Will the Media Re-Elect Trump?

Meet the Press gives Sarah Huckabee Sanders a platform to spew lies.

It's only the early stages of the lead up to the 2020 presidential election and already much of the mainstream media appears set to repeat the mistakes of the 2016 election campaign cycle as Trump and his minions lie with abandon and find little or no challenge or push back from talking heads and anchors.  These instances of journalist malfeasance go far beyond the absurd obsession of false equivalency where somehow dishonest statements and outright lies are treated as a counterpoint to actual fact and science based positions of Democrat elected officials and candidates. A column in the Washington Post by former Republican Jennifer Rubin takes the media to task and focuses on both Trump's lies and the lies of his minions, Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Liz Cheney, one the daughter of little more nowadays than a scamvangelist and the other the daughter of the cynical liar, Dick Cheney who pushed to have America squander thousands of lives and billions and billions of dollars in the Iraq War fiasco (one would almost believe that lying is genetic). Lies and untruths need to be challenged and exposed as lies. Here are column highlights:

The New York Times gives prominent placement on its home page to list all of President Trump’s juvenile nicknames for the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates, including the racist Native American slur directed at Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). This serves no purpose other than to highlight his name-calling and reinforce his abusive conduct.

Meanwhile, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders goes on “Meet the Press” to repeatedly accuse former FBI director James B. Comey of treason. She insists everyone knows about corruption at the top levels of the Justice Department. . . . She claims “they” leaked information and lied. (Who? What information? When?) . . . Sanders falsely insists the FBI was guilty of “unprecedented obstruction and corruption.”

Trump’s press secretary is not challenged on her exaggerations, distortions and outright lies, although she in essence concedes Trump has already made up his mind, issued his verdict and is expecting the attorney general to come back with evidence.

Former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance White tells me, “I think what is crucially important to remember here is that two FBI agents can’t launch a coup against a president, even if they want to.” She explains, “Our system is set up so that independent judges must sign off on warrants and wiretaps. And given all the contact between the campaign and Russia, it would have been irresponsible for the FBI not to investigate.” She adds, “I have never heard a response from Trump to that point.”

The same Trump talking points were used by Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) without challenge on “This Week.”

This is balderdash. In no sense were either of them [Peter Strzok and Lisa Page] “in charge of launching the investigation,” and in any case, private gossip doesn’t amount to “treason.” Cheney is not challenged on her assertions. Were Trump appointees former deputy attorney general Rod J. Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher A. Wray also guilty of treason?

Aside from repeating the same factual distortions, White suggests that Cheney “needs to read the Constitution, because this can’t possible be treason.” She says, “It’s irresponsible for an elected official to engage in talk of coups and treason, knowing it’s untrue but also that there is a possibility it could incite additional attempts at violence.”

Constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe concurs. Cheney “is too smart to believe even a bit of what she’s saying. That makes her prattling away about a ‘coup’ and particularly about ‘treason’ especially pernicious and dangerous,” he says. “Only dictators threaten those who dare to question and investigate their use of power with prosecution for treason.”

The mainstream media must pick up its game. Its role is not to act as Trump’s megaphone for childish insults, which directly aids his efforts to defame presidential opponents. It’s one thing to explain that Trump uses insults and to debunk them; it’s another to reinforce and popularize them.

More important, Republicans who repeat blatantly untrue talking points should not go unchallenged. To do so merely assists Trump in his war on the truth and his efforts to smear national security officials. Republicans would like to bury an already-completed inspector general’s report that found Strzok and Page did not influence the investigation.

The courts are doing their part. House Democrats are doing their part. Now, the media need to exercise the same diligence in calling out Trump’s lies. Instead of learning from the mistakes of 2016 — when Trump was allowed to spew his racism and falsehoods at length on live TV coverage of rallies — the media risk a repeat by simply recycling his slurs and lies. Do better, please.

The Diminishing Power of Trump's Lies

Outside of Donald Trump's white supremacist and right wing Christian extremist base where the truth and objective facts have never mattered, the Mueller report has helped to do one thing, namely demonstrate just how dishonest Trump and many of his minion - e.g., Sarah Huckabee Sanders who learned to lie from a master liar, her father - have been from day one of the Trump campaign.  Indeed, the volume of lies has only increased. In my view, it is to a point where the press needs to start skipping White House press briefings and cease reporting what are deliberate lies.  Why disseminate Trump's lies for him and a bunch of lies for liars who have proven their credibility to be less than that of a sleazy carnival barker selling snake oil?  Stop amplifying the lies. Thankfully, some in the press seem to be waking up to reality and questioning their actions in broadcasting known lies and untruths. A piece in Politico looks at the growing media reluctance to accept Trump's non-stop lies.  Here are highlights:

President Donald Trump wants New York Times journalists to beg for forgiveness on their knees, and White House aides say they’re ready to accept apologies from the press corps at large. They’re in for a long wait.

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s bombshell 448-page report has unleashed a very different kind of reckoning among Washington reporters and media watchdogs.

The report detailed multiple efforts by Trump and his senior aides to mislead journalists and the public, reigniting a long-running media debate about how to cover such an unprecedented presidency — and when, if ever, to accept White House denials at face value.

The repeated public rejections of key aspects of the report in the face of sworn, on-the-record statements from his own advisers have diminished the power of a denial from the president of the United States — something that once carried weight.

“Reporters have to start assuming that this White House is going to continue to lie and manipulate the media,” Columbia Journalism Review editor-in-chief Kyle Pope said in an interview.

Pope even questioned the value of quoting or interviewing Trump’s principal spokesperson, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who admitted to Mueller’s investigators that she made unfounded claims that the ousted FBI director James Comey had lost support among rank-and-file agents. Sanders later tried to defend her statement, saying the “sentiment” was accurate without offering any proof to support her claim.

