MRC Joke Policeman Unironically Complains Of Others Being Joke Police Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Alex Christy complained in a March 17 post:
Comedy Central’s The Daily Show claims to be a comedy show, but temp host Kal Penn and husband of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Chasten Buttigieg, turned it into the joke police on Thursday while condemning a recent joke told by former Vice President Mike Pence at Pete’s expense.
Penn set the table by reporting, “At the Gridiron Dinner in Washington, D.C., that’s a dinner where politicians are known to make humorous speeches—”
After Buttigieg interrupted to add “they try,” Penn continued “They try, yes. Vice President Mike Pence made a joke about your husband taking paternity leave and he referred to it as ‘maternity leave’ and when I saw that, my biggest reaction was, really? You're just going to recycle a 1998 joke that’s, like, been around forever, but what was your reaction?”
If Penn found the joke boring, that would be one thing, but Buttigieg insisted it was much worse, “I mean, I think ‘joke’ is being generous.”
The real joke here is that Christy's main job at the MRC is to be a joke policeman, heaping disdain on late-night comedy shows that make too much fun of right-wingers like him. Here's a sample of what he has written since the beginning of this year, with a particular focus on Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers (with a little Jimmy Kimmel for good measure):
Christy has determined that any joke that doesn't align with his right-wing ideology is not funny and, must therefore be condemned. Seems like he needs to step away and spend some time taking classes at joke police academy if he wants to keep his certification.
WND's Farah Responds To Trump Indictment With Racism, Conspiracy Theories Topic: WorldNetDaily
Given the size of the freakout WorldNetDaily had over the indictment of Donald Trump, it stands to reason that WND's biggest Trump fanboy, editor Joseph Farah, would be freaking out just as bigly. Indeed, Farah's March 31 column began with a bizarre racial attack, accusing district attorney Alvin Bragg (who is black) of "shucking and jiving" over the indictment:
What was all this shucking and jiving about for the last few weeks?
President Donald Trump was about to be indicted. Then he wasn't. Then he was.
What was going on in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office, I wonder. Who was he talking to besides his fairy godmother, George Soros? Was he seeking permission from Merrick Garland or Joe Biden? Did he know what kind of furor he would set off by criminally indicting a U.S. president for the first time in history?
And what are these 30-something counts he was putting together for release next week? Were they something the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District of New York and the Federal Election Commission haven't seen before? They decided against bringing charges. In fact, two of Bragg's own attorneys quit his office when he began talking about indicting Trump.
You would think he was trying to disgrace himself by going ahead finally with his wicked plans. Or maybe he had to get permission. Maybe it's just part of a devious plot to further weaponize the government, as if we could imagine that.
And why is so brazen to turn down a subpoena to testify to the House Judiciary Committee?
There's something very strange about the timing of it all. Trump is growing in popularity since announcing his bid for the presidency. Does Bragg think this is going to make him less of a political threat?
Despite not seeing any of the evidence, Farah ranted that Trump is innocent:
They're just going to stay on him. To date they haven't found ANYTHING! He's as clean as a hound's tooth. They keep throwing stuff at him, and he acts like the Energizer Bunny. Hey, maybe this guy just loves his country. Have they ever thought of that?
Nevertheless, these are gravely dangerous times in America. Most of us just can't wait to get Trump back in office; it won't come fast enough. We just have to live through the next few months. The country can't take much more punishment and oppression.
Of course, nobody feels it like Donald Trump. He should have one job to do – run for president! He's never taken his sight off that. How can a man go through all of this?
Just pray for him – and anybody who can afford to give him some money along the way, encourage him that way.
Trump is a very wealthy man who does not need anyone to donate money to him.
Farah repeated discredited election fraud conspiracy theories to defend Trump in his April 5 column headlined "Trump was right about EVERYTHING!":
You can see it for yourself now. It's perfectly obvious to all of us. Donald Trump accurately called the stolen election in 2020, what followed in the Capitol "insurrection" and all that followed in America ever since. Just look at the Big Picture. Just watch how the Democrats changed their tactics and became tyrants.
That's right. In case someone hasn't noticed yet, the odds are they are actively considering another Big Steal in 2024 – or worse. They are actively building a police state, an authoritarian nightmare. It's their only option to retain power.
First, they tried to sell the claim that 2020 was just another election – with Joe Biden receiving some 80 million votes – without even campaigning! Then they created, manufactured, dreamed up the Capitol sham. Next came the raid on Mar-a-Lago. Then Alvin Bragg's gambit. And there are other states and jurisdictions set to wage lawfare against Trump this year. They'll potentially be able to tie him up, not giving him time to campaign this year – or worse.
Nothing they do now would surprise me.
What they know is that Trump seriously threatens their New World Order, their Great Reset. They've already got the fake media in their pocket, Big Tech censors in place, unlimited money interests set up, the Deep State machinations. They have New York, California, Illinois and a few other clueless states they can count on. We have Donald Trump's real popularity – up to 72% in some polls.
[...]
"2024 is the final battle," said President Trump in Waco, Texas, recently. "That's going to be the big one. You put me back in the White House, their reign will be over, and America will be a free nation once again."
We all need to back Trump now – our best hope for the future in the natural world. May God bless him, and may God bless America.
Only a dead-ender like Farah would think a corrupt, amoral man like Trump is "our best hope for the future in the natural world."
for his April 6 column, Farah cherry-picked quotes by President Biden to invent a reason why he had not spoken out on Trump's indictment: "Hint: It's because he's in on the plot to stay in the shadows for once, now that others are carrying the ball."
MRC's Jean-Pierre-Bashing, Doocy-Fluffing Watch (Sans Doocy) Topic: Media Research Center
Curtis Houck sounded much more like a PR flack for Kevin McCarthy than the "media researcher" he's supposed to be in his writeup of the April 21 White House press briefing:
Prior to the weekend, more Hunter Biden headlines, and Monday’s media tsunami regarding Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon, there was Friday’s White House press briefing and it began with a rant from White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre ghoulishly claiming House Republicans want to “fill our cities with smog,” “give asthma to our children,” and allow oil companies to use chemicals that would “melt bones.”
This rant represented no basis in reality, but not one White House reporter stepped up to the plate to condemn this, including the front row of NBC’s Peter Alexander, ABC’s Mary Bruce, CBS’s Nancy Cordes, Reuters’s Steve Holland, CNN’s Kevin Liptak, and Darlene Superville of the Associated Press. There wasn’t even an installment of Doocy Time to call this out.
The plan spearheaded by Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) would only, among other things, roll spending back to 2022, ax new spending for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and impose additional work requirements for certain welfare programs. So, yes, Republicans would be going back to the dark, old days where bones were melted and cities were filled with smog in....2022?
