvaccinated.
Irving said that the Nets offered him a contract of four years and roughly $100 million in salary, but that his decision to be unvaccinated was a strong factor in him and the organization not being able to come to terms with the new contract.
"I gave up four years, 100-and-something million deciding to be unvaccinated and that was the decision," Irving said on Monday. "[Get this] contract, get vaccinated or be unvaccinated and there's a level of uncertainty of your future, whether you're going to be in this league, whether you're going to be on this team, so I had to deal with that real-life circumstance of losing my job for this decision."
[...]
Sure, Irving has made enough money in his excellent NBA career to last him for a long time, but he likely could have easily cashed in on a big payday and the sides likely could have reached an agreement without any hiccups had New York not been so adamant about implementing a pointless, harmful, and costly mandate.
So when Irving indulged in Kanye-esque anti-Semitism by posting a link to an anti-Semitic film on his Instagram account, then wouldn't apologize until after the NBA suspended him, he built up enough anti-vaxx goodwill at the MRC that it came to his defense instead of criticizing his anti-Semitism. A Nov. 10 post by Clay Waters whined that the New York Times reported on both Irving's and West's anti-Semitism and that they were being "blamed on Trump and Republicans." Waters did at least call the anti-Semitism "rancid" -- which is the only word of criticism the MRC has expressed toward Irving's anti-Semitism. (Just like with Kanye.)
The next day, however, Maxson wouldn't criticize Irving at all, instead going into full whataboutism mode:
On Thursday, Nike co-founder Phil Knight said the Swoosh is done with Brooklyn Nets’ Kyrie Irving because the star guard “stepped over the line” by posting a social media link to an anti-Semitic movie. Boston Celtics’ all-star Jaylen Brown was having none of this, as he tagged Nike for hypocrisy over the issue of China.
“Since when did Nike care about ethics?,” Brown tweeted in response.
The same can be said of Brown and the NBA. He has worn Nike shoes in some games this season. Nike sources products from a factory in Qingdao, China, where Uyghur laborers are brutalized and forced to produce basketball shoes. The NBA pacifies China to protect income from its largest market.
[...]
Nike and the NBA will continue to rake in their Chinese windfalls, while giving meaningless lip service to social justice. Shame on both of them. They deserve zero respect and none of our consumer dollars.
Speaking of meaningless lip service, the MRC used to criticize Elon Musk for his close ties to China -- until he started spouting right-wing rhwtoric and got interested in buying Twitter.
It took both Jason Cohen -- the guy who wrote a post that tried so hard to justify Kanye's anti-Semitism that the MRC eventuially deleted it -- and Matt Philbin to write a Nov. 17 post that played whataboutism with both Irving's and Ye's anti-Semitism:
Say what you want about Kanye West and Kyrie Irving – their antisemitism doesn’t come with a body count. Then there’s Al Sharpton.
Race hustling MSNBC host was inciting riots and deadly arson against New York Jews before Irving was born. So the timing of a positive new documentary about Sharpton is … ironic. And for John Legend to executive produce it and Joe Scarborough to promote it is flat-out hypocritical.
So what is the deal here?
Al long ago laundered his image, losing weight and trading in the shiny tracksuit and gold chains for a tie, an MSNBC job and close ties to left-wing politicians. Had it had one, MSNBC’s reputation would have taken a hit. The English language certainly did.
Conversely, Ye has recently shown himself to be quite conservative and even sinned greatly by supporting Trump. While Kyrie’s politics are less clear-cut, he refused to take the COVID-19 vaccine, which undoubtedly alienated him from the mainstream left.
So are progressives proponents of canceling antisemites, or is it only when convenient?
Al Sharpton’s antisemitism was more virulent and harmful than anything Ye or Irving said. His race hoaxes ruined lives and he’s never shown any contrition.
[...]
The evidence is clear that Sharpton was a dangerous antisemite at a level much more severe than Ye and Irving. Yet Ye and Irving have been completely canceled while Sharpton has been embraced.
At no point do Cohen and Philbin actually condemn Irving's or Ye's anti-Semitism -- they simply argue it wasn't allegedly as bad as Sharpton's.
It seems that Cohen and Philbin only want to cancel anti-Semites when its convenient to their right-wing agenda -- and Irving and Kanye have been too convenient to their agenda for these two to offer even the slightest criticism of their anti-Semitism, let alone go into cancel mode.
How do you know the employment numbers were good under a Democratic president? CNSNews.com's lead story focusesinstead on a different number than the unemployment rate. Susan Jones' lead story on October's employment numbers again put the labor force participation rate in the headline and buried the good news:
In the final jobs report before Election Day, the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics said the October employment situation weakened from the prior month.
In October, the unemployment rate increased two-tenths of a point to 3.7 percent; and the labor force participation rate declined a tenth of a point to 62.2 percent.
The number of employed Americans -- 158,608,000 in October -- dropped by 328,000 from September's all-time high of 158,936,000. At the same time, the number of unemployed Americans increased by 306,000 to 6,059,000, and the combination of that unemployed up/employed down produced the higher unemployment rate.
The nonfarm economy added 261,000 jobs last month, well above the consensus estimate of 200,000. Notable job gains occurred in health care, professional and technical services, and manufacturing.
And as before, Jones was still touting how great the economy was under Donald Trump:
The labor force participation rate reflects the active workforce -- the percentage of civilian, non-institutionalized workers available for the production of goods and services, so the higher, the better.
The participation rate was 61.4 percent when Joe Biden took office as the pandemic raged. Today's number, 62.2 percent, is still more than a point below the Trump-era high of 63.4 percent recorded in February 2020, just before COVID shut things down.
Editor Terry Jeffrey served up his usual sidebar about government employment, complaining that it increased "despite the fact that state government employment actually declined during the month." Jeffrey didn't explain why he doesn't think government jobs are real jobs.
For the first time in a while, there was a second sidebar in the form of an anonymously written piece:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) put out a statement expressing her satisfaction with the October jobs report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and arguing that Republicans are not happy with good economic news.
[...]
“The October jobs numbers are the latest evidence that, under President Biden and the Democratic Congress, America continues to create jobs at a strong, steady, sustainable pace,” Pelosi said.
“While Republicans want to send costs soaring and make working families pay the price, Democrats will always put People Over Politics: lower costs, better-paying jobs and safer communities for all,” she said.
The anonymous author offered no evidence that Pelosi was wrong.
MRC Freaks Out Over Twitter Whistleblower Who Didn't Follow Pro-Musk Narrative Topic: Media Research Center
At the Media Research Center, you're only a good whistleblower if you advance right-wing narratives, like Peiter “Mudge” Zatko did in bolstering Elon Musk's pre-purchase attacks on Twitter and like Frances Haugen did in criticizing Facebook (at least until Facebook started working behind the scenes with right-wing media outlets to attack her, at which point the MRC flipped as well).
When a whistleblower emerged that countered right-wing anti-Twitter narratives, the MRC was quick to attack by playing the Soros card in an attempt to discredit him. Joseph Vazquez threw a massive tantrum in a Sept. 23 post, whining that this whistleblower was distracting from Zatko's pro-Musk narrative:
The Washington Post found a so-called “whistleblower” connected to liberal billionaire George Soros to stoke hysteria about how former President Donald Trump’s Twitter account threatened the planet.
