During the rise of the tea party Anderson Cooper called conservatives “tea baggers” on CNN and remarked about “teabagging.” The network featured a multitude of guests and contributors who likened tea partiers to nazis, bigots, pick your poison. No pressure was ever brought about to censor the speech of those babbling on air. CNN never found any of the remarks objectionable. Fast-forward to present time. Dana Loesch mocks the absurdity of the left’s predictable Outrage Chic on her radio show, Erick Erickson mocks occupiers on his radio show, Roland Martin mocks soccer (who doesn’t mock soccer?) and David Beckham’s underwear using his personal Twitter account and all hell breaks loose. Note: not a single one of these individuals said any of this on CNN’s airwaves, as demonstrated above. That doesn’t matter to the Progressive Inquisition.

Progressives have been falling over themselves to get Loesch and Erickson fired from CNN since CNN decided it wasn’t going to actually attempt to make money and offer a variety of opinion. Progressives hate variety, they loathe diversity of thought. The George Soros mouthpiece, Media Matters for America actually pays people to listen to Erickson and Loesch’s radio shows, record them, and try to trump up outrage over nothing. For instance, last week Loesch said that women can use birth control methods such as pills, condoms, and natural family planning as their “choice,” as opposed to the “choice” of murdering a baby. Eric Boehlert, a man who, to our knowledge, is not a licensed OB/GYN and has not, to our knowledge, ever been a woman at any time, mocked the idea that a woman is smart enough on her own to actually prevent pregnancy naturally. Because they don’t teach about menstrual cycles in high school, or the most fertile times of the month for a woman, information Boehlert apparently missed out on in school. They tried to get CNN’s attention with it on Twitter after posting it to their site.

Erickson joked about violent, raping, drug peddling occupiers getting tased — the violent movement MMfA endorsed — and MMfA/Boehlert put the clip on their site and also tried to get CNN’s attention with it. MMfA endorsed Occupy, defended it, and said nothing with this hit a cop in the face with a brick, when women were being raped, drugs being sold, absolutely nothing when the White House was shot up and smoke bombs were thrown by occupy campers. That wasn’t bad enough to earn their condemnation but cracking a joke when one of them is so out of control they have to be tasered for the safety of the police — and the person who cracked the joke is the bad guy. Those are their priorities.

They failed. They did the same thing last month as well, completely proving the point Loesch was making about hysterical reactions to the Marines appearing to urinate on the bodies of dead terrorists who had just tried to kill them in battle.

CNN didn’t fire Loesch, they didn’t fire Erickson, either which enraged Boehlert and MMfA. It showed their impotence, their weakness, that no one truly gives a damn what they do all day over on their little corner of the Internet.

Roland Martin spent Super Bowl Sunday writing #rolandsrules, jokes about watching the Super Bowl. I cannot stand the man’s politics and I damn near hated him during the midterm elections because he was one of the racial demagogues who called tea partiers every name in the book. His Tweets were funny. He joked about appetizers, about soccer — because soccer is stupid — and David Beckham’s underwear. His Tweets angered GLAAD, who believe that they have the patent on soccer and David Beckham’s underwear, thus if you insult and/or mock them, they will take it as gay bashing. Advocacy to GLAAD is trolling Twitter trying to see how many different ways innocuous Tweets can offend them.

GLAAD does more to make a mockery of themselves than Martin or anyone else could ever do.

CNN suspended Martin over the Tweets as they are close with GLAAD.

(more…)

While CAP seems to have taken the charges to heart, and is seeking to change its ways, the Obama/Soros-”firsters” at MMFA are digging in their heels.

This dual-loyalty charge, like most anti-Semitic claims, is even more abhorrent because it directly contradicts Jewish Law:

Seek the peace of the city where I have exiled you and pray for it to the Lord, for in its peace you shall have peace. -Jeremiah Chapter 29:7

And it is nothing new: the dual-loyalty charge made by these progressive groups have been around since biblical times, it was what caused enslavement of the Israelites by Egypt.