Jean-Pierre had been hawking Biden’s “bold climate and environmental justice agenda” when she argued it “could not stand in starker contrast to the dangerous proposals MAGA House Republicans are putting forward.”
Citing a pants-on-fire chart behind her, she declared McCarthy’s “ransom note” would mean the party wants “to kill jobs, fill our cities with smog, and give asthma to our children.”
“The proposal would repeal the Inflation Reduction Act’s green energy tax credits,” she continued, “sending thousands of jobs back to China” and “make it easier for oil companies to use toxic chemicals that cause severe burns, damage people’s eyes, and quite literally melt bones.”
Houck offered no actual evidence anything Jean-Pierre said was wrong -- he just mocked her and repeated similar mocking from his fellow right-wingers.
Houck spent his writeup of the April 24 press briefing whining that everyone was talking about Fox News firing Tucker Carlson and nobody was talking about Hunter Biden, and that a right-wing reporter asked about an old story:
While media observers, Twitter, and cable news viewers were lighting their hair on fire Monday over the monumental shakeup with CNN firing Don Lemon and Fox News axing Tucker Carlson, the Biden White House held its near-daily press briefing and there were a few moments that slipped under the radar, including one about Hunter Biden.
The New York Post’s Steven Nelson took advantage of National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan serving as Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre’s crutch for the day and asked about an April 11 revelation from a former Obama-Biden official that alleged Sullivan — then a top Biden aide — called for support to the Ukrainian gas industry just after Hunter Biden signed on with Burisma.
Houck's April 27 briefing writeup was heavy on the right-wing scandal du jour (let's call it "Questiongate"):
Thursday’s White House press briefing featured an embarrassing performance by the ever-inept Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre as she tried to defend and explain away an infamous photo captured of President Biden holding a card Wednesday afternoon with the name of a reporter he called on (Courtney Subramanian of the Los Angeles Times) and a typed-out question that was close to the one she asked.
Fox’s Jacqui Heinrich brought it up, but treaded carefully: “The LA Times said that their reporter did not submit any questions in advance of yesterday’s press conference, so, to people who saw that pocket card, can you explain how that ended up there and why the President needed something like that?”
Jean-Pierre thanked Heinrich for bringing it up and, sure enough, had comments. She insisted “[i]t is entirely normal for a president to be briefed on reporters who will be asking questions at a press conference and issues that we expect they might ask about” and thus “it is not surprising” to hear the White House anticipated questions about 2024 and semiconductors.
Adding that press briefings also serve as a way of gleaning what reporters are interested in, Jean-Pierre proclaimed: “[W]e do not have specific questions in advance. That's not something that we do. And in fact, I would point out the questions that was asked was different than what it was on the card that you all saw.”
After she insisted such preparation was done in order to shape the news coverage, the Daily Caller’s Diana Glebova wasn’t having it: “How are the reporters decided?”
Jean-Pierre actually replied, explaining the White House “reach[es] out to a number of reporters who — who were going to — who we know are going to be at the press conference and that's what we did yesterday and also...who has not gotten a question in a while.”
Houck censored the fact that both of these reporters work for right-wing outlets -- thus demonstrating their bias -- or that it's standard procedure for presidents and other officials to be briefed on what reporters are likely to ask them at a press briefing.
Michael Dorstewitz spent his April 7 Newsmax column cheering Elon Musk's partisan stunt of arbitrarily labeling NPR's Twitter feed as "state-affiliated media," citiing as evidence that NPR ignored the story of Hunter Biden's laptop:
NPR is partially-funded by taxpayer dollars, but most importantly it only seems to “hold the powerful accountable” when “the powerful” happen to be conservatives or Republicans. They generally carry water for Democrats, as they demonstrated in the closing days of the 2020 presidential election.
What should have been an October surprise that would have assured then-President Trump’s reelection, never made it off the starting block. The New York Post’s stories of Hunter Biden’s “Laptop From Hell” were banned from Twitter as “disinformation.”
But legacy media such as NPR did all they could to ignore it, and NPR appeared proud of its decision.
“Why haven’t you seen any stories from NPR about the NY Post’s Hunter Biden story?” NPR asked on Twitter. “We don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions.”
They wouldn’t even try to confirm or rebut what should have been the biggest news of the 2020 election cycle.
As we've pointed out, the New York Post -- a biased right-wing, pro-Trump newspaper -- refused to provide no independent verification of the story at the time that would have overcome reasonable concerns about partisanship, instead demanding that people take this story hyped by anti-Biden partisans at face value. Dorstewitz is simply mad that a dubious "October surprise" was justly ignored by media outlets that actually care about reporting facts.
Dorstewitz then complained that White HOuse press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre vouched for NPR's editorial independence: "In other words, to make its case that it’s not a government mouthpiece, NPR cites praise from the White House and the Pentagon. They could have made their case better by citing complaints from the government."
He went on to whine that it was accurately pointed out that George Soros had not directly donated any money to Trump-prosecuting district attorney Alvin Bragg but cheered that "Twitter fact-checked the fact-checker and added context to Kessler’s claim" by noting that Soros donated to a group that help elect Bragg -- which, again, is not the direct contribution Bragg-haters claimed it was. He conlcuded by gushing:
None of this would have been possible had billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk not purchased Twitter and turned it around.
It’s always refreshing when someone has the courage to state the obvious: that “the emperor has no clothes.”
And it makes no difference whether it’s a little boy that says it while enjoying a royal parade, or it’s a social media platform pointing out the obvious prejudices of legacy news.
Either way, it’s always fun.
Yes, Dorstewitz would think that right-wing bias and stunts are "fun."
WND Helps Right-Wing Channel Play Victim Over Suspension Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily's Bob Unruh took a page of the Media Research Center victimization playbook for an April 4 article:
Another day and another attack on conservative voices in America.
It is the Google-YouTube conglomerate that again is being accused of using its online power to "eradicate the web of conservative voices" after its decision to suspend Right Side Broadcasting Network.
RSBN was accused of "pushing content on the stolen elections, fraud in the 2020 elections, and [an absence] of opposing voices," according to a report from The Gateway Pundit.
It's a frequent claim from leftists and liberals who want to suppress concerns about America's elections.
[...]
The Gateway Pundit report noted, "One day before President Trump is to be indicted on 'trumped up' charges by a Soros-funded district attorney, Google-YouTube suspended the Right Side Broadcasting Network (RSBN) account."
It explained, "Google-YouTube used a familiar excuse accusing RSBN of pushing content on the stolen elections, fraud in the 2020 elections, and absent of opposing voices in their videos."
The report, however, openly wondered, "Since when did Google-YouTube start forcing conservatives to contain liberal insanity in their content? And has the same standard been forced on the regime-approved mainstream media outlets?"
