AP Warns of 'Far Right' in Red States, But Touts 'Drag Laureates' in San Francisco

May 22nd, 2023 4:55 PM

Washington Free Beacon media reporter Drew Holden flagged a story on "far-right" Republicans in Tennessee from the Associated Press. This has become a real trend of late. The headline from reporter Christina Cassidy

‘They’re opposed to government. But now they are the government.’ One county’s hard-right shift

Liberals always play this game, as if they can't imagine it turned around on them: "They're opposed to policing the border. But now they're the border police." It's about the same level of argument.

Once again, conservatives have control somewhere, and it's intolerable to the so-called objective press. In this case, it's Sumner County, Tennessee, where a group of "Constitutional Republicans" are calling out "Rinocrats" and talking loosely about Judeo-Christian values.  Holden called it out on Twitter: 

Maybe these new conservative office-holders aren't doing everything right, but the point is how AP paints the whole thing as dangerous. This whole "far right" trend is really obvious over the last few weeks. These are just some domestic ones: 

April 29: Zooey Zephyr row spotlights rise of GOP far-right caucuses

May 9: The meaning behind the far-right symbol Texas shooter wore as he killed 8

May 20: Many transgender health bills came from a handful of far-right interest groups, AP finds

Holden added evidence that AP does NOT feel this way about extremist local governments when they're on the Left: 

San Francisco can push the libertine-Left agenda, and AP sounds happily promotional (no "far left" to be found): 

Meet D’Arcy Drollinger, a drag queen who’s now the first drag laureate in the US

Reporters Stefanie Dazio and Haven Daley gushed: 

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Anti-trans legislation is roiling the nation. Bills prohibiting drag performances are cropping up in statehouses. Violence and vitriol are turning children’s drag story hour events into headline-news protests.

San Francisco is fighting back Thursday by naming the nation’s first drag laureate, an ambassador-style position designed to represent the city’s famous LGBTQ+ community at a time when rights are under attack.

In a city known for its support of LGBTQ+ rights, San Francisco Mayor London Breed says it was a natural step to create a position that not only embraces drag culture but puts government resources toward it.

They touted that "Drag Laureates" may follow in West Hollywood and New York City. Conservatives were not quoted anywhere in this piece. This is how opposition to the Left was described: 

Members of the Proud Boys sparked a hate crimes investigation when they protested and shouted slurs outside a Bay Area library hosting Drag Story Hour, where drag queens read to kids, last June. In Oregon last year, demonstrators — some of them armed — threw rocks and smoke grenades at each other outside a drag event.

In November, a shooter at a Colorado Springs nightclub turned a drag queen’s birthday party into a massacre, killing five people and injuring 17 more. The suspect was charged with hate crimes and murder. [Not mentioned: the shooter in custody is non-binary.]

The American Civil Liberties Union is tracking 474 anti-LGBTQ+ pieces of legislation in the U.S., including Tennessee’s first-in-the-nation law that essentially bans drag from public property or in the presence of minors.