A new king arose over Egypt, who did not know about Joseph. He said to his people, “Behold, the people of the children of Israel are more numerous and stronger than we are. Get ready, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they increase, and a war befall us, and they join our enemies and depart from the land.” – Exodus Chapter 1:8-10

Jewish sources from all over the political spectrum have denounced the CAP and MMFA use of Antisemitism in their political writing.  Not many people were surprised when the Simon Wiesenthal Center denounced the use of the dual loyalty term, but when the very progressive magazine, The Tablet condemned CAP and MMFA for its use, eyebrows were raised.

The root of this problem is not a twenty-something blogger writing something stupid on the Internet. Rather, it is that anti-Semitic rhetoric and logic are being protected and justified by those who are supposed to be gatekeepers. These people, often in the service of their larger political aims, are willing to apologize for or ignore what is obviously Jew-baiting and Jew-hatred…..

…This isn’t how the world works. Americans’ sensitivity to racist language directed at African-Americans has not made Americans insensitive to “real” anti-black racism. Rather it has made us scrupulous about our language, and subsequently our beliefs and practices have come to reflect, if not wholly fulfill, the promises embodied in this country’s founding documents.

What makes people insensitive to racism is when American political and intellectual elites refuse to confront racist language. The use of phrases like “Israel Firster” and “dual loyalist” that are based on anti-Semitic tropes is anti-Semitic. So is the belief that Jews fan the flames of hatred for discussing the opinions of those who hate them

CAP has denounced the term and instituted “oversight” changes — while the staffer who used “Israel firster” on his Twitter account apologized, deleted the tweets and has since left CAP for another group. The Wiesenthal Center has applauded CAP for making the changes.

The Anti-Defamation League also said in a written statement that the Center for American Progress “took the matter seriously and understood the anti-Semitic nature of raising dual-loyalty canards.” The ADL praised CAP for taking “concrete steps” to address the problem.

But as for Media Matters and its “Israel-firster” user, MJ Rosenberg, the talons are out.  These pages have provided many examples over the years how Rosenberg accuses American Jews of dual loyalty with the term Israel-firsters), or how he claims the  “evil Zionist lobby” controls both the media and the U.S. foreign policy.

(more…)

- Bill Maher tells Occupy Wall Street to “get a job,” and says:

“As I watch them on the news now I find myself almost agreeing with Newt Gingrich. Like, you know what – get a job…Now it’s just a bunch of douchebags who think throwing a chair through the Starbucks window is going to bring on the revolution.”

- Apparently, Hot Topic is all out of Che shirts, so a bored Daily Kos decides to spend its time bullying … a food pantry:

I just got off of the phone with someone at Paul’s Pantry (the third person I was connected to). We spoke for awhile, but ultimately it came down to a few things (1) he said that they have the right to refuse to send their truck anywhere; (2) he refuses to send their truck to an organization that “kills babies” and isn’t supported by 90% of Paul’s Pantry’s donors; and (3) the office is more than willing to accept the donations if they are brought directly there. He seemed most uncomfortable with their truck being seen near Planned Parenthood’s office because of the optics and feels that PP is trying to pick a fight since this has been their position for over 12 years. I told him to expect more calls. ..”

Let’s shower this POS with our calls. I have left a message. So should all of you. Maybe this is a distraction, but much is at stake-a woman’s right to choose. [my emphasis]

A group of progressives who don’t donate to this charity found out that a food pantry would rather keep itself free of Planned Parenthood’s politics, so they decide to bully the private entity. Hysterical progressives don’t care that the charity may risk losing donations if their van is spotted at a Planned Parenthood. They don’t offer to make up for the funds, either, and they fail to encourage readers to donate. What is their big contribution to society? Tantrums? They haven’t done an ounce to serve others as Paul’s Pantry yet these narcissistic space savers have the audacity to politicize everything from breast cancer to food for the needy. Keep it up, Daily Kos.