In a so-called “exclusive,” The Post found a Twitter truther to steal former Twitter executive Peiter “Mudge” Zatko’s thunder and make the issue about Trump rather than the Big Tech platform. “ Jan. 6 Twitter witness: Failure to curb Trump spurred ‘terrifying’ choice,” was The Postheadline.
The leftist whistleblower — now identified by The Post as Anika Collier Navaroli — was reportedly a “former policy official on the team designing Twitter’s content-moderation rules,” meaning the “rules” that made Twitter a bloated censorship operation to silence conservative speech. But nowhere in the article did The Post mention Navaroli's ties to Soros.
Navaroli reportedly overcame the “terror she felt” about coming forward due to her so-called “worry” that Trumpian “extremism and political disinformation on social media pose an ‘imminent threat not just to American democracy, but to the societal fabric of our planet.’” [Emphasis added.]
The story fawned how a previously “unidentified former Twitter employee” testified before the Soviet-style House Jan. 6 committee to slam the company for ignoring “false and rule-breaking tweets from Donald Trump for years because executives knew their service was his ‘favorite and most-used … and enjoyed having that sort of power.’” Twitter banned Trump two days after the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.
Navaroli “worked on media and internet privacy campaigns for” the nutty, Soros-funded defund-the-police group Color of Change — founded by CNN commentator and former Obama appointee, Van Jones. Soros has donated millions to the group. The leftist organization proclaims itself as the “nation’s largest online racial justice organization.”
[...]
While disingenuously painting Navaroli as having a “strong bias for protecting speech,” The Post championed how she “grew fascinated with how” online censorship rules “were helping shape real-world social movements, from the inequality campaigns of Occupy Wall Street to the protests over racial justice and police brutality.”
At no point did Vazquez disprove anything Navaroli said, and he didn't even prove Navaroli is a "leftist" -- he was just mad that his preferred narratives were getting ignored by someone with at least as much credibility as Zatko offering a different story that was just as credible.
NEW ARTICLE: Selective Honesty At WND Topic: WorldNetDaily
Joseph Farah claims he's being honest about WorldNetDaily's seemingly perpetual financial crises -- but he's not. Farah also attacked Google for (temporarily) blocking WND due to malware on its website -- which WND ultimately admitted was true. Read more >>
MRC Cheers Musk Firing Twitter Employees For Being 'Woke' (Whatever That Is) Topic: Media Research Center
We've noted how pleased the Media Research Center was at reports that Elon Musk would fire much of Twitter's staff if he did what he agreed to do months before and buy the company. Well, when the firings became imminent, an anonymous Nov. 6 post was positively orgasmic at the prospect of Musk ruining people's lives:
You’re fired! That’s not only a famous shout from Donald Trump’s TV celebrity days, it’s a sentence that woke Twitter employees are hearing in increasing numbers as Elon Musk takes over the platform. And The Washington Post is furious.
In the article “Musk’s Trump-style management rattles Twitter workers awaiting layoffs,” The Washington Post whined about the scraps of gossip Twitter employees have collected to discover if massive layoffs are indeed imminent.
“Workers follow new boss’s tweets and share rumors on anonymous apps amid silence from leadership on firings, staff cuts and product changes,” The Post reported. Twitter employees have reportedly started panicking about reductions in force based on the Google Calendar of “one of their new bosses” as well as through Slack chats and anonymous workplace “gossip” site Blind.
Woke pro-censorship Twitter employees were Blind, indeed, when they targeted any alternative voices on the platform.
The anonymous writer didn't explain when being "woke" was just cause for termination (or even what "woke" means). And, as we've noted, Musk's mass firings were so botched that Twitter had to ask some fired people to return because they did essential work.
A Nov. 8 post by Autumn Johnson sought to blame "left-wing activists" for advertisers pulling their ads from Twitter instead of the more likely cause that Musk has created too much chaos on the platform for advertisers to feel comfortable there:
Several companies have caved to the demands of liberal activists and pulled their ads from Twitter after Elon Musk announced the platform would no longer unfairly censor conservatives.
Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Audi, General Motors, General Mills, and Pfizer paused ads on the platform after Musk said significant changes would be made to the company’s content moderation standards.
General Motors told CNN that it is “monitoring” Twitter’s “new direction” under Musk and will potentially re-evaluate its decision to remove ads from the platform.
“We have paused advertising on Twitter,” General Mills spokesperson Kelsey Roemhildt told CNN in a statement. “As always, we will continue to monitor this new direction and evaluate our marketing spend.”
Several leftist advocacy groups appear to be leading the ad suspension effort. Among them is one called Accountable Tech.
Johnson censored the fact that Musk threatened to "thermonuclear name and shame" advertisers who paused their Twitter spending -- which doesn't seem like a good way to encourage the advertisers who provide the biggest share of Twitter's revenue.
Johnson penned another press release for Musk in a Nov. 9 post:
Twitter CEO Elon Musk reaffirmed his commitment to free speech in a meeting with advertisers Wednesday.
The Washington Post reported that Musk discussed some of his plans for Twitter in an effort to attract advertisers to the platform. The public broadcast was viewed by over 100,000 people online:
“Musk took questions over the course of roughly an hour from two of his executives and a representative of the advertising industry during a Twitter Spaces meeting, which was broadcast live on the site midday. More than 100,000 people listened live.”
Musk suggested that while the platform’s content moderation standards have not changed yet, supporting free speech is not the same as amplifying so-called “hate speech.”
“We have to be tolerant of views we don’t agree with, but those views don’t need to be amplified,” he said, according to The Post.
Johnson somehow forgot to mention that Musk had spent the previous few days suspending Twitter accounts that made fun of him, strongly suggesting that his purported tolerance for differing views has clear limits.
The MRC even spun one of Musk's failures -- selling blue check marks for $8 a month without considering that people would buy them and masquerade as genuinely certified accounts -- because it helped make one of the MRC's enemies look bad. A Nov. 10 post by John Simmons insisted that Musk had "good intentions" in starting the feature, it was used for "mischievous purposes," one of which was an account masquerading as NBA star LeBron James demanding to be traded. Simmons declared: "hile it is humorous that someone created this headline to cause a stir, it isn’t entirely outside the realm of possibility that this could happen."
Jeffrey Clark helped Musk play the victim in a Nov. 10 post:
The pro-China outlet Bloomberg News attempted to defame Twitter CEO Elon Musk by portraying him as a threat to the United States.
“Mister President, do you think Elon Musk is a threat to U.S. national security?” Bloomberg White House reporter Jenny Leonard asked President Joe Biden during a Nov. 9 press conference at the White House.
But she didn’t stop there, also pressing Biden on whether the president should use government power to “investigate” Musk’s lawful purchase of Twitter. Musk is a self-described “free-speech absolutist” who has taken flack for tweeting in March that “[f]ree speech is essential to a functioning democracy.”
But Leonard framed Musk’s Twitter deal as a shady partnership with “foreign governments, which include the Saudis.”
MRC Free Speech America President Dan Schneider slammed the liberal media for ignoring the obvious question: What about TikTok?
