I've always wanted to launch my own grassroots political organization dedicated to protecting our Third Amendment rights, collecting donations, and then just sitting back while turning out glowing annual reports about how, thanks to our tireless efforts, no citizen was compelled to house soldiers in their place of residence during times of peace for 217 consecutive years.
While it is not quite as ingenious as my idea, it looks like the Media Research Center is launching it's own version of this sort of can't-possibly-fail initiative, as Alex Koppelman points out:
Whether they know it or not, the staff at the Media Research Center -- a conservative press watchdog -- seems to have hit upon an ingenious new strategy: make a big deal about getting involved in fights in which your enemy is nonexistent. You can't possibly lose!
Monday, the MRC announced the formation of the Free Speech Alliance, a group dedicated to fighting against the reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine, an old FCC regulation that mandated equal time for opposing viewpoints in opinion programming. The move was announced in a post on MRC's blog, Newsbusters, that was titled "The Free Speech Alliance Declares War on the 'Censorship Doctrine.'"
The MRC is also asking people to sign a petition against revival of the regulation. "In 1987, President Ronald Reagan rescinded the Fairness Doctrine and since then, talk radio has flourished. Conservatives dominate it, and liberals can't stand it. By re-instating the Fairness Doctrine, liberals would effectively silence the conservative leaders of the day ... and would essentially take control of all forms of media," the group says in an introduction on the Web page that hosts the petition. On the same page, the MRC warns, "In recent months, the groundswell for reinstatement is intensifying. In fact, a growing number of liberal leaders in Washington, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, have openly stated their intent to do so."
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According to the MRC, Fairness Alliance member organizations include Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, Concerned Women for America and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.
Of course this sort of right-wing effort to save America from the return of the Fairness Doctrine is almost guarantee to succeed without those involved having to do anything at al since, as Marin Cogan explains, there is no effort underway or desire whatsoever to actually reinstate it:
Today, the doctrine has almost no support from media-reform advocates. According to Mark Lloyd, co-author of the CAP report, "I don't think there's any movement [to restore the fairness doctrine] at all. ... We don't support it. " Craig Aaron of the media-reform group FreePress says, "[I]n reality, the fairness doctrine as it existed is never ever coming back."
Responses from the offices of most of the Democrats who have been pegged as fairness-doctrine proponents--Schumer, Dick Durbin, Dianne Feinstein, and others--have ranged from a firm denial that the issue is a priority at all to disbelief at finding themselves at the center of a manufactured controversy. "Somebody plucked this out of the clear blue sky," says the press secretary for New Mexico Senator Jeff Bingaman, a Democrat who was questioned about the issue by a conservative radio-show host a few weeks ago. "This is a completely made- up issue." Senator Durbin's press secretary says that Durbin has "no plans, no language, no nothing. He was asked in a hallway last year, he gave his personal view"--that the American people were served well under the doctrine--"and it's all been blown out of proportion." In fact, as recently as last year, the House voted by an overwhelming three-to-one margin to temporarily prohibit the FCC from imposing the dead policy; 113 Democrats voted to support the move.
Meanwhile, the president-elect himself has said in no uncertain terms that he does "not support reimposing the fairness doctrine on broadcasters." Republican paranoia is nothing more than that.
In the weeks leading up to Tuesday’s historic election, the McCain campaign and RNC led a coordinated campaign to cast the integrity of the vote into doubt. They claimed ACORN was engaging in massive voter fraud. They claimed that Obama was receiving illegal foreign contributions. They claimed that the “liberal media” was skewing the polls in favor of Democrats.
In other words, they were writing themselves an insurance policy in the event of a contested election or narrow loss. But it wasn’t even close.
As a result, the anticipated barrage of conspiracy theories and false charges never materialized. Yet not everyone could just let it go.
Election Countdown: View from the Right features Townhall.com's Amanda Carpenter, Washington Times' Brian DeBose, Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes and ex-Romney press sec. Kevin Madden (CNN, SAT, 5pm).
It seems that CNN has decided that the weekend before the election is as good a time as any to give conservative commentators an hour of free airtime to lay out their agenda. If CNN is also planning on giving liberals an hour to talk about the election, I haven’t heard anything about it.