- Occupiers reportedly threw bricks at cops and urine ad media over the weekend. Protesters in NYC upped the ante:

In New York City, Occupy protesters allegedly urinated on a cross inside a Brooklyn church.

“An occupier peed inside the building and the pee came into contact with a cross,” wrote Rabbi Chaim Gruber in a note to the New York Post.

The Occupy Wall Street movement has a history of participants urinating and defecating in public.

The group has also been accused of desecrating West Park Presbyterian Church. The pastor ordered 60 protesters to leave the sanctuary after someone stole a bronze lid from the $12,500 baptismal font.

“It was like pissing on the 99 percent,” an angry Rev. Bob Brashear told the New York Post.

(more…)

Yesterday, Juan Williams of Fox News doubled down on his accusation that Republican presidential candidates are using “racial code words.”

Today, Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic has followed suit with an article rehashing the tired allegation that Republicans are using so-called “dog whistle” tactics–“the use of coded, ambiguous language to appeal to the prejudices of certain subsets of voters”–i.e. white voters (Democrats’ use of race to appeal to the prejudices and fears of black voters is rarely subject to scrutiny.)

Jeffrey Goldberg (Photo: Bloomberg News)

Goldberg says that the Obama’s Republican opponents have alleged the following (original links, including one to Media Matters–itself the subject of serious charges of antisemitism–included):

Black people have lost the desire to perform a day’s work. Black people rely on food stamps provided to them by white taxpayers. Black people, including Barack and Michelle Obama, believe that the U.S. owes them something because they are black. Black children should work as janitors in their high schools as a way to keep them from becoming pimps. And the pathologies afflicting black Americans are caused partly by the Democratic Party, which has created in them a dependency on government not dissimilar to the forced dependency of slaves on their owners.

I’ll go even further, and admit that I personally heard a presidential candidate give a speech–in a church, no less–in which he blasted the black community, and black men in particular, for the phenomenon of single-parent households; who noted that black children with absent fathers have a greater chance of becoming criminals; who scolded black parents, “don’t just sit in the house and watch ‘Sports Center’ all weekend long”; and who told blacks to “read a book once in awhile.”

That candidate was Barack Obama.

(more…)

Former Maryland Lt. Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend is teaming up with Media Matters for America founder David Brock to form a new group to raise big bucks for Democrats in an effort to compete with Republicans.

Kennedy Townsend is remembered by conservatives for her role in pursuing Linda Tripp, the whistleblower in the Monica Lewinsky scandal. She has long since joined forces with Media Matters, the book-burners of our day, who seek to drive all shred of conservative political opinion out of public discourse.

Of course, Brock and Kennedy Townsend know how marginal their views are: they fully expect 2012 to be a “disaster” without more big money on the Democrat side:

Former Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, who is positioning herself to be a major player in the Democratic Party’s 2012 fundraising efforts, pledged that a new group she is forming will help Democrats “compete dollar to dollar” with Republicans over the next two years. Townsend has teamed up with David Brock, founder of the liberal media watchdog Web site, Media Matters, to form American Bridge, a group that aims to be a counterweight to right-leaning organizations such as American Crossroads and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which spent millions to support conservative candidates and causes in 2010.

Brock is known for his willingness to go to any lengths to pursue Fox News, while Media Matters has also been trying to become a partisan force by having its often dubious content picked up by outside media outlets. MMfA’s war on Fox has caused some to question the outlet’s tax-exempt status, according to the Washington Examiner: (more…)

Tablet magazine, the new online Jewish-themed publication that focuses on a broad range of current affairs topics, has taken Media Matters for America (MMfA) and the Center for American Progress (CAP) to task for using antisemitic language in criticizing Israel.

Illustration from Tablet: Daniel Hertzberg

In two separate articles, Tablet takes on the organizations that are the core of the Democrats’ media and policy strategy, joining a debate in which the defenders of MMfA and CAP have resorted to the worn-out fallacy that their critics are trying to silence debate on Israel.