Clark's description of Bloomberg News as "pro-china" is laughable (not to mention unsupported by any actual evidence) because the MRC itself was accusing Musk of being pro-China less than a year ago. Clark was silent about that, of course. And the MRC's TikTok whataboutism lacks credibility because its attacks on the platform are clearly doing the bidding of Facebook, which hired a conservative PR firm to help spread anti-TikTok talking points in right-wing media. Clark went on to grumble:
The liberal media have repeatedly alleged connections between Musk and the Saudis, laying the groundwork for Leonard’s pointed question. Axios, Newsweek, CNN Business — and yes — even Bloomberg News all gave sensational coverage to reputed ties between Musk and the Saudi royal family.
Clark didn't even bother to disprove any of that reporting, which tells us he's complaining simply in an effort to distract from it (even though, again, the MRC itself was criticizing Musk's foreign entanglements before he showed interest in buying Twitter).
Tierin-Rose Mandelburg helped Musk slag Twitter employeees in a Nov. 11 post:
Work from home option is ELIMINATED.
ABC News somehow obtained an audio from a Twitter meeting where Elon Musk told his staff that if they don’t return to the office full-time, he’ll consider their absence their resignation. AKA, COVID-19 is over, get out of your pajamas and off the couch and get your ass to work.
"Let me be crystal clear, if people do not return to the office when they are able to return to the office -- they cannot remain at the company. End of story," Musk told an employee who asked about the company's new expectations.
[...]
Twitter employes are probably like the rest of the world who got used to working from home and are mad that they can no longer half-ass their jobs.
As usual, Mandelburg provided no evidence to prove that was the case. She concluded with the slavishly loyal Musk hero-worship the MRC has become known for:
Why is it “ridiculous” for fully capable employees to — ya know — go to work? Firefighters can’t “work from home,” surgeons can’t operate from their couches, police officers can’t catch criminals virtually. They go into work because that’s what workers are supposed to do!
Musk realizes this and is not going to take any bs regarding people who simply “want” to work from their homes.
Nobody has ever accused software engineers of being surgeons or firefighters -- which is why most normal companies, especailly in the wake of the COVID pandemic, allow at least some workers to work from home. This tells us Mandelburg is much more interested in doing PR for Musk than trying to understand how the working world works outside her right-wing media bubble.
CNS Peddled GOP Narratives Before Midterms Topic: CNSNews.com
As the midterm elections approached, CNSNews.com endeavored to be a Repuiblian Party mouthpiece by giving Republican politicians and partisans a platform to peddle partisan talking points unencumbered by such inconvenient things like balance or fact-checking. For example:
CNS even tried to clean up and spin away after Republican foibles, like in this Nov. 2 article by Jones:
President Biden and his fellow Democrats claim that Sen. Rick Scott -- and by extension, the entire Republican Party -- want to cut or end the Social Security and Medicare programs.
Biden said it on Tuesday while campaigning in Florida: "You’ve been paying into Social Security your whole life. You earned it. Now these guys want to take it away. Who in the hell do they think they are? Excuse my language," the president said.
"I think the heat of South Florida's gotten to the guy, all right?" Sen. Scott told "Mornings With Maria" on Wednesday.
[...]
Biden on Tuesday pointed to the plan floated by Scott -- not by the Republican Party.
Scott has proposed the following: "All federal legislation sunsets in 5 years. If a law is worth keeping, Congress can pass it again." And: "Force Congress to issue a report every year telling the public what they plan to do when Social Security and Medicare go bankrupt."
Biden told his audience, correctly, that under Rick Scott's plan, "every five years, the Congress will have to vote to reauthorize Social Security — reauthorize it or else it goes away. Would have to vote to reauthorize Medicare, reauthorize veterans benefits, and I go down the list."
But Biden then translated "reauthorizing" as "cutting."
[...]
Asked if it was a mistake to float a plan that lends itself to misrepresentation by Democrats, Sen. Scott said Democrats "do the same thing" every election cycle:
"They say Republicans are going to cut Medicare and Social Security. They do it whether you put out a plan or not. I do believe that when you run for office you ought to tell people what you're going to do. I'm a business guy. I went and raised money when I was running businesses. Nobody gave me money and said I don't know how I'm going to spend it, just give me the money.
"If you want somebody's vote you should tell them exactly what you're going to do do... We ought to be very specific, how are we going to preserve Medicare; how are we going to preserve Social Security. We have to talk about it. Because what's happening right now, it's going away and nobody wants to talk about it."
As election day neared, CNS was eager to peddle Republican talking points on "election integrity" straight from the source (and, of course, without fact-checking or added commentary). A Nov. 7 article by Jones cheered how RNC chair Ronna McDaniel refused to give a straight answer to the question of whether Republicans would follow in Donald Trump's footsteps and scream "election fraud!" in every election Republicans lose:
Dana Bash, host of CNN's "State of the Union," asked Republican Party Chairwoman Rona McDaniel on Sunday for a "simple yes or no" answer -- "Should Republican candidates, Ron Johnson, all of them, accept the election results?"
McDaniel took the question and ran with it, concluding that Democrats talk a lot about "election deniers," but Democrats themselves are "crime deniers, inflation deniers and education deniers."
The exchange left Bash flustered, as McDaniel turned the "denier" label on Democrats. You can watch the entire exchange in the video below, complete with crosstalk, but here are the highlights.
In response to Bash's question, should Republicans accept the election results, McDaniel replied:
"Well, I would say the same to Stacey Abrams, right, or Hillary Clinton, who's already saying, in 2024, we are going to rig the election. That's not helpful.
"Listen, you should have a recount. You should have a canvass. And it'll go to the courts, and then everybody should accept the results. That's what it should be.
"But I'm also not going to say, if there's problems, that we shouldn't be able to address that. If there's real problems, everyone should be able to address that. And I think Ron Johnson and Stacey Abrams, in the end, once all their avenues are exhausted, right, they will -- they will accept the results."
Another article that day, by Melanie Arter, uncritically let McDaniel spin away reports of right-wing activists intimidating voters by keeping occasionally armed watch on drop boxes by declaring that "nobody should be intimidating or breaking the law. Nobody should, but poll watching is not intimidating. ...This isn't happening from the RNC." A Nov. 8 article by Craig Bannister, however, cheered McDaniel touting how Republicans have lawyered up to fight election results they don't like:
“We’re going to make sure it’s fair,” Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel reassured Americans Tuesday as they went out to vote in this year’s midterm elections.
“Everybody needs to be calm,” because Republicans are hard at work throughout the country to ensure voter integrity, McDaniel promised in an interview with “Fox & Friends,” conducted in a Pennsylvania diner:
"We have poll watchers everywhere. We have 100% coverage. And in Pennsylvania, we have poll workers. We have lawyers everywhere and we're going to make sure, if we see anything wrong, we're going to protect everybody's vote, and we're going to make sure it's fair.”
“But some of these states have wacky laws, and we're just going to have to deal with it and be patient. It may take some time," McDaniel cautioned.
Bannister also uncritically hyped that, in his words, "Democrats are to blame for delays in vote-counting and the erosion of trust in the integrity of the country’s elections."
MRC Downplays Racist Attacks On 'Rings Of Power,' Whines It Wasn't Masculine Enough Topic: Media Research Center
A Sept. 7 post by Stephanie Hamill began by whining:
Not a fan of the new Lord of the Rings TV series? Well then, you might just be a racist or a bigot according to some on the left.
Apparently, you can’t give an honest review about Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power without being called a racist or bigot because of Middle-earth’s new more "diverse and gender-balanced characters."