“I don’t think Sanders has any credibility whatsoever,” he said.  Sanders did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump and his staffers have responded to the Mueller report with nearly simultaneous claims of vindication and frustration. [Trump's] The president’s delight that Mueller was unable to establish that the Trump campaign conspired with Russia to interfere in the 2016 election has been quickly replaced with rage.

After initially claiming “total exoneration,” [Trump] the president now calls some of the report’s findings “total bulls--t,” and he has bashed ex-staffers who supplied detailed notes about crucial behind-the-scenes moments at the White House. Trump is particularly furious with former White House counsel Don McGahn, who told investigators that Trump repeatedly told him to oust Mueller, a directive he ignored. The president denies McGahn’s assertion, although Mueller found ample evidence to substantiate it.

“Journalists shouldn't take anything said by any president at face value, but the Mueller report reminds us that [Trump] this president in particular says so many things that are flatly untrue that we shouldn't trust anything without checking it,” said veteran New York Times White House reporter Peter Baker.

“And we didn't even need Mueller to tell us that,” Baker added. “Every White House reporter has experienced it over the last couple years. Time after time, he has denied things that were confirmed elsewhere.”

Earlier this month, for example, Trump denied reports that he had offered then-Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan a pardon had he been jailed for illegally blocking migrant from entering the country.

Privately, White House reporters said they felt vindicated by Mueller’s report, noting that it supported much of their reporting about the president over the past two years. They have no plans to apologize for their coverage.

But that hasn’t stopped Trump and his aides from calling for journalists to beg for forgiveness. . . The New York Times has not apologized to the president for its 2016 coverage.

Asked whether reporters’ approach to White House coverage should change in the aftermath of the report, Bob Woodward said, “I don’t think so. I think, by and large, people have maintained their aggressive edge.”

Woodward, in an interview, added that reporters should focus less on allegations of Russian collusion and more on what he called the “governing crisis” created by the internal chaos in the White House. Issues like Trump’s policy toward Iran are deeply consequential and warrant deeper scrutiny from the press, he said.

Trust nothing that Trump and his sycophants say and cease giving him a platform to disseminate lies.  Question everything coming out of his thoroughly dishonest regime. 

Trump Claims That the Media Covers Up Terror Attacks

Each new day one sees another - or, in some cases, a half dozen or more - new lies emanating  from the White House and its sociopath occupant.  Worse yet, the scale and dangers posed by the lies continues to escalate.  Seemingly, there is no limit to what lies Der Fuhrer, his Minister of Propaganda, Kellyanne Conway, and others like the White House Press Secretary will spew either to confuse or confound average Americans not to mention citizens of other nations. Perhaps most chilling are the lies told about the media where anything displeasing to Der Fuhrer becomes "fake news" and the media is accused of covering up news stories - that actually do not exist - that play to support Trump's paranoia and narcissism.  A piece in The Atlantic looks at this very scary trend. Here are excerpts:

The Donald Trump who arrived at MacDill Air Force Base near Tampa on Monday was subdued and dark, promising to keep the United States against “radical Islamic terror” through a strong defense, and accusing the press of willfully refusing to report on terrorist attacks.

But first, as he is wont to do, Trump let his mind drift back to a happier time, . . . . “We had a wonderful election, didn’t we?” the president said as he began his remarks. “And I saw those numbers, and you liked me, and I like you. That’s the way it worked.”

That was about as sunny as things got, although Trump has great praise for U.S. Central Command and U.S. Special Operations Command, both of which are housed at MacDill. Trump did boast about pressuring Lockheed Martin to knock nine figures off the cost of the F-35, and he took a moment to boost his nominee for a vacancy on the Supreme Court, Judge Neil Gorsuch—though, weirdly, he did not mention Gorsuch’s name.

The threat to the U.S. is great, in Trump’s telling.

“The challenges facing our nation nevertheless are very large. Very, very large,” Trump said. “We’re up against an enemy that celebrates death and totally worships destruction. You’ve seen that. ISIS is on a campaign of genocide, committing atrocities across the word. Radical Islamic terrorists are determined to strike our nation as they did on 9/11, as they did from Boston to Orlando to San Bernardino and all across Europe.”

He continued: “You’ve seen what happened in Paris and Nice. All over Europe, it’s happening. It’s gotten to a point where it’s not even being reported. And in may cases, the very, very dishonest press doesn’t want to report it. They have their reasons, and you understand that.”

The last few sentences there are staggering: Trump’s assertion that there are attacks that the press is not reporting, and furthermore is not reporting for political reasons. In fact, the media love reporting on terrorism stories, following the old news adage that “if it bleeds, it leads.”

But never mind that: Just what attacks is Trump claiming have not been covered? He did not name any, and a request to the White House for a list was not returned. It’s a safe bet there are not any. Trump might prefer more frequent, or more salacious, coverage of European attacks, but that’s a different complaint.

Then there is the accusation that the press is intentionally covering up, for some nefarious reason that his audience will understand but need not go stated, a classic example of dogwhistle politics. That’s in keeping with his longstanding assault on the press, though when combined with the implication that they are doing so to undermine the nation’s security, it takes on an even darker shade. 

Once again, the nation is left to ask whether Trump’s wild deviation from reality is intentionally misleading or simply sloppy and careless. The natural comparison is to comments last week by senior Trump aide Kellyanne Conway, who claimed that Trump’s immigration executive order would have prevented the “Bowling Green massacre” that was not covered. There was, of course, no such massacre, . . . 

