Crasser With Crowder

The Media Research Center supports right-wing "comedian" Steven Crowder's vicious homophobia and hate-filled attacks because they tend to get him suspended from social media, which gives the MRC a chance to further its "victim" narrative.

By Terry Krepel
Posted 7/19/2021

Steven Crowder

In June 2018, Joseph Chalfant gave Crowder the comedian's pass over his homophobic shots at gay journalist Carlos Maza, while complaining about CNN host Poppy Harlow's treatment of the story:

After the interview concluded, Harlow then turned attention to the videos conservative YouTube comedian Steven Crowder and host of Louder With Crowder, made about Vox journalist Carlos Maza:

Guys, YouTube has taken a lot of heat also for these homophobic videos, specifically ones aimed at this Vox journalist, that are still on, even after the new guidelines. I asked him directly, why is that still there, are you going to take them down? They are in the middle of reviewing their guidelines, again meeting with outside groups and they’re considering it, but they don't know at this point. But I mean, if this is fundamental to their business, they have to make a decision about where that line is between hate and free speech.

Crowder, who is, again, a comedian, made jokes at the expense of Maza. Maza, upset that someone would dare make fun of him, then led an attempt to get Crowder de-platformed, but he only succeeded in getting Crowder’s channel demonetized. The fact that Crowder was telling jokes about Maza seemed to be entirely lost on Harlow.

Chalfant didn't mention the actual insults Crowder hurled Maza's way. e smeared Maza as a "lispy queer," among other things, which inspired Crowder's right-wing followers to doxx Maza. That's what the MRC thinks is "comedy."

The very next day, however, Kyle Drennen gave no such pass to late-night comedian Seth Meyers, apparently because Trump is a less acceptable comedy target than the LGBT community. When Meyers appeared on NBC’s Today show, Drennen ranted that he "was greeted with congratulations from the cast for five years of using his show to promote Democrats and bash Republicans. The morning show crew was impressed with Meyers bringing his left-wing 'point of view' to the late night landscape – not that politics was lacking in that arena." He further ranted that Meyers' "A Closer Look" segment "amounts to nothing more than to a long list of anti-Trump screeds that he has delivered on his show over the years," going on to huff that "Night after night, Meyers’ liberal audience does receive the latest Democratic Party talking points and a healthy dose of bashing conservatives."

It seems the fact that Meyers is a comedian telling jokes was entirely lost on Drennen.

So, to sum up: 'Trump-bashing screeds" by a non-conservative comedian are a horrible thing at the MRC, while gay-bashing screeds by a conservative comedian are totally cool.

A couple days later, Jorge Plaza implicitly came to the defense of Crowder by ranting against comedians he declared were "unfunny" because ... they didn't mock gay people, or something:

On June 19, The Hollywood Reporter fashioned a list of the top 40 “most powerful people in comedy” for 2019. It’s a predictable gaggle of reliable lefties and reads more like a wanted poster for the gang that ruined comedy.

The first big-name entry was Sacha Baron Cohen of Borat fame. Though since the 2006 blockbuster hit, the liberal Cohen has struggled to reclaim his “glory” days. His go-to gag is to ambush conservatives to make them look dumb, actively pandering to a lefty audience.

Unfortunately for Cohen, everyone recognizes his oddly oblong face and lanky body from Borat, so his disguises don’t work anymore. Now, whenever Cohen disguises himself to trick a conservative into saying something stupid, he embarrasses himself.

[...]

In the left’s PC crusade against comedy, these are the people that we are left with to harold as comedic geniuses: washed-up gross-out artists that depend on crude vulgarity for laughs. Gone are the days of boundary pushing comedians like George Carlin and Dave Chappelle. Welcome to the age of “Woke Comedy.”

Ah, to pine for the days of un-woke "comedians" like Crowder and their wacky homophobia. (Also, he failed to account for Cohen making a "Borat" sequel, in which his schtick worked yet again on clueless conservatives.)

It was only after Maza went public about the verbal abuse and doxxing that YouTube moved to demonetize Crowder's channel, for which the MRC granted victimhood status to Crowder, as it loves to do for any right-winger -- no matter how extreme -- who gets in trouble with social media because of their extremism.

P.J. Gladnick went full whataboutism in an August 2019 post that responded to Vox pointing out that a Trump-led social media summit that featured lots of right-wing grievance disproved itself by getting a lot of coverage in social media ... by devoting half his post to attacking Maza for prompting YouTube's "demonetizing not only Steven Crowder's YouTube channel but many other conservative-oriented channels as well." Gladnick didn't mention Crowder's homophobic attacks on Maza, which forced Maza to take action.

In December, Randy Hall gave Crowder a platform to rant that "the purge is coming" in the form of YouTube proposing content reforms to cut down on "malicious insults" and "veiled threats" -- you know, what Crowder did to Maza. Which, of course, led Hall to invoke revisionist history to claim that Crowder was merely "mocking" Maza.