You see, movies and shows that have the right amount of diversity appear to be off limits when it comes to critiques about the quality and content, or at least that’s what it seems like these days.
After citing someone calling out right-wing trolls for launching vicious attacks on the series because some of the dwarves were not white -- even though J.R.R. Tolkien put implied racial undertones into his Middle-Earth that would make a depiction of some underclasses very much true to canon -- Hamill tried to frame these racist attacks as mere concern about "integrity":
So what some J.R.R Tolkien fans were concerned about was whether or not the new series on Prime Video would respect the integrity of his legendary work. Which is a legitimate concern considering many of us have noticed how Hollywood producers tend to ruin sequels and remakes when they focus on skin color and woke messages rather than the story and production value, among other things.
So being against racism is being "woke" instead of a commonsense position every sentient being should have?
Hamill then tried to downplay the idea that racist trolls were spamming review sites with bad reviews, insisting they were really concerned about content:
But the release of the episodes clearly didn’t get the reaction and reviews Amazon was hoping for. So much so that Amazon halted reviews to prevent trolling. According to the Hollywood Reporter an Amazon source told it that reviews are being held for 72 hours to "help weed out trolls and to ensure each review is legitimate."
It’s very possible that this is a sincere effort to combat internet trolls, but this also could just be a ploy by Amazon to hide bad reviews.
Now over at Rotten Tomatoes the situation isn’t much better for Amazon, as The Rings of Power has an average audience score of 39 percent, which is rather interesting considering the TV critics gave it a score of 85 Percent.
As for what some viewers aren’t liking about the show? Well, the reviews and responses on social media vary.
Now we move on to the narrative Hamill really wants to push: the show's males aren't masculine enough. She uncritically quotes Elon Musk tweeting that "Almost every male character so far is a coward, a jerk or both. Only Galadriel is brave, smart and nice," as well as her own tweet calling the show "wokified" without offering any examples beyong an accompanying picture of a black character. (The MRC has a bit ofa thing about masculinity.) She continued to insist this, and not racism, was the real issue the trolls have:
These were just a few examples, if you go through social media and read the reviews you will find that the majority of people didn't actually take issue with the new diverse characters. Those who weighed in were complaining a lot about the plot, the dialogue, the special effects, the list goes on.
Either way, the series drew more that 25 million viewers according to Amazon, making it the biggest premiere in the history of Prime Video.
Hamill touted those review-bombed low ratings again in a Sept. 19 post:
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings Of Power's fourth episode, 'The Great Wave,' was released on Friday, September 16, which means we are now halfway through the new Lord of the Rings series' first season (of a reported five), and it doesn’t look like things are getting much better when it comes to the reviews of Amazon’s latest high profile show.
Things have gotten so bad that The Rings of Power is comparable in low user ratings to the Disney+ series, She-Hulk: Attorney-at-Law on not only movie and TV review site Rotten Tomatoes, but also Metacritic.
But not so much, Metacritic users are giving the series an unfavorable user score of 2.4 out of 10. And over at Rotten Tomatoes, the audience reviews are still hovering in the upper 30's (out of 100), which hasn't changed since the release of the first two episodes.
If you compare the numbers to She-Hulk, you will notice the two series have strikingly similar marks, high critic scores and low audience reviews.
The Disney+ series has been described as a "woke, feminist mess" by Newsbusters contributing writer Elise Ehrhard, and I couldn't agree more.
Yes, the MRC did heavily whine about "She-Hulk" being "woke," whatever that is.
Hamill was also still insisting that it's not racist for online trolls to complain that the existence of non-white races in the show, and you're part of the "woke mob" for even pointing that out:
Some in the media and the "woke mob" have been labeling those with legitimate critiques about the series as "racists," including some of the hosts over at The View who went off on those who weren't gushing over the 'The Rings of Power' and other new shows with diverse casts.
You see, no one is allowed to have a negative opinion about the series because of Middle-earth’s new more diverse and gender-balanced characters - or at least that's what is seems like.
The problem with this idea is that it's intellectually dishonest. You're not by default an angry racist because you don't like the new series. Those who are going along with this notion clearly aren't listening to what viewers are complaining about in regards to the new Lord of the Rings series, which Kain perfectly describes in his article.
The problem with Hamill's line of logic is that complaining about the show's "diverse and gender-balanced characters" is very much a racist and sexist criticism -- something to which Hamill is (perhaps deliberately) oblivious.
Hamill spun again in an Oct. 16 post, whining that the "beta male" characters was really the most "common" criticism of the show"
The first season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings Of Power has come to an end, with the eighth episode titled, ‘Alloyed,’ airing on Friday, October 14. I must say it's been a long journey filled with disappointment and too many cringeworthy moments to count.
Now one of the most common complaints among J.R.R Tolkien fans and popular critics was that male characters were portrayed as ‘weak’ and ‘cowardly’ throughout the series, among other things.
[...]
I think it’s safe to say that most of us don’t take issue with strong female characters in shows - I certainly don’t. That being said, it would be nice if there was a little balance, right?
The key to good fiction is believability, and one could argue that the writers of Rings of Power focused on cramming in the woke feminist agenda, in turn, throwing plausibility out the window.
In this Amazon series you get the sense that the writers wanted you to know that women are stronger, smarter and better than men. It felt forced to say the least, which lead to a plethora of cringy, awkward, and unrealistic looking scenes — filled with beta males.
Hamill once again insisted that none of the criticism of the show could possibly have been racist:
You see, no one is allowed to have a negative opinion about the series because of Middle Earth’s new more diverse and gender-balanced characters - or at least that's what is seems like.
Those who are accusing critics of 'racism' are dishonest and lazy. Want proof? Take a look at the difference between audience scores for The Rings of PowerandHouse of Dragon.
The House of Dragon is also a high-profile, fantasy TV show with a diverse cast, and it happens to be hugely successful, with an average audience score of 84 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.
So it appears the so called 'racist backlash' against Rings of Power actually had nothing to do with the new diverse cast and more to do with the plot, the dialogue, the special effects, the list goes on.
Note to Hamill: Complaining about the show's "diverse and gender-balanced characters" is an inherently racist criticism, and if you're still whining about that, all the attempts to distract from said racism by huffing about "beta males" and citing reviews of a completely different show (in which she assumes without proof that the two shows appeal to exactly the same audience) doesn't change its racist nature.
WND's Root Predicted 'Red Tsunami' In Midterms -- Then Claimed Dems Stole Election When It Didn't Happen Topic: WorldNetDaily
Wayne Allyn Root confidently (and self-aggrandizingly) predicted a Republican midterm landslide in his Oct. 21 WorldNetDaily column, headlined "Bet the House on a GOP landslide":
I hate to say "I told you so," but I told you so.
I'm not just a political radio and TV talk-show host. I'm also a Vegas oddsmaker and professional sports handicapper – and I've got the 180-pound granite star on the Las Vegas Walk of Stars to prove it. Before I ever got into politics, I spent 30 years as the top sports oddsmaker in America. The national media dubbed me "America's Oddsmaker" and "The King of Vegas Sports Gambling." I understand the odds.
I've used those skills to pick political winners too. After seven years on national radio and TV, and thousands of predictions about politics, my record is the most accurate in the media – by a mile. I'm not perfect, but I'm batting .999.