One article by Spencer Ackerman–whose blog was once hosted by CAP–addresses “fellow progressives” and insists that while criticism of Israel is sometimes appropriate, those who use anti-Jewish tropes–like specious charges of dual loyalty and “Israel first”–undermine the case they are trying to make. He singles out Media Matters, CAP, and the radical pro-Palestinian lobby J Street, among others, for their rhetorical record of bigotry:

Some on the left have recently taken to using the term “Israel Firster” and similar rhetoric to suggest that some conservative American Jewish reporters, pundits, and policymakers are more concerned with the interests of the Jewish state than those of the United States….

“Israel Firster” has a nasty anti-Semitic pedigree, one that many Jews will intuitively understand without knowing its specific history. It turns out white supremacist Willis Carto was reportedly the first to use it, and David Duke popularized it through his propaganda network. And yet [Media Matters' M.J.] Rosenberg and others actually claim they’re using it to stimulate “debate,” rather than effectively mirroring the tactics of some of the people they criticize….

(more…)

Media Matters for America (MMfA) must be really afraid of Andrew Breitbart. Once again, he’s their number one target for elimination from mainstream media appearances–even ahead of conservative media luminary Rush Limbaugh, whom MMfA hates with a passion.

The above attack, on MMfA’s front page, is pathetic in form and function. (Note to MMfA editors: “vigorously” only has one “u,” unless you’re not writing to be read by Americans.)

MMfA’s intent is not to respond to anything Breitbart said on CNN–where he defended South Carolinians and conservatives against mainstream media attacks–but to protest the fact that he appeared on CNN.

And what, according to MMfA, has Breitbart said or done that would justify his exclusion from American public discourse? Let’s take each claim in turn: (more…)

Eric Boehlert, serial propagandist and Senior Fellow at Media Matters for America, joined the Stephanie Miller show this morning to fling some more dirt at Big Journalism editor-in-chief Dana Loesch.

Boehlert, who has thus far given a pass to men such as Bill Maher and Brit Hume with regard to their comments supporting U.S. Marines who were videotaped urinating on Taliban corpses, joined his hosts in joking about Loesch’s “screeching.”

Miller’s co-host, Chris Lavoie, opened the interview with Boehlert by describing a debate with Loesch on Twitter: “She got really, really screechy and emotional in her responses, and I just kept it on the level.”

Boehlert agreed, affirming Lavoie’s choice of language: “Straight to the screech, straight to the attacks.” He also belittled Loesch, describing her as “an Andrew Breitbart creation.”

Prior to joining Andrew Breitbart’s Big Journalism in 2010, Loesch had been blogging for more than ten years, and had won an award in 2007 for her column in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, among other distinctions.

Boehlert also slammed Loesch for not apologizing for her remarks–an odd claim, given that Media Matters has yet to apologize for the blatant antisemitism of M.J. Rosenberg, or for the lies and distortions of Boehlert himself.

Piling on, Boehlert claimed that Loesch hosts “a radio show, you know, that nobody listens to in the 22nd largest market in the country.” In point of fact, the Dana Show is the number one talk radio show in St. Louis–and in Indianapolis–in its time slot and it was just announced that the show is expanding to three hours.

But if Loesch’s show were really “a radio show that nobody listens to,” why would Boehlert and the left have made such a big deal out of her comments, elevating them to a national level?

Miller provided the answer: (more…)

When I check my morning inbox, there’s no shortage of advertising waiting for me.

The Gap is offering to sell me clothes. Radio Shack is offering to sell me electronics.  And Media Matters for America is offering to sell me a mainstream media landscape free of conservative voices.

Make no mistake; as much as it may appear that ideology is driving groups like Media Matters, MoveOn.org and Color of Change, they’re also pushing their agenda for marketing reasons, citing dubious “achievements” designed to get their liberal niche audience to click the Donate Now button.

