Former California Rep. Katie Hill resigned after only 10 months on the job &#8230; and it doesn&#8217;t sound like she did it willingly. Hill admitted to having had an affair with a female campaign staffer but denied an alleged affair with her male congressional legislative director — a violation of House ethics rules. RedState and the Daily Mail posted pictures of a naked Hill apparently brushing the hair of her female love interest. Hill blamed the photo release on her husband, since they are engaged in a nasty divorce.
On her way out, Hill was honored by the media elites for giving a lectern-pounding farewell address in which she claimed she was victimized by a sexist double standard. This is downright bizarre. Anyone with some experience in Washington can cite careers ended by sex scandals — Republicans like former Sen. Larry Craig and former Reps. Mark Foley and Christopher Lee, and, most recently, former Democratic Sen. Al Franken. Hill was the pioneering female in this parade. This proves there isn&#8217;t a double standard.
The liberals pretended that because Hill is the first millennial member of Congress to be ousted over cellphone photos, her generation has met some horrifying new demise. In Time magazine, Charlotte Alter claimed in a large headline that Hill merely resigned &#8220;Because of Nudes,&#8221; skipping over the allegations of Hill having sex with two staffers. Alter changed the subject to the risk of sexual messages for everyone, citing a 2015 poll that found 82% of respondents ages 18 to 82 had &#8220;sexted&#8221; in the last year. This completely sidestepped the ethical issues of sex with subordinates.
Democrats are always the victims and never the victimizers.
The New Yorker ran an article unsubtly titled &#8220;The Terrorization of Katie Hill.&#8221; Writer Masha Gessen began by reporting that a mysterious white powder was mailed to one of Hill&#8217;s congressional offices in California and closed the article by insisting that Hill was violently attacked. &#8220;Revenge porn is an act of violence that hurts its victims in many of the same ways that sexual assault does,&#8221; he wrote. &#8220;It is also an act that finds easy accomplices, from the people who decided to publish those photographs to whoever sent the white powder to Hill&#8217;s office on Monday.&#8221;
This kind of creepiness happens to both parties. A man was convicted earlier this year for sending threatening letters filled with white powder to President Donald Trump&#8217;s sons. It&#8217;s disgusting to compare that kind of anthrax scare to a reported sex scandal.
Libertine-left interest groups also got involved. Alphonso David, head of the Human Rights Campaign, told The Hill newspaper that Katie Hill was victimized as a bisexual. &#8220;(I)t&#8217;s not unusual or it&#8217;s not a surprise to conclude that she&#8217;s being treated differently because she&#8217;s bisexual,&#8221; he argued. But was he sure? &#8220;We, of course, don&#8217;t have any data or evidence to support that,&#8221; he said. Who needs evidence? To the left, it sounds plausible.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi insisted Hill was not forced out of office by her party and decried Hill&#8217;s &#8220;humiliation by &#8230; cyber exploitation.&#8221; Pelosi added that she has warned her children and grandchildren that &#8220;appearances&#8221; like Hill&#8217;s &#8220;can come back to haunt you if they are taken out of context.&#8221;
But the only people wrenching Hill&#8217;s reckless alleged sexual behavior with staff members out of context are liberals.
L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Brent Bozell III and Tim Graham, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Katie Hill.