I called this one a long time ago. This election was always going to be about inflation, inflation, inflation. But clueless Democrats bet the house on abortion, abortion, abortion.
Have you seen the polls? The GOP is surging. Key races all over the country are moving to the GOP. Polls that I trust give the GOP a 4- to 7-point lead in the generic congressional poll, which translates to a historic landslide similar to GOP victories in 2010 and 2014.
[...]
Independent women have moved to the GOP by a remarkable, unheard of, unimaginable 32 points in one month. Why? Simple: inflation and crime have been raging out of control in the past month. The chickens have come home to roost.
It's all because Democrats bet on the wrong horse. They decided to gamble the whole election on abortion. I told the GOP to bet the house on inflation. Inflation trumps abortion every time.
"It's the economy and the women, stupid."
Root added vaccine fearmongering to his prediction in his Oct. 28 column:
The issues of inflation and crime worked like magic. A massive red wave landslide is upon us. As of days ago, I predicted a 50-seat GOP victory in the House and a 3- to 5-seat GOP victory in the Senate.
But then something happened that was so shocking that I believe it pushed even inflation and crime out of first place. This is the final blow that destroys the Democratic Party. This is so big that we don't have just a red wave coming on Nov. 8. We have a red tsunami.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) just became the "Child Death Cult."
Last week the CDC voted unanimously to recommend every school district in the country mandate the COVID-19 vaccine for every child, or they can't go to public school. They recommend the COVID-19 vaccine be added to the "vaccine schedule." We know that most politicians, bureaucrats and schools – especially in blue states and cities – will comply.
This just became a life-or-death election. This just became the civil rights issue of the 21st century. This just became the parental rights issue of the millennium.
I believe this CDC decision is child abuse, reckless endangerment, negligence, medical malpractice, fraud, insanity, conspiracy, coverup and crimes against humanity, all rolled into one.
[...]
Every parent in America – especially mama bears – now has a life-or-death reason to vote 100% straight-ticket Republican for the midterms: to protect your precious, innocent children from an experimental, emergency-use-only, rushed-to-production vaccine that has proven dangerous and deadly all over the world.
Because if you live in a blue state, every child will be force-vaccinated, and all parental rights will be nullified.
[...]
Every parent in America who loves their children, who has no interest in turning them into a combination of guinea pig and crash-test dummy, has only one choice on Nov. 8 ...
VOTE REPUBLICAN.
This isn't a red wave anymore. This will be a Republican red tsunami.
Root spent his Nov. 5 column boast that even purported Democratic attempts to steal the election won't stop the "red tsunami":
The final sad days of desperation and depression are setting in for Democrats. They know a disaster is upon them. They know this coming Tuesday is a "disaster-level event" for the Democratic Party. For all intents and purposes, Democrats may cease to exist as a major party after Tuesday. The red wave landslide is that big.
It's now morphed into a red tsunami.
There's nothing left for Democrats to do now but try to rig and cheat ... and after the fact, claim the GOP stole the election. Classic Saul Alinsky strategy. Look in the mirror and whatever you see, blame your opposition for what you are and what you do.
But even their best rigging and election fraud won't work this time. Democrats can affect about 6 to 8 points. Maybe 10 points in a best-case scenario. That's the most they can get away with. But this GOP landslide is so big that nothing can stop it. It's a tsunami that will overwhelm the usual 6- to 8-point Democrat effect. Democrats are powerless to stop a double-digit GOP win. This one may be 15 to 20 points.
[...]
The final sad days of the Democrats are about a confused and hated president with dementia; an ex-president (Obama) despised by middle America; a House speaker (Nancy Pelosi) whose self-destructive husband gets himself in life-or-death trouble every time Nancy leaves the mansion; abortion, abortion and abortion.
But the gang who couldn't shoot straight forgot inflation, gas, groceries, rent and the economy, stupid.
On Tuesday they will find out what matters to America. Even the usual Democrat attempts at rigging and stealing won't be able to overcome the tens of millions of angry middle-class Americans coming with pitchforks to take back this country.
But the "red tsunami" didn't happen.Which means Root did exactly what you'd expect -- which, of course, was not apologizing for being so wrong. In his Nov. 11 column, he declared that the election was stolen again:
When something is so obvious, if the outcome makes no sense, if the outcome is literally impossible, then it is what it is. Forget "proof." You know it. You saw it. You felt it. You experienced it. It happened. It's real.
It seems the 2022 midterm was just stolen. Just like 2020.
If you disagree, you're delusional, or terribly naive, or brain-dead. Or you're in on the fix.
It's time to admit we're all part of a massive experiment in fraud, theft, brainwashing and gaslighting to a degree never seen in world history.
Think of all the times in just the past few years you've been gaslighted. I believe they lied to you about open borders … they lied about Hillary's 30,000 deleted emails … they lied about spying on former President Donald Trump … they lied about Russian collusion … they lied about a perfectly fine Ukrainian phone call … they lied about massive Biden corruption in Ukraine and China … they lied about the Hunter Biden laptop … they lied about the origins of COVID-19 … they lied about the need for lockdowns and masks … they lied about the need for COVID-19 vaccines … they lied about the vaccines being "safe and effective" … they lied and covered up all the deaths and injuries from the vaccine … they lied about the success of miracle drugs hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin … they lied about the 2020 election.
You've been the victims of nonstop, severe gaslighting for a decade now. You're all part of a human psychology experiment in the limits that government and media can go in propaganda and brainwashing – while you can see they're lying right in front of your eyes.
And these are the exact same people now telling you Democrats just over-performed, and stopped a GOP red landslide, against all odds, without cheating and stealing the midterm election.
[...]
In this environment where Americans can't afford gas, groceries or rent, with the economy failing, inflation raging, scared to death of losing their jobs, living in cities plagued by violent crime, mass shoplifting, homelessness everywhere, streets lined with human waste and drug needles and failing schools intent on teaching your children to become masked transgender people.
In this environment, they all voted for Biden and the Democrats? Does that make sense to you?
That they looked around at the disaster one man has created in only two years, and they defied a century of historic midterm defeats for the party in power ... and voted for Democrats? Folks, you've been gaslighted.
Root provided no actual evidence of a stolen election, of course; instead, he claimed that Republicans should have done as well in the rest of the country as they did in Florida, which has "strict voter ID requirements, strict laws against voter fraud, severe prison terms for anyone caught trying to commit voter fraud, no mail-in ballots sent to every voter, no ballot drop boxes, no ballot harvesting, no ballots accepted for days after Election Day and no counting for days until the desired result is achieved by the Democratic Party." Root didn't see the opposite end of that argument, that all those restrictions suppressed non-Republican votes in the state, meaning that Republicans actually "stole" the election there.
MRC Complains Again That Coverage Of GOP Candidates Was 'Negative' (Read: Accurately Reported) Topic: Media Research Center
Rich Noyes was roused out of retirement to crank out one of his usual highly subjective coverage "studies" for the midterm elections, which got featured in a Nov. 1 post:
Four years ago, TV’s midterm coverage hammered Republican candidates and then-President Trump with 88 percent negative spin while sparing Democrats similarly bad press. This year, Democrats are in charge of the White House and both chambers of Congress, yet a new Media Research Center study of ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts finds that Republicans are receiving coverage that is just as negative (87% negative) as in 2018, while Democrats — including the President — are drawing far less scrutiny than the party out of power.
