Today’s installment of the Media Research Center’s “Best Notable Quotables of 2013,” as selected by our 42 expert judges: “The Tea Party Terrorists Award.” The establishment media have been hostile to the Tea Party from the moment it appeared on the scene in 2009, impugning participants as racists, “tea baggers” and terrorists ready to blow up the political system.
“Winning” this category in 2011, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman falsely suggested Tea Party complicity in the grievous wounding of Democratic congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, announcing in a blog post written just two hours after news broke of her shooting: “We don’t have proof yet that this was political, but the odds are that it was....It’s long past time for the GOP’s leaders to take a stand against the hate-mongers.” (This year’s winners and videos below the jump.)
Charles Pierce
When liberals want to persuade other liberals of their authenticity, they routinely resort to vulgarity. Chock it up as one of the innumerable odious legacies of the '60s.
Charles "Charlie" Pierce, an oft-constipated scribe for the once great magazine known as Esquire, went on a particularly demented rant yesterday in response to the verdict in the Zimmerman trial.
Have liberals already conceded defeat in today's South Carolina special election? Though polls show the race a true toss-up, some Democrats are attacking not just Republicans, but smearing the entire state as well.
During today's Stephanie Miller Show, guest Charlie Pierce of Esquire Magazine slammed the Palmetto State as "tribal", "a cult" and the ultimate dig, "religious"! From the program:
Yeah, good thing. Come to think of it, when could that have even happened, Mr. Pierce?
One of the more bizarre observations in media after the capture of suspected Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhav Tsarnaev came courtesy of Charles Pierce, Esquire magazine political blogger. (Video clip after page break)
For the past two weeks, NewsBusters has been showcasing the most egregious bias the Media Research Center has uncovered over the years — four quotes for each of the 25 years of the MRC, 100 quotes total — all leading up to our big 25th Anniversary Gala September 27.
If you’ve missed a previous blog, recounting the worst of 1988 through 2002, they are here. Today, the worst bias of 2003: The New York Times compares the U.S. bombing of Baghdad to the horror of September 11; Peter Arnett goes on Iraqi state TV to propagandize against the U.S.; and we find out what a “comfort” Ted Kennedy’s liberal policies would have been to Mary Jo Kopechne, “if she had lived.” [Quotes and video below the jump.]
During the first centuries of Christianity, Christians were thrown to lions in arenas to be jeered by mocking crowds. Today, Christian athletes face the taunts of a media strongly opposed to their faith.
No Christian athlete draws more media catcalls than New York Jets quarterback Tim Tebow. CBSChicago.com writer Dan Bernstein dismissed Tebow as “little more than an affable simpleton” and slammed his fans as “lunatic-fringe cultists.” Columnist Rabbi Joshua Hammerman of The Jewish Week expressed his desire that Tebow’s Broncos would lose a playoff game because a Broncos victory would “buoy his faithful, and emboldened faithful can do insane things, like burning mosques, bashing gays and indiscriminately banishing immigrants.” Radio host Craig Carton was the latest to jump on the anti-Tebow bandwagon, calling him a “fraud” and complaining that he “clearly thinks he is Jesus” on his August 14 radio show.
The Washington Post can’t even keep the liberal politicking out of the Sports section. On Wednesday, sports columnist Sally Jenkins somehow blamed a George W. Bush speech snippet for the Roger Clemens prosecution: "The Clemens case came about because a handful of zealots who are presumably bored by their real jobs were overly empowered by former president George W. Bush’s mention of the performance-enhancing-drug issue in his 2004 State of the Union address."
On Tuesday’s Sports section, blogger Dan Steinberg mocked The Daily Caller for lauding Washington Nationals rookie Bryce Harper as a conservative hero, approvingly quoting hard-left hack Charles Pierce:
Do liberal journalists who cover sports have nothing better to do than bully religiously conservative Christian athletes? Last year it was ESPN's Rick Reilly mocking evangelical teenage wrestler Joel Northrup. The latest to line up to smack around Christian athletes who act on conscience is Esquire's Charles Pierce, formerly of the Boston Globe, Pierce also contributes to ESPN's Grantland.com blog.
In his May 15 Grantland post, "And a Girl Shall Terrify Them," Pierce used news that a religious school from Phoenix, Arizona had forfeited a championship baseball game rather than play against a team which was fielding a female player. Pierce, who also appears frequently on taxpayer-backed National Public Radio, decided to weigh in with his condemnation. "The Gospels are not your alibi," Pierce huffed, directing his wrath at the Society of Pope Pius X, which runs the Our Lady of Sorrows Academy in Phoenix:
NPR's weekend game show "Wait! Wait! Don't Tell Me!" usually saves most of its topical humor for supposed White House drunk George W. Bush or Dick Cheney the Grim Reaper for all the usual smug-liberal laugh lines. On Saturday, host Peter Sagal went on an extended comedy routine with five jokes mocking Pope Benedict XVI, beginning with the notion that he's "another famous gay icon."
By contrast, a review of the last four shows finds there have been zero Barack Obama jokes. However, on March 10, they made fun of Rick Santorum saying if elected, he would not recite the names of former presidents to make excuses for himself. This prompted a "caliphate" joke at the Catholic candidate's expense.
"Today on the program, we'll ask whether Americans are losing the skills of true debate and with it a central pillar of this democracy," BBC's Jonny Dymond informed listeners of the May 15 "Americana" podcast.
Yet when it came to Dymond's guests, there was no dissent from the liberal line.
Take guest Charles Pierce, a Boston Globe columnist and author of "Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free."
During his segment, Pierce decried the state of debate in America over global warming lamenting that "it is impossible to accept the reality of global climate change and get nominated in the Republican Party."
While some networks have tried to say next to nothing about Obama’s Guantanamo flip-flop, they are not happy on liberal talk radio shows on Tuesday. Ex-MSNBC anchor David Shuster told Stephanie Miller he was disappointed that Obama’s been so conciliatory (wasn’t that part of his "purple state" appeal?)
SHUSTER: I though the President was very clear in his election campaign about okay we’re going to close Guantanamo and we’re going to reinstitute sort of the Constitution and Constitutional principles. I mean I think it gets back to sort of my issue with President Obama all along has been there’s such an effort I suppose to sort of want to be conciliatory and sort of you know reach sort of middle ground and compromise.
But I always thought the job of a President was to sort of use the bully pulpit to bring people towards your position. And say "You know what, this is what we stand for, and I’m going to use the megaphone of the Presidency to convince Americans why I am right."
Every year, the Media Research Center invites a distinguished panel of expert judges to sift through the dopiest, wackiest quotes of the year, and every year it seems the honor roll of idiocy gets longer and longer.
This year, top honors in the MRC's "Audacity of Dopes Award for the Wackiest Analysis of the Year" went to the Boston Globe Magazine's Charles Pierce, for a January 10 column he addressed to Republican Senate candidate Scott Brown just days before the Massachusetts special election. In Pierce's highly-esteemed opinion, Brown's cause was hopeless: