2012 Slanties: The Tree of Slants

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One doesn't have to go back to the beginning of time to learn about right-wing media bias -- just to the mid-1990s, when WorldNetDaily, Newsmax and CNSNews.com were mere gleams in the eyes of their respective founders. And one doesn't need to make a pretentious movie about it -- that's what ConWebWatch's Slantie Awards are for.

So, without further, ado, let the ninth annual Slanties begin!

* * *

The first award is for the most egregious example of bias in "news" coverage. This year's nominees are:

• WorldNetDaily's Aaron Klein coming to the aid of Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak by defending his failing regime and making sure the dictator's retinue got copies of Klein's Obama smear book.
• CNSNews.com rewriting the headlines of Associated Press articles it publishes to add more right-wing bias.
• Newsmax's disturbingly close relationship with Donald Trump, which began the year by serving as cheerleaders for Trump's presidential ambitions and concluded the year with a failed attempt to stage a Republican presidential debate featuring Donald Trump, a plan that collapsed when most of the candidates balked at the idea of taking questions from someone who might be running for president himself.
• WorldNetDaily's ethically challenged correction policy, which involves fixing errors as quietly as possible and not publicly acknowledging them unless they are too big and embarrassing to ignore (or unless someone has threatened to sue them).
• The Media Research Center's aggressive defense of Herman Cain against sexual harassment allegations, which repeatedly failed to disclose that Cain is a close friend of MRC chief Brent Bozell.
• WorldNetDaily's war on Gardasil, which involved promotion of fringe medical groups and a man once described as "Austria’s most notorious abortionist" -- not to mention having to grasp for plausible explantions about why it was fighting a vaccine that prevents cervical cancer.

And the Slantie goes to ... Newsmax's relationship with Donald Trump. This has been more than a decade in the making, since Ronald Kessler flew on Trump's private jet and fawned over him in his book on the Palm Beach high-society scene. Newsmax threw out what little sembelence of journalistic balance it had in its agressive cheerleading for Trump, and Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy even proudly proclaimed, "Trump realizes the great potential of Newsmax and has been using it very adroitly. We're well aware he's using it, happy he's using it." Newsmax then doubled down with Trump on an ill-fated presidential debate, which fizzled when only two candidates would commit to taking part.

* * *

The next award is the LoBaido Award for the silliest statement made by a writer for a conservative news Web site (named after Anthony LoBaido, who wrote a post-9/11 column for WorldNetDaily that was so unhinged -- he blamed the attacks on America's immorality since "all that is evil in the world can be found in New York" and, for good measure, called Hillary Clinton "openly Marxist, treasonous and abortion-mongering, occultic" -- that WND eventually pulled it from its site). From the usual bumper crop, we've whittled the contenders down to these finalists:

"How long do you think Sean Hannity's show would last if four times in one sentence, he made a comment about, say, the President of the United States, and said that he looked like a skinny ghetto crackhead? Which, by the way, you might want to say that Barack Obama does."

-- Brent Bozell, Fox News' "Hannity," Dec. 22

Barack Hussein Obama, our president, is a traitor. Finally, his hatred for our nation and his plan to destroy it are crystal clear. He must be forced from office – legally – before our entire country goes down the drain for the final count!

Much has gone on in the last three years to show Obama's true colors, sympathetic not to Judeo-Christians values and culture, but Islam and its surrogate-controlled states.

[...]

Obama must go now! We cannot wait until an election in 2012, as more damage will irreparably harm our nation. He must be legally forced to leave office now, plain and simple.

-- Larry Klayman, Dec. 16 WorldNetDaily column

In fact, the cool quotient of deep thinkers is definitely on the rise as is evident in the smash success of the TV sitcom “The Big Bang Theory.”

The plotline of “Big Bang” revolves around two roommates, experimental physicist Leonard Hofstadter and theoretical physicist Sheldon Cooper, who are friends with aerospace engineer Howard Wolowitz and astrophysicist Rajesh Koothrappali.

The intellectual prowess and comic geekiness of the four characters have transformed them into pop icons that amazingly share quite a few traits with former House Speaker Gingrich.