As we pointed out when the MRC whined about this very same thing, RSBN spreads proven falsehoods about election fraud and it doesn't believe it should be held accountable for doing so. Unruh clearly sympathizes, and he added his own conspiracy-mongering:
But the facts remain that a Media Research Center poll after the 2020 election revealed that Joe Biden almost undoubtedly would have lost key swing states – and the election, had social and legacy media not interfered in the election by suppressing damaging, but accurate, reporting about the Biden family's international business schemes.
Further, there was the undue influence on election results from the $400 million plus that Mark Zuckerberg handed out through foundations to local election officials, who often used the windfall to recruit voters from Democrat districts.
Almost certainly without those factors, which came from outside America's election process, the U.S. would be in the middle of President Trump's second term now.
Unruh censored the fact that Zuckerberg foundation grants were available to any election official who wanted it and much of it was used to help defray added expenses of holding an election during a pandemic. Also, there is nothing sinister or evil about encouraging people to vote, and the MRC's election-fraud conspiracy theory is based on polls it bought from Trump's campaign pollster and the polling firm founded by Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway.
NEW ARTICLE: The MRC's Partisan Interpretation Of 'Anti-Semitic' Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center had trouble criticizing Kanye West's anti-Semitism, but it rushed to proclaim without explanation that Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar's criticism of Israel is "anti-Semitic." PLUS: The MRC defended Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones against charges of racism after an old photo resurfaced. Read more >>
MRC's Whataboutism On Fox News-Dominion Settlement Continued Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center found even more ways to minimize andplay whataboutism over Fox News paying Dominion $787.5 million to settle a defamation lawsuit. An April 22 "flashback" post by Rich Noyes complained that Fox News has always been a target of the "liberal media":
Fox News’s liberal competitors are happy at this week’s news that the network will pay nearly $800 million in damages to settle a lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems, but they are sad that the settlement means they won’t be able to jab Fox with the daily negative headlines they could hope for from a trial.
“Capitalism won. Dominion won. Did democracy get anything out of this?” CNN’s John King whined on Wednesday’s Inside Politics. By “democracy,” of course, King was referring to CNN’s (and the larger liberal media’s) anti-Fox agenda.
This disdainful attitude has been a feature of the media’s treatment of their rival since Fox News debuted in 1996. That year, Los Angeles Times TV writer Howard Rosenberg sneered at Fox News boss Roger Ailes for building a news organization around “the ditsy notion of the media having perverted the United States by being a cesspool of lefty ideologues.”
[...]
A quick reminder: For 85 consecutive quarters (21.25 years), Fox News has been the most-watched cable news network in prime time.
Of course, "liberal media" critiques have nothing to do with Fox News choosing to lie to its viewers about election fraud, and popularity does not equal moral superiority as Noyes seems to suggest.
Mark Finkelstein spent an April 24 post complaining that a Dominion lawyer said the settlement doesn't restore the company's reputation that was destroyed by lies from right-wingers (like Fox News):
Cry me a river—788 million miles long!
On Katie Phang's Saturday show on MSNBC, Stephen Shackelford, a lead lawyer for Dominion Voting Systems, echoed the claim by the company's CEO that the settlement payment of $787.5 million from Fox News was "bittersweet."
In a New York Times op-ed, the CEO, John Poulos, in addition to calling the settlement "bittersweet," actually wrote:
"If we could,we would trade it all in a heartbeat to go back in time to get our reputation back. "
Riight. The entire company was most recently valued at $226 million. The $778 million settlement thus represents more than three times that valuation! And as for CEO Poulos wanting to get Dominion's reputation back, the company got untold millions in free publicity supporting its reputation. This will turn out to be a windfall for Dominion that goes beyond the huge settlement.
Moreover, the majority owner of Dominion is Staple Street, a private equity firm. They're in the business of making money, not of serving as social-justice warriors. Odds they would have traded $788 million for a more profound apology from Fox News? Precisely zero.
Shackelford added to the farce by saying that the $788 million settlement represented "some measure of compensation" for Dominion. Some?
And then there's the "measure of compensation" for Shackelford and the other Dominion trial lawyers on the case.[...]
It's fair to assume that the lawyers will receive tens of millions in compensation. Hopefully, that will be sufficient to assauge poor Shackelford's "bittersweet" feelings.
Finkelstein didn't explain where Dominion should go to get its reputation back, or why his ffellow right-wingers won't do their part by admitting they were wrong to spread false conspiracy theories about the company.
In an April 25 post, Clay Waters complained that critics wanted to see evidence that Fox News had learned something from falsely defaming Dominion:
Before the Tucker Carlson stunner, the Jeremy Peters “Media Memo” on the front of Monday’s New York Times Business section was headlined “Will the Fox-Dominion Settlement Affect Its News Coverage? Don’t Count on It." Peters went beyond the embarrassing particulars of the Fox News settlement with Dominion Voting Systems to hint racism at the right-leaning network, and also chided it for not showing “humility” by bowing to Democratic President Biden after the settlement.
[...]
Peters’ desire for Fox News to be “humbler or gentler” sounds like code for “tacking leftward.”
Waters then got mad at the Times writer for calling out Fox News for continuing to give airtime to election fraud conspiracy theories:
Peters lamented that Jesse Watters didn't push back on Clay Travis when he claimed Biden “only won by 20,000 votes after they rigged the entire election, after they hid everything associated with Hunter Biden, with the big tech, with the big media, and with the big Democrat Party collusion that all worked in his favor.”
Trump lost the popular vote by seven million votes, but why can't the Times admit they were on the team hiding all the Hunter Biden laptop developments with the Democrats? The Times has admitted the laptop contents were real, so don't Republicans have a reason to complain about suppression?
Peters added "Stories of voter fraud, often exaggerated and unsubstantiated, have been part of the network’s D.N.A. well before 2020. In 2012, Roger Ailes, who founded Fox News with Mr. Murdoch, sent a team of journalists to Ohio to investigate still-unproven claims of malfeasance at the polls after former President Barack Obama beat Mitt Romney there."
The paper did not address how it has sent teams of journalists to investigate suspected election fraud in the presidential races in 2000, 2004, and 2016.
All of Waters' whataboutism obscured the fact that he wouldn't criticize Fox News for still spreading lies and conspiracy theories.
