Religion

Lefty Writer Claims Trump, Conservative Evangelicals Have One Big Thing In Common: ‘Narcissism’
By Tom Johnson | December 30, 2015 | 9:14 PM EST

If you’re looking for the ultimate contradiction in terms, it’d be hard to top “Christian narcissist.” Nonetheless, David Masciotra alleged in a Tuesday Salon piece (originally published on the left-wing site AlterNet) that “conservative evangelical Christianity” somehow “encourages narcissism,” and that this unholy communion explains Donald Trump’s relatively high level of popularity on the religious right.

“In order to appeal to evangelical voters, candidates…have to project narcissism and selfishness,” asserted Masciotra. “Having perfected his personality through years of reality television performance, Trump is able to successfully sway evangelicals to his side, despite his lack of Christian credentials, because narcissists take comfort in each other.”

Carson Daly: Important for Him to Get Married ‘to Have the Sacrament of Marriage’ in Catholic Church
By Curtis Houck | December 30, 2015 | 7:37 PM EST

Discussing his marriage to longtime girlfriend Siri Pinter while guest-hosting Wednesday’s Today, Carson Daly offered a rather surprising reason for finally getting married to Pinter after having been together for the past decade. Speaking of how tying the knot over Christmas has already changed his life, he explained he feels that being married has affected him “in a more profound way” due to “the sacrament of marriage, you know, be a part of our lives.”

NYT Theater Critic: ‘Grumpy Guys’ in GOP Would ‘Be a Lot Looser’ If They Were Like Drag Queens
By Curtis Houck | December 28, 2015 | 5:37 PM EST

Reviewing the new drag queen-centered Broadway show Kinky Boots in Monday’s New York Times, critic Ben Brantley chose to dedicate a few paragraphs to the bizarre suggestion that the show should make one think “that maybe all those grumpy guys who populate the Republican debates might be a lot looser if they traded in their navy suits for rainbow-colored ball gowns.”

Google's Christmas-Free Doodle vs. Animated Celebration of Evolution
By Mark Finkelstein | December 25, 2015 | 9:17 AM EST

A very Merry Christmas to NewsBusters readers everywhere! Just out of curiosity, I took a look at the Google doodle for this Christmas Day.  See below: it's bland, boring and above all, void of any reference at all to the holiday itself. I decided to have a look at the ways Google observed other days with its doodles. And sure enough, exactly one month to the day before Christmas Eve, Google celebrated "the 41st anniversary of the discovery of Lucy," she being the skeleton of a hominin found in Ethiopia.  

Google's animated gif doodle shows a monkey walking on all fours, then a lumbering ape-like figure, and finally the tall, striding Lucy. Evolution, baby! Evolutionists everywhere celebrate Lucy Discovery Day by huddling around their Origin of the Species first editions and adorning their bumpers with fish symbols with feet. So, is Google worried about offending non-Christians with a true Christmas doodle? Then why not similar concern for the sensibilites of creationists with its Lucy doodle? 

CNN's Cuomo: 'Despite Stats on Christian Terrorists,' 'White Kid' Can Bring Clock to School
By Brad Wilmouth | December 23, 2015 | 5:20 PM EST

Near the end of Wednesday's New Day on CNN, during a segment about the top five stories on social media for 2015, co-host Chris Cuomo oddly declared that, "despite all the stats about Christian terrorists," if a "white kid" had brought a homemade clock to school, unlike a "brown" Muslim kid like Ahmed Mohamed, there would have been no assumption that it was actually a bomb.

Santorum Turns Tables on Scarborough Suggestion To Go Kumbaya on American Muslims
By Mark Finkelstein | December 21, 2015 | 9:12 AM EST

It's rare when a politician says something surprising, or doesn't succumb to a feel-good suggestion. Which made Rick Santorum's response to Joe Scarborough this morning doubly remarkable.

On today's Morning Joe, Scarborough had teed Santorum up to agree with his suggestion that we need to "reach out aggressively to let Muslim Americans know that they are every bit a part of the American dream as you or me." But Santorum turned the tables, saying "I would ask that in reverse: what are they going to do to reach out to make sure they are confronting --" Scarborough broke in: "no, no, no. I don't think so." But a composed Santorum went on to calmly make his case, calling out in particular CAIR for "continuing to apologize for the radicals."

