NEW ARTICLE -- Slanties 2021: Hy-Slantie-Chloroquine
Topic: The ConWeb
It's awards season, so it's time to honor, as it were, the worst ConWeb reporting and craziest ConWeb opinions of the year. Read more >>

ConWeb Triggered By Harry Styles In A Dress
Topic: The ConWeb

Pop star Harry Styles did a photo shoot for Vogue magazine in which he wore dresses, and unsurprisingly, the ConWeb melted down over it. Todd Starnes ranted in a Nov. 16 WorldNetDaily column:

Harry Styles, the former boy band singer, is making national headlines in the fashion world. He's the first man to grace the cover of Vogue. He was also wearing a dress.

Mr. Styles says society should dismiss the idea that there are clothes for men and clothes for women. He went on to say that wearing ladies' garments is "amazing."

Vogue prides itself in being the industry leader when it comes to fashion and style – and if they have their say, hairy-legged men with burly chests will be painting the town red in Gucci gowns with matching handbags.

[...]

It's a direct assault on cultural norms – this idea of gender fluidity. The left wants you to believe there's no such thing as male or female. They want you to believe that you actually exist on some sort of spectrum.

They want to create a society where it's perfectly acceptable for Doris and Sally to wear jock straps. And we should celebrate if Cousin Leroy meanders through Walmart wearing ladies' unmentionables.

At CNSNews.com, its favorite dishonest black conservative, Candace Owens, was given space for her own meltdown:

“There is no society that can survive without strong men,” Owens tweeted on Monday. “The East knows this. In the West, the steady feminization of our men at the same time that Marxism is being taught to our children is not a coincidence. Bring back manly men.”

[...]

She trended on Twitter at the number two spot because of the tweet and received criticism from many fans of Styles.

“You’re pathetic,” Olivia Wilde responded to Owens. Wilde is a filmmaker who cast Styles as the lead in her upcoming movie Don’t Worry Darling.

Vox’s Carlos Maza said Owens sounded “like the pearl-clutching puritans who've been around since the 50s and 60s. Genuinely impossible for them to be cool for even one second.”

Candace tweeted after she began trending to clarify her position, “I meant: Bring back manly men. Terms like ‘toxic masculinity,’ were created by toxic females. Real women don’t do fake feminism. Sorry I’m not sorry.”

And at the Media Research Center, Sergie Daez was aghast that anyone would criticize Owens for her meltdown:

Who would look more manly? A gnarly-faced Scot who’s clad in a kilt, sporting a fierce beard, brandishing a claymore and wearing a scowl that could kill a snowflake? Or a smooth-faced boy with styled hair who’s wearing a dress that resembles a ball gown from the 1800s? 

While appearance doesn’t reveal everything about one’s character, it can send off a message about one’s beliefs. Harry Styles, British vocalist of the band One Direction, seems to think that it’s alright for men to wear dresses, as evinced by his latest photo shoot with Vogue magazine. Conservative political activist and author Candace Owens found the sight revolting, and she tweeted on November 14, “There is no society that can survive without strong men. The East knows this. In the west, the steady feminization of our men at the same time that Marxism is being taught to our children is not a coincidence. It is an outright attack. Bring back manly men.”

Billboard.com reported Owens’s disgust in an article published on November 16, where they called Owens a “hater” and “conservative firebrand.” They also presented a number of tweets defending Styles from Owens’s comments, including a tweet from actress Olivia Wilde, who is known for acting in the medical drama House.

Billboard’s headline indicated that Wilde was defending Styles from Owens, but it sounded more like a childish attempt to avenge an injury.

Actually, Daez is the childish one here, responding to actor Zach Braff's tweet that people are "free to be whatever the f*** yoiu want jto be" by retorting, "Clearly it’s more important to Braff to be what one wants to be rather than to be what one is, that is, oneself," going on to further sneer, "Styles might have his own issues to deal with, but it’s important to just be yourself."

But it's clear Daez doesn't want Styles to "be yourself," especially if that self involves wearing a dress in a photo shoot.