To make it even better, it’s being hosted by David Brody of Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network:
The Brody File will be hosting a one hour political roundtable show this weekend on CNN.
It will be an Election special devoted to how conservatives view this 2008 election and the future of the GOP.
I'll be hosting the show and the roundtable will include Kevin Madden, Stephen Hayes, Amanda Carpenter and Brian Debose.
It will air this Saturday from 5pm-6pm and again on Sunday at 2pm.
I’ve criticized Brody several times before, especially for his incessant coverage of the Jeremiah Wright issue, and wondered why CNN keeps giving him airtime, which Brody brags is a great opportunity to expose people to Pat Robertson’s worldview.
But apparently CNN has decided that what the country needs to hear before they go to the polls next week are the views of a bunch of conservatives moderated by Pat Robertson’s in-house journalist.
Sarah Palin sat down the CBN’s David Brody over the weekend and Brody has now posted various excerpts on his blog.
Among other things, Palin tried to explain her infamous “I read all of them” response to Katie Couric’s question regarding which newspapers she reads by saying she was irritated that Couric wasn’t asking her about real issues and that it’s the sort of thing that only “the Washington elite and the media” care about.
She also defended the recent tone at various McCain and Palin events, saying that if she ever heard people in the audience say anything inappropriate, she “would call 'em out on that,” and likewise defended her efforts to link Barack Obama to William Ayers, saying “I would say it again.”
She then explained to Brody why she wasn’t doing press conferences or appearing on news programs to be interviewed – and it’s because they will just mock her:
Brody: Let me ask you a little bit about media scrutiny because some of the media networks...wonder why you don't go on some of the 24/7 cable networks. What is your response to that?
Palin: Well sometimes it just doesn't do any good. I mean you set yourself up just to continually be mocked, you know so sometimes that doesn't do any good, but what I have done in this campaign is in reaching out to the American voters through our rallies, through the one on ones, through the small meetings that we've had trying to get our message out, our plans for this country out there minus the filter of some of the filter of the mainstream media because, because that filter as, as we see every day when we turn on the news too often there is this, this opaqueness, there is this, this spin, this contortion of a person's words and intentions and that does more harm than good, so it's a greater challenge for me and for John McCain to try to get our message out there without that filter of I think some of the world's media.
And speaking of being mocked, it’s not just Palin that is being ridiculed, it’s also God:
Brody: There have been some shots taken at you…regarding your Christian faith…The Pentecostal stuff, the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Do you want to clear up exactly what you believe in and so that the record can be set straight a little bit? Because there have been some editorials and others taking shots at you regarding --
Palin: Yeah, and I think the saddest part of that is that faith, not just my faith, faith and God in general has been mocked through this campaign, and that breaks my heart and that is unfair for others who share a faith in God and chose to worship our Lord in whatever private manner that they deem fit and my faith has always been pretty personal. I haven't really worn it on my sleeve. I haven't been out there preaching it. I've always been of the mind that you walk the walk. You just don't have to be talking the talk about your beliefs, so just wanting maybe my life to be able to reflect my faith. So it's always been pretty personal and that was kind of a surprise in the last couple of months that people would misconstrue and spin anything that has to do with my faith or anybody else's and turn it into something to be mocked.
Finally, Palin weighed in on the need for a Federal Marriage Amendment and couched it, as she always does, in her own assertion that she not bigoted or judgmental:
Brody: On Constitutional marriage amendment, are, are you for something like that?
Palin: I am, in my own, state, I have voted along with the vast majority of Alaskans who had the opportunity to vote to amend our Constitution defining marriage as between one man and one woman. I wish on a federal level that that's where we would go because I don't support gay marriage. I'm not going to be out there judging individuals, sitting in a seat of judgment telling what they can and can't do, should and should not do, but I certainly can express my own opinion here and take actions that I believe would be best for traditional marriage and that's casting my votes and speaking up for traditional marriage that, that instrument that it's the foundation of our society is that strong family and that's based on that traditional definition of marriage, so I do support that.