The Media Needs to Stop Normalizing Trump

Some had predicted that the feckless mainstream media ("MSM") would seek to boost Donald Trump and deflate Hillary Clinton because of a desire that the presidential race be a "horse race" with more suspense and increased viewing and support for media coverage.  Stated another way, the MSM is all about money and is only too happy to help foist a disaster on the country if it lines its pockets with cash in the process.  A piece in Salon looks at the problem of the MSM's normalization of Trump and willingness to over look his endless stream of lies and policy free bloviating.  Here are article excerpts:

It’s only May, which means we have about five months before the presidential election. There are conventions to be had, running mates to be selected, debates to be overhyped, and an obscene amount of money to be spent on an equally obscene quantity of advertising. The general election campaign hasn’t even really begun yet, on account of it being so damn early in the cycle still. Hell, we don’t even have official nominees yet for either major party.

And yet, we find ourselves in a peculiar situation. Specifically, the presumptive nominee for one of the major parties has already given a soft endorsement to a long-since discredited theory that his likely opponent is complicit in the covered-up murder of a political associate. When you strip all the names from this situation and view it through the lens of established political norms, that looks crazy and desperate.

[W]e’re talking about one candidate backhandedly making the allegation that his opponent was an accessory to murder, and the press reaction is “boy, that Trump sure can drive headlines – better watch out, Hillary!”

This is precisely what I was talking about I wrote earlier this month about the danger in normalizing Trump. He wants all the craziness to be taken in stride, and he’s succeeding. He’s being abetted in this by a Republican Party establishment that is happy to bite its tongue so long as they get their tax cuts and conservative judicial nominations. But that’s no reason for the press to buy into Trump’s game and treat his crazy mudslinging as a mere campaign tactic rather than a disqualifying character flaw.

And it’s only going to get worse as the election cycle wears on. Trump met a few weeks ago with Ed Klein, an infamous source of salacious and discredited Hillary Clinton bullshit. Just this week, Trump promoted Klein’s latest book, which is full of insane nonsense. None of this is normal, so stop treating it like it is.

This is no longer Trump on reality TV.  We are talking about the future of the country.  Yet the MSM is again proving itself as useless as it did during the Iraq War buildup that was all based on lies that the MSM could have exposed had it been responsible and not acting as a platform for liars.

Why Doesn't Anyone Care That Donald Trump is a Serial Liar?

I criticize the main stream media frequently and with good cause.  In general, true investigative journalism is largely a dead art.  Worse yet, the media cares more about sensation and controversy than it does about the truth or educating the public about the dishonesty of some public figures. Hence, we see foul hate group leaders like Tony Perkins routinely given a platform with little or no challenge to his false statements or reference to his KKK affiliations or documented lies.  The phenomenon has now reached an apex with Donald Trump's candidacy where three-quarters of what Trump says is untrue, yet the media simply gives him a pass and, in facts, often abets his lies.  A column in Salon looks at this dangerous development.  Here are highlights:

Donald Trump is a serial liar. Okay, to be a bit less Trumpian about it, he has trouble with the truth. If you look at Politifact, the Pulitzer Prize-winning site that examines candidates’ pronouncements for accuracy, 76 percent of Trump’s statements are rated either “mostly false,” “false,” or “pants on fire,” which is to say off-the-charts false. By comparison, Hillary Clinton’s total is 29 percent.

This time around, though, neither the media nor the public — least of all his supporters — seem to care. Which leads to the inescapable conclusion that these days, as far as our political discourse goes, truth, logic, reason and consistency don’t seem to count for very much.

The question is why.

One simple explanation is that Trump has changed the rules. He is not a politician but a provocateur, and he isn’t held to the same standards as Clinton or Bernie Sanders or even Cruz, all of whom actually have policies. For Trump, policies are beside the point.… Truth, logic, reason and consistency don’t seem to count for very much. The question is why.

Another explanation is that long before Trump, social scientists observed that truth matters less to people than reinforcement, and that most of us have the ability to reformulate misstatements into truth so long as they conform to our own biases. We believe what we believe, and we are not changing even in the face of opposing facts (without this capacity for self-deception there would be no Fox News).

There is, however, another and even more terrifying explanation as to why the truth doesn’t seem to matter. It has less to do with Trump or our own proclivities to reshape reality than it has to do with infotainment — with the idea that a lot of information isn’t primarily about education or elevation, where truth matters, but entertainment, where it doesn’t. You might call it “the Winchell Effect.”

Walter Winchell, about whom I wrote a 1994 biography, was a hugely popular New York-based gossip columnist for the Hearst newspaper chain and an equally popular radio personality, although saying that is a little like saying that Michael Jordan was a basketball player. Winchell was the gossip columnist, with an estimated daily audience of 50 million. He practically invented the form, and the form was a long chain of snippets — rumor, prediction, innuendo — racing down the page, separated by ellipses. One can only assume this was because readers seemed to relish the excitement of the “news” more than they desired its accuracy. Or, to put it another way, gossip was entertainment, not information. Thus the Winchell Effect.

The Winchell Effect is alive and well in today’s politics in two respects. First, candidates can get away with saying pretty much anything they want without being held accountable so long as what they say is entertaining and so long as they keep the comments coming. Trump has been the major beneficiary of this disinclination by the MSM to examine statements. The blast of his utterances always supersedes their substance. And the MSM plays along.

And that is the second way in which the Winchell Effect changes our politics. If candidates are not accountable, neither are the political media. Like Winchell, they are not only besotted with strategies, polls, predictions, and — in the case of a few cable networks — wild, unverifiable charges, they are, like Winchell, seldom challenged when they get it all wrong.

Since they won’t call one another out, no one calls them out. In effect, they are implicated in the Winchell Effect as much as Trump is, which may be one reason why they don’t challenge him. Neither Trump nor the press has to be right. They just have to keep ginning up the excitement.

What this means is that our politics is no longer politics in the traditional sense of policy and governance. It is, as most of us realize, a show, a game, an ongoing reality TV saga.
With their mutual lack of interest in the truth, Trump and the MSM deserve one another — a synergy of the showman and the gossip columnists. But do we deserve them? Only if we allow our politics to become a way of amusing ourselves rather than the way to select a leader.