BOZELL &#038; GRAHAM: Katie Hill Finds Her Shills

Democratic Party

Katie Hill

Media Bias

Nancy Pelosi

One of the strangest things about liberals is how they think getting arrested is some kind of achievement. Take Jane Fonda, who, at the tender age of 81, is still ranting about capitalist America ruining the world. Only this time, the issue is &#8220;climate change&#8221; instead of the Cold War.
&#8220;Hanoi Jane&#8221; infamously sat behind a communist antiaircraft gun in Vietnam in 1972, and today, one could imagine her aiming her big gun at commercial aircraft ruining the planet with their notorious carbon emissions.
Naturally, liberal journalists are delighted. On Oct. 25, the Hollywood Reporter gushed over her third arrest on Capitol Hill. This time, actor Ted Danson was arrested alongside her. The Reporter included a pile of happy play-by-play tweets (including video tweets) by Hannah Jewell of The Washington Post. She seemed to be on a first-name basis with the socialist actress.
— &#8220;Jane just asked a group of very buttoned up college kids on a capitol visit if they wanted to join her,&#8221; she tweeted. &#8220;Ted Danson added that getting arrested &#8216;sharpens the mind.'&#8221; (Insert laugh track here.)
— &#8220;&#8216;When I turned 70 I thought ok, time to rest on my laurels&#8217; says Ted &#8230; &#8216;and then I met Jane Fonda&#8217;. He calls her his mentor. &#8216;Here I am about to get arrested.'&#8221;
— &#8220;Ted Danson just shared a little handcuffed high five (high ten?) with Jane Fonda.&#8221;
— &#8220;Jane gets patted down and shouts &#8216;Ted, are ya having fun yet?!'&#8221;
This is nothing but an exercise in political vanity. Getting arrested sounds all naughty and risky — but there are no risks. The Capitol Police does not allow demonstrations on the Capitol grounds without a permit, so these leftists come unauthorized and play Martin Luther King for a day — unauthorized but not unannounced. Press attention (and adulation) is everything, so they make sure everyone knows they&#8217;re coming. Protesters are put in single-use plastic handcuffs and usually taken to the Capitol Police garage. Fonda isn&#8217;t sitting in jail over the weekend. No one&#8217;s fining her $1,000 for the trouble.
When Fonda was first arrested, on Oct. 14, the network morning shows were predictable stenographers to leftist protest.
On NBC&#8217;s &#8220;Today&#8221; show, Dylan Dreyer oozed: &#8220;Fonda, who has a long history of political activism, has dubbed this &#8216;Fire Drill Fridays.&#8217; &#8230; She&#8217;s still keeping busy, 81 years old.&#8221; NBC White House reporter Peter Alexander chimed in: &#8220;Yeah, lending her celebrity to the cause. That&#8217;s great.&#8221;
On &#8220;CBS This Morning,&#8221; Saturday co-host Michelle Miller proclaimed: &#8220;Oscar-winning actress and long-time activist Jane Fonda is hoping her latest role will make a lasting impression. Fonda was one of 16 people arrested outside the U.S. Capitol Friday while peacefully protesting climate change.&#8221; She quoted Fonda as calling the state of the warming planet &#8220;a collective crisis that demands collective action.&#8221;
This is not an actual demonstration of science.
Jewell also quoted Fonda: &#8220;&#8216;There was a time when there was no plastic&#8217; says Jane, &#8216;and we did just fine.&#8217; (Plastic was invented before she was born but popularized in the 1960s I believe).&#8221;
ScienceHistory.org says the first fully synthetic plastic was invented in 1907 and became widely utilized in World War II. The left began protesting plastics in the &#8217;60s, so that&#8217;s how liberal millennials at The Washington Post guess it all started.
Science isn&#8217;t really the point. Passing a Green New Deal that takes over what remains of American capitalism is the point. Left-wing radicals haven&#8217;t changed their authoritarian agenda one bit since their glory days of rooting against America in Vietnam. Jane Fonda is the same self-absorbed dilettante that she was in 1972 &#8230; and she&#8217;s still celebrated for it.
But here&#8217;s a red brick of reality: It ain&#8217;t working. The purpose of this form of political activism is to create a national movement that supports it and emulates it. All the media adulation aside, the public doesn&#8217;t care what these two old people, with all their expensive plastic surgery, are doing. Jane got arrested. Nothing. She got herself re-arrested. Nothing. She brought in Ted. Double nothing.
What a waste of good plastic.
L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Brent Bozell III and Tim Graham, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Jane Fonda.