WND Columnists Rant About Trump Indictment Topic: WorldNetDaily
Just as WorldNetDaily's "news" side freaked out over Donald Trump's indictment, its opinion side did too. Scott Lively managed to work his homophobia obsession into it in an April 3 column headlined "Trump's arrest is a lefty 'Sieg Heil' to the Rainbow Swastika":
Without Trump we would collectively have slept right through the transition from a Constitutional Republic to a Global Maoist Technocracy under Hillary Clinton – ignoring the shouts of warning from "crack-pot bigots" like myself on the "radical fringe" of society. And that is, of course, why ALL the Woke, and a great many "useful idiots" following their lead, hate Trump with a passion that burns in them like the unquenchable fires of Hell, blinding them to all reason and prudence – to the point that many have abandoned even the pretext of rationality and justice. Trump is America's "Judge" in the truest Old Testament Samsonian sense, and our fate as a nation is inextricably intertwined with his.
[...]
Learning from history doesn't necessarily ensure you can avoid its repetitions. You also have to take effective action to stop the bad guys. In this case, it means educating Americans on the centrality of the LGBT agenda to the attack on our system, and the willingness to accept that the only real solution is a restoration of Judeo-Christian religious and cultural norms.
But the person who most needs to learn the history exposed in this article is President Trump, who seems completely ignorant of the fact that his indictment and arrest is above all else a Lefty Sieg Heil to the Rainbow Swastika.
Rachel Alexander was less homophobic, but still worked in a Stalin reference, in her column the same day:
We are living in an Orwellian era when the formerly most powerful man in the world, who remains very powerful, is being prosecuted in order to stop him from becoming president again. If they can take him down, they can take down any conservative. The left has weaponized lawfare, which started with merely civil lawsuits but has now progressed into disbarring attorneys and prosecution. Once they've gone after Trump through prosecution – even if unsuccessful – it will be easier to go after him again on other charges, and easier to go after any other conservative. And they won't stop there; they'll next go after RINOs and those on the left who side with the right against the abuse of the legal system.
[...]
The left is throwing everything they can at Trump in order to stop him from becoming president again. They brought impeachment charges against him twice. The FBI was sent to search his home. More indictments by other prosecutors are expected.
The U.S. is turning into a banana republic with this deterioration of the legal system combined with election fraud determining elections. As Stalin's secret police chief, Lavrentiy Beria, famously said, "Show me the man and I'll show you the crime." Similarly, criminal defense attorney Harvey Silverglate wrote a book, "Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent," which explains how there are so many vague and broad laws now the average person commits three felonies a day and doesn't know it. If they want to get you, they'll figure out a way.
Andy Schlafly manufactured a victimhood narrative in his April 4 column:
By indicting President Trump, the New York County prosecutor is infringing on the First Amendment rights of all Americans. Every American has a right to an unfettered debate and campaign by candidates, including Trump, for our nation's highest elective office.
This indictment interferes with the 2024 presidential election by hampering the full participation of a leading candidate, and the right of Americans to benefit from his undivided attention to his campaign. One Democrat district attorney in Manhattan infringes on all these rights by indicting the front-runner Republican candidate, Donald Trump.
"The freedom to speak and the freedom to hear are inseparable; they are two sides of the same coin," declared Justice Thurgood Marshall in 1972. Democrats are interfering with the right of every American to hear from Donald Trump without distraction by an improper prosecution.
[...]
As patriotism declines in polls and millions of immigrants fail to assimilate into our traditional culture, the glue binding our vast country together may have lost some strength. In 1857, the Dred Scott decision arrogantly denied rights to slaves rather than allow the political process to work, and a few years later our nation broke up.
Last we checked, paying hush money to a porn star to cover up an affair is not an act of patriotism.
Jim Darlington's April 7 column described the purported three-step process behind Trump indictment, which escalates quickly into right-wing conspiracy theories:
Speculation 1: Tar the candidate.
This is the opening salvo of a multi-pronged lawfare campaign. If these parking-ticket-level "offenses" are to be the new standard for Democrat prosecutions, then we can expect the name of Donald Trump to be showing up on any number of dockets 'round the blue states of the nation. The tentative calculus here must be for the communists to watch and see if the algorithm of echoing blind accusations and actual pending charges can be safely deemed sufficient to sink Trump's presidential candidacy.
Speculation 2: Bury the candidate.
But if not … When the backfiring effect of this plan arouses the nation's perception of Trump's heroic martyrdom and his poll numbers hit 60%, we have every right, even every duty, to prepare for the day of the assassins. The battle is boiling down to the division of the godly from the godless, who, in the end, can be trusted to act without a shred of moral hesitation. Sort through the recorded lists of the purported "Arkicides" associated with the Clinton Syndicate, and pause a moment to wonder, "Are these really just a string of coincidences, cooked up by some feckless fool on the loony fringe, or, is there more to see here than we might really care to see?"
Speculation 3: Abolish the nation.
Some of us poor pessimists keep thinking, "This could be our last election." Even every movement of the paranoids is now available to be temporally and spatially monitored. We know where you are, when you are there. The Planned Epidemic proved successful in measuring the American citizenry's massive willingness to submit to federal dictates, based upon spectacular lies. The J6 Reichstag fire was aimed at letting you all know that the feds can make bucking the narrative an act of terrorism, and making you tremble. The escalating outrages by the Biden group are straight-out destructive on one hand, and an invitation to counter-revolutionary conservative violence – which, if big enough, could be answered with martial law. As Dear Leader Joe said, "What good are your AR-15s when we've got F-35s?" Justin Trudeau gave us a shout out from up North, to the effect, "Watch what happens when we seize their bank accounts."
Biden didn't actually say that, despite Darlington putting it in quotes, and neither did Trudeau (who froze, not seized, bank accounts of those behind last year's disruptive trucker protests). And, of course, portraying the Capitol riot as a "Reichstag fire" is wildly dishonest.
MRC Helped Crowder Play The Victim -- But Buried His Victimization Of His Estranged Wife Topic: Media Research Center
Right-wing podcaster Steven Crowder has long been a key beneficiary of its right-wing victimization narrative, portraying any attempt by tech platfgorms to hold him accountable for his extremism as "censorship." But he also says enough conservatively correct things to keep benefiting. For instance, a March 2022 post by Jeffrey Clark cheered how Crowder criticized Jon Stewart for having money and for using fancy book-learnin' words when talking about climate change:
Political commentator Steven Crowder tore former Daily Show host and multimillionaire Jon Stewart apart for preaching environmental progress but downplaying the cost — the livelihoods of working people.
Crowder recently blasted an episode from The Problem with Jon Stewart on the March 16 edition of his show Louder with Crowder. In a roundtable conversation, Stewart’s senior episode producer Reniqua Allen-Lamphere said that there was a need for a “just transition” for coal miners and other blue collar workers who are losing their jobs to the climate change lobby. Stewart responded during his woke new show “The Human Cost of Climate Change,” that “[p]rogress is never fair. And almost never just.” Then he gave the kicker, asking: “How can we give the soft landings to the inevitable destruction that is ancillary to our progress?” Crowder cut the clip and snapped back, “And there it is. Your jobs, your livelihoods, are “ancillary” to ‘our progress.’” He continued, “Is there any more elitist phrase that you’ve ever heard on a program?” Stewart has an estimated net worth of $120 million, according to Celebrity Net Worth.
