Media

To say that Bryan Fischer is furious about his failed appearance on CNN earlier this week where anchor Carol Costello threw him off the program would be a bit of an understatement, as yesterday he went off on an epic rant against the "gay gestapo," saying that Costello's refusal to allow him to spew his bigotry unchallenged on national television is exactly what "the gay gestapo looks like in action." 

Fischer made multiple references to the "gay gestapo," proclaiming that "the stormtroopers of the homosexual movement" and "the Nazis in the gay gestapo" will punish anyone who says that "homosexuality is immoral, it is unnatural, and it is unhealthy - that is a simple, straightforward statement of fact" because "it is a crime of blasphemy against the god of gayness": 

We really hope that this serves as a wake-up call to any media outlets who might be thinking of giving Fischer any sort of platform from which to promote his radical agenda in the future, because this is unbridled bigotry that drives it. 

On yesterday’s edition of The Janet Mefferd Show, the host and her guest, Matt Philbin of the Media Research Center, took aim at an unlikely vector of liberal ideals: the world of sports. Reflecting on an MRC report, Mefferd said that ESPN and other sports broadcasters are “using their sports platforms really to push this liberal economic and social ideology.” Philbin asserted ESPN hires people with a “liberal pedigree” and its website includes content that is in “support of the gay agenda.”

Philbin held up liberal commentator Keith Olbermann, who previously worked at ESPN, as proof of the network’s liberal bias. He conveniently ignored the fact that Texas Republican senate candidate Craig James is also a former ESPN broadcaster and ESPN’s chairman and vice president are both Romney donors.

Mefferd: If you are a big sports nut you’re noticing also that from time to time you’ll see a little bit of political material creep in on the sidelines and that’s really the intent of a lot of people on the left, they want to politicize the games, but it’s true of sports in general, and if you follow sports TV at all, ESPN, some of those other sports shows, you’ll see this, and in fact, the Culture and Media Institute of the Media Research Center has put together a report all about this documenting the trend of commentators and sportscasters using their sports platforms to really push this liberal, economic, and social ideology. Matt Philbin is with us, managing editor of the Media Research Center. So Matt, let’s talk about sports in general and what you guys noted looking at channels like ESPN or some of these other sports shows, where do you see this liberal ideology kind of creeping in?

Philbin: Well, you can see it all over the place, and uh, I would just, uh, just a reminder, that, uh, Keith Olbermann came from ESPN. Before he went to MSNBC, he came from SportsCenter which he actually helped create, I believe, uh, so, ESPN has a long liberal ESPN and you can see that in a lot of its programming. And you can see that on its website as well. Its website has always, for years now, has featured commentary in support of the gay agenda.

Philbin later maintained that sports journalists, like other journalists, have “an antipathy toward conservatives and toward traditional Americans.” The two also took umbrage in particular to the sports network’s supposedly cozy relationship with President Obama: Mefferd was dismayed that ESPN is helping the President “show his softer side” by broadcasting his NCAA bracket selection.

Of course, President Bush, a former baseball franchise owner, previously appeared on ESPN to talk fishing and baseball.

Philbin: They’re just pulling from the same sort of pool of people as the mainstream media is, sort of, uh, habitually liberal journalists who really have an antipathy towards conservative and toward traditional Americans.

Mefferd: What about ESPN and its relationship with President Obama, because they’ve sort of fawned over him as well, haven’t they?

Philbin: Oh, They think he’s terrific.

Mefferd: Sports picks and everything.

Philbin: Yes, you know, oh, They’ve had him on to pick his, uh, brackets in the NCAA tournament. They’ve had him speak about reforming college football’s BCS system. Things that really, a President doesn’t have much interest, or shouldn’t have much interest in talking about.

Mefferd: Well, he wants to be a man of the people I guess. Show his softer side, I guess. “They’re calling me a socialist too much, quick, ESPN, let me do my March Madness picks!

Philbin: That’s right, I’m, just like them.

Mefferd: Just like them. 

The Religious Right’s go-to movie review group, Movieguide, is not happy with The Hunger Games. Movieguide, a website dedicated to offering “in-depth analyses of current movies from a biblical perspective,” is also politically active. At May Day 2010, for instance, its president Ted Baehr urged conservative Christians to take the societal “mountain of arts and entertainment” and insisted that in order to reverse the “homosexualization of the culture,” politicians who support marriage equality should be tried and punished.