And another favor for Team Blue: the dominant topics within these campaign stories — GOP candidate controversies, abortion rights and the danger of “election deniers” — perfectly match the topmost items in Democrats’ campaign playbook. Our study shows discussion of these issues within campaign stories far eclipsed that of the economy and inflation, issues that voters deem most important.
This year’s study looked at the same period of time as we did in 2018, from September 1 to October 26. This year, the Big Three evening newscasts aired 115 stories which mentioned or discussed the midterm elections during, with a total airtime of 213 minutes, or about 60 percent more than the 130 minutes we tallied four years ago.
It focuses only on a tiny sliver of news -- the evening newscasts on the three networks -- and suggests it's indicative of all media. Fox News was not evaluated at all.
The study explicitly rejects the idea of neutral coverage -- even though that's arguably the bulk of news coverage -- dishonestly counting only "clearly positive and negative statements."
It fails to take into account the stories themselves and whether negative coverage is deserved or admit that negative coverage is the most accurate way to cover a given story.
It fails to provide the raw data or the actual statements it evaluated so its work could be evaluated by others. If the MRC's work was genuine and rigorous, wouldn't it be happy to provide the data to back it up?
Indeed, Noyes whined:
Most of this year’s discussion centered on four candidates: Republicans Herschel Walker, Mehmet Oz and Kari Lake, and Democrat John Fetterman. Fetterman’s bad press (81% negative, mostly comments panning his dreadful debate performance) was the worst of any Democrat, but it was better than any of the top Republicans. His Senate rival, Oz, was hit with 82 percent negative press, while Georgia’s Herschel Walker was slammed with 50 negative statements vs. six positive ones, an 89 percent negative spin.
That’s still better than Arizona’s Kari Lake, who was on the receiving end of nine evaluative comments, all negative, giving her a 100 percent negative press score.
While no Democratic candidate other than Fetterman received heavy coverage, there were occasional positive features for several of them, contributing to the Democrats’ more positive press. Alaska House candidate Mary Peltola, for example, was profiled in a glowing September 24 CBS Evening News story about her “milestone” status as the first native Alaskan in Congress.
Of course, the MRC hurlednothingbutnegativity at Fetterman and played defense for Walker over the abortion allegations. Noyes offered no advice on Walker's abortion scandal should have been covered in a "positive" manner (read: framed in right-wing talking points).
Noyes dishonestly whined further:
Viewers and voters seeking election news have more choices than ever, but even today, the Big Three remain uniquely powerful, with relatively large audiences (collectively, about 20 million viewers per night) of citizens who are not as ideologically-established as the fans of wall-to-wall cable news.
So while the establishment media fret about dangers to democracy, there’s a danger in a powerful partisan media passing itself off as objective or centrist, when the reality is that the networks are now open advocates for the success of one party over the other.
Meanwhile, the MRC refuses to admit that right-wing outlets like Fox News have an ideological bias, let alone spend some of its "media research" evaluating just how biased they are. That's because it depends on those outlets to advance its partisan talking points, and exposing their bias would be counterproductive to an ally.
WND Columnist Touts Conspiracy Theory-Filled Anti-Fauci Film Topic: WorldNetDaily
There's lots to unpack in the opening of Rachel Alexander's Oct. 17 WorldNetDaily column:
When I first heard that the book Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote about Dr. Anthony Fauci was going to be made into a documentary by the "Fahrenhype 9/11" filmmaker, I was skeptical, because the left has been trying to defeat vaccine choice by falsely labeling our position as "anti-vaccine." It's part of a common tactic they resort to, portraying our positions inaccurately, because otherwise they would be unable to persuade people to gravitate toward theirs.
However, Jeff Hays is a respected filmmaker, despite how much big tech has banned him – I cannot find any of his movies on Netflix or Amazon Prime – and he explained to me that even Kennedy is not anti-vaccine; that's also a false portrayal. Kennedy mentions in every talk he gives about COVID-19 that he's not anti-vaccine, but the MSM doesn't report that part. Kennedy merely is skeptical of the effects of some vaccines.
First: Nobody on the left claims Kennedy. Second: Kennedy is indisputably an anti-vaxxer-- anyone who spreads liesand misinformation about vaccines is clearly not a supporter of them. Third: If Jeff Hays is working with anti-vaxxers like Kennedy, he cannot possibly a "respected filmmaker."
Fourth: Alexander is trying to be too clever by half in claiming that Kennedy "merely is skeptical of the effects of some vaccines." She later touts Kennedy pushing the claim that mercury in vaccines causes autism in children -- a discredited claim.
Fifth: She's also being too clever by half in claiming that being an anti-vaxxer is not "our position" and that she's being "inaccurately" portrayed as an anti-vaxxer and that she just wants "vaccine choice." She linked to a 2021 column she wrote complaining that "The left lies about the right being anti-vaccine. They routinely refer to us as 'anti-vaccine' when many of us have gotten the vaccine and merely want it to be a choice," adding: "Conservatives carrying signs that say 'Don’t jab on me' could be construed as being anti-vaxx, not anti-vaxx mandate. Stop letting the MSM refer to us as 'anti-vaxx.' It’s a lie. The left doesn’t follow the science with their insistence on mandates, because a lot of young healthy people have died after getting the vaccine." The thing is that there is no functional difference between being anti-vaxx and anti-vaxx mandates because there's so much overlap between the two groups.
Alexander went on to prove that Hays isn't a "respected filmmaker" by rehashing the conspiracies he put into his attack film on Fauci:
The film goes over Fauci's flip-flop on wearing masks, how he originally dismissed them as not working against respiratory illnesses. Masks are referred to as "a symbol of obedience" so people "remain in constant fear." It's a "mass psychosis where you keep the entire population in fear that their lives are under attack."
Mark Crispin Miler, a professor of media studies at NYU, said people believed what they saw on CNN and other mainstream media due to their prestigious reputations. CNN said popular podcast host Joe Rogan took "horse dewormer medication" in order to misrepresent ivermectin.
The documentary goes so far as to hint that perhaps there was something nefarious going on; since ivermectin has been around a long time used to treat ailments, it is now a generic, so pharmaceutical companies can't make much of a profit from selling it. Ivermectin was once considered as possibly being used to treat cancer, but due to the stigma given it during COVID-19, that's now unlikely.
In fact, Fauci's position on masks changed because of initial misunderstandings about how COVID spread and a need to make sure health care workers had enough masks due to early shortages. Also, it has been repeatedly proven that ivermectin is ineffective against COVID, and there is no evidence that it's being suppressed because "pharmaceutical companies can't make much of a profit from selling it."
Alexander's conspiracies continued:
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is singled out for criticism. Through his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Gates allegedly steered the World Health Organization away from its traditional role helping developing countries to a "single preoccupation with vaccines."
The legendary baseball player Hank Aaron was one of the first people to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, as part of an effort to convince blacks skeptical of it due to the Tuskegee experiment. But 17 days later, he was dead. Kennedy refers to the possible linkage as "suspicious," and even the left-leaning Snopes fact-checking site does not say the possibility of causation is false, labeling it "unproven." The documentary contains a long list of young athletes who collapsed from odd health problems shortly after getting the vaccine.