NEW ARTICLE: Narrative Over Truth, Abortion Edition
Topic: The ConWeb
After a new documentary revealed that Roe v. Wade plaintiff Norma McCorvey said she became an anti-abortion activist because she was paid to do so, the ConWeb's anti-abortion activists sought to discredit the film. Read more >>

NEW ARTICLE -- Slanties 2020: Once Upon A Time In ... Slantie-Land
Topic: The ConWeb
It's awards season, so it's time to honor, as it were, the worst ConWeb reporting and craziest ConWeb opinions of the year. Read more >>

NEW ARTICLE: Defections In The Gay-Bashing Ranks
Topic: The ConWeb
The ConWeb used to be able to count on Chick-fil-A and the Hallmark Channel to be indifferent, if not hostile, to LGBT rights and issues. Now they can't, and they're a little sad about it. Read more >>

NEW ARTICLE -- Slanties 2019: Into the Slantie-Verse
Topic: The ConWeb
As the web the ConWeb weaves continues to spread under new writer Donald Trump, it's time once again to highlight the worst ConWeb reporting and craziest ConWeb opinions of the year. Read more >>

NEW ARTICLE -- Slanties 2018: The Shape of Slant
Topic: The ConWeb
As the ConWeb contorts itself into pro-Trump state media, it's time once again to honor, as it were, the worst ConWeb reporting and craziest ConWeb opinions of the year. Read more >>

The ConWeb vs. A Fiction Writer
Topic: The ConWeb

The ConWeb really, really hates author Dan Brown.

The Media Research Center's Brent Bozell Tim Graham started their Oct. 6 column with a personal shot at him:

Dan Brown, the author of "The DaVinci Code," is back with another blockbuster anti-religion novel, and CBS "Sunday Morning" rolled out the red carpet on Oct. 1 to honor him and his massive commercial success.

The segment began with what he called his "fortress of gratitude" — his house loaded floor to ceiling, over several stories, with bookshelves ... stuffed with copies of Dan Brown's own books.

So we know who Dan Brown worships.

So Bozell and Graham hae never engaged in self-promotion in a media appearance before? They then rant further:

For all the folderol about "fake news," the media never found it necessary to challenge the veracity of Brown's scurrilous charges he posits as facts in his novels — that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and had a child; that the Catholic Church took the human Jesus and cynically invented him as a god at the Council of Nicaea in 325; or those nonexistent "monks" in the Catholic group Opus Dei. They spent hours on ABC, CBS and NBC elaborating on Brown's "intriguing" theories, when what they were enthusiastically broadcasting was an atheist version of birtherism.

Brown's new novel, "Origin," once again features his hero, Harvard professor Robert Langdon, who tries to learn what discovery computer genius Edmond Kirsch was prepared to reveal that (as The Washington Post explains) "boldly contradicted almost every established religious doctrine, and it did so in a distressingly simple and persuasive manner."

So Bozell and Graham are mad that Brown presents fictional things as fact in a book of fiction? Isn't that the very definition of fiction?

Meanwhile, WorldNetDaily was taking even more shots at Brown. Joseph Farah huffed in his Oct. 13 column:

How do I say this politely?

Dan Brown is a fool.

The author of “The Da Vinci Code” may have sold 200 million copies of a novel based on enormous lies about the history of Christianity, but that does not mean he has wisdom.

Farah goes on to complain that Brown "did his best to make news about his latest release, “Origin,” by explaining why the Creator of the universe will not survive science, which, of course, is another way of saying God never existed except in the imaginations of man."

The same day, WND gave a platform to various and sundry fellow travelers to trash Brown. Birther pastor Carl Gallups, for instance, declared that “Dan Brown has been used as a tool of Satan for many years" because "A big chunk of his life has been dedicated to the task of minimizing and marginalizing the pure biblical message of salvation in Jesus Christ.” WND managing editor David Kupelian groused that "Brown has sold 200 million books, which I guess says something about the low state of ‘consciousness’ in today’s world" -- which sounds a little like professional jealously on Kupelian's part, since his books haven't sold 1/200th of the number Brown's have.

WND also brings on right-wing radio host Jan Markell to assert, "“Brown mocks the God who ‘sits up there and judges us.'” ... Someday Brown will be judged by that very same God and he won’t be laughing – and he won’t be mocking. He will have to say he was wrong, but it will be too late. The fires of hell will not be pleasant.”

