Stretch! NPR Somehow Connects Weinstein to Repealing Obamacare Contraceptive Mandate

October 10th, 2017 2:57 PM

National Public Radio deserves some sort prize for Most Energetic Attempt to Smear Harvey Weinstein on Conservative Christians. On Saturday night's All Things Considered, NPR host Michel Martin attempted to correlate the Weinstein sexual-assault scandal and the Cam Newton female-reporter-dismissing scandal with....peeling back the contraceptive mandate for religious employers under Obamacare. 

Martin connected the stories by suggesting that "activist organizations" -- on the Left -- felt what NPR calls the "contraceptive coverage rollback" was "really important." 

MICHEL MARTIN: Jeff, I'm going to throw one more wrinkle at you. And that is that this is the same week in which the Trump administration announced two new rules that would exempt for religious beliefs and moral convictions, all employers and insurance companies, from the mandate in the Affordable Care Act to cover contraception without co-pays or deductibles. And a number of kind of activist organizations have been sort of beating the drum about this and saying, hey, this is really important.

So I'm kind of wondering whether the Cam Newton, Harvey Weinstein stories get more attention, but are there other things that we should be paying more attention to? And I apologize, I didn't give you a lot of time to answer, but what are your thoughts about that?

CNN contributor Jeff Yang did not disappoint the ultraliberal audience of NPR, suggesting that this mandate is part of a "deeper structure" of sexist oppression, aided by "admitted sexual predator" Donald Trump: 

JEFF YANG: Well, I think that actually they're all pretty well interlinked. I mean, we talk about these things as if they're individual incidents, but what they really are examples of a deeper structure, right? It's not whether women speak out because women are often not in positions to do so. It's whether men do because men are certainly aware when some somebody like a Harvey Weinstein is doing what he's doing that these activities are happening. But if they don't speak out, then women don't feel comfortable or able to speak out.

And then when you actually have a situation where somebody who is an admitted sexual predator is elected president, it seems to be further evidence that there's a deep structure that accepts these sorts of things as okay in society, I'd say at the very highest level.

Christian conservatives should suggest to NPR that deep structural oppression could be defined as being forced to subsidize NPR discussions that smear your faith-based beliefs as comparable to sexual assault. 

Yang is just another liberal activist being offered a platform. He's race-hustling against Trump on his Twitter page (@originalspin) over ESPN's suspension of Jemele Hill: "Trump is now actively targeting @jemelehill—a woman of color who has bravely spoken out against state oppression—by name and livelihood." 

And: "A white sitting POTUS singles out a private citizen for public retribution & naturally she’s a black woman. Mark this dark day in history."