Friday, January 14, 2005

More bogus Christian "persecution".


Ironically, I was going to come back to this recent bit of news fluff but Media Matters, bless their little hearts, saved me the trouble.


The story here was that, just before Thanksgiving, the right-wing echo chamber started promoting the story that a Christian high school teacher in Cupertino was banned from handing out the Declaration of Independence just because that document contained the phrase "our creator". And, my, oh my, did they get mileage out of it. Not surprisingly, it turns out to have been a total myth, as you can read here.

And on top of that, can someone explain why they'd invite serial adulterer Newt Gingrich to talk about anything related to Christian values?

By the way: It's worth pointing out a nasty little twist to this myth that didn't get as much attention as it should have. You'll notice in MM's article that the original Reuters news release discussing this story was back on Nov. 24, 2004. Notice anything interesting about that date?

That's right -- it's the day before American Thanksgiving. It's painfully obvious that this charade was very carefully orchestrated to pump this story into the airwaves just as everyone was getting ready to travel, so that there would be precious little time to refute it until after the holidays. On top of that, this maximized the likelihood of having family members sitting around the dinner table, with perhaps conservative Dad railing at more mainstream or liberal son or daughter home from college about how those damned liberal, atheist bastards couldn't even tolerate the Declaration of Independence, and poor son or daughter, sitting there, thinking, "What the $%#%$# is he talking about?"

It's exactly the same strategy as the Bush administration always releasing bad news on Friday afternoon, after everyone's buggered off for the weekend. Oh, yes, this was all carefully planned. These things don't happen by accident.

5 comments:

Robert McClelland said...

I often wonder if the right whingers even remember how to tell the truth any longer.

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Anonymous said...

Just let the dude speak. Get rid of him and argue your side.

Jay McHue said...

Media Matters is so left-leaning that they're damn near falling over! Check out this page:

"Media Matters for America is a Web-based, not-for-profit progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media. Conservative misinformation is defined as news or commentary presented in the media that is not accurate, reliable, or credible and that forwards the conservative agenda."

Translation: if it isn't bent as far to the left as we are, it's "conservative misinformation."

Their staff list reads like a who's who of liberalism:

"Katie Barge has held research positions on presidential, gubernatorial, and senatorial campaigns. Most recently, she worked for Senator John Edwards's presidential campaign."

"David Brock is the author of four political books, including The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy. His preceding book, Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative, was a 2002 New York Times best-selling political memoir in which he chronicled his years as a conservative media insider. Brock serves on the advisory board of Democracy Radio Inc. and is the recipient of the New Democrat Network's first award for political entrepreneurship."

"Nicole Casta has worked in government relations for the National Organization for Women (NOW) and The National Partnership for Women and Families, monitoring and analyzing a range of policy issues including: civil rights, educational equity, reproductive rights, women's health, and workplace fairness."

"Jamison Foser has extensive experience in progressive research, communications, and strategy, having worked for nearly a decade in national politics. Most recently he served as Research Director at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) for the 2002 cycle."

"Terry Krepel has worked for newspapers for more than 17 years as a reporter, designer, and editor. He is the creator and editor of ConWebWatch, which monitors conservative news websites."

"Marcia Kuntz most recently ran the Alliance for Justice's Judicial Selection Project. Previously, she served as minority counsel for the housing subcommittee of the House Committee on Banking and Financial Services and as legislative counsel to Representative Barney Frank (D-MA)."

"Andrew Seifter has experience organizing, advocating, and fundraising for several progressive not-for-profit groups, including the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, and the State PIRGs."

"Gabriel Wildau most recently worked as a policy analyst for General (Ret.) Wesley K. Clark's presidential campaign."

"Avi Zollman most recently worked as a foreign policy researcher for former Vermont governor Howard Dean's presidential campaign."

This is one of your sources for supposedly unbiased information? Don't make me sick?