CBS Edited Out Harsh Critique of Obama, U.S. 'Militarism' by Muslim Focus Group
By Tim Graham | December 20, 2015 | 4:24 PM EST

The leftist website The Intercept is taking apart Friday’s CBS panel discussion on Muslims in America: “two Muslim Americans who took part in the group complained that CBS edited out parts of the discussion where they raised their own concerns — including critiques of U.S. militarism, surveillance and entrapment.”

They also said that Frank Luntz, “the right-wing pollster who led the focus group, silenced members of the group when they criticized discriminatory U.S. government policies.” They ripped into Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, but CBS wanted its own tidy narrative of patriotic Muslims who have no problem with this president.

New Republic's Brian Beutler: Democratic Debaters Should Denounce GOP’s ‘Appeal to Paranoia’
By Tom Johnson | December 19, 2015 | 11:49 AM EST

Debbie Wasserman Schultz may not want you to know about it, but there’s a Democratic presidential debate on Saturday evening, and Beutler believes that the candidates therein “would be doing the country a service by placing the right wing appeal to paranoia in its proper context—and then rejecting it forcefully.”

In a Friday piece, Beutler described this week’s Republican presidential debate as “an elaborate group sermon on the importance of being afraid”; opined that the GOP candidates “have made almost no attempt to argue” that their proposals “will reduce the terrorism risk, which is so small to begin with”; and asserted that Republicans’ “position on Jihadi terrorism (that no risk is too small to ignore) is practically the opposite of their position on mass shootings in general (that no risk is worth mitigating at all).”

Bozell & Graham Column: CNN Sashays With Satanists
By Brent Bozell | and By Tim Graham | December 19, 2015 | 8:04 AM EST

When Ted Turner was running CNN back in 1991, he banned the use of the word “foreign” on air. In a memo to employees, he made a threat to fine employees with a forced donation to UNICEF. To avoid offense, they were told they should use the word “international” instead because it “promotes a sense of unity."

Today, this is Jeff Zucker’s CNN, and unity be damned. Offending the audience is part of the ratings gambit. On December 13, as many Christians celebrated the third Sunday of Advent and rejoiced over the incarnation of Jesus Christ, CNN was celebrating Satan. Literally.

Matthews: Trump 'Playing to Racists,' Obama 'Not One of Us, He's Black' View
By Brad Wilmouth | December 18, 2015 | 4:55 PM EST

Appearing as a guest before MSNBC's live coverage of President Barack Obama's Friday press conference, during a discussion of Donald Trump's history of promoting birtherism against the President, MSNBC Hardball host Chris Matthews recalled his accusation that Trump is "playing to racists" and playing to a view that President Obama is "not one of us, he's black."

NBC's Mitchell Claims 'A Lot of Discrimination' Vs. Muslims, GOP Says 'Really Troubling' Things
By Brad Wilmouth | December 17, 2015 | 9:56 PM EST

Nearing the end of her MSNBC program Andrea Mitchell Reports on Thursday, NBC Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent Andrea Mitchell claimed that "there is a lot of discrimination" against Muslims as she was introducing President Barack Obama's 1:00 p.m. speech.

After suggesting that some of the "rhetoric" at Tuesday's GOP presidential debate was "really a recruitment tool for ISIS," she recounted that Bernie Sanders visited a mosque yesterday and then asserted that "there is a lot of discrimination here," adding that it is "fueling the ISIS rhetoric."

CNN's Left-Wing Guests Wildly Distort 'Racist' GOP Debate
By Matthew Balan | December 17, 2015 | 4:32 PM EST

On Wednesday's CNN Tonight, left-wing analyst Rula Jebreal and Columbia University's Ahmed Shihab-Eldin unleashed against the Republican presidential candidates, in the wake of Tuesday's CNN debates. Jebreal asserted that Ted Cruz was "nostalgic for Arab dictators," and concluded that "this is racist. This is pure bigotry." She later likened the GOP contenders to the Nazis: "What you are hearing from these people is a criminalization of an entire group of people — something that, actually, we heard...in Europe before World War II."