You can see this in Media Matters’ latest public-relations assault on Dana Loesch. Media Matters states its mission as combating “conservative misinformation,” but in this case, there is very clearly no misinformation speak of.

Loesch — at worst — was delivering an outrageous opinion in a show of support for the troops, as part of her job trying have an interesting and entertaining radio show. That’s not misinformation, and MMfA knows it.

So why does Media Matters care, and why drag CNN into it? The answer is very simple. It’s how they raise money.

This is from a fundraising letter from Media Matters for America that I received on December 27, 2011. If you’d like to learn how to write fundraising emails, pay attention, because this one is pretty well done. Bang on a few hot button issues, make it seem like you made some real progress, toss in a few references to the idea that “we’re all in this together!”, and then go for the kill and ask people to dig deep to help support you with a donation: (more…)

Media Matters is famous for being a “core institution” of the Democrat party and a staunch defender of the slur “Israel-firster,” thus it’s no surprise that they lack the ethics to fully and accurately quote Governor Rick Perry in his quote on the Marines and the Taliban:

MMfA, who spend more time obsessing over Big Journalism’s Dana Loesch, have devoted more print, time, and research to Loesch than to Fast and Furious. Seriously! They have pretty much the exact same number of entries on their search results, and all of their Fast and Furious articles are defending it and Holder.

Perry’s full quote is actually this:

“These kids made a mistake, there’s not any doubt about it,” he said. “[They\] shouldn’t have done it, it’s bad — but to call it a criminal act, I think is over the top.”

This is virtually the same thing that Loesch has said, in a week’s worth of radio broadcasts on the subject, before and after the controversy hit. During her January 11th broadcast, Loesch discussed how the Marines would be brought up with UCMJ. Media Matters doesn’t want you to know that because they have been gunning to get her off of CNN because they believe that CNN should be a progressives-only outlet. Media Matters wants to institute a fascist-style of broadcasting, wherein only progressives are allowed on the airwaves. Media Matters has repeatedly targeted respectable news outlets with their insipid, Van Jones-type attacks, only to fail.

(more…)

The Jerusalem Post reports today that Faiz Shakir, vice-president of the Center for American Progress (CAP) and editor of the ThinkProgress.com blog, had admitted that the term “Israel Firster,” which has been used by bloggers at CAP and Media Matters for America (MMfA), is “anti-Semitic.”

Faiz Shakir (Image: Press.tv)

The admission was made in an e-mail obtained by the newspaper:

The Jerusalem Post last week obtained the first CAP acknowledgment of Jewhatred stemming from a group of Mideast bloggers affiliated with CAP’s ThinkProgress website.

In the e-mail that the Post obtained exclusively from the CAP account of Faiz Shakir, who serves as editor-in-chief of the ThinkProgress.org website and is a vice president at CAP, he wrote, “Yes, I agree ‘Israel Firster’ is terrible, anti-Semitic language. And that’s why that language no longer exists on Zaid’s personal twitter feed, because he also knows and understands the implications.”

Zaid Jilani wrote on his Twitter account, where he identifies himself as a “Reporter-Blogger for ThinkProgress,” that “…Obama is still beloved by Israel-firsters and getting lots of their $$.”

The e-mail recognizing the anti-Semitism of a CAP blogger was sent from FShakir@americanprogress.org in December.

The term “Israel Firster” evokes old anti-Jewish slurs of “dual loyalty” and implies that Americans of all faiths who support Israel, and especially those who oppose the Obama administration’s hostility to Israel, are disloyal to the United States.

MMfA senior fellow M.J. Rosenberg is particularly fond of the term “Israel Firster,” and frequently uses it–and worse–terms to attack the pro-Israel cause.

Both CAP and MMfA are key to the Democratic Party’s policy and public relations strategies.

(more…)

On January 3, Media Matters for America (MMfA) linked, among others, a Big Government item by J. Christian Adams to support its mischaracterization of a Fox News segment on South Carolina’s contested voter ID law.