-- James Hirsen, Dec. 13 Newsmax column

There remains another question astute individuals will ask: "Why did Obama choose Osawatomie to deliver such a transpicously Marxist speech - considering that he and his ilk do nothing that isn't meticulously calculated?" The answer to that question is another question. Could it be because Osawatomie was the Weather Underground newspaper published by Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn in the 1970s, or did it have to do with the abolitionist John Brown whose nickname was Osawatomie - unless you believe it was all just a coincidence?

Then there is the eerie similarity between the Weather Underground organization logo and the Obama 2008 campaign logo. There is also their use of "audacity" to bring about "socialism" in America, in the original newspaper written by Ayers and Dohrn. While it is unknown for a certainty who wrote Obama's "The Audacity of Hope," Ayers, himself, referred to it as more of a "political hack book," suggesting that it was a disingenuous feint to the center written by committee. I reference it because language found in "Audacity of Hope" closely parallels that found in the Ayers-Dohrn communist newspaper.

-- Mychal Massie, Dec. 12 WorldNetDaily column

Well, I’m sure you saw EPA chief Lisa Jackson was named Energy Policy Maker of the Year by Politico last night. And I quote, “The EPA chief has been a forceful advocate on environmental issues and has held the line against intense Republican attacks on her agency.” Is this kind of like Time picking Hitler or Khomeini as Man of the Year – whoever had the most impact whether for good or ill?

-- Noel Sheppard, Nov. 30 NewsBusters interview with Sen. James Inhofe

“Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you,” Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev declared when addressing Western ambassadors at a reception at the Polish embassy in Moscow in 1956.

This was an assertion of the Marxist contention that capitalism as a system would collapse and be replaced by socialism. By this philosophy, wealthy people exploit the working class, and the capitalist system must be replaced by a socialist government that would redistribute the wealth.

If that philosophy sounds familiar, it’s the approach taken by President Barack Obama and the Occupy Wall Street movement he has embraced. At every turn, Obama demonizes those who have achieved financial success, and he has made hatred of the wealthy the key to his re-election campaign.

-- Ronald Kessler, Nov. 28 Newsmax column

Not only do I – an Arab-American male – agree on the importance of considering the ideological and religious worldview of those being screened for sensitive security jobs and for passenger flights for the safety of all, but I would go much further.

I say it's time to strictly limit Muslim immigration into the United States to avoid the kinds of disasters we're seeing in Europe.

-- Joseph Farah, Nov. 28 WorldNetDaily column

The one parallel universe is represented on Fox Business by the likes of Nancy Skinner, Caroline Heldman, Tara Dowdell, Carl Jeffers, Joe Sibila, Erika Payne and others.

Skinner is a Democratic talk-show host. The description is self-explanatory. Heldman is a professor at Occidental College whose considered opinion is that "the "private sector" put us in "the economic position we are in." Heldman, who resembles the popular caricature of Marie Antoinette, calls regularly for the heads of business people. Dowdell is one of many fast-talking Democratic strategists to plump for every imaginable assault on private property issued by Washington. Sibilia is a successful CEO who – in his monumental ignorance of the benefits that redound to society when "both capital and labor are ... permitted to make their own free choices" – is demanding that corporations "be designed for the common good." Erika Payne, among other evils, is the author of what Jonathan Alter of Newsweek endorsed as "a blueprint for a progressive conspiracy to help save the country."

The philosophical filth spewed by such characters – almost nightly on freedom-promoting programing, no less – is that government can spend and lend to good effect; that it can tax without discouraging and disrupting production; and that our overlords in D.C. can regulate "better" (read energy-squandering) industries into being by steering capital and labor away from bad (energy-efficient) industries (oil and gas).

[...]

The above Fox News fixtures no more represent truth or promote it than does your average Holocaust denier.

-- Ilana Mercer, Nov. 17 WorldNetDaily column

This is no longer a question of freedom of speech. This has long ago ceased to be an issue of the right to assemble. No American citizen has the right to terrorize and threaten his fellow Americans in this way. No mob of Americans should be permitted to endanger and to harass the public the way these hateful "Occupy" hippies have done for months.

Call out the National Guard. Turn on the fire hoses. Send bulldozers. Bring flame-throwers, for pity's sake. Men and women who give a damn about their country, wearing Hazmat suits and respiratory gear, empowered by the lawful government of this nation, should be marching in ranks on every Obamaville this very moment, prepared to beat with truncheons and shoot with rubber bullets every last filthy hippie. Put a stop to this miserable army of miscreants before they are permitted to rape, infect, or ruin one more person.

The "Occupy" movement is a cancer. The "occupiers" are criminals and terrorists. The Obamaville is a creeping death made of Nylon, placards and human waste. This movement is a third-world rot that will infect us all if we do not sterilize it now.

-- Phil Elmore, Nov. 16 WorldNetDaily column

One of Barack Obama’s first official acts upon being sworn in as President of the United States was to return a bust of British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill to Britain. The bust, which once occupied the Oval Office, had been loaned to George W. Bush by the British government in a show of solidarity after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

Was this Obama’s rejection of international support against Muslim extremism? Or was it much more than that?

[...]

There is a more likely explanation, if one understands that the President’s biological father was in fact Malcolm X, rather than Barack Obama Sr. The slight against the Obama’s sensibilities was far more painful.

Just three days before his father’s assassination, England had considered banning Malcolm forever from its soil.

-- WorldNetDaily columnist Erik Rush, Oct. 15 column at Terrible Truth

Thank God for YouTube. Or else we never would have know that hundreds of times in more than 50 cities since 2010, groups of black people have been roaming the streets of America – assaulting, intimidating, stalking, threatening, vandalizing, stealing, shooting, stabbing, even raping and killing.

But today the denials are crumbling. The curtains are lifting. We now can see what so many public officials and media have been curiously desperate to deny: Race riots are back.

-- Colin Flaherty, Oct. 13 WorldNetDaily column

It would be easy to dismiss the Occupy Wall Street protests as another disorganized and pungent liberal whinefest ... because that’s basically true. The demonstrations, taking place in New York and now other cities and other nations, have a classic lefty feel and scent. But there’s more to this, if you dig deep enough. These protests do reflect the genuine economic fears that many Americans feel.

The few thousand that have turned out to occupy Wall Street 24-7 are mostly young, rarely bathe and chant a lot.

-- Dan Gainor, Oct. 4 CNSNews.com column

President Chris Christie as a role model could help restore health to our body politic by reminding us daily that gluttonous government is obese and must be put on a strict diet to reduce its unhealthy size.

-- Lowell Ponte, Oct. 3 Newsmax column

If the U.S. truly wants to fix the root causes to the economy, then it needs to take a hard look into the causes of the low birthrates to Caucasians from 40 years ago and again now. Let's start with these:

• Feminists
• Gays
• Teachers
• Entertainers
• Men who feel no responsibilities
• Abortion on demand
• Secularists
• Environmentalists
• Courts/lawyers/the ACLU
• the New World Order

And what do all of these have in common? They all promote the liberal philosophy. The result is a white population with a birthrate that is too low to replace itself. The Caucasian population has decreased from 24 percent of the world population to 10 percent in just 40 years because of a lack of births.

-- Michael Master, Sept. 29 WorldNetDaily column

Many, if not most, Americans view the mass invasion of their country by Mexicans and others about as favorably as the citizens of Czechoslovakia, Holland and France viewed the mass immigration of Germans into their countries during the 1940s.

-- Vox Day, Sept. 25 WND column

The homosexual agenda represents an existential threat to Christian civilization and we're in the final phase of the war, losing badly. It all hinges upon you, Christian reader. Either get into the "game" in earnest, immediately, or wave goodbye.

-- Scott Lively, Sept. 23 WorldNetDaily column

President Barack Obama has the most important speech of his presidency on Thursday. A speech built around creating jobs and inspiring economic recovery. You want an economic recovery? You want jobs? Two magical words are needed to change the course of history.

Two words change the future for millions of desperate unemployed Americans. Two words transform a depression into a boom. Two words motivate and inspire every business owner in America to create jobs. Two words free the U.S. economy from the current doom, despair, debt, depression, misery, and malaise.

Only two words need to be uttered by President Obama’s lips: “I resign.”