So she’s not for telling anyone “what they can and can't do” … unless they are gay, in which case Palin is all for telling them they can’t get married.
Time Magazine's Massimo Calabresi just wrote an entire blog post lamenting the fact that "in the three presidential debates, McCain and Obama have completed a surprising sweep: no mention of 'God,' the 'Lord,' or even a higher power."
Calabresi concludes by declaring that this is especially "noteworthy" to "people who care about the presence of religion in politics." And whom would those people be?
"Whether intentional or not the discussion of God and the role of faith appears to have been relegated to the Saddleback forum in this general election,” says Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, who calls the development “troubling.”
Of course Perkins is troubled by it - his whole purpose in life is to equate God with the Republican Party and if the candidates aren't talking about God or the social issues the Religious Right care about, then his role in the process is diminished.
If Calabresi is going to make bold declarations regarding "people who care about the presence of religion in politics," he might want to try and find examples beyond Religious Right activists who've dedicated their entire careers to trying to mix the two in a very dangerous way.
Recently, CBN’s David Brody delivered the keynote address as the Baptist Press Collegiate Journalism Conference where he explained to his audience that journalism is a great way to spread the Gospel and win converts for Christ:
“If we can go ahead and say intelligent things on the air in a mainstream media network, then maybe they’ll listen to our Jesus talk as well,” Brody said. “And you never know how that’s subconsciously going through, but I can tell you that you definitely get witnessing opportunities to shine your light in the mainstream media world.”
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“The blog that I write is viewed by the mainstream networks, and it’s an opportunity at that point to really talk to people about what it means to be saved and grace and redemption of Jesus Christ,” he said. “I do that quite a bit on my blog. You don’t hammer them over the head with it, but at the same time you don’t want to miss opportunities either.”
Brody declared that he prays before his on-air appearances because “no journalism can be successful without divine enabling” and that that it was because of prayer that he has managed to secure interviews with newsmakers like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton (though he has still been unable to win over John McCain):
In addition to articulating a Christian worldview in their work, Christian journalists also must rely on God to sustain them and guide them, Brody said. He told how God has worked through prayer many times to land interviews and work out challenging details.
During the 2008 primary season, Brody worked for an entire year to get an interview with Hillary Clinton. The night before the scheduled interview, it was still uncertain whether Clinton would come, he said. But his producer spent an hour and a half in prayer, and Clinton showed up at the appointed time.
According to the article, Brody believes that “Christian journalists have an opportunity to change the world” and so it only makes sense that he plies his trade on behalf of Pat Robertson. As for what CNN thinks he brings to the table, that remains to be answered.
... because Mike Huckabee's new TV show starts airing this weekend:
All of us have been talking about the show I will be doing for Fox News. I wanted to bring you up to date on what is going on. The show will be called "Huckabee." I'm sure the name will make it easy for all of you to find it. "Huckabee" will air this Saturday and Sunday at 8 PM Eastern time on Fox News Channel. Please be sure to watch, and let me know what you think. Send this email on to your family and friends and invite them to watch also.
In his latest blog post, Mike Huckabee announces that his new program on Fox is scheduled to debut sometime this weekend:
My show with Fox is schedule to debut this coming weekend, but due to the debate Friday night, there is still some question as to the first airing. The show will tape on Saturday in NY. More details on the show as we know more. Hope you will all tune in when the time comes!
As Chip noted earlier, there is nothing like opening the Values Voter Summit with Lou Dobbs blasting the "liberal bias of the national media" for supposedly savaging Sarah Palin, then mocking celebrities like Matt Damon, before confessing that he's a "petty and venal person" and saying that Keith Olbermann is "hanging by a highly medicated string" ... before threatening him:
Rob Schenck is not exactly a household name – in fact, he’s barely known even to those who monitor the Religious Right, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a history of influence with member of Congress and the right-wing movement.
We’ve been writing about Schenck for awhile now, primarily in the context of his crusade to expose the fact that Barack Obama might really be a Muslim infidel … and even if he’s not, his Christian faith is “woefully deficient,” as well as his reportedly successful efforts to sneak into the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing room and anoint the chairs with oil before Samuel Alito's confirmation hearings.