In its review of The Hunger Games, Movieguide wasn’t just upset about the violence in the PG-13 film but also worried about its “homosexual and cross-dressing implications” and characters who act “effeminately.” The group seems to completely miss the movie’s messages about societal oppression and how people can become desensitized to violence, even claiming that the dictatorship at the center of the film is not rebuked “strongly enough”:

Strong but not extremely explicit or very overt humanist worldview with some Romantic elements, plus light moral elements such as protagonist protects her younger sister, some strong elements suggesting opposition to totalitarian dictatorship, and some homosexual and cross-dressing implications where men in a large city wear makeup and gaudy outfits and a minor character acts effeminately; three profanities and five obscenities; very strong violence includes children kill children with knives, swords, bows and arrows, not always shown but with blood implied, girl is burned, youngest child is killed by bow stabbing right through her, adults get into fights and destroy buildings, mutated dogs eat boy, girl beaten against wall, and girls fight and one gets slashed on cheek; no sex scenes but some kissing and kissing on cheek, plus some homosexual cross-dressing where men of large city are in makeup and gaudy outfits; no nudity; drinking and drunkenness; no smoking or drugs, but bug stings girl and she hallucinates for two days; and, dysfunctional family implied as mother has left children and father is not alive, lying, mentor for children is an alcoholic, government plays propaganda, and a dictatorship but it’s implicitly rebuked though not strongly enough.

Movieguide’s David Outten and Tom Snyder go on to maintain that the movie and book trilogy will lead to school shootings. Warning that the movie “rejects” and “neglects America’s Christian heritage,” Outten and Snyder say the film will exacerbate America’s cultural degradation. The popularity of The Hunger Games, they write, could even make “a tyrannical leader like Nero or Hitler” become “a distinct possibility for the land of the free and the home of the brave”:

Are there really millions of Americans hungry to watch a movie where children fight each other to the death? Yes, it’s a movie. The actors who “die” in the movie actually get paid and live to make more movies. Even so, the spectacle is still all about children being forced to kill one another.

Is that what we want school children discussing over lunch? Children killing each other?

Few children who buy tickets to THE HUNGER GAMES will ever kill anyone, but it only takes a few. Horror stories of school killings, including a recent event in a Cleveland, Ohio school, often reveal similarities to movies the killers enjoyed.

…

What Americans need to realize is that the values that keep the rulers of the United States from doing things like forcing children to fight each other to the death are Christian values. The values that ended the death matches in Rome were Christian values. The values that ended slavery in England were Christian values. And, the values that should be crying out against such violence in movies like THE HUNGER GAMES are Christian values.

…

America has long been on the road to rejecting the Christian, biblical values that made republican virtues, hard work, capitalist progress, and liberty a beacon of light to a dying, hurting world.

Consequently, our culture, including the mass media that creates our culture, is filled with misguided leaders who want to completely change God’s definition of marriage, make pornography available to children or at least teenagers, keep every teenager constantly supplied with boxes of condoms, and steal money from the taxpayers to re-distribute that hard-earned money to freeloaders, loons, rich union goons, and radical activists.

THE HUNGER GAMES is supposed to be mere fantasy, but it seems like part of the problem. If one of the biggest movies of the year so far rejects or neglects America’s Christian heritage, then maybe a tyrannical leader like Nero or Hitler has indeed become a distinct possibility for the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Religious Right pundits have been up in arms since GLAAD publicized many of their most vitriolic anti-gay statements as part of their Commentator Accountability Project, comparing GLAAD to the Irish Republican Army and calling the group a tool of Satan. Peter LaBarbera of Americans For Truth About Homosexuality took his pity party to The Janet Mefferd Show yesterday, where he said that conservatives have been “a little too tolerant of the media bias” and that “activist-minded homosexuals” in the media are “leading a lot of other journalists to not bring both sides.” LaBarbera also defended Ron Paul’s writings about a “federal-homosexual coverup on AIDS,” saying they are not “homophobic” and no one should use that term anyway because it is “homosexual activist rhetoric.”