Meanwhile, Trump and the MSM will keep the misinformation coming, on the sadly correct assumption that many of us don’t really care about facts so long as we are being titillated.

The Growing Hysteria and Dangerousness of the Far Right

Candidly, if I were a Muslim American, I would be very frightened by the current atmosphere on the right of the political spectrum which is depicting every Muslim as a would be terrorist.  Perhaps I am especially sensitive to demonization since gays have long been called out as deviants and a danger by the "godly folk" and I know what it is to be fearful of my safety on occasion simply because of who I am.   Most often this fear was triggered by "godly folk," those who see themselves as "real Americans," and on one occasion, the Norfolk Police.  How long will it be until some self-appointed Christian vigilante lets loose violence on Muslims or others who they deem to not be "real Americans"?  A piece in Salon looks at this increasingly dangerous atmosphere.  Here are excerpts:.  

The escalating right-wing hyperbole is not just irresponsible but dangerous, as it promotes undue fears and offers more confrontations and violence as a solution, such as calls for all Americans to carry guns. What’s forgotten in that line of thinking is that many people won’t, or don’t want to use guns.

The GOP presidential candidates, in contrast, relish the thought of war with ISIS. One after another, at Thursday’s Republican Jewish Coalition summit in Washington, they declared the nation was “in a time of war” (Ted Cruz), facing “terrorist attack” (Chris Christie), “they’re already here” (Lindsey Graham) and the feds should spy on anyone, anywhere, anytime . . . .

There’s “fear in the air,” the Times reported Friday, echoing a national poll released Thursday finding 83 percent of Americans expect a major terrorist attack. Meanwhile, overseas, the U.S. is deepening the military response to ISIS following the Paris attacks, and NATO allies that had limited their involvement are now sending troops, planes and ships.

In other words, contrary to what the GOP presidential candidates would have the public believe, the U.S. is very much at war in Iraq and Syria. Meanwhile, they and their propagandist allies are opposed to removing weapons of war from individuals at home.

Americans who don’t believe the answer to violence is to carry a gun anytime they step outside find themselves in an escalating climate of fear-mongering, panic-driven gun sales and an urge by many to strike real or imagined foes.

What is lacking are people who can put these latest events and trends into perspective, historic contexts or offer wise responses—although the New York Times ran its first front-page editorial in decades on Saturday morning, urging Congress to ban militarized weapons and calling the recent domestic gun-caused slaughter terrorism. Most of the TV news, however, is reading a different script, hyping the FBI announcement that it was investigating the San Bernardino shootings as a terrorist incident.

The White House has ignored most of the noise coming from Congress and the 2016 campaign trail, making reasonable remarks that are quickly overshadowed by hyped headlines. The lack of a stronger, clearer and wiser countervailing presence from Obama has had serious consequences, however. It’s created a void filled by an onslaught of irresponsible GOP hyperbole and right-wing propaganda. Ironically, Obama is allowing the end of his presidency to be colonized by exaggerated fears and darkness, though he was elected by a majority of Americans seeking a far more hopeful future.

The War for LGBT Equality is Far From Over

To hear some pundits talk, one would think that the war for LGBT equality is over and, if the U.S. Supreme Court makes same sex marriage a nationwide right come June, we should all be sitting back luxuriating in our new found freedoms.  This view conveniently ignores the reality that in 29 states gays can be summarily fired based on the sexual orientation and/or gender expression.  Worse yet, in states like Virginia there are no public accommodation protections for LGBT citizens.  The discrimination sought to be made legal under Indiana's "license to discriminate law" is already legal in Virginia.  Add to this reality the Christofascists' rising hysteria as they lose the so-called culture wars and their demands for special rights that far too many Republicans seem only too happy to grant.  In a piece in Huffington Post, focus is given to Michelangelo Signorile new book that looks at the future of the struggle for LGBT equality.  Here are highlights:

The queer rights movement has come a long way over the past 50 years and has seen an especially mind-blowing array of triumphs secured in just the last five years. From marriage equality sweeping much of the United States to the transgender community gaining traction, momentum and unprecedented visibility, today the dream of equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people is closer to becoming a reality than ever before.

But before you break out the champagne and start drafting an invite list for a celebratory party, there's some bad news: we've still got a long way to go before queer people attain all of the rights that non-queer people have. And, what's more, we have a lot more work left to do in terms of changing the way that non-queer people think about the lives and experiences of queer people on the most fundamental of levels.

I recently chatted with my colleague Mike [Signorile] about his new book including everything from how "the closet" has changed over the years to his vision for our future and how we can -- hopefully -- one day achieve victory.

Noah Michelson: Do you remember where you were and what you were doing when you got the idea for the book? Is there a specific moment you can point to when you thought "OK, it's time to look into this more closely"?
Michelangelo Signorile: The book came together over a period of several years. It actually crystalized as an idea as far back as 2009, when facts on the ground, in terms of how people experienced homophobia and transphobia, were never quite matching the celebrations in the media of the victories, which then were still baby steps compared to now.

The first chapter is entitled "Victory Blindness." What exactly does that mean and how is it affecting the movement?
Victory blindness is something we all succumb to at times. It's a term I use to describe the phenomenon in which we focus on the wins, so starved for validation, that we allow them to blind us to the continued bigotry we face. We become enthralled, intoxicated -- spellbound by even a little bit. The effect is that it obscures our reality -- literally our vision -- and it makes us lose our gumption, not wanting to rock the boat, fearful that we'll lose what we've gained and not get what little bit we think we need, when in fact we need a lot and we should be strong and confident knowing our allies will stay with us. . . . . We were and are still hated and despised by many -- despite having so many allies now -- and we have no rights in most states nor federal protections. So this is victory blindness, and it can have the terrible effect of actually allowing the backlash to grow because it telegraphs that we will back down. 