MMfA cherry-picked a small portion of Adams’s post, while ignoring the bulk of Adams’s argument solidly refuting MMfA’s own weak defense of Attorney General Eric Holder, thereby obscuring his criticism from their readers.

Emphasis via MMfA:

In a January 3 segment on Fox News’ Fox & Friends, correspondent Jim Angle promoted a number of falsehoods and misleading claims about voter ID laws and the Department of Justice’s action preventing one such law from being implemented in South Carolina.

Even Vote Fraudster J. Christian Adams Calls The Analogy “Silly And Constitutionally Incorrect”

Adams: Arguments “Flimsy” Since “The 15^th Amendment Is In Play When It Comes To Voting.”In a BigGovernment.com piece attacking the DOJ’s letter, J. Christian Adams wrote:

What Adams did was provide several solid arguments as to why Holder’s DOJ appears to be contesting the South Carolina law based largely upon misperceptions and fuzzy math for political reasons. Media Matters neglects to point out that Holder’s DOJ used out-dated data, grossly inflating any potential problem in South Carolina. They also repeatedly highlighted a 20% number already exposed as a math gimmick aimed at making the issue appear to be far more significant than it may actually be.

(more…)

Media Matters feebly attempted to save face from the Girl Scout brochure controversy after the group dumped the propaganda website.

The Girl Scouts say they will no longer recommend the liberal website Media Matters as a good source for fact-checking suspected media bias.

The site published a very long, rambling post complaining about the negative attention it received yet gave no argument for why the criticism wasn’t deserved.

(more…)

Courtesy of Brian Maloney at The Radio Equalizer, former CNN host Bill Press demonstrates what a tolerant, class act he is … not!

BILL PRESS (15 DECEMBER 2011) (29:45): Oh yeah, all right all right yeah first of all I just have to thank my lord and savior Jesus Christ and you know what I want to say, S.T.F.U. [shut the f*** up]!

I’m tired of hearing Tim Tebow and all this Jesus talk….

Tim Tebow, everybody wants to make him a hero. I think he’s a disgrace! I think he’s a disgrace! I think he’s an embarrassment!

Press is the author of a book called TOXIC TALK: How The Radical Right Has Poisoned America’s Airwaves. (more…)

Politico’s Ben Smith writes today that Media Matters for America (MMfA) and the Center for American Progress (CAP), both “core institutions” of the Democratic Party, are pushing anti-Israel policies and downplaying the threat of a nuclear Iran.

By promoting views once confined to the extreme left and isolationist right, MMfA and CAP are dividing the Democratic Party and isolating themselves on the margins of American political debate.

Smith notes, for example, that MJ Rosenberg, “Senior Foreign Policy Fellow” at MMFA, “regularly heaps vitriol on those who disagree” with his radical left-wing views on Israel, including liberal pro-negotiation voices such as Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic. In May 2011, Andrew Breitbart noted that Rosenberg had accused supporters of Israel of disloyalty to the U.S. and called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “terrorist.”

Though CAP “tends to walk a more careful line,” Smith notes that CAP policy analyst Matt Duss, who directs the Middle East Progress blog, called Israel’s blockade against terrorist-controlled Gaza a “moral outrage” and likened it to “segregation in the American South.” CAP has also accused pro-Israel organizations, such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), of agitating for war with Iraq and Iran.

Smith reports that CAP chairman John Podesta has faced complaints over “borderline anti-Semitic stuff” about Israel published on his organization’s website: (more…)

In response to this evening’s groundbreaking report on 60 Minutes, which targeted both Republicans and Democrats for insider trading in Congress, Politico has circled the wagons around Washington’s political elite.

The CBS story was based on original research by Hoover Institution fellow and Big Peace editor Peter Schweizer for his new book, Throw Them All Out: How Politicians and Their Friends Get Rich Off Insider Stock Tips, Land Deals, and Cronyism That Would Send the Rest of Us to Prison.