“You don’t see any Christians or any pro-family advocates, at least any that I’m aware of,” Mefferd said, “organizing any sort of accountability project to keep gay activists off the air.” Actually, the radio host didn’t have to look so far as LaBarbera himself, who who repeatedly tried to get Grove City College to fire professor Warren Throckmorton for his opposition to Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill.

Mefferd: Here’s what is interesting too, because you don’t see any Christians or any pro-family advocates, at least any that I’m aware of, organizing any sort of accountability project to keep gay activists off the air. I mean, this doesn’t go both ways. I actually think the Christians and the pro-family leaders are awfully, awfully tolerant of activists and what they have to say and what kind of media coverage they get.

LaBarbera: I think we’re a little too tolerant of the media bias, you’re absolutely right. You read a typical AP story these days, you won’t find another point of view.

…

LaBarbera: Then there’s lots of openly, I would call them, activist-minded homosexuals in the newsroom and I think they are leading a lot of other journalists to not bring both sides.

Mefferd: That’s true.

LaBarbera: And you do have gay journalists, openly gay journalists, covering stories and they might not be fair because maybe they’re too close to the story because they are activist-minded homosexuals themselves.

…

Mefferd: Tell both sides and stop calling it hate because I’ve never seen a Christian or a pro-family person ever exhibit hate toward a homosexual.

LaBarbera: Yes and stop using tendentious words like ‘homophobe,’ I remember Chris Wallace on Fox ran a story on Ron Paul, he described Ron Paul’s past writings as homophobic, I think it was ‘blatantly homophobic,’ and I read them and I said, look, this is Ron Paul’s point of view, these were not fearful, this is just a point of view about homosexuality and AIDS and something I don’t recall but we can’t use homosexual activist rhetoric in telling these stories.

Over the last several years, we have seen spiritual warriors organizing public prayer rallies for the purpose of swinging elections, ending abortion, fighting marriage equality, converting Muslims, and even launching a presidential campaign ... so perhaps it was only a matter of time before a similarly orchestrated prayer effort was launched for the purpose of targeting Hollywood and the entertainment industry:

TheCRY (Hollywood) is a prayer movement that gathers believers from every denomination, ethnic background and generation for a full day of prayer, fasting and abandoned worship. Those who come to TheCRYs believe in the power of prayer, fasting and speaking the love of God over a city, nation or sphere.

Prayer leaders (aka: speakers), worship leaders (aka: musicians) and artists all come at their own expense and serve freely recognizing the day is a corporate offering to the Lord as we, with one heart, pray for Him to move in entertainment media.

The leadership of TheCRY Hollywood is made up of several seasoned leaders from the Hollywood area and beyond. These leaders will lead in prayer, worship and share inspiring sound bytes throughout the event that will direct the gathering back to prayer.

This sounds an awful lot like what Lou Engle does with The Call, which explains why Engle and various others in the spiritual warfare movement have all endorsed the effort:

TheCRY Hollywood has the blessing and endorsement of Lou Engle and TheCall but is it's own organization.

Last week, the Culture and Media Institute released a report entitled "Baptism by Fire" which complained that media outlets were covering the faith issues as they relate to the Republican primary battle in a different manner then it was covered during the Democratic primary battle in 2008:

With the 2012 elections less than a year away, the liberal media are attacking President Obama's potential opponents on a number of fronts, but especially on religion.

ABC, CBS and NBC have used religion in two ways, either painting the field of GOP primary challengers as a God Squad of religious zealots or playing up differences in their faith. Whether they're letting viewers know that "Rick Perry's gonna have to answer some questions about the people" he prays with, fretting that God "told Michele Bachmann," to enter politics, or devoting no less than 40 segments to the question of whether Mormonism is "a cult" or if "Mitt Romney is a Christian," the networks have repeatedly used faith against the GOP field.

Media preoccupation with the GOP candidates' faith is the exact opposite of how they covered (or didn't) candidate Obama's 20-year attendance at the church of a racist, anti-American pastor who subscribed to "black liberation theology," or Obama's half-Muslim heritage.

The Media Research Center's Culture and Media Institute studied network news reporting on the GOP candidates and religion from Jan. 1-Oct. 31, 2011, and compared it to coverage of the Democratic presidential primary candidates over the same period in 2007. The discrepancy, in both the amount and tone of the coverage, was striking. Network reporters, so disinterested in the beliefs of Obama and his rivals for the 2008 nomination, took every opportunity to inject religion into their coverage of the GOP field.