Meanwhile, Maza left Vox to go out on his own to make videos for his own YouTube channel, but the MRC could not stop attacking him for calling out Crowder. In a February 2020 post, Alexander Hall complained that "The New York Times gave this 'New York-based socialist' a prominent feature in their business section with two gigantic photos on separate pages," then engaged in revisionist history about Crowder: "Maza, aka @GayWonk, famously triggered the adpocalypse on YouTube when he blasted the platform for allowing conservative YouTuber Steven Crowder to poke fun at him during Gay Pride Month. Shortly afterward came a wave of 'carpet bombing' demonetizations and potential rule changes that restricted free speech on the platform." Hall made sure not to mention Crowder's vicious homophobia.

The next day, Clay Waters, the MRC's designated Times-hater, went after the Times article itself, bizarrely and counterfactually portraying Maza as the aggressor and Crowder as the victim: "Maza, whose Twitter bio refers to Tucker Carlson as a white supremacist, targeted conservative Steven Crowder in 2019. After Crowder mocked him as a 'lispy queer,' YouTube was pressured into demonetizing Crowder’s YouTube videos." (Waters didn't mention that Maza's claim about Carlson is backed up with evidence.)

Waters also insisted that Maza is "no slouch at internet bullying," while conveying further victimhood on Crowder by complaining that the writer of the Times article showed "hostility toward Crowder" by referring to him as "a bargain-bin conservative comedian." Needless to say, Waters couldn't be bothered to describe the full extent of Crowder's homophobic attacks.

Crowder's YouTube demonitization eventually ended, and Kayla Sargent served up the good news in an August 2020 post, while still managing to keep his victimhood intact:

It’s a win for free speech. Conservative comedian and political commentator Steven Crowder will once again be allowed to draw ad revenue on his YouTube channel.

YouTube lifted the restrictions against Crowder on August 12, more than a year after he was originally demonetized.

Crowder was originally restricted on the platform in June of 2019 after Vox contributor Carlos Maza accused Crowder of making homophobic and racist statements towards him in a since-removed tweet.

Maza’s accusations came to light on May 31, 2019, and YouTube promised that they would review Crowder’s flagged videos. On June 4, the platform tweeted a reply to Maza’s initial post, stating, “while we found language that was clearly hurtful, the videos as posted don’t violate our policies.”

Although YouTube did not take any initial action against Crowder, the pressure from the left and the media only increased, and some in the press called for Crowder’s channel to be “shut down completely.”

Sargent did concede that it was the fact that Crowder took down his homophobic videos, and not "YouTube's good graces," that got him re-monetized. She then warned: "The battle is never over, though. YouTube is still able to demonetize individual videos, and at any point, the platform could change its community guidelines again and restrict or even remove Crowder’s channel at any time."

As is MRC tradition, Sargent was quiet about the homophobic details of Crowder's videos that got him demonetized in the first place, and she left unspoken that the main thing Crowder can do to keep from getting restricted in the future is not be such a homophobe.

Sargent went on to push Crowder's victimhood in later MRC posts, such as one a few days later on how a poll found that "73 percent of U.S adults believe that social media companies censor political viewpoints of their users" was an excuse to mention how "Until recently, YouTube had demonetized conservative comedian and commentator Steven Crowder." That was followed by an Aug. 26 post complaining that "YouTube chose to censor more content on its platform during its second quarter than it had in any previous quarter" similarly referenced how YouTube had "demonitized [Crowder's] channel a year."

In neither of those posts did Sargent point out that it was Crowder's homophobia that got his channel demonetized.

In trouble again

Like the hateful right-winger he is, Crowder couldn't help himself by getting into more trouble -- but the MRC wants you to think that Steven Crowder is just a misunderstood comedian who keeps being "censored" because he's a conservative. Nick Kangadis was on hand to play dumb in a May 13 post:

The “Big Tech” oligarchs will eventually come for you. After they censor and ban everyone they hate for whatever reason, they won’t stop and will go after whomever they deem is the next “offensive” entity.

YouTube has given conservative talk show host Steven Crowder a “second active strike” on his main channel and also given the first strike to his clip channel, Crowder Bits.

The censor-happy platform identified an episode of “Louder with Crowder” in which Crowder himself and his crew agreed that the shooting of Ma’Khia Bryant in Columbus, Ohio on April 20 was justified.

YouTube gave the Crowder team a somewhat more specific explanation of why that particular episode violated their guidelines:

In particular, this video violated the aspect of the policy that prohibits "content reveling in or mocking the death or serious injury of an identifiable individual." Accordingly, the video has been removed and a strike has been applied to the Steven Crowder channel. This constitutes the second active strike on the Steven Crowder channel and, as a result, uploads are now suspended for two weeks.