None of these writers, by the way, offer any proof whatsoever that they have read Brown's new book, let alone "The DaVinci Code."Which means they're just bashing an undeniably popular author without knowing what they're talking about.

Scaramucci On The Job Just Long Enough for ConWeb Tributes To Him
Topic: The ConWeb

The abrupt departure of Anthony Scaramucci as White House communications director after just 10 days on the job meant that the digital ink was barely dry on ConWeb tributes to his arrival.

Jerry Cave enthused in a July 29 Accuracy in Media column:

If you work in the White House and do not have the message yet, Scary Mucho is there to scare people straight on the issue of leaking. And he is not messing around.

He is sending a message to the staff that none are above suspicion or scrutiny. This is not the Obama Justice Department, where anything went, nor the Hillary Clinton State Department, where bribes and lawlessness reigned. It’s illegal to leak, and if you do so from the Trump White House now, you will be gone…no matter who you are. 

Scaramucci is not in Washington to make friends. He is here to clean up the operations of the White House and clean out those who are not on the president’s side. 

He correctly identified Priebus as a leaker and as someone who did not support the candidate and brought people into the White House who also were neverTrumpers. Those people are now on the shortest of leashes.

[...]

Washington thinks it can beat anybody, even these brash, rude New Yorkers. These New Yorkers get things done. I like their chances.

Cave offers no evidence that Scaramucci or anyone else "correctly identified" Priebus as a leaker.

Not to be outdone in the suck-up department was Ray Negron, who wrote in a July 27 Newsmax column:

Anthony Scaramucci now walks with President Trump. We are better off for it.

Whenever I reached out to Mr. Scaramucci he was always there for me. He helped to make my radio show on ESPNDeportes a better and more interesting show.

[...]

Selfishly I will miss him. I will miss his knowledge in sports that he brought to the show. I will miss how he could give and take fun-loving banter with Reggie Jackson.

I know how busy he will be but I hope he can find the time to come on the show again.

Anthony really was a big fan favorite on ESPN "Impact." Even though he was always on demand at Fox and CNBC, he always found the time to come to our show and have fun with us. He never saw us as the little guy.

Thank you Anthony Scaramucci, we will always be grateful for that. I know our country needs you more.

It looks like Scaramucci will suddenly have plenty of time to appear on Negron's show.

NEW ARTICLE -- Slanties 2017: Time to Make the Slantie Chimichangas
Topic: The ConWeb
It's time to honor (as it were) the worst ConWeb reporting and craziest ConWeb opinions of the year, with the bonus opportunity for a literal ConWeb deadpool. Read more >>

ConWeb Embraces Dishonest Report on Political Donations By 'Journalists'
Topic: The ConWeb

The Center for Public Integrity has issued a report claiming to detail how "journalists" have donated to HIllary Clinton's campaign far more than to Donald Trump's. Needless to say, the ConWeb jumped right on it.

At the Media Research Center, Tim Graham touted how "the liberal Center for Public Integrity" issued the study.(No, Tim, an organization that funded a fraudulent hit job on Al Gore and was once run by the editor of the right-wing Washington Times is not "liberal.")

WorldNetDaily's Bob Unruh highlighted the finding that "journalists so far in this election season have given 27 times as much money to Hillary Clinton as to Donald Trump." Accuracy in Media's Don Irvine similarly promoted the findings, "as if we needed any further evidence that the liberal media are in the tank for Hillary Clinton." And Jason Devaney of Newsmax states that the report claims "people working in the media — which includes journalists, reporters, news editors, and TV news anchors — are opening their wallets for the former first lady."

But if you read the report closely -- which the ConWeb has no interest in doing -- it's obvious that CPI is using an overly broad definition of "journalist."

For instance, all four ConWeb reports highlighted that former ABC anchor Carole Simpson has donated $2,800 to Clinton. What CPI and the ConWeb don't make clear: Simpson left ABC in 2006 and currently works as a college professor. Insisting that Simpson continue to be held to the standards of a job she has not held for a decade -- and CPI offers no evidence that Simpson made any political donations while employed as a journalist -- is simply dishonest.