The obvious response to this allegation would be to point out that the media probably writes a lot more about the faith of Republican candidates because Republicans candidates regularly use their faith as part of their campaigns.

After all, Rick Perry just released two ads about his faith and organized a massive public prayer rally earlier this year, while Michele Bachmann was just on James Dobson's radio program talking about the importance of a "biblical worldview."  For his part, Newt Gingrich regularly uses his faith as part of his campaign while Mitt Romeny's Mormonism continues to be an issue to various Religious Right activists.  In fact, just last month, most of the Republican contenders gathered for a "Thanksgiving Family Forum" hosted by several Religious Right groups where they spent several hours discussing nothing but their faith.

So the reason the press writes more about the faith of Republican candidates probably has a lot to do with the fact that Republican candidates make faith a large part of their campaigns ... but admitting that would pretty much undermine the entire premise of CMI's report, which is why, when CMI's Matt Philbin was on The Janet Mefferd Program yesterday and she raised this rather obvious point, he struggled to explain that it was still a double standard because Democrats are "supposedly" just as religious as Republicans:

Mefferd: Now I wonder if that fact that you have a number of GOP hopefuls who are very, you know, open about their faith - you have Michele Bachmann, you have Rick Perry, you have Herman Cain (you have Herman Cain,) you have Mitt Romney - could it be construed that faith is more of an issue in this election because they are more candidates talking about it?

Philbin: Well, in any GOP primary battle, they do talk about it more, certainly, then Democrats do. In Iowa, they're going to evangelical conservatives and they certainly are not going to be reticent about their faith. But the problem is that the Democrats are, supposedly, just as religious, they have a need to appeal to almost the very same people, so for the networks not to cover the religion of the Democrats while they are covering the religion of the Republicans is a strange double standard.

One of CMI's recommendations in this report is that "reporters should refrain from injecting religion where it doesn't belong" ... but apparently reporters should also be writing a lot about the faith views of Democratic candidates even if those views tend not to play nearly as prominent a role in their campaigns as compared to Republicans. 

Last night, Politico broke the news that during Herman Cain’s tenure as director of the National Restaurant Association in the late 1990s, two women left the trade association after settling sexual harassment claims against Cain. Cain has since denied the charges, accusing the media of leading a “witch hunt” against him and responding to one reporter by asking, “Have you ever been accused of sexual harassment?”

Like clockwork, the Right’s major media critics are rallying to Cain’s defense.

Brent Bozell of the Media Research Council even tied the allegations against Cain to the discredited accusations that Bill Clinton raped Juanita Broaddrick when he was attorney general of Arkansas. Bozell argues that while the Cain story is a “hit piece,” the media should have given more coverage to the Broaddrick allegations:

Sadly, Herman Cain’s predictions have come true. In May he stated that he was ‘ready for the same high-tech lynching that [Clarence Thomas] went through -- for the good of this country.’ That's what Politico is doing with its unsubstantiated and thoroughly hypocritical hit piece against him. Anyone in the press that gives this story oxygen is equally hypocritical.

In the eyes of the liberal media, Herman Cain is just another uppity black American who has had the audacity to leave the liberal plantation. So they must destroy him, just as they tried destroying Clarence Thomas. The richest irony here is that the same media that refused to cover evidence of an alleged rape by a state Attorney General who became President now are running stories based on unnamed sources, about offenses that aren’t a fraction as grave. But one was a liberal Democrat, the other a conservative Republican -- hence the double standard.

Rush Limbaugh is also using the Cain case to attack Clinton. Limbaugh said that coverage of the charges, which were originally made in the 1990s, amount to a racist media trying to bring down a black conservative:

You know, I guess I shouldn't be surprised, folks. After all of these years, none of us should be surprised, but I still am. Look at how quickly what is known as the mainstream media goes for the ugliest racial stereotypes they can to attack a black conservative. You know who's laughing himself silly today is Bill Clinton. (imitating Clinton) "Yeah, I really did it. Ha-ha. They praised me and they went as far out of their way as they could. Even my old buddy Carville is out there and he's saying, 'Look what happens when you drag a dollar bill through a trailer park, you get Paula Jones.' I have everybody defending me and they're going after this black guy, and they're going after him with some of the ugliest racial stereotypes I have ever seen. That's how our side does it; we get away with it. I just love it. I love watching it."