The part of the second chapter, entitled "We Don't Serve Fags Here," that intrigued me the most is your discussion of the closet and how, even in 2015, it is such an enduring and dangerous phenomenon. How has the closet changed since you began writing about it and what do you think needs to happen for it to vanish altogether -- or is that even possible?
So many people clearly have come out in the past 25 years, since I wrote my first book, Queer in America, and people are coming out at much younger ages. . . . . But we still see the closet strictly enforced among public figures. We still see the media not going there in discussing public figures -- even those in the glass closet -- sending the message that it's still shameful. We still see Hollywood enforcing the closet. And, in my research for It's Not Over, I found that even as things had changed, many many more average LGB people than we think are still deeply closeted, living tormented lives, married to people of the opposite gender when they're not bi, just to pass as straight, particularly in conservative parts of country.

We have to get to a place where people do not go in the closet -- where they're raised as queer, and that will only happen when we revolutionize education and teach about sexual orientation and gender identity in school, k-12. It's just starting in California. We need to take it to all 50 states

[F]rom the number of reported hate-based attacks in the United States increasing to this frightening new crop of "religious freedom" bills aimed at allowing discrimination against queer people. Some have written off this ramping up of anti-queer sentiment as the last gasp of a soon defeated right-wing coalition. How do you feel about that assertion and what's the danger in framing these events in this way?
You know, everything is the last gasp of something -- until people get their breath again. We thought we saw the last gasp of racism 50 years ago. Then we thought we saw it over and over again, including when President Obama was elected, right? We were "post-racial" and all this. Obviously it wasn't true. The enemies of LGBT equality, similarly, as they have done with women, will keep working at finding ways to try to thwart us. 

Tell me about "covering." What is it and why can it be harmful?

Covering is when members of marginalized groups attain certain rights and then think that the best strategy is to try to fit in -- not to focus on difference. He writes about it from the perspective of race, as an Asian American, as well as from the perspective of being gay. For queer people, covering is when we tone down or assimilate in, or try to show cultural tastes that are more in line with the mainstream, and downplay our own culture. And certainly, refraining from showing same-sex affection or sexuality is covering. 

Why do you think it's important for the media to stop trying to stay neutral on these issues? What do you say to those who claim that abandoning that neutrality means stories can't be accurate or fair?
This really is a two-pronged question -- one about journalism and one about bigotry. Let's start with journalism. I've long maintained that "objectivity" and "neutrality" are a bit silly to strive for because it's really impossible, particularly when you as the journalist are a member of a marginalized group and other people have made up the rules of "objectivity."

[G]getting to the second part of the question, the homophobia, and transphobia, issue, the bigotry -- the opposing view is now completely debunked when it comes to a scientific point of view. There are no reputable scientists, medical associations, sexologists, etc., who see homosexuality, bisexuality or transgender identity as harmful -- and so all the media is left with to show an opposing view is bigotry, most often from religious conservatives. And they just do not have a place anymore -- and perhaps never should have -- in public policy debate. The media no longer bring white supremacists on to debate racial issues. It's time they stop bringing on anti-gay hate groups too.

I think Michelangelo is on to something.  Read the rest of the piece or, better yet, get his new book,  It's Not Over, here.

The GOP is Still Crazy

I find it maddening how much of the media either merely parrots the talking points of GOP apologists or is all to ready to promote the myth that there is a real reform movement within the Republican Party.  All one need do is look at the actions of GOP legislators and their flat earth proposals to realize that reform is a myth being peddled to dupe the gullible just as Chimperator George Bush campaigned on the dubious tag line of "compassionate conservatism" in 2000.  The Virginia House of Delagates is but one example of how far reality is from the myth of moderation or reform.  A piece in Salon looks at the deep seated - and perhaps increasing - insanity of the Republican party.  Here are excerpts:

It is a cardinal rule of horserace-style political journalism in the U.S. that no two elections can have the same narrative. That’s not to say certain tropes aren’t repeated ad nauseam. But it is to say that that the press corps’ desire to mitigate the unavoidable, soul-crushing monotony of a campaign often causes it to flip the script from one election to the next, despite politics in the real world changing much more slowly. If you look at the way the media’s covered the ongoing “invisible primary” to be the GOP’s next presidential nominee, you’ll see the narrative for 2016 is being pre-written already.

[B]ecause the story after 2012 focused on the Tea Party pulling Mitt Romney too far to the right, the narrative for 2016 will be about the Republican “establishment” throwing its weight around to nominate an ostensibly more moderate, electable candidate. The bland, cautious, managerial Republican Party of yesteryear is back! The crusading, militant and extremist Tea Party is over!
Except, well, it isn’t.

It’s not over in the U.S. Congress, where a shutdown-in-miniature is unfolding between the White House and the Tea Party wing of the GOP. It’s not over in Wisconsin, where a Tea Party-darling governor is slashing the state university system’s funding, changing its mission statement (while lying about it), and fighting tooth and nail to humiliate people on government benefits. It’s not over in North Carolina, where a billionaire-backed Tea Party government is also going after the public university system in its effort to turn the state into Kansas. And it’s not over in South Carolina, where one state representative hopes to mainline National Rifle Association propaganda to a generation of public school students.

Let’s stick with the South Carolina example for a moment, because I think it tells us much about the contemporary GOP’s character. According to Kimberly Johnson of Al Jazeera America, the recent decision on the part of PTR Industries, a gun manufacturer, to move its headquarters from Connecticut to South Carolina has inspired Republican state Rep. Alan Clemmons to propose what he’s calling the “Second Amendment Education Act.” As the name implies, the bill would “provide all public elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools” with “instruction in the Second Amendment” for no fewer than “three consecutive weeks in one grading period in each academic year.” The curriculum would be written by the NRA, of course.