The documentary points out that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' own studies have found that the government's vaccine reporting system may be understating injuries by over 99%, in part due to no effort being made to make it more easily usable by the public.
Finally, when people started to become concerned about the adverse effects of the vaccine, Kennedy said Fauci killed the proposal for a vaccine safety commission.
Regarding the claim about Hank Aaron, doesn't Alexander think the claim that COVID vaccines caused his death should have to be proven before they are spread? Otherwise,she's just acting as a megaphone for unproven allegations. And the "vaccine safety commission" was proposed by Kennedy himself before the COVID pandemic as a ploy to foment distrust in vaccines, so it was not a good-faith idea and it's dishonest for him, Hays and Alexander to suggest it was any sort of good-faith effort.
Alexander concluded:
It comes down to "fear disables critical thinking," according to the documentary. Kennedy doesn't get into the whys behind his research. He doesn't explain why Fauci has these biases, but some of the commentators in the documentary point out that Fauci has a contempt for classical medicine, instead preferring radical, dangerous new alternatives.
But Alexander won't call out how Kennedy and Hays are using fear to attack vaccines, and that Kennedy is the one who has a "contempt for classical medicine." Perhaps that's because she pushes that same fear.
MRC Ignores Facts To Cheer Alleged Demise Of Batgirl Film, Bisexual Superman Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center likes nothing more to lash out atsuperhero franchises who dare to offer protagonists who are anything other than white and heterosexual. An Aug. 4 post by Michael Ippolito -- under the headline "Get Woke, Go Broke" -- cheered the new owners of Warner Bros. and its DC comic franchises shelving a new Batgirl movie despite it being nearly completed, whining that the titular character wasn't white:
Some corporations have finally gotten the memo and are pumping the brakes on producing woke garbage.
According to The Wrap, Warner Brothers will not release the $90 million project BatGirl either theatrically or on HBO Max. The movie was slated for release later in 2022, and numerous worrisome reports, such as the race-swapping of the main character, indicated it was going to be another leftist propaganda film.
“The decision to not release Batgirl reflects our leadership’s strategic shift as it relates to the DC universe and HBO Max. Leslie Grace is an incredibly talented actor and this decision is not a reflection of her performance,” said a Warner Bros. Pictures spokesperson. “We are incredibly grateful to the filmmakers of Batgirl and Scoob! and their respective casts and we hope to collaborate with everyone again in the near future.”
The total movie budget reached a whopping $90 million due to COVID shutdowns, reshoots, and an increased budget. The movie was set to be the character’s big breakthrough with veteran actor Michael Keaton reprising his role as Batman. Early tests revealed that the moviegoers did not enjoy the film at all. Holy woke propaganda, Batman!
Ippolitio did not explain now, exactly, making Batgirl not white (she would have been Hispanic in this film) made the film "woke," nor did he identify any other content from the film -- which he could not possibly have seen -- that warranted the "woke" slur. Seems that Ippolito can't handle a person of color starring in a superhero film.
(Warner Bros. itself stated that a change in corporate strategy was the cause of the film's cancellation, and nothing was said about the film being too "woke," whatever that is.)
Matt Philbin was even more whiny and snarky -- with added homophobia -- about the alleged cancellation of another project in the DC universe in an Oct. 13 post:
Look! Up in the sky: it’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a woke bisexual guy in tights! Except he’s not going to be there much longer.
According to Brittany Bernstein at National Review Online, DC Comics announced at the New York Comic Con that it’s canceling Superman: Son of Kal-El because it turned out nobody was really interested in an excruciatingly woke comic book.
Go figure.
Don’t ask me how comic book fans can pass up riveting story lines about Clark and Lois’s light-in-the-tights teenage son fighting climate change and other progressive bugaboos, but the series was less popular than CNN+.
“The fourth issue of the series sold just 37,500 copies, earning it an abysmal 55th place in October 2021 sales,” Bernstein reported.
So what the hell was DC thinking when it dreamed up this dud? According to the series author, “The idea of replacing Clark Kent with another straight white savior felt like a missed opportunity.”
So this was an expensive exercise in virtue signaling. Lot of that going around.
Philbin was too invested in his homophobia that he ignored the inconvenient fact fact that the comic isn't getting canceled at all -- it's being re-launched in a new six-issue series as "Adventures of Superman: Jon Kent." And despite Philbin's gloating about the series' purportedly terrible sales, CBR pointed out that at the time this narrative appeared, "the best-selling comic book on Amazon was Superman: Son of Kal-El #16, the series' most recent issue," and "Son of Kal-El" writer Tom Taylor said that he will contiunue to write the new series. Perhaps that will teach Philbin to not get his comic book news from a right-wing commentary magazine.
The MRC previously whined about the creation of the bisexual Superman, because, again, it thinks superheroes should only be white heterosexuals.
CNS Can't Stop Complaining About Committee Looking Into Capitol Riot Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com hatesNancy Pelosi and hated the House committee hearings looking into the Capitol riot, so it's unsurprising that its initial story related to the final committee hearing on Oct. 13 was not about what was discussed during said hearing but, rather, an Oct. 14 article by Craig Bannister on a video of Pelosi released after the hearing:
“I’ve been waiting for this,” House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) says in a newly-released video, in which she says claims “punch him out,” if then-President Donald Trump comes to the U.S. Capitol during the January 6, 2021 riot.
“I’m going to punch him out,” House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said of Trump as the Capitol riot unfolded, according to video obtained from Pelosi’s daughter and aired by CNN Thursday.
CNN describes the scene, in which Pelosi declares that "this is my moment; I've been waiting for this," gesturing emphatically, before threatening to "punch" then-President Trump:
Bannister did tacitly concede, unlike WorldNetDaily, that Pelosi's remarks came in the context of a violent Trump-inflamed mob attacking the Capitol.
Indeed, CNS did no news article whatsoever on the contents of the hearing -- which arguably belies its claim to be a "news" operation. Instead, intern Lauren Shank wrote an Oct. 14 article uncritically repeating Donald Trump's grievances:
Former President Donald Trump spoke out against the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S Capitol, questioning why they did not ask him to testify months ago.
“Why didn’t the Unselect Committee ask me to testify months ago? Why did they wait until the very end, the final moments of their last meeting?” Trump asked on his Truth Social platform.
“Because the Committee is a total ‘BUST’ that has only served to further divide our Country which, by the way, is doing very badly – A laughing stock all over the world?”
In another post he wrote, “The Unselect Committee knowingly failed to examine the massive voter fraud which took place during the 2020 Presidential Election – The reason for what took place on January 6th.”
“Why didn’t Crazy Nancy Pelosi call out the ‘troops’ before January 6th, which I strongly recommended that she do,” said Trump. “It was her responsibility, but she ‘didn’t like the look.’ Crazy Nancy failed the American People!”
Shank refused to fact-check this claim -- if she had, she would have known that Trump never signed an order to deploy National Guard troops that day, so Pelosi could not possibly have turned it down.
Shank did eventually get around to describing something that actually happened at the hearing, while, of course, putting some biased spin on it:
While the potential of Thursday’s hearing may be its last on the Jan. 6 attacks, the committee, consisting of seven Democrats and two Republicans, all said “aye” in voting to subpoena Trump.
(The two Republicans, Rep. Adam Kinzinger (Ill.) and Rep. Lynne Cheney (Wyo.), had expressed their disapproval of Trump even before the events of Jan. 6, 2021 and had voted for his impeachment.)