That is ridiculous. As Louderwithcrowder.com's Courtney Kirchoff wrote in the article concerning the strike, the Crowder crew “didn’t revel in the death or serious injury of an identifiable individual.”

Note that Kangadis did not document what Crowder actually said so readers could judge for themselves, even though he went on to write that "Yours truly watched that episode the day it aired, and while the Crowder crew likes to have fun and make joke — whether you agree with them or not, at no point did they 'revel' in the death of Bryant."

As a more honest and responsible media watchdog -- Media Matters -- did document, Crowder and his co-host were mocking the dead Bryant in general and her weight in particular, claiming she moves like "an old [George] Foreman" and claiming her "fifth DoorDash" was arriving. So, yeah, they were very much reveling in and mocking a dead woman. But Kangadis want to gaslight you, parroting the old MRC narrative that "This seems like it’s just being used as an excuse to come one step closer to eliminating the most popular conservative channel on YouTube."

If this is "the most popular conservative channel on YouTube," alleged censorship is the least of conservatives' problems.

Kangadis continued to gaslight in a May 21 post:

Conservative talk show host Steven Crowder announced on his brand-new Rumble channel that he and his lawyer Bill Richmond filed a lawsuit last Thursday against video platform giant YouTube for suspending his channel for two weeks for allegedly violating their guidelines.

[...]

As noted above, Crowder’s lawsuit stems from the platform issuing a second strike last week against the Steven Crowder channel who — according to YouTube — exhibited “content reveling in or mocking the death or serious injury of an identifiable individual.”

For the record, the show did not, but that will be for a court to decide from here on out.

The death that the Crowder crew allegedly reveled in was the justified shooting of Ma’Khia Bryant by a Columbus, Ohio police officer.

Again, Kangadis refused to tell readers exactly what Crowder said. If it was not offensive, why hide that since it would presumably boost Crowder's defense?

Then, on June 3, Casey Ryan kept up the gaslighting on Crowder in a monthly roundup of what the MRC thinks is the month's "WORST censorship":

YouTube targeted a video where Crowder stated that the shooting of Ma’Khia Bryant was justified in Columbus, Ohio. The platform said that the video had “‘content reveling in or mocking the death or serious injury of an identifiable individual,’” according to Crowder’s team. However, the Louder with Crowder team also said Bryant was never mocked. “The video they're referring to didn't revel in the death or serious injury of an identifiable individual,” the team said in a statement. “It seems YouTube is unhappy the studio crew agreed the shooting of a teenager trying to stab another was justified.”

Like Kangadis, Ryan also refused to offer a transcript of what Crowder said.

Banned from TikTok

There's a boatload of misinformation in a June 28 post, in which Alexander Hall inexplicably kept up the MRC's defense of of the ever-more-hateful Crowder, under the headline "China Strikes":

TikTok can be subservient to the genocidal Chinese government, but the platform’s real offense was allowing conservative commentators, a leftist organization said.

“Comedian and conservative commentator Steven Crowder has been banned from China’s TikTok viral video platform,” Reclaim The Net reported June 26. Leftist organization Media Matters proclaimed it was behind the purge: “Far-right internet personality Steven Crowder has been banned from TikTok following a June 8 Media Matters report highlighting his bigotry on the platform,” the organization wrote in a June 24 update. “A TikTok spokesperson confirmed to Media Matters that Crowder’s account had been removed for violating its community guidelines.”

Media Matters leadership has received extensive funding from leftist megadonor George Soros, the record shows. Soros’ Foundation to Promote Open Society (OSF) tax forms has shown five separate donations between 2010 and 2014 totalling $1,575,000. Soros gave the organization money every other year during that time. The leftist group released a report earlier in June sliming Crowder for “using TikTok to spread hate to a younger audience.”

First: Hall offered no evidence that the Chinese government even knows Crowder exists, let alone that it ordered TikTok to remove him from the platform, as he suggests -- or, for that matter, that the Chinese government is so involved in TikTok that it polices all users or eve the those in America.

Second: Hall's complaint about Media Matters receiving funding from Soros interests is a red herring. He offers no evidence that any of it was used to target Crowder -- highly unlikely, since even its own documents notes that the last bit of Soros funding came in 2014. It's also a pittance compared to the money the MRC receives from rich conservatives like the Mercers.

Indeed, Hall didn't quote anything from Crowder that Media Matters found offensive -- just like it didn't directly quote the nastiness that got Crowder suspended from YouTube in May.

Crowder's TikTok suspension also made the June roundup of what the MRC claims is the "WORST censorship"; Casey Ryan laughably called Media Matters an "extreme far-left organization" and repeated Hall's complaint that it "spread fearmongering rhetoric about Crowder’s popularity."