“It’s a big handshake,” is how PTR Industries purchasing manager Bob Grabowski described Clemmons’ bill. “It’s a big ‘hello’.” He recounted how his company was treated by South Carolina locals, who are desperate for good-paying jobs in a state where the unemployment rate remains significantly higher than the national average. He and his co-workers were made to feel, he said, like “rock stars.”

The communications director for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, Ladd Everitt, told Al Jazeera that the possibility of the NRA writing a three-week-long curriculum is “a nightmare,” because the organization “endorses an insurrectionist interpretation of the Second Amendment.” As if there wasn’t enough of this in South Carolina already, an NRA-penned review of American history would leave millions of children under the impression that the Framers saw the Constitution much the same as the men behind the Confederate States of America.

[T]he Republican Party is still being driven by the Tea Party. And the Tea Party remains what it’s always been: A collection of dedicated, unsentimental and ambitious ideologues who don’t see themselves as responsible, competent managers, but as conservative crusaders on a transformative, holy mission.

By Givng A Platform to Iraq War Boosters, Is the Press Trying Hide Its Own Blame?

Like a rock but dumber

I am a strong advocate of a free and independent press/media which serves the role of informing the public, keeping the government and elected officials honest, and independently investigating policies and public statements.  It is the role that the Founding Fathers envision for the media.  Sadly, more and more often we see the media merely parroting statements of politicians and demagogues like Tony Perkins and others without ever asking hard questions or challenging statements that can easily be shown to be either untrue or highly questionable.  It was this failure of the press/media that, in my view, allowed the American people to be suckered by the lies of Bush/Cheney and their sycophants.  Now, with Iraq all too predictably falling into chaos, many press/media outlets are providing platforms to the very architects of the Iraq War disaster. It makes me want to scream at the television and yell WTF is wrong with you.  A piece in Huffington Post suggests that what's happening now is the media's attempt to throw a smoke screen around its own culpability in the Iraq disaster.  Here are column highlights:

The bad bout of 2003 déjà vu continued on Sunday when former Vice President Dick Cheney appeared on ABC's This Week to lecture President Obama about how his policies had allegedly made a mess out of Iraq, as violence there continues to grip the country and threatens to completely destabilize the nation.

Cheney's appearance continues a maddening, week-long stroll down Baghdad memory lane as media outlets rush to get commentary from the people who, 11 years ago, got everything wrong about the Iraq War: The stunning cost, the causalities, the war planning, the intelligence, the sectarian violence.
All of it.

"The neoconservative program cost the United States several trillion dollars and thousands dead and wounded American soldiers, and it sowed carnage and chaos in Iraq and elsewhere," writes Harvard University professor Stephen Walt in Foreign Policy.

The head-scratching question continues to be, why? Why are the discredited "experts" who botched Iraq last time now being a given a platform to comment on the military crisis they helped create? And why are these rejected mouthpieces being given a chance to bash President Obama, someone who opposed the failed war in the first place? 

Why the strange rehabilitation? Here's a hint: People might be forgetting the deep bond that ran between the compliant Beltway media in 2003 and the very same failed Iraq War architects and partisan boosters the press is now turning to for advice. In other words, the Beltway press was part of the Iraq problem then. (They sold us a disastrous war.) So it's not that surprising the press is part of the problem now.

Fact: You can't talk about the Iraq War without addressing the central role the U.S. news media played during the run-up to the invasion, and the fevered and futile hunt for weapons of mass destruction. And that's why the current move to treat failed war sponsors as knowledgeable experts might also be seen as an effort by some journalists to put behind them the massive media missteps that led to the war.

Meaning, the reason the press doesn't think it's strange having the people who got everything wrong about the war on TV today is because so much of the Beltway press got the same things wrong 11 years ago.

[I]t's important to never forget just how much government stenography went on prior to the war in D.C. newsrooms, and just how little daylight existed between the Bush administration and media elites in their ironclad agreement about the need to invade Iraq. Only then does the continued symmetry now on display begin to make sense. 

The current rehabilitation tour brings back painful media memories. Like the fact that during the first two weeks of February 2003, when the debate about the war should have been raging on the public airwaves, of 393 people interviewed on-camera for network news reports about the war just 17 percent expressed skepticism about the looming invasion, according to a FAIR survey.

Of the 414 Iraq stories broadcast on NBC, ABC, and CBS from September 2002 until February 2003, almost all the stories could be traced back to sources from the White House, the Pentagon, or the State Department, according to figures from media analyst Andrew Tyndall. Only 34 stories, or eight percent, were of independent origin.

Investigative journalism has become an unknown concept for many in the media who are either too lazy or too stupid (too many news anchors are selected for their looks, not whether they can think independently) and the nation has paid a horrific price for the media's failure to expose lying politicians and demagogues.  Bush/Cheney is in the running for one of the worse presidential administrations in 200+ years.  Why does anyone listen to Cheney whatsoever.  The man ought to be on trial for war crimes. 

Pro-LGBT Religious Voices Absent In Mainstream Media

I often complain about the laziness of much of the mainstream media and its willingness to give a platform to the leaders of registered hate groups such as FRC's Tony Perkins who besides being vitriolically anti-gay has white supremacist associations that somehow never get mentioned by anchors and commentators who typically allow Perkins and those of his ilk to spew anti-LGBT lies unchallenged.  A new study from GLAAD and the University of Missoui Center on Religion & the Professions confirms that I'm not imagining the bias and confirms the slanted coverage of religious views on LGBT individuals and our legal rights.  Pro-LGBT religious views are almost completely absent from news coverage while the anti-LGBT coverage is far over represented in comparison to the percentages various denominations bear to the total population.  Here are highlights from Think Progress on the mainstream media's flawed coverage:

A new study from GLAAD and the University of Missoui Center on Religion & the Professions finds that pro-LGBT people of faith are the “Missing Voices” — severely underrepresented in mainstream media. In fact, three out of four religious messages about LGBT issues over the past three years have come from people who identify with anti-gay faith traditions. Evangelical Christians and Roman Catholics were by far the most represented in the media, with mostly negative messages to share.  .   .  