[...]
Although Trump’s critics frequently describe the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol as an insurrection, to date not one person (of 900-plus arrested) apparently has been charged with insurrection.
The harshest charge has been “seditious conspiracy,” and brought against only 11 people.
Shank didn't expaloin why someone has to actually be charged with insurrection to describe the riot as an "insurrection."
Even though there will be no more committee hearings, CNS continued to attack the committee. Bannister invoked two of his favorite right-wingers to go after Pelosi again in a Nov. 10 article:
Democrats “never intended” their January 6 Select Committee to be political and “it was never planned as a political tactic,” House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) – who refused to allow Republicans to seat their own committee members – said Tuesday as the midterm elections were taking place.
Pelosi insisted that Democrats’ one-sided January 6 Select Committee hearings had no political agenda, when asked by PBS NewsHour Host Judy Woodruff about voters’ disinterest in the televised, public hearings.
“Well, well never intended it to be a political item. It’s about seeking the truth,” Pelosi responded.
“[I]t was never planned as a political tactic,” Pelosi added, repeating Democrats’ mantra that “democracy is at stake” in this year’s midterm elections.
But, as Constitution Scholar Mark Levin has explained on his “Life, Liberty & Levin” television program, the “illegitimate” hearings are an unconstitutional effort to indict and smear former President Donald Trump and his Republican colleagues:
[...]
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R), who spent 20 years in Congress, has also explained how the one-sided hearings have been purely political.
“What I saw last night was a show trial worthy of Joseph Stalin,” Gingrich observed, following one of the hearings conducted in June. “Last night’s January 6 Committee propaganda show had nothing in common with legitimate congressional hearings.”
“There is a sense of fairness and Due Process which is central to American freedom and independence. The January 6 Committee has violated every aspect of due process, presumption of innocence, and impartial search for truth,” Gingrich noted.
Bannister didn't mention that because the committee hearings were not part of a legal process, there was not a duty to follow due process. He also didn't mention that Republicans had every right to hold their own hearings to build a counter-narrative to the House committee but chose not to.
Managing editor Michael W. Chapman tried to help Republicans fiorward a conspiracy theory about the riot in a Nov. 15 article:
At a hearing held before the House Homeland Security Committee on Nov. 15, FBI Director Christopher Wray declined to say whether the FBI had used "confidential human sources" "dressed as Trump supporters" in the Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection.
House Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) asked Wray, "Does the FBI have confidential human sources -- did the FBI have confidential human sources embedded within the January 6 protesters on January 6, 2021?"
FBI Director Wray replied, "Congressman, as I'm sure you can appreciate, I have to be very careful about what I can say about when -- may I finish -- about when we do and do not and where we have and have not used confidential human sources."
"But to the extent that there's a suggestion, for example, that the FBI's confidential human sources or FBI employees in some way, instigated or orchestrated January 6, that's categorically false," said Wray.
Higgins then asked, "Did you have confidential human sources dressed as Trump supporters inside the Capitol on January 6, prior to the doors being opened?"
Wray replied, "Again, I have to be very careful --."
At that point, Higgins interjected, "It should be a no. Can you not tell the American people no, we did not have confidential human sources dressed as Trump supporters positioned inside the Capitol?"
Wray then responded, "You should not read anything into my decision not to share information on confidential human sources."
At that point, Committee chairman Benny Thompson (D-Miss.) said Higgins' time was up and they moved on to another congressman.
Higgins' line of questioning leaned into a conspiracy theory forwarded by right-wingers that secret FBI agents embedded in the crowd caused the violence that day. Chapman failed to explain that to his readers.
Welcome To The MRC's COVID Cruise! Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center is sponsoring a Mediterranean cruise next summer, and all the usual right-wing folks will be on this junket. Aside from the MRC's own Brent Bozell, Tim Graham and Terry Jeffrey, other right-wing activists getting their cruise comped include Rick Santorum, Dean Cain, Charlie Hurt, Cal Thomas, Jason Chaffetz and Joe Concha. The one unsusual guest -- in that he's not a prominent right-wing activist like the rest -- is Jim Jimirro, who has actually done something with his life by creating the Disney Channel and running Disney's home video operation, and he has an "impact series" on media issues named after him at the Paley Center for Media. Jimirro did, however, moderate a panel last year in which Graham went off on a New York Times reporter, so maybe that's how he got the invite.
Even though the MRC regularly rants that the "liberal media" isn't diverse enough, there will be no diversity of opinion allowed here. This cruise is all about figid ideological uniformity, as one of the features being promoted is the opportunity to hang out with "like minded fellow cruisers."
But there's another thing these cruisers may share: COVID. A key part of the MRC's cruise promotion is that nobody is required to be vaccinated. Ads promoting the cruise on MRC websites proclaim that "NO VACCINES OR TESTS REQUIRED," and the top of the cruise website has a sticker declaring "Covid19 VAX no longer required."
Actually, it's a little more complicated than that. Celebrity Cruises, which will run the MRC cruise, has protocols that it follows; while vaccines are not required, it does state that "Unvaccinated guests ages 5 and older will need to test 3 days prior to boarding U.S. sailings; and ages 12 and older for select Europe sailings" and that "Boosters are highly recommended, but not required, for those eligible at least 7 days before" (text color in original). It's also noted that "Guests must provide proof at terminal check-in of a negative viral COVID-19 test (PCR or antigen) taken within two days of their embarkation." The protocols further state: "Masks on board will be recommended, but not required, in the vast majority of venues. There may be select venues or certain situations in which masks are required. Celebrity Cruises is currently providing complimentary surgical mask(s) on board with replacements available upon request."
Given the MRC's penchant for spreadingmisinformation about COVID vaccines and overall hostility to COVID-related health protocols, the number of "like minded" cruisers who will be unvaccinated is likely to be higher than the general population and masking for onboard events will be minimal at best despite Celebrity's protocols, so these cruisers should prepare for a likely outbreak.
We've noted how Newsmax pundit Dick Morris confidently predicted a red wave in the midterm elections, with Republicans seizing both the House and the Senate and Democrats losing all 60 close congressional races. Well, that didn't happen, making this yet another failed Morris prognostication. Perhaps he saw this a bit on election day, when he played the election-fraud card in a Nov. 8 Newsmax TV appearances:
By contrast to its 
As with 
How do you know the employment numbers were good under a Democratic president? CNSNews.com's lead story 
At the Media Research Center, you're only a good whistleblower if you advance right-wing narratives, like 
We've noted
As the midterm elections approached, CNSNews.com endeavored to be a Repuiblian Party mouthpiece by giving Republican politicians and partisans a platform to peddle partisan talking points unencumbered by such inconvenient things like balance or fact-checking. For example:
A Sept. 7 
Wayne Allyn Root confidently (and self-aggrandizingly) predicted a Republican midterm landslide in his Oct. 21 WorldNetDaily 
Rich Noyes was roused out of retirement to crank out one of his usual highly subjective coverage "studies" for the midterm elections, which got featured in a Nov. 1 
There's lots to unpack in the opening of Rachel Alexander's Oct. 17 WorldNetDaily 
The Media Research Center likes nothing more to 
CNSNews.com 
The Media Research Center is sponsoring a 