[...]
Crowder also dissected the elitist worldview underpinning Stewart’s comments by exposing his tone deaf usage of the word “ancillary.” “What’s under ancillary?” He continued: “The cost of gas, the cost of all energy, the cost to heat your homes, your jobs, right, if you’re working in any kind of an energy sector that isn’t renewable.”
[...]
“So right now, we have a bunch of privileged, wealthy people game-planning the entire economy under the guise of climate justice while considering your livelihood and everything therein to be ‘ancillary.’”
“You don’t need a conspiracy,” Crowder said. “That’s the great reset.”
The MRC also touted Crowder's comments on variousothersubjects, and it invoked the victim narrative again by complaining that Crowder was among several purportedly "pro-free speech" people and groups (read: right-wing extremists) banned from TikTok.
An April 27 post by Tierin-Rose Mandelburg, however, surprisingly tiptoed toward criticism of Crowdder by suggesting that Crowder's nasty mockery of a Down syndrome-themed Barbie doll may have gone a teensy bit over the line:
Conservative talk show host Steven Crowder sorta poked fun at the move and joked about Mattel making a doll with Sickle-Cell and added that the doll didn’t look “that downsy” and that the slogan could be "[Barbie] now with more retard.” I think Crowder’s intent was trying to make fun of how Mattel always tries to be inclusive (even and especially about woke crap) but his delivery proved to be insensitive.
Mandelburg's complaint that Crowder was being a tad "insensitive" -- while touting "spicy takes" about the doll by her fellow right-wingers -- was hollow given her own rant that Barbie dolls "regularly show their support for the gays, lesbos and whatever else is part of the alphabet mafia."
Unfortunately for Mandelburg, her tepid critique of Crowder came out the same day that a video surfaced showing Crowder hurling vicious verbal abuse toward his estranged wife, even threatening to "fuck her up." This was followed by Crowder issuing threats against her on his podcast and reports (by the right-wing New York Post, no less) that working for Crowder is not a terribly pleasant experience.
The MRC issued no statement critiicizing Crowder's behavior, of course. The only allusion to it that can be found at the MRC was a May 2 post touting an appearance by MRC executive Tim Graham on Newsmax talking about the firing of Tucker Carlson and leaks about his behavior at the network, with Graham declaring that the leaked Carlson statements don't show that he's a "terrible person," adding, "It's not exactly a 'Steven Crowder with his wife' video." Host Eric Bolling chuckled, declaring that Graham's remark "made me laugh." Ironic, given that Bolling was fired from Fox News over allegations of sexual harassment.
Priest-Turned-Right-Wing Activist's Final CNS Column Was Weirdly Appropriate Topic: CNSNews.com
Rev. Michael Orsi -- the Catholic priest who thinks he's aright-wing pundit -- continued to have a space to ply his trade at CNSNews.com until it was shut down last month. He served up a laundry list of right-wing talking points in his March 14 column:
There are many signs of malaise in our country at present. For instance, in the post-COVID period, some 2 million people still haven’t returned to active employment. Many have chosen to drift along on what remains of the compensation provided during the pandemic lockdowns and business closings.
Others get by on “gig jobs,” temporary assignments, or parttime, short-term projects, interspersed with government assistance.
Another sign of malaise is the large number of young men in the Generation Z-to Millennial age range who have decided not to pursue marriage. Many (according to some surveys, as high as 60 percent) have even given up dating, choosing instead to spend their time in online gaming and viewing Internet pornography.
Young women, for their part, admit to being lonely, depressed, often angry. A corresponding 60 percent of them are given to contemplating suicide. Their lives too are spent mainly in the online world, where they’re subjected to messages and images that create doubt about their self-worth and make them feel they just don’t (and can never) measure up to unrealistic standards of female perfection.
This leaves them vulnerable to creeps who prowl the Internet in search of confused girls to exploit, often financially, sometimes physically.
These are signs of a society devoid of ambition and teetering on the brink of hopelessness.
Add to all that a pervasive and growing distrust of government and the leadership class, a sense that the stabilizing elements of our society are somehow slipping away, that we’re being manipulated, and important facts about political, economic, and social conditions are withheld from us.
The banking crisis that’s unfolded in the last few days is a good illustration. Surely, this hasn’t come out of nowhere. Why is it such a surprise? Where were the knowledgeable analysts who should have been raising red flags? How were the banks allowed to go so far into dangerous financial territory?
Another example is the lack of clarity about Ukraine. We can’t get a clear picture of what’s happening. We know that thousands of Ukrainians are being killed, along with thousands of Russians. But what progress has our huge investment in arms and support gained? Is this war winnable? Is it just?
We face an even greater danger when our focus becomes so narrow that we not only downplay negative factors but actually deny what’s real. This becomes a kind of blindness — a distinctly spiritual blindness — one that’s rampant in society today.
That blindness drew attention during the recent International Women’s Day, when First Lady Jill Biden bestowed the State Department’s annual International Women of Courage Awards. According to State’s website, “a group of twelve extraordinary women from around the world” were honored for their work in building “a brighter future for all.”
In particular, award recipient Alba Rueda was described as someone who had shown bravery while being “kicked out of classrooms, barred from sitting for exams, refused job opportunities, subjected to violence, and rejected by her family” for efforts to “end violence and discrimination against the LGBTQ-plus community in Argentina.”
The award raised eyebrows because Alba Rueda is a “transgender woman.” Which is to say: a man.
[...]
Defying all reality — not to mention Genesis 1:27 (“male and female He created them”) — a person who was born male, but who believes he’s a woman, received an award intended for females who demonstrate womanly courage. And the citation was validated by no less than the wife of the President.
Surely such a denial of God’s creation is spiritual blindness.
Orsi threw in a reference to "transgender ideology" for good measure -- as if being transgender is like being a Catholic.
Orsi's final CNS column on April 19 -- the day before CNS was abruptly shut down -- was perhaps an unintentional bit of foreshadowing, focusing as it did on how a deceased body should be treated: "It should be buried in a grave that has been properly prepared and protected from disturbance (a practice known technically as inhumation). Or else it should be cremated, the ashes then interred in a permanent enclosure, often referred to as a columbarium." Ironically, the Media Research Center's treatment of CNS -- shutting it down abruptly, apparently firing nearly everyone who was involved in it and not even announcing why it was shut down, even though it was about to mark its 25th anniversary and the fired employees had worked for CNS through much of that time -- shows it inexplicably wants the website to be buried deep in an unmarked grave.