That, apparently, was enough to send Politico–and the clowns at Media Matters for America–into a panic.

While hyper-partisan Media Matters has vomited a torrent of non-sequiturs to defend House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi from charges of inside deals (she paid high wages to her non-union farm workers? really?), Politico has attempted to defend Washington’s political class as a whole.

First, says Politico’s John Bresnahan–before describing the 60 Minutes report in any detail–Schweizer is a conservative. Hence, by implication, he has an agenda (unlike Politico, of course).

Second, Bresnahan claims, Schweizer’s allegations are old charges–nothing to see here:

The allegations regarding Bachus, Hastert and Gregg [all Republicans!] covered by 60 Minutes are several years old and have received extensive media coverage already.

Curiously, Bresnahan does not link to previous reports by Politico on these individuals. (Perhaps they were at the bottom of the page somewhere, near the Solyndra scandal.)

Third, Bresnahan adds, Pelosi and House Speaker John Boehner (also criticized in Schweizer’s book and the 60 Minutes report) are innocent of wrongdoing, because… because… they say so:

“I have not made any decisions on day-to-day trading activities of my account and haven’t for years. I do not do it, haven’t done it and wouldn’t do it,” Boehner said during a Nov. 3 press conference when asked about the transactions by Steve Kroft.

Boehner’s office dismissed the 60 Minutes report as absurd…

“First of all, what you’re contending is not true,” Pelosi said. “Second of all, we are very proud of our record of what happened.”

Instead of following up original research by Schweizer–and by CBS, which did its own, independent investigations–Politico has stepped in to act as mouthpiece for the leaders of the Washington elite.

(more…)

My impression of Herman Cain’s press conference today, which he called to address mounting allegations of past sexual harassment, is that Cain succeeded in conveying the impression that in his own mind at least, he is telling the truth.

That does not resolve the facts of what may or may not have happened–it’s still a case of “he said, she said”–but it will likely reassure the bulk of Cain’s supporters.

What is noteworthy is that even though Cain took extensive questions from journalists, not one journalist, apparently, thought to ask Cain to answer simple questions arising from Sharon Bialek’s press conference with Gloria Allred in New York yesterday:

• Does Cain deny communicating with Bialek in 1997?
• Does Cain deny upgrading Bialek’s room in July 1997 at the Capitol Hilton?
• Does Cain deny having dinner with Bialek in July 1997 in Washington, DC?

These are questions to which answers could probably be found–eventually–by studying telephone records, the hotel registry, credit card receipts, and the like. Though Cain stated that he did not recall having met Bialek, his denials or evasions on the questions above would have been highly relevant if evidence was later discovered to corroborate Bialek’s claims.

Cain said that he would submit to a lie detector test. But the journalists present did not try to get Cain on the record, in the moment, about the facts. And I suspect that is because the facts are not actually that important to the media at this point. What is more important is the narrative the allegations serve to create–a narrative about Cain’s neophyte campaign, not his past conduct, his honesty, or even his personal life.

The essence of that narrative is that a relative political outsider like Cain is not ready for, much less welcome in, Washington D.C. Facts are interesting only to the degree they confirm or (to a lesser extent) refute that over-arching hypothesis about his candidacy.
(more…)

Forget “Sixty Minutes”–it took the geniuses over at Media Matters for America (MMfA) all of about 60 seconds to pounce foolishly on the Breitbart TV video of CBS’ Steve Kroft asking a question of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. MMfA immediately pronounced it a “Right-Wing” smear job.