The study also notes that the proportion of these messages does not reflect the U.S. population. Evangelicals appear more often (34 percent) than their presence in the population should warrant .  .  .  .  and the frequency of anti-LGBT Catholic messages (over 50 percent) conflicts with the strong LGBT support among American Catholics (over 71 percent).

Perhaps the most troubling result of the study was the discovery that the media constructs a conflict between religion and the LGBT community. Those hostile to LGBT people were often identified with their religious identity, while those who were supportive or neutral were not.  ThinkProgress similarly documented that progressive voices of faith were completely absent from the Sunday morning political shows’ conversations about religion.

More Hate Merchant Shrieking Over Being Held Accountable

I noted yesterday how GLAAD has launched an initiative to educate the mainstream media about the lies, faux experts and anti-gay animus of Christianist "pundits" who are all too often allowed to spill anti-gay bigotry across the airwaves without being challenged. The reaction across Christianist universe over the prospect of being held accountable and exposed as dishonest, deliberate liars has been sharp with gallons of flying spittle and verbal diarrhea that only serves to confirm why these individuals - and the hate group organizations many represent - are bigots and unworthy of being given any kind of media platform. Another example of this anti-gay animus comes from American Family Association talk show host Kevin McCullough. Right Wing Watch has details which are highlighted below:

After calling GLAAD a tool of the Devil, talk show host Kevin McCullough defended previous statements, listed by GLAAD’s Commentator Accountability Project, that gay couples “despise” marriage and are “seeking to destroy” it. McCullough said that they are indeed trying to “destroy” marriage, but took issue with GLAAD’s use of the term “gay,” because according to McCullough, “I don’t believe that you can be gay.” He said that being gay is a choice and warned that “homosexual behaviors can end up killing you” because “homosexual behaviors when acted upon in the teenage years greatly increases the likelihood if you’re male that you will try to commit suicide.” McCullough is correct in arguing that gay youth do have a higher risk of suicide, but seems to ignore the fact that anti-gay prejudice and bias in society plays a large role in why there is the higher suicide rate.

MCCULLOUGH: . . . They don’t like the fact that men and women complete one another. They don’t like the fact that that union is so perfect that it sometimes brings children out of it, they don’t like the fact that that is the ability of what a natural marriage relationship brings. So I said they “despise,” they do, “they don’t like normal marriage and they’re seeking to destroy it,” yeah, “by redefining it,” that’s what they are seeking to do, they are seeking to undo what it’s always been. Yeah, I said that, I still believe it. It’s still true.

I don’t believe that you can be gay. I believe that people engage in homosexual behavior, and I believe that homosexual behaviors can end up killing you, and I think that homosexual behaviors when acted upon in the teenage years greatly increases the likelihood if you’re male that you will try to commit suicide. But that’s what the data says, that’s not what the Kevin McCullough says, that’s what the studies show, that’s what the secular humanist studies indicate about homosexual behavior. . . . I don’t believe that people are gay, I think they behave in homosexual ways but I don’t buy that ‘gay’ is a state of being, I think it’s a series of choices.

As noted many times before, it is crucial to the Christianist agenda that sexual orientation be a "choice" because otherwise there opposition to legal rights hits a brick wall and is exposed as nothing but religious based hate and extremism. Hence why "ex-gay" ministries continue to be a top propaganda priority.

Why Does MSNBC Invite Anti-Gay Liars on TV to Represent Christians?

I have long lamented the laziness and irresponsibility of the main stream media ("MSM") that results in anti-gay bigots and Christianists who lack any legitimate credentials being given platforms as either representatives of everyday Christians and/or "experts" on social issues, especially those pertaining to homosexuality. Would the MSM invite the Imperial Wizard of the Klux Klux Klan on to talk about the threat posed by blacks who seek civil equality? Or neo-Nazi leaders to talk about Jewish Americans? I think not, yet we see the precise equivalent time and time again when extreme Christianists and hate group leaders are brought on to TV news programs and allowed to spew lies and untruths while never being challenged. It's one thing when this travesty occurs on Fox News. It's something far different when the offending networks are CNN, MSNBC and the three main networks. A group called Faithful America has shouted out "enough is enough" and launched a petition addressed to MSNBC demanding that hate group leader and white supremacist lover Tony Perkins cease being provided a platform by MSNBC. Sign the petition here (I've already signed it). Here are highlights from the Faith in Public Life that looks at what lead to the petition effort againstMSNBC:

MSNBC is in the news this week for announcing that they may finally be ending their contract with contributor Pat Buchanan, who has come under fire in the last month (deservedly) for publishing another book with incendiary racist commentary. Led by Color of Change and CREDO Action, hundreds of thousands of people pressured MSNBC to fire Buchanan. This latest update suggests MSNBC finally listened to their concerns.

Unfortunately, Buchanan wasn’t the MSNBC’s only problematic regular contributor. As Media Matters has tracked, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins has appeared on the network 18 times in the past year alone–almost as often as he’s gone on Fox News.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has rightfully declared Family Research Council a hate group because of their consistent, unwavering commitment to spreading hateful lies about the LGBT community.

Speaking on MSNBC, Perkins has falsely claimed that “the research is overwhelming that homosexuality poses a danger to children,” and another FRC official has called for criminalizing homosexuality.

Yet instead of accurately identifying FRC as a untrustworthy hate group, MSNBC has continued to treat its officials as legitimate political commentators, most recently inviting Perkins on air just yesterday twice to discuss how evangelical Christians view the Republican presidential candidates.

In response, Faithful America has launched a petition calling on MSNBC to “stop inviting Family Research Council spokespeople on the air to represent the views of Christians and other people of faith.”