CPI also touts the donations to Clinton by talk show host Larry King, highlighted as well by AIM, Newsmax and the MRC. But has anybody ever considered King to be a "journalist"? No. More dishonesty.

In fact, the first example of an actual working journalist is the New Yorker's Emily Nussbaum. But she's a TV critic and rarely covers news or politics. But most of the working journalists in hard news that CPI cites as making political donations are employed by small local papers, not large media organizations, which generally prohibit reporters from making poltiical donations.

But because this dishonesty plays into the hands of the right-wing narrative about the evil "liberal media," the ConWeb will stick with the clickbait headline and ignore the dubious contents.

ConWeb Touted 'Ben-Hur' Remake, Is Silent On How It's Bombing In Theaters
Topic: The ConWeb

A few weeks back, we documented how both Newsmax, CNSNews.com and the Media Research Center were all shilling for the new remake of "Ben-Hur" and touting its religious bona fides, in line with the producers' aim to make the film appeal to a religious audience.

They weren't the only ones in the ConWeb who signed on as unpaid (or paid) spokespeople for the film. WorldNetDaily got in on the act too:

• In an Aug. 15 article, Rusty Wright -- "an author and lecturer who has spoken on six continents" -- rehashed the background of the book that inspired the film and asserted that "'Ben-Hur’s' poignant depiction of revenge, reconciliation and redemption generates a powerful message for today’s world filled with racial and religious violence, cop killings and more."
• George Escobar, who runs WND's film division but is grandiosely described in the headline as a "top film executive," lamented in an Aug. 20 article that "we are in an age of colonization in our politics, theology and mass migrations, fought most visibly within inner-city plantations" before giving the film a gushing review: "Probably more than at any other time, a film such as 'Ben-Hur' is needed. Does it deliver the power and drama of its predecessors? Mostly. Is it relevant for our time? Definitely. Should you go see it? Absolutely."

The reality, however, is that the film is tanking -- badly.

The film made only $12 million its opening weekend and to date has made a little over $20 million in just under two weeks -- very bad for a film that opened wide (3,000+ screens) and cost $100 million to make. Even counting foreign revenue, it's highly unlikely the film will recoup what it cost to make during its theatrical run, making this movie "the bomb of the summer."

YOu won't read about that at WND, CNS  or the MRC, though -- none have seen fit to mention the "Ben-Hur" bomb on their front pages the way they promoted the film.

Newsmax, however, made a game attempt to spin the failure with an Aug. 23 article by David Patten, blaming the bad reviews on the "mainstream media" who actually reviewed the film and found it wanting:

The mainstream media is doing such a fine job of heaping coals on the new Mark Burnett and Roma Downey epic, "Ben-Hur," that it might want to be careful. The intensity of their vituperation might just induce movie-goers — particularly faith-oriented ones — to go see what all the fuss is about.

Rolling Stone branded the film "a remake disaster of biblical proportions."

ABCNews.com dismissed it as "a miscast remake that will only appeal to a specific [read Christian] audience." Others were less kind.

If film lovers ignore those reviews and go anyway, however, what they'll see is a picture far different from the one being portrayed in the media as a flop — which explains why some are extolling it.

"I love 'Ben-Hur,'" host Glenn Beck remarked on his program recently. "It is great."

Patten made excuses for producers (and Christian-media faves) Burnett and Downey, whom he baselessly proclaimed to be "Hollywood's No. 1 power couple": "If the film's director and producers are guilty of anything, it is their soaring ambition in trying to boil down a story that took three hours and 32 minutes to relate in the 1959 version — clearly too long for modern audiences – to a little over 2 hours in the remake."

Patten also claimed that "Evangelicals trust Burnett and Downey to handle their cherished biblical narratives with care," ignoring the fact that "Ben-Hur's" main story -- a revenge story involving a Jewish prince forced to become a slave and a climactic chariot race -- is not a "cherished biblical narrative"; it's from a novel first published in 1880. In the book, the crucifixion of Christ is a parallel narrative to the story of Judah Ben-Hur.