What's next, folks? A cartoon on MSNBC showing Herman Cain with huge lips eating a watermelon? What are they gonna do next? No, Snerdley, I'm not kidding. The racial stereotypes that these people are using to go after Herman Cain, what is the one thing that it tells us? It tells us who the real racists are, yeah, but it tells us that Herman Cain is somebody. Something's going on out there. Herman Cain obviously is making some people nervous for this kind of thing to happen.

Not to be outdone, Ann Coulter said on Fox News that the left is twisting civil rights laws that were meant “to protect blacks from Democrats from the South” to help “white women from Scarsdale”:

“It’s outrageous the way liberals treat a black conservative,” she told Geraldo. “This is another high-tech lynching.

…

Nothing liberals fear more than a black conservative. Ask Allen West. Ask Michael Steele. Ask Clarence Thomas. And even what the allegations are here, I mean, just shows you how the civil-rights juggernaut has gone off the rails. The idea of civil rights laws to begin with ironically was to protect blacks from Democrats from the South who won’t protect them. Now it’s you know, white women from Scarsdale who say, ‘Oh, I don’t like that he called me honey.’” Coulter also questioned some of the details of the report and if they merited the definition of harassment.

“It’s not groping, it’s not touching or demanding sex,” Coulter said. “It’s that he had remarks that they found inappropriate. One is he had inappropriate gestures that were not overtly sexual. Well, what were they then? This isn’t dropping your pants and saying ‘kiss it.’ This is an outrageous attack on a black conservative who is doing extremely well and will be our vice-presidential candidate.”

Bill Bennett appeared on The 700 Club today to promote his new book The Book of Man. He and Pat Robertson used the time to lament the rise of women in American society and the supposed decimation of manhood. Bennett claimed that “feminism” and “gay culture” confused and blurred gender lines, and seemed to mourn the fact that women are now taking positions of authority in society once reserved only for men. Robertson cited the promotion of Virginia Rometty, who is succeeding Sam Palmisano to be CEO of IBM, and warned of a pending “matriarchy.”

Watch:

Bennett: What feminism did I think, Pat, was confuse the debate to some extent by saying those expectations we have of boys, the kinds of responsibilities that they will need to take up as men, we’re not sure we need them anymore because we’re not sure we need men any more, well we do need men.

Robertson: Well you know it’s interesting in the news today was the changing of the guard at IBM where Palmisano is changing off and a woman’s taking his position as head of this great corporation, IBM.

Bennett: That’s right and there’s just a ton of that…fine all power to the women and the girls, as long as we don’t confuse roles and the differences in genders. Boys have to wake up! We got to wake them up!

Robertson: What’s this going to do to society, if men don’t take their places as men and suddenly there’s a gap and women and we have a matriarchy. What will this do ultimately to society?

Bennett: I think it can hurt society, maybe grievously. Interestingly the feminists are not celebrating this Pat, they want men too. They might want to rail against this and they may want to talk about stereotypes of man and male domination and so on, but women want men. They want men for that strong arm, they want men for that protection, they want men for a partner in marriage and so it’s something that has got very blurred and what I try to do in this book is remind people of things that are true. And to the boys, as you very well said, the array of things offered on TV and elsewhere is very confusing, from macho stuff to gay culture to all sorts of things. What I got here is a point of view that is time tested, based in tradition that will get boys to manhood.

• PFAW: America as a 'Christian Nation' -- A Conversation with Experts on Religion, History, Law and the Constitution.

 

• Evan McMorris-Santoro @ TPM: Rick Perry Goes Full Birther: ‘Let’s See His Grades.’

 

• Tommy Christopher @ Mediaite: James O’Keefe Explains His Attack On Huffington Post’s Sam Stein.

 

• Ben Armbruster @ Think Progress Security: Gingrich Suggests Obama Is Ushering ‘Defeat’ In Iraq, Two Days After Saying He’s ‘Right’ To Withdraw.

 

• Media Matters: MSNBC's Buchanan Stands By His Bigoted Remarks About Homosexuality.

 

• Andy Birkey @ Minnesota Independent: Rick Santorum talks sodomy laws on Bradlee Dean’s radio show.