Just as racist rhetoric has no place in the media, anti-gay liars should not be baptized as credible Christian messengers, particularly for a network built on progressive viewers. MSNBC should continue its move to improve its contributor rolls by keeping FRC off its shows.

Why Do News Networks Promote Anti-Gay Hate Groups?

Despite being registered as an anti-gay hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a number of news networks - and newspapers like the Washington Post - have continued to regularly provide a platform for FRC spokesmen to disseminate their hate based and fraudulent anti-gay venom. It's not as if legitimate voices of religious people aren't available. The fact that Tony Perkins (who has past ties to white supremacy groups) in particular receives fawning interviews is particularly disgusting. Would these same networks provide similar venues for the Imperial Wizard of the KKK or spokesmen of Neo-Nazi groups that deny the Holocaust and idolize Hitler? I think not. Here are some highlights from Equality Matters:

In November of 2010, the Southern Poverty Law Center listed the Family Research Council as an anti-gay hate group due to its “propagation of known falsehoods” about the LGBT community. Since being listed, however, FRC spokespersons have been invited 52 times to discuss issues ranging from the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” to the 2012 presidential campaign. Despite FRC’s long history of producing anti-gay propaganda, every major news network has invited the group on national television while failing to acknowledge its hate group designation.

SPLC: FRC’s “Specialty Is Defaming Gays And Lesbians.” From an October 7 SPLC report:

The Family Research Council (FRC) bills itself as “the leading voice for the family in our nation’s halls of power,” but its real specialty is defaming gays and lesbians. The FRC often makes false claims about the LGBT community based on discredited research and junk science. The intention is to denigrate LGBT people in its battles against same-sex marriage, hate crimes laws and anti-bullying programs. To make the case that the LGBT community is a threat to American society, the FRC employs a number of “policy experts” whose “research” has allowed the FRC to be extremely active politically in shaping public debate. [...]

The FRC also strongly promotes the “ex-gay” movement as a way to combat LGBT civil rights measures, though professional organizations have repeatedly called so-called “reparative therapy” (which seeks to turn gays and lesbians into heterosexuals) into question and issued statements that don’t support it. [...]

Part of the FRC’s recent strategy is to pound home the false claim that gays and lesbians are more likely to sexually abuse children. This is false.

FRC President Tony Perkins Made 32 Television Appearances Since Being Labeled A Hate Group Leader. According to an Equality Matters analysis*, FRC president Tony Perkins has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News a total of 34 times in twelve months after being his organization was labeled as a hate group.

Are these news networks incredibly lazy, ignorant, bigoted against gays, or what? It drives me crazy that when Perkins and others appear they (1) are NEVER asked hard questions and (2) their nasty past and/or numerous lies are never exposed. Joe Jervis summed it up well in regard to Perkins:

I'd also like to know why every single network ignores the scandal that sank Perkins' political career, namely his exposure as having paid KKK Grand Wizard David Duke a whopping $82,500 for access to his mailing list of racists. There's also this: "On May 17th, 2001, Perkins gave a speech to the Louisiana chapter of the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), a white supremacist group that has described black people as a 'retrograde species of humanity.'"

PRI Host Apologizes for Anti-Gay Comments

The usual suspects at Christianist organizations have quickly jumped on the Penn State sex abuse scandal to allege that such sexual abuse is the fault of LGBT individuals as a class. Making matters worse, Warren Olney (pictured at right) - the host of To The Point - used the sad episode to play to the Christianist claims and allowed blatantly anti-gay Jerry Cox, head of the Family Council, to present anti-gay parenting argument. One would have thought that anyone with a shred of credibility in the mainstream media would have known better than to give any anti-gay activist a pulpit. Yet once again, the MSM has given credibility to quacks and frauds who when stripped of all the bullshit have ZERO expertise and ZERO legitimate credentials. Thankfully, Olney has now issued an apology. I hope that others in the MSM have been paying attention and will cease allowing religious extremists to spread lies and disinformation. Queerty looks at Olney's apology and here are some highlights:

To The Point host Warren Olney has issued a much better apology that reads in part:

We reported that Penn State’s former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky was allowed to care for foster children even though authorities knew he was suspected of child abuse… [while] gay and lesbian couples are often prohibited from both fostering and adopting, even though they can provide loving homes… people thought that, by discussing both topics in one show, we had equated the two. . . . . There is no connection between pedophilia and homosexuality, and we never intended to say or imply there is. But our failure to make that crucial distinction explicit was a serious oversight. We regret it, and we apologize.

GLAAD points out that the show has still not explained why they let an anti-gay activist spout false and inaccurate information on the show with no push back from Olney.

Sometimes even a respected journalist can have his head up his ass: Warren Olney, the award-winning host of the current-events show, To The Point, angered gay and gay-friendly listeners on Friday by segueing from the ongoing Penn State child-abuse scandal to a panel discussion on LGBT parenting—one that included the president of the anti-gay Family Council spewing lies about gay families.

Given a mike and an audience, Cox started in with his group’s line of bigoted misinformaton: “Our position is that if the state is going to take children into custody, it ought to put children in the best homes possible… What does the research and common sense show? You’re going to put them in a home with a loving mother and father.”

Except the research doesn’t show that at all. As GLAAD points out, according to the American Psychological Association: “There is no scientific basis for concluding that lesbian mothers or gay fathers are unfit parents on the basis of sexual orientation. On the contrary, results of research suggest that lesbian and gay parents are as likely as heterosexual parents to provide supportive and healthy environments for their children.”

The bottom line is that the media needs to immediately cease having bigots like Cox - or Tony Perkins, Maggie Gallagher, Catholic bishops, etc. - appear any any context where they are permitted to spew RELIGIOUS based belief rather than true medical/mental health/scientific facts. We in the LGBT community need to slam individuals like Olney every time they give hate merchants and bigots a platform from which to lie and peddle disinformation.