MRC's Graham Tries To Minimize Fox News Settlement With Dominion Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center played a lot of whataboutism in the wake of Fox News deciding to pay $787 million to Dominion rather than go to trial, and Tim Graham spent his April 19 podcast rehashing what his minions put out earlier that day -- namely, lots of whataboutism and lots of complaining that some were disappointed that Fox News didn't have to apologize to spreading lies about Dominion.It was a bit of an echo of a February podcast in which he similarly played whataboutism as lawsuit filings reveal just how deliberately Fox News lied to its viewers.
Graham's podcast guest was Dan Schneider of MRC's Free Speech America division -- you know, the one that insists that misinformation cannot be defined objectively in such a way that social media can try to counter it without being accused of "censorship." Graham did admit that "it's certainly a bad day for Fox's reputation, it's kind of a bad year for Fox's reputation." Schneider. who claims to be a lawyer, went on attack against "the left" by weirdly arguing: "If you ask any of those people what Fox did, they're not going to tell you -- it's just that Fox lied. How? What was the actual accuation? They don't know, they just want punishment of this media outlet they hate." In fact, the exact evidence has been well documented. Still, Schneider tried to minimize Fox News' actions, which even Graham felt the need to push back on, only to play whataboutism instead -- and then to admit some uncomfortable truths after all this time:
SCHNEIDER: What did Fox do that was so horrible, so horrible that was worth 7.8 or ... Lou Dobbs tweeted out that his guest, Sidney Powell, said that she has no doubt that Dominion was able to manipulate the vote. All he did was quote that he will have a guest who says this. And that was really worth $787 million.
GRAHAM: I think most of this was them putting on guests who said things they couldn't prove. That is certainly true. Now, I would say this -- Jim Geraghty has a piece at National Review to respond to this in a sense is that, yes, Lou Dobbs on December 10, 2020, tweeted, not on air, "Cyber Pearl Harbor! Sidney Powell reveals groundbreaking new evidence indicating our presidential election came under massive cyberattack orchestrated with the help of Dominion, Smartmatic and foreign adversaries." So to me, yes, "Cyber Pearl Harbor," I mean, you could see where you'd say, well, now you're overdoing it. But wthe whole problem with all of this is, this is all the same stuff they said about Russia in 2016.
SCHNEIDER: Right. So, I don't want to sound like I am flacking for Fox, because Fox basically did the same thing that harmed Donald Trump's own re-election bid, they started reaching out to people like Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis and people who have law degrees but have never actually -- well, Sidney actually did -- was a federal prosecutor for a time, but if you ever hear her legal analysis, it is thin to say the least -- ridiculous, yes. Jenna Ellis, never -- as far as I know she's never actually practiced law, sand he spouts things that cannot be supported. But Fox and then Trump surrounded themselves with people who got them in trouble.
GRAHAM: Yes. And -- I mean -- this was the line that really made sense to me from Jim Geraghty. He said if you choose to believe the 2020 presiential election was stolen, you must believe Fox News agreed to pay $787 million to Domnion in a settlement rather than present any of that evidence.
Not only did Graham nor anyone else at the MRC raise these concerns about Powell, Ellis and the election fraud claims emanating from both the Trump campaign and Fox News -- to the contrary, it uncritically embraced those falsehoods -- it manufactured its own conspiracy theories about the election to claim it was stolen from Donald Trump. We've also documented how the MRC tried to insert Powell into its victimhood narrative after she was suspended from social media for spreading election misinformation, so it's a bit rich for Graham and Schneider to finally get around to disavowing her.
Graham went on to dismiss all of that truth-admitting, arguing that Fox News didn't suffer much "reputational damage" from the settlement because "poeple who think Fox News doesn't do news thought that before, have been thinking that for decades," while "conservatives see this as the latest attempt by the liberal media to undermine Fox News, so there's going to be a rally-around-Rupert effect." He then added: "This won't damage Fox's reuptation -- or let's put it this way: It won't damage people's reliance on Fox to try and balance out what the liberal media does."
In other words, Graham is saying that pushing the correct narratives is more important to conservatives than telling people the truth. And people wonder why anyone should trust Fox News or any other right-wing media outlet, or why the MRC whines so much when NewsGuard points out how untrustworthy right-wing media is.
That was followed by Schneider uniroinically rehashing his employer's conspiracy theory about the 2020 election, which involved buying biased polls from Trump's campaign pollster and the polling firm founded by Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway to complain that not enough people knew about Hunter Biden's laptop. Graham was happy to echo that conspiracy:
GRAHAM: This is the interesting part, where they'll say we took a poll -- Geraghty says this -- you know, you take a poll and say, "did Biden legitimately win?" I think the key there is the word "legitimately." Because anybody who looks at these polls and says, if there's the risk that if these people had actually reported in real time on the Hunter Biden laptop, that this could have changed the election. Obviously, this election was in some states very close, and so, yes, it's quite possible that just by these voters not voting for Biden, whether or not they voted for Trump, could have affected the results. So I would say, did Biden win? He did, but he won, as we've tried to demonstrate, by suppressing damaging information.
Graham then went the whataboutism route once more, complaining yet again about Anita Hill and women who accused Brett Kavanaugh of untoward behavior, as well as bringing up the CNN settlement with Nicholas Sandmann.
Graham's April 21 column didn't comment much about the Fox News-Dominion settlement despite that being the news peg it was based on; instead, it was almost entirely whataboutism -- mostly whining about BuzzFeed publishing the Steele dossier (while downplaying the fact that BuzzFeed never presented the dossier as fact), huffily insisting that those who promoted the dossier have no moral standing to criticize Fox News.But if Graham is going to give a pass to Fox News' lies, what moral standing does he have to criticize others?
Newsmax Columnists Try To Defend Clarence Thomas Topic: Newsmax
Daniel McCarthy spent an April 18 Newsmax column offering a full-throated defense of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas while also barely mentioning the ethics scandal that prompted the column:
Clarence Thomas is an unconquered American.
He refused to let the segregation and poverty into which he was born define his life. He wouldn't let racists impose limits on him.
He also wouldn't let leftists claim ownership of his mind or allegiance simply because they opposed segregation. They were enemies of freedom, too, only from another direction.
Liberals have never forgiven him for refusing their patronage and their leash.
[...]
The latest press campaign against Thomas accuses him of failing to disclose gifts from and financial deals with his billionaire friend Harlan Crow, as well as mixing up the names of companies he owns in other financial statements.
What the indignant hype leaves out, however, is that Thomas' compliance with any disclosure rules is purely voluntary. A law that cannot be enforced is at best a suggestion.