While Schenck might not be a right-wing powerbroker, he is something of a name dropper as this video check-in from earlier in the week demonstrates in which he reports that he’s on his way to Utah to join Sen. Orrin Hatch for a golf tournament before meeting up with Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice.
None of this is particularly relevant or groundbreaking and we probably wouldn’t even bother mentioning it were it not for the announcement at the end that he will be attending and providing commentary for both the Democratic and Republican conventions on behalf of National Public Radio:
Schenck released a statement today confirming that he “will travel to Denver on Saturday, August 23, to observe and comment on the Democratic National Convention and surrounding events” but makes no mention of NPR.
Is Schenck really going to be providing commentary for NPR on the Democratic Convention? If so, did NPR bother to do any research on just who they were bringing on-board?
During the early 1990s … [Schenck] was arrested a dozen times during protests outside women's health clinics and abortion doctors' homes, and is renowned for outrageous publicity stunts, including dangling an aborted fetus in Bill Clinton's face outside the 1992 Democratic National Convention. With former Elim classmate Randall Terry, Schenck helped start Operation Rescue, a hardline anti-abortion group that embraced "direct action" in an effort to shut down reproductive health clinics and prevent doctors from practicing abortion.
Schenck, along with his twin brother Paul, have a long history of militant anti-abortion activism and first came to fame by targeting local doctor Barnett Slepian who was, in 1998, assassinated by an anti-abortion activist:
BOOK EXAMINES SCHENCKS' ROLE IN SLEPIAN CASE
25 October 2000
Buffalo News
Two years after Dr. Barnett A. Slepian's assassination, a new book written by a former local pro-life activist raises the question of whether the Schenck twins played an indirect role in singling out Slepian as a potential target for violence.
Author Jerry Reiter, a former member of the Town of Tonawanda church led by the Revs. Paul and Robert Schenck, never accuses the twin brothers of being involved in any murder plot or the harboring of the killer.
But in his book, "Live From the Gates of Hell," Reiter writes that his former pastors brought national Operation Rescue leaders here for protests outside the same home where Slepian later was killed.
The author questions how "an obscure physician from a midsize city like Buffalo" wound up on a national short list of targeted abortion providers.
"It was impossible to say with certainty who had put Slepian on the secret list, but it was possible that the national leadership would not have known about Slepian at all if it had not been for Rob and Paul Schenck," Reiter writes. "They were the first to choose him as a target for anti-abortion protesters."
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Reiter writes that he was shocked when Robert Schenck told him that neither brother had heard of James C. Kopp before the FBI announced him as a suspect in Slepian's murder. The Schencks and Kopp had been arrested at demonstrations in the same cities.
The creative geniuses at the American Family Association’s OneNewsNow still haven't learned their lesson. The right-wing site was roundly ridiculed last month after we reported that the site was automatically replacing every instance of the word "gay" with "homosexual" in the Associated Press stories that it syndicates. As a result, they ran numerous stories like this one about track star Tyson Gay: "Homosexual breaks Greene's US record in 100 at trials."
And they're still at it. The folks at Queerty noticed some less-than-subtle edits in today's AP story on Hallmark's decision to carry same-sex wedding cards.
The headline – Now on Hallmark Aisle: Gay Marriage Cards – was changed to this: Hallmark embraces homosexual ‘marriage.’
And the lede went from “Most states don't recognize gay marriage” to “Most states don't recognize same-sex ‘marriage.’”
The scare quotes around marriage are a great touch, but we’re surprised that OneNewsNow passed up the opportunity to replace “same-sex” with “homosexual,” as they did later in the story. This can only mean one thing – the OneNewsNow summer interns have headed back to Virginia Beach to resume their formal education at Pat Robertson University.
Last month, the Washington Times debuted a new weekly column by NewsBusters editor Matthew Sheffield. Fresh off his latest scoop that “liberals [are] more profane than conservatives,” he returned to the pages of the Times to exhort conservative activists to realize the dangers of Wikipedia and work to counter it by spending more time editing entries to better reflect their right-wing views:
Conservatives seems to be making another critical error regarding the online encyclopedia on the question of political bias. You can't entirely blame them either, considering that Wikipedia seems to have tilted leftward in a number of cases.