Right-Wing’s Pelosi Smear Ignores Historic Credit Card Reform Passed Under Her Watch

And MMfA didn’t stop there. It was like watching a one-legged man off to the races, down the track of a newly discovered dastardly Right-Wing smear campaign in action:

Breitbart.tv: “60 Minutes Challenged Nancy Pelosi On Her Conflict Of Interest While Speaker And Facilitating Financial Reform While Being Involved With Credit Card Companies.” The exchange was posted on Andrew Breitbart’s Breitbart.tv website, promoting the notion that Pelosi faced a “conflict of interest” while overseeing credit card reform as Speaker:

Fox Nation: “Pelosi Visibly Shaken When ‘60 Minutes’ Confronts Her About Shady Investments.” Fox Nation suggested that the exchange demonstrated that Pelosi had “shady investments”:

From there, MMfA quickly circled the wagons around the former Speaker, desperate to show her as an innocent champion of the people against those evil credit card companies–one of which she seems to have invested with on favorable terms, despite relevant legislation making its way through the Congress she then led.

Wall Street Journal: “Congress And The White House Are Taking Aim At Controversial Credit-Card Practices.” In April 2009, The Wall Street Journal reported:

McClatchy: “Consumers … Would Get Strong New Protection” Under Credit Cardholders’ Bill Of Rights. McClatchy reported in May 2009:

(more…)

You can Google up the Media Matters link if you must. I’m leaving it out as a means of doing my part to help clean up toxic waste. The takeaway is that Media Matters is doing everything it can to push this country as far left as it can, even if it means consistently misleading its readers and members of the media it targets for message dissemination.

This year, Fox has continued to push the right-wing talking point that “America is a center-right country.” In fact, on issue after issue, polls are clear that Americans favor progressive policies.

Fox Hosted Andrew Breitbart To Claim That “We’re A Center-Right Nation.” On Fox Business, David Asman hosted right-wing blogger Andrew Breitbart to claim that the United States has a “2-1 ratio of conservatives to liberals.” From the broadcast:

BREITBART: Well, look — well, first of all, we’re a center-right nation that’s — and the media’s controlled by the people on the elite coasts. So they — the way that the minority in this country — and according to Gallup, we’re still a 2-to-1 ratio of conservatives to liberals. Yet, we have these squeakers every election cycle. They’re squeakers and it’s 50-50, it’s so close, because of the media being able to frame who the good guys and who the bad guys are. [Fox Business, America's Nightly Scoreboard, 8/24/11]

(more…)

Your money at work … attacking both truth and freedom. Why Is Media Matters a 501(c)(3)?

- New Video Suggests Media Matters Ignored Facts In Attempt to Smear Breitbart, Cover Up Pigford Fraud

This morning, Big Government posted video from an event at the National Press Club at which Faya Rose Touré (formerly Rose Sanders), an attorney from the $2.7 billion Pigford “black farmers” discrimination settlement, revealed major flaws in the claims process. Her statements support previous reporting by Big Government and Big Journalism–reporting which Media Matters ruthlessly and wrongly attacked as false.

The newly released video confirms much of what Pigford’s critics have been saying, destroying previous attempts by George Soros’s Big Labor-funded minions at Media Matters to hide the truth.

From Breitbart media’s earliest reporting on the Pigford settlement, Media Matters began recklessly hurling accusations of racism, and lying about Andrew Breitbart and others’ writing about the issue, while discounting facts now shown to be correct.

In hindsight, that appears to have been an orchestrated effort to suppress the truth behind Pigford and potentially keep the scandal from surfacing in mainstream media outlets.

It is an effort that has failed.

- Did Media Matters Collude With DOJ On Black Panther Story?

When news broke of alleged voter intimidation involving the New Black Panthers Party in the 2008 election, Media Matters for America (MMfA) launched a relentless push back against the charges, resulting in almost 8,000 MMfA site specific Google hits in which MMfA attacked virtually anyone who attempted to report on the controversy, while elevating any reporting that minimized it, or the Department of Justice’s decision to drop the case.

Meanwhile, a former MMfA Director of External Affairs, Xochitl Hinojosa, who had actually joined the Department of Justice in July of 2009 as a Public Affairs Specialist, took an active role in pushing back against the story from witin DOJ.

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