This manufactured scandal is an opportunity to dispel a liberal myth and impart a lesson about where sovereignty lies in our nation.
[...]
The Supreme Court, like the president, is not a creature of Congress or the agencies it sets up, and the check that the legislature does wield over the judiciary and the executive, impeachment, is itself checked by the people through elections.
Yet liberals know that controlling public perception is the way to direct public opinion. That's why an ideological monopoly on the media is so important — why Fox News has to be smashed and right-ish views of any kind have to be labeled hate or disinformation.
Clarence Thomas answers to no one except, ultimately, the political force of the people. The question is whether the people finally answer to the media or whether they judge for themselves and have the independence of mind that Justice Thomas exemplifies.
Michael Dorstewitz tried his hand at a defense of Thomas in his April 28 column:
Earlier this week CNN thought they had him. They tweeted, "A company related to Republican megadonor Harlan Crow, a longtime friend of Clarence Thomas who paid for lavish trips for the Supreme Court justice and his wife, had business before the Supreme Court in the mid-2000s, records show."
However, CNN’s story destroyed that claim once they got past the headline, admitting that "Crow’s name does not appear in a caption of the case," and "neither Crow nor his company were involved in the matter or discussed it with Thomas."
As a final clincher, the Supreme Court declined to hear the case.
In fact, the CNN article stated only that Crow's office claimed that Crow was not involved in the case or discussed it with Thomas -- which is not a proven fact, making it much less of a claim destroyer than Dorstewitz would have you believe.Dorstewitz then whined that Thomas was compared to another former Supreme Court justice with ethics issues:
Three days later The Hill ran an opinion piece comparing Thomas to a former high court member.
"Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas showed the way," the column explained. "Caught in the midst of a financial scandal, Fortas did the decent thing and resigned rather than continue to embarrass the court and himself. This is one precedent that Thomas, a notorious iconoclast, should follow."
But the two situations aren’t remotely similar. Fortas accepted $20,000 annual cash payments from a man under investigation for securities violations.
Thomas has a wealthy friend who is not under investigation and with no case pending before the court. He invites Thomas places and the two exchange gifts.
Dorstewitz concluded by gushing that "it must be fun being Clarence Thomas. It’s fun just watching him release one of his trademark booming, infectious laughs as he drives the liberals crazy. And that’s another fun part — driving them crazy."
WND Defends Trump Over Indictment, Smears Prosecutor As Stalinesque Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily had been building up outrage over the possible indictment over Donald Trump, and when that happened, the outrage went to a whole new level. Bob Unruh's March 30 "news" article on the indictment simply parroted pro-Trump talking points:
Former President Donald Trump is accusing President Joe Biden of "political persecution" and "election interference at the highest level in history," following news that a Manhattan grand jury has indicted Trump on a questionable charge that most legal experts, including lifelong Democrats like Harvard professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz, have condemned as a totally "political" prosecution.
Previously, federal investigators and federal election investigators, even the Manhattan DA himself, all tossed out the complaint as unworthy of prosecution.
But Democrats, desperately clawing at anything to use against Trump as he runs for the 2024 presidential victory, pushed DA Alvin Bragg, a far leftist whose campaign was funded by billionaire extremist George Soros, to go after a claim about a "hush money" payment to a former stripper to keep quiet about an alleged affair.
Such payments are not illegal, but Democrats are alleging the payment was a campaign contribution to Trump's 2016 campaign.
Without this odd and controversial combination of claims, the allegations would have been dead in the water.
Democrats hope they can exploit a legal case against Trump as they promote the mentally declining octogenarian Joe Biden for another term in the White House.
However, polls show that Trump might actually benefit from the publicity and outrage, and experts in the law have concluded that Trump, even under indictment, still could be elected.
Democrats have a deathly fear of Trump as a candidate because of the success of his first "Make America Great Again" term, when he literally vaporized much of Barack Obama's "accomplishments."
Their concern, with reason, is that Trump would do the same to Biden's agenda.
An article by Unruh the next day touted pro-Trump "constitutional expert" Jonathan Turley criticizing the indictment, even though it "still hasn't been released, so few people know what it actually contains now." Unruh followed that a couple hours later by hyping a vicious smear of the prosecutor, Alvin Bragg:
Alvin Bragg, the far-left Manahattan district attorney who obtained a grand jury indictment of President Trump, probably over a payment and a nondisclosure agreement with a stripper over an affair both have denied happened, is being accused of adopting the promise that was made, back in the day, by Stalin's secret police chief.
Margot Cleveland, a longtime veteran of the federal court system and now a senior legal correspondent at The Federalist, identified that chief as Lavrentiy Beria and his promise as, "Show me the man and I'll show you the crime."
Never mind that, again, neither Cleveland nor Unruh actually knew what was in the indictment at this point.
Peter LaBarbera attacked Bragg as well in an alleged "news" article while touting how Trump has Republican support despite his apparent criminality:
With his politically-driven grand jury indictment of Donald Trump, Manhattan's George Soros-backed District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, has done what only a hard-left, Trump-hating Democrat could do: quickly unite most major Republican leaders behind the former president.
There are some exceptions: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's silence on the Trump indictment has been deafening. And former Arkansas governor and potential longshot presidential candidate Asa Hutchinson says Trump should "step aside," calling the indictment a "huge distraction" that is bad for Republicans and bad for America.
Even as he rails publicly against the "witch hunt" against him, Trump reportedly is cooperating with Bragg's office "to coordinate his surrender to the Manhattan D.A.'s Office for arraignment on a Supreme Court indictment, which remains under seal," CBS reported. He likely will not be handcuffed, and the process will take place Tuesday afternoon, after which Trump will return to Mar-a-lago.
LaBarbera offered no proof that Bragg is "hard-left" or that he hates Trump any more than he does any other criminal.
Unruh cheered intimidation of Bragg by right-wing members of Congress in an April 3 article:
It's no secret that leftist billionaire George Soros has been donating, sometimes heavily, to the campaigns of leftist district attorneys who, once they are in office, impose their own bias regarding justice.
They decline to prosecute certain crimes, they decline to seek prison terms for convicts, they work to arrange early release for those already in jail.
Significantly, in most cases, they allow crimes to skyrocket in their jurisdictions, to the point businesses and residents are seeking to move out.
Now Republicans in the U.S. House have come up with a response to the agenda: To strip those officials of their legal immunity.
According to a report from Just the News, Rep. Austin Scott, R-Ga., said liberals tried to remove the qualified immunity that protected police officers from lawsuits previously.
Now it's time for that move to target prosecutors.