Imagine an Obama-Free America.

Overnight 2 1/2 years of pain are erased. Trillions of dollars and millions of jobs are brought back into the USA. Millions of business owners breathe a sigh of relief and begin to plan their recovery. Investors begin investing again, unleashing a torrent of buying and business expansion.

-- Wayne Allyn Root, Sept. 7 Newsmax column

Rep. Maxine Waters, the despiteous Democrat from California, not only thinks tea-party people should go to hell – she has offered to show us the way.

Do tell. First of all, the devil is from hell, so it stands to reason that one of his children would know the way back home.

[...]

Oh, and one last thing. The next time Waters offers to lead an exhibition of discovery to her father's homeland, I, for one, hope she stays.

-- Mychal Massie, Aug. 22 WorldNetDaily column

just saw clip of bho doing his mac-daddy limp wrist fairy princess chuck n jive swagger as he strutted 2 podium last nite - some1 shud tell him the snoop dog pimp swagger isnt presidential

-- Mychal Massie, July 26 TwitLonger post

"First you let [gays] do their own thing in a corner -- 'Ah, they'll be OK.' Next thing you know, they're marching in the streets. You keep looking the other way, and then one day, boom, they throw you in an oven. [canned audience noise] You can 'ooh' all you want, but you've obviously not read 'The Pink Swastika.'"

-- D.J. Dolce, July 19 WorldNetDaily video

Here's my theory: Trump is a very successful businessman for whom there's never enough money. I don't think he has any interest in politics beyond what it can do for his enterprises. I actually think he may have been involved in shaking Obama down for something he wanted with that birth certificate charade. Because he got cold feet when Obama released the phony birth certificate, now Obama is shaking him down.

To get whatever it is he wants from Obama and company, he may be asked to throw the 2012 election into chaos by running as an independent.

Evidently the stakes are very high.

What are the possibilities?

Apparently Trump wants to build the world's tallest building in Chicago.

Getting things done in Chicago means payoffs.

Those payoffs don't always come just in the form of money.

-- Joseph Farah, July 19 WorldNetDaily column

1. private army (like Hitler)

2. socialist (like Hitler)

3. media control (like Hitler)

A clause hidden in the Obamacare bill, which is now law, gives Obama the right to form a private army.

Why isn't anyone freaking out?

Hitler did this.

Hitler, like Obama, was a "socialist" who came from a dysfunctional family, had a communist father who abused alcohol, womanized and sired several children from different mothers, had a white mother, suffered child abuse and neglect, moved often, lied about his birth and heritage, changed his name, was a narcissist, rose to power with the help of disreputable men, had the Rothschilds as financial backers, stirred up racial conflict and class warfare, wrote a biography about race at age 35, followed up with another book used to launch a political career, supported infanticide (partial-birth abortion), gave big speeches in stadiums, promised change and a new social order, had youth groups singing his praises, used propaganda, used voter fraud and intimidation, controlled the media, created "crises," used a poor economy, hated Jews (Israel), pretended to be "Christian," advocated population control and euthanasia, socialized medicine, formed a private army and then ... killed his political opposition with his private army.

Well, I am Obama's political opposition. That's why I am concerned.

-- Victoria Jackson, July 15 WorldNetDaily column

Moreover, if the president believes that gays, lesbians and transsexuals are "our brothers and sisters," why does he not also believe that "our brothers and sisters" include not only polygamists, but exhibitionists, the incestuous, coprophiliacs, necrophiliacs, urophiliacs and zoophiliacs (those who have sex with animals who are unable – or unwilling – to run away)?

None of these additional sexual orientations has the huge rate of HIV/AIDS and syphilis, which deadly diseases are distributed so widely by the nation's large number of sexually profligate homosexuals.

Their continued deadly-disease spreading was surely aided and abetted by Mr. Obama's announcement that they (with no distinction between the sexually profligate and other homosexuals) are "our brothers, our sisters, our children, our cousins, our friends, our co-workers."

Such presidential pandering to deadly-disease spreaders is surely a despicable means of trying to attract votes by an incumbent who will apparently do anything to try to win re-election.

