Attack of the Christofascists

Pasta-fazul the right-wingers sure know how to manipulate the Mainstream media. If I wasn't lazy, I'd expand this discussion to book-length form. Ahem.

“What Liberal Media?: The Truth About Bias and the News” (Eric Alterman)

On the topic, Eric Alterman writes, in part:

Comment is free: Attack of the Christofascists :

But the MSM coverage has completely ignored the elephant in the middle of the room, an elephant which has - appropriately in my view - been the focus of blogosphere coverage: that is, the identity of the accusers. The truth is that the reporters covering the story really have absolutely no idea whether Catholics care at all about what a couple of Edwards bloggers said on their personal blogs before they were hired and which clearly, Edwards would never have approved. As a lazy substitute, they have instead allowed the rightwing huckster William Donohue of something called “the Catholic League” to speak for all Catholics.

This is not only lazy; it is journalistically irresponsible. There's no evidence anywhere that Mr. Donohue speaks for Catholics other than himself - which is a good thing, because the man is a raving anti-Semitic lunatic. Don't take my word for it. Here (as posted on my own blog earlier this week) is Donohue, making one of his 23 appearances on cable TV in 2004, and explaining to Scarborough Country guest host Patrick J. Buchanan, that “ Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular. It's not a secret, OK? And I'm not afraid to say it. ... Hollywood likes anal sex. They like to see the public square without nativity scenes. I like families. I like children. They like abortions.” When a rabbi asked Donohue to please “stop the anti-Semitic garbage, OK?” He replied “Who's making the movies? The Irishmen?... So the Catholics are running Hollywood, huh? ... They're not Rastafarians. They're Jews....You're going to tell me that the Chinese don't live in Chinatown, right?” My sponsors at Media Matters have compiled a list - by no means exhaustive - not only of Donohue's various offenses against common decency but also of uncovered offensive remarks by McCain bloggers that have gone all but unreported in the MSM. You can find that here.

What's the upshot? Well, the Edwards campaign made lemonade: it won the allegiance of many bloggers by, ultimately, doing the right thing. But the extremist rightwing pressure groups demonstrated, once again, that they can play the MSM like a violin - getting it to play a story exactly as they would like, context and inconvenient truths be dammed. And the left has little ability to demand equal or even remotely fair treatement.

Any news item which depends upon a quote from Bile-Bill Donohue to make a right-wing slanted point can be discarded as not worth reading.

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