"I think you're going to have to look at prosecutorial misconduct and whether or not prosecutors in this country should be exempt from liability," he said during an interview on the "Just the News, No Noise," television program.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy already has said Congress will do something to punish Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a far-left activist who took a misdemeanor complaint that multiple jurisdictions had concluded provided no evidence for a prosecution to file what apparently is a felony against President Trump.
Again, the indictment still had not been made public at this point, so Unruh could not possibly know the evidence behind it.
Joe Kovacs offered a Trump-friendly narrative about Trump's arraignment on April 4, where he deemed that the most important event of the day was Trump trying to pull an alpha-male move:
Donald Trump "definitely glared" at Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney who indicted the former president Tuesday on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection with his alleged role in hush-money payments toward the end of his 2016 presidential campaign.
Trump vocally pleaded "not guilty" to all counts before Judge Juan Merchan, an avowed Democrat whose daughter has reportedly worked for Kamala Harris.
"It is not just about one payment," said Bragg.
Jake Gibson, a federal law-enforcement producer for Fox News, said after Tuesday's arraignment : "I think it's worth noting, President Trump definitely glared at the D.A. Bragg when he left.
"He seemed to get up, look around the room. .. and then lock his eyes on Alvin Bragg."
On the heels of his arraignment Tuesday in New York, former President Donald Trump addressed America from his Florida home at Mar-a-Lago, saying "our country is going to hell" and that the 34 felony counts against him "should be dropped immediately."
"Now there's radical election interference on a scale never seen before in this country," Trump said.
"I never thought anything like this could ever happen in America."
[...]
Trump specified that criminal as the "radical George Soros-backed prosecutor Alvin Bragg" who the former commander in chief says "campaigned on the fact that he would get President Trump ... at any cost before he knew anything about me."
Kovacs made no attempt to fact-check anything Trump said, demonstrating that he's not much of a reporter or editor.
NEW ARTICLE: The MRC Plays Politics With A Tragedy Topic: Media Research Center
After a train carrying hazardous chemicals derailed in Ohio, the Media blamed Pete Buttigieg for being gay, falsely accused the Biden administration of racism and even attacked ESG policies -- anything but calling out the railroad itself. Read more >>
Michelle Induces Another Fit Of Obama Derangement Syndrome At The MRC Topic: Media Research Center
Barack Obama hasn't been president for years, yet the Media Research Center continues to suffer outbreaks of Obama Derangement Syndrome. This happened again when Michelle Obama appeared on TV to promote a book, and Alex Christy whined about it in an April 20 post:
Former First Lady Michelle Obama reignited her book tour on Wednesday as she stopped by NBC’s The Tonight Show for an interview with host Jimmy Fallon, who was espicially interested in one specific chapter.
Fallon led Obama with more of a statement than a question when he reported, “There’s also a chapter dedicated to, ‘When they go low, we go high.’”
After Obama recalled, “Well, people still keep asking me, “you still mean that?,” Fallon continued, “But, that was -- that was an epic line. That was just -- it just - it stuck in everyone's head… Did you realize how powerful that would be years after you--?”
Recently, Obama went low by insisting that racism wouldn’t let her wear her hair in a way she may have preferred while she was first lady.
[...]
All in all, Obama spent 20 minutes on The Tonight Show including two interview segments one pre-recorded segments where she and Fallon surprised people at a book store.
As we've noted, right-wingers like Christy would have absolutely caused a controversy if Michelle Obama had changed her hair in the White House, and it's not racist or "going low" to point that out.
The same day, another interview with Michelle Obama sent Curtis Houck into a full ODS rage:
After having teased former First Lady Michelle Obama’s appearance all week, Thursday’s CBS Mornings lived up to the embarrassing hype with an astounding nine teases plus 14 minutes and 20 seconds over two segments prostrating themselves over the ground she walked on, led by co-host, Democratic donor, and Obama family friend Gayle King (neither of which was, as usual, disclosed to viewers). All told, democracy died in a lack of journalism.
King couldn’t even get a second beyond welcoming viewers to the show before reminding them Obama would be there. After the Eye Opener, King exclaimed they were “very excited because we’ve got a very special guest in the show today” after having “tour[ed] the country” and “spreading the word about her book.”
She added the title of her second book was The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times and remarked, “And boy, don’t we have some uncertain times right now.” Co-host Nate Burleson agreed, gushing, “And her light shines bright.”
Two teases later, King swooned over how Michelle was so highly anticipated at CBS that, in a move she claimed has never happened before, “a techician came to me and said, ‘how does Mrs. Obama like her room temperature?’”
The second part was even dumber as King called over a staffer to relay how this woman’s mom had chided her for planning to wear jeans in the presence of Obama[.]
[...]
King pivoted to her second book and gushed over “the difference between the two books because Becoming was a best-selling novel, over 12 million sold. Drop the microphone, thank you so much.”
“So when you started writing the second one, did you feel pressure that I have to top that, or I want to make another bestseller,” she asked.
Obama explained she wasn’t contractually obligated, but did anyway due to “the last few hard years of being in quarantine, dealing with COVID, all the political uncertainty” and thus “had a lot of time on my hands to just sort of stew and to mull over questions that young people...would ask about managing life in uncertain times.”
[...]
King’s final question was eye-rolling: “What gives you joy these days, Michelle Obama? What are you looking forward to?”
And because they couldn’t get enough, the show ended with King thanking Obama.
Tim Graham rehashed all of this for his April 21 podcast:
Meanwhile, Michelle Obama drew typical goop about her line "when they go low, we go high" and whether she would please her superfans by running for president someday. NBC late-night host Jimmy Fallon hailed her "epic line," but Michelle Obama has certainly gone low over the years, including in convention speeches. CBS morning host Gayle King gushed all over her, as usual, as you might expect, since they have vacationed together. But Mrs. Obama had a gaffe when she claimed America’s the only country with "unfettered access to firearms." Many felons, domestic abusers, and mental health patients don't get access.
In fact, many right-wingers oppose red-flag laws that would keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers, "mental health patients" and other people deemed to be dangerous.
The Media Research Center's Alex Christy complained in a March 17 post:
Given the size of 
Curtis Houck sounded much more like a PR flack for Kevin McCarthy than the "media researcher" he's supposed to be in his writeup of the April 21 White House 
Michael Dorstewitz spent his April 7 Newsmax 
WorldNetDaily's Bob Unruh took a page of the Media Research Center victimization playbook for an April 4 
The Media Research Center found even more ways to 
Just as WorldNetDaily's "news" side 
Right-wing podcaster Steven Crowder has 
Rev. Michael Orsi -- the Catholic priest who 
The Media Research Center 
Daniel McCarthy spent an April 18 Newsmax 
WorldNetDaily had been 
Barack Obama hasn't been president for years, yet the Media Research Center 