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The reason for this is in the editing. Anyone can alter Wikipedia's entries, in most cases without even bothering to register for an account. What this means in practical terms is that people with enough determination to force their viewpoints on Wikipedia can do so.
Sheffield urges conservative activists not to retreat to the safety of Conservapedia because, well frankly, it’s a joke, and instead head once more into the breach by dedicating hours of their lives online to editing articles until they finally gain control:
Faced with such bias, many people on the right seem willing to retreat from the Wiki Wars, resorting to legal maneuvering to block particularly noxious entries and crying foul about Wiki unfairness. Still others on the right have withdrawn to their own site, Conservapedia.
There is nothing wrong with such efforts, but they are incomplete - incomplete because they fail to recognize that liberal bias at Wikipedia isn't like bias at ABC or CBS. These institutions are dominated by liberals, true, but their systematic structure is such that the ability for people on the right to push for fairness is severely limited.
That is not the case with Wikipedia, a participatory medium in which those who are most active enjoy the most influence. It's time for the right to dust off its hands and engage in some old-fashioned activism.
CBN's David Brody wrote a post today explaining to his readers why it is that he seems to keep interviewing Barack Obama but not John McCain. Turns out it is because McCain is trying to avoid him:
First of all, The Brody File has made numerous (dozens) of requests for a one on one interview with John McCain. Those requests have been turned down due to various reasons. Usually I am told it is a scheduling issue. I have been trying for six months. The Brody File has bent over backwards to try and get John McCain to discuss issues of faith, social policy and other matters. I am told that an interview will eventually be forthcoming. I believe it will happen and that is encouraging.
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Here’s why: There is no doubt that the McCain camp realizes that religious conservatives are crucial to winning in November. The McCain staff is working hard to get out the vote. But the thinking inside the McCain camp also centers on how they need to appeal to Independents and moderates who may get turned off to some degree with excess talk about faith and social issues. There may be a reluctance to appear in part for this reason. After all, Brody File interviews end up on The 700 Club. But what’s important to remember about our audience (and I get reminded everyday in the emails I receive) is that we are read and viewed by voters from all faiths. It’s a wide spectrum with various political views.
So when you see Barack Obama sitting down with me and appearing on CBN, don’t think for a minute that we aren’t affording the same opportunity to John McCain. We are.
It seems that McCain doesn't want to ruin what is left of his reputation as a "maverick" by sitting down with Brody because he works for Pat Robertson, whom McCain labeled an "agent of intolerance" back in 2000. Of course, that didn't stop him from cozying up to Jerry Falwell, so this strategy doesn't really make a lot of sense.
Current New York Times best-selling author and proven liar Jerome Corsi has been lavished with attention by the likes of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh for his slanderous new book about Barack Obama.
But before Corsi put Obama in his crosshairs, he plied his wares in the GOP presidential primary. Fox and Limbaugh treat Corsi like he’s a legitimate political commentator, so we’ll trust they’ll have Corsi back on to discuss his groundbreaking work on McCain:
As we noted earlier this week, Focus on the Family yanked its video featuring Stuart Shepard asking supporters to beseech God with prayers so that Barack Obama’s Democratic Convention speech at Mile High Stadium in Denver would be washed out with “rains of biblical proportion.”
The video and attempt to hide it generated so much attention that Shepard was forced to apologize, kind of, in his latest video:
Despite their efforts to remove the video, someone else uploaded a copy of it to YouTube which quickly generated more than 100,000 views. But now, Focus has gone after that version as well and gotten YouTube to remove it.
But try as they might, there are still severalversions of the clip available on YouTube and now, News Blab 2008, which first posted the copy of the FOF video to YouTube, has gone ahead and posted it again on their own website, saying Focus “obviously [does] not understand Copyright ‘Fair Use’ when reporting a news story.”
On top of that, Good As You also has a copy of it posted on their website.