-- Les Kinsolving, July 5 WorldNetDaily column

So, what is a young man who wishes to be a happy and productive member of society but does not wish to find himself locked into a life of post-divorce serfdom to an ill-tempered, overweight woman with a legal obligation to children who may not even belong to him? Fortunately, the answer is both clear and easily applied. To increase your chances of marital and familial success in life, it is vital to stay away from what are known as "career" or "working" women.

While this will not eliminate all the risks of what has become known as Marriage 2.0, it will return a man's probability of successful marriage to that of the earlier, more marriage-friendly era. Marriage to a stay-at-home wife rather than one with a full-time job reduces the risk of divorce by nearly one-third. Just the simple act of avoiding romantic involvement with working women is nearly enough on its own to again make marriage a viable option for young men.

Vox Day, May 30 WorldNetDaily column

In September 2006, [James] Frey and publisher Random House reached a tentative legal settlement, the terms of which mandated refunds for readers who felt that they had been defrauded by Frey's book.

In January 2009, that same publishing house signed a deal with Obama [for a young-adult edition of "Dreams From My Father"] to defraud hundreds of thousands of new readers, little ones, likely with no choice in the matter but to be defrauded.

At some point, Bill Ayers has got to blow the whistle on this despotic bit of literary child abuse.

-- Jack Cashill, May 19 WorldNetDaily column

Some of you will remember Nikita Khrushchev at the United Nations, removing his shoe and pounding the heel on the table, while shouting, "We will bury you!" It's not hard these days to suggest this simply was a bad translation and that what the communist leader was threatening, was to "Barry Soetoro" us.

-- Craige McMillan, May 5 WorldNetDaily column

Though Beck is a multi-faceted individual, his greatest talent is that he's a master teacher. His Fox News shows are like going to college, but learning things they don't teach at the most expensive campuses in the country.

And therein, I believe, lies the crux of the problem. Beck is too good of a teacher, something Will Durant warned about when he said, "Woe to him who teaches men faster than they can learn." Most Americans are not yet ready to accept the truths Beck teaches, so they find it easier to dismiss him as a doomsayer or conspiracy nut.

-- Robert Ringer, March 18 WorldNetDaily column

Simply stated, we must drill now. Let's delude ourselves that we are actually healing the planet some other time. For years now, the warnings have gone out that the U.S. needs to free itself from dependence on Islamic oil. President Obama has done just the opposite, choosing instead to petition some worthless puny little gods called Volt and Prius to save us. I would love to believe that Rush Limbaugh is wrong when he says that President Obama is purposefully trying to destroy this nation, but in light of his actions, what other option do I really have?

-- Joel Richardson, March 12 WorldNetDaily column

The DOMA simply makes more explicit the government's obligation to secure the Creator-endowed unalienable rights of the natural family. This obligation precludes government from fabricating other rights that impair them. In this respect, granting homosexuals the right to marry is like granting plantation owners the right to own slaves.

-- Alan Keyes, Feb. 25 WorldNetDaily column

My one revision of Coulter is not that we should invade their countries: "We must invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. PC (perversity correctness) means keeping Christianity, America and the West on the road to dhimmitude.

-- Ellis Washington, Jan. 22 WorldNetDaily column

And the winner is ... Brent Bozell. It's not often you get to see the well-compensated president of a major nonprofit organization call the president of the United States a "skinny ghetto crackhead," but by golly, Bozell isn't afraid to step up to the plate and let his hate flag fly.

* * *

Our final award is the Slantie Award for Career Achievement in Conservative Bias. This goes to a reporter or commentator with a consistent record of biased and slanted reports that fly in the face of time-honored journalistic practice, the truth and/or common sense.

And the winner is ... WorldNetDaily's Les Kinsolving. When he's not in the White House briefing room asking biased and bizarre questions, he can be found penning homophobic screeds on the WND website or being petulant about not being given the respect he thinks he deserves. Back in 2004, we called Kinsolving the right-wing Helen Thomas; the only difference between them is their ideology and the fact that Kinsolving is somehow still a member of the White House press corps.

* * *

That concludes the evening's festivities. We'll see if Ricky Gervais is available to host next year's gala.