ConWeb Is Well Represented in Secretive Right-Wing Group
Topic: The ConWeb

In May, the Southern Poverty Law Center published a list members (as of 2014) of the Council for National Policy, a secretive group of right-wing power players in politics, culture and the media. The CNP enforces a "Fight Club"-style omerta in which members are not to acknowledge that they are in fact members, and far-right extremists mingle with more mainstream conservatives. The group has been a behind-the-scenes force in coalescing right-wing support for Donald Trump's presidential campaign.

Thus, it's no surprise that the ConWeb is well represented in the CNP's membership among media members.

Needless to say, WorldNetDaily's Joseph Farah and Jerome Corsi are members of the group, with both being on the CNP's board of governors and Farah a member of the "Gold Circle," which sounds like some sort of super-elite faction within the group. Farah has been a longtime member; we've documented how Farah reported on a CNP meeting in 2007 despite the fact that the article had no byline, deduced from the fact that he's a CNP member, WND was one of the few media organizations in attendance, and he is presumed to have sought CNP permission to write about the meeting before doing so.

But a couple other members on the CNP list might be a bit more of a surprise. Newsmax's Christopher Ruddy is a member and on the board of governors, and CNSNews.com editor in chief Terry Jeffrey is also a member. (Interestingly, Jeffrey's boss, Media Research Center chief Brent Bozell, is not listed as a member.)

If we were as conspiratorially minded as Farah and WND, we could presume that the presence of bigwigs from WND, Newsmax and CNS means that the "news" organizations engage in some level of coordination when it comes to determining their editorial agendas.

But we'll never know, because not only have Farah, Corsi, Ruddy and Jeffrey continued to keep their CNP membership a secret from their readers, their websites have reported nothing on the CNP -- let alone the leak of the membership list -- in the month and a half since the SPLC's story came out.

Which means the ConWeb has put maintaining the omerta over reporting facts.

NEW ARTICLE -- Out There, Exhibit 63: The ConWeb's Favorite Environment-Destroying Chemical
Topic: The ConWeb
ConWeb writers want to bring back DDT to kill mosquitoes and bedbugs, despite the fact that most mosquitoes and bedbugs are now immune to its effects. Read more >>

The ConWeb Censors How Badly Benghazi Movie Tanked
Topic: The ConWeb

We've detailed how the ConWeb plugged the heck out the new film "13 Hours," about the attack on Benghazi, and praised it for functioning as "rightwing propaganda." But the ConWeb won't tell you one key thing about it: how well it did at the box office.

That's because it didn't.

In its opening weekend, "13 Hours" -- which cost $50 million to make -- made just $19.2 million, despite having the action-film credentials of Michael Bay behind it and despite a wide opening on more than 2,300 screens. This past weekend, the film took in just $9 million. That does not bode well for the prospects of making back its production costs.

Forbes thinks that one reason the film is tanking is that it's "trapped by its inherently political origins" and how the film was marketed to conservatives and the right-wing media outlets who praised it as a way to torpedo Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. Remember the headline of Drew Zahn's WorldNetDaily review of the film was "How can Hillary possibly win after this?" Forbes adds: "In short, the film arguably wouldn’t have existed save for the controversies surrounding the 2012 terrorist attack, but it was the existence of said controversies that prevented the film from crossing over beyond the would-be converted."

You won't read any bad news about "13 Hours" in the ConWeb, however. WND, Accuracy in Media and NewsBusters have all censored news of the film's tanking. CNSNews.com published the usual Associated Press stories on weekend box office takes, one of which noted that the film "failed to make a large impact." But they were never given a link on the CNS front page, which means they may as well not have been published at all given how unlikely the typical CNS reader is to read anything on the site that didn't appear on the front page.

The film's flop hasn't stopped the ConWeb from promoting it, however. The Media Research Center's Tim Graham whined in a Jan. 18 NewsBusters post about how a Washington Post film reviewer told the truth about the film's political agenda. Even though that post was written after the opening weekend numbers came out, Graham made sure not to mention that his beloved film tanked.

That's ironic, because the MRC has a history of mocking paltry box office takes when they involve films they don't like.