BOZELL &#038; GRAHAM: Jane Fonda&#8217;s New Socialist Stunts

Jane Fonda

Socialism

Freedom of speech is in the First Amendment for a reason. Freedom begins with the ability to speak your opinion without fear of censorship or violent reprisal or imprisonment. This is a precious human right, not something that most countries in the world revere like we have. But here in America, free speech is most dangerously under attack in the one place you would not expect: the universities.
Dennis Prager and Adam Carolla have created a new documentary on the subject called &#8220;No Safe Spaces.&#8221; Prager announces near the outset that a Pew Research Center survey found 49% of college students do not support free speech if it&#8217;s designated as &#8220;hate speech.&#8221; He asked, &#8220;Do you know how moronic that is? The issue of free speech doesn&#8217;t apply to love speech. Nobody ever threatened love speech.&#8221;
Prager objects to people who say all humans yearn to be free. He said it&#8217;s more common for humans to yearn to be taken care of. &#8220;We have raised a generation to believe that to be taken care of is more important than liberty.&#8221;
The documentary includes Carolla testifying before Congress about the current generation on campus. &#8220;They grew up dipped in Purell, playing soccer games where they never kept score and watching &#8216;Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!&#8217; And we&#8217;re asking them to be mature.&#8221; He can&#8217;t stand the idea that radical students are running the campus, while the administrators surrender. &#8220;We need the adults to start being the adults.&#8221;
Then there are chilling examples of how the left wants to censor speech they don&#8217;t like. One white woman reads into a microphone: &#8220;There will be resistance, and it will not be peaceful. Resistance to violent hate speech is not another act of hate. It is an act of love.&#8221; Later in the film, her rant continues: &#8220;There is no free speech for fascists. Their words are violent, and for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.&#8221;
Obviously, the main targets of censorship at American colleges are the conservative speakers invited to campus. They may seem like rare external threats when the faculty doesn&#8217;t have any troublesome right-wingers to challenge them in the classroom. &#8220;When you are conservative, you are not wrong. You are evil,&#8221; Prager summarizes. &#8220;They have to think you&#8217;re evil. Otherwise, they have to debate us.&#8221;
But the film also explores liberal professors and teaching assistants being punished for crossing the speech police. We&#8217;re glad we&#8217;ve reported on some of these, such as Nicholas and Erika Christakis at Yale, who they crusaded to drive off campus for expressing the sentiment that children should be allowed to choose their own Halloween costumes.
The central exhibit is Bret Weinstein, who was forced out at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, after he, as a white male, dared to show up and teach during a &#8220;Day of Absence,&#8221; when all white people were supposed to avoid coming to campus.
And they bring in liberal and leftist voices, like Van Jones and Alan Dershowitz, to defend free speech. The most prominent one is former President Barack Obama. &#8220;Anybody who comes to speak to you and you disagree with, you should have an argument with them,&#8221; Obama said at an education town hall in 2015. &#8220;But you shouldn&#8217;t silence them by saying, &#8216;You can&#8217;t come because I&#8217;m too sensitive to hear what you have to say.'&#8221;
By the film&#8217;s end, you can sense that the censorious excesses have been punished. But it certainly doesn&#8217;t mean this problem is over. Free speech on campus is an ongoing battle, so this movie needs to be seen — far and wide.
L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Brent Bozell III and Tim Graham, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Tape over mouth.

BOZELL &#038; GRAHAM: Speech Police And &#8216;Safe Spaces&#8217;

Adam Carolla

Dennis Prager

Free Speech

Safe Spaces

One of the most interesting parts of the CNN Democratic debate this week had nothing to do with the debates. It came during a commercial break. The Washington Post bought commercial time — which isn&#8217;t shocking, since the Democrats are the paper&#8217;s natural subscriber base. It&#8217;s how The Post promoted itself that was truly jaw-dropping.
The ad resembles a computer screen with a cursor floating over a button that reads, &#8220;Unsubscribe.&#8221; It starts with the phrase &#8220;Clickbait as news.&#8221; Is that true? The Post abhors clickbait?
Two minutes on the paper&#8217;s website puts the lie to that. The night after the debate, the first &#8220;In the News&#8221; tag at the top of the website promoted the &#8220;news&#8221; subject of &#8220;snowball fight.&#8221; That clickbait led straight to this headline: &#8220;A 68-year-old got hit with a snowball. He retaliated by beating a 9-year-old unconscious, police say.&#8221;
There was more. The next scourges The Post opposed in the commercial were &#8220;Hidden agendas&#8221; and &#8220;Unverified sources.&#8221; But The Post thrives on hiding the agendas of anonymous sources, whose identities feel unverified to the reader. In 2017, The Post published an article gleefully titled &#8220;Anonymous sources are absolutely killing Trump&#8217;s presidency.&#8221; Two weeks ago, the paper gushed over the &#8220;whistleblower&#8221; fueling the Democratic impeachment effort, under the headline &#8220;Someone blew a whistle. It&#8217;s now the hottest tune in D.C.&#8221;
Virtually the entire false narrative of Russian collusion with Trump was based on statements like &#8220;said one source,&#8221; &#8220;according to an official,&#8221; &#8220;based on interviews with 17 sources familiar with the case&#8221; etc., etc. Now it&#8217;s the same with the narrative on Trump and Ukraine.
And The Post is one of the worst offenders. What anonymous staff member came up with that lie?
Still, there&#8217;s more to the ad. The Post also claims to be in staunch opposition to &#8220;The outrage cycle&#8221; and &#8220;Purposefully polarizing narratives.&#8221; But whether it&#8217;s the &#8220;news&#8221; pages or the editorials, the outrage at Trump and polarization over Trump are never-ending. Even in times when unity should occur — take the funeral of George H.W. Bush — The Post was polarizing, running a front-page &#8220;news&#8221; update headlined, &#8220;Trump sits with fellow presidents but still stands alone.&#8221; Reporter Philip Rucker snarkily described former presidents and first ladies in the front row &#8230; by reminding everyone how Trump had insulted them over the years.
Still more. The ad claims you should subscribe to The Post to avoid &#8220;Reckless reporting&#8221; and &#8220;Misinformation.&#8221; Holy smokes. We won&#8217;t bother to cite the endless stream of recklessness. We will only point to the entirety of the Russia collusion story that dominated The Post&#8217;s coverage for two years and was entirely wrong. &#8220;Reckless&#8221; is an understatement.
Just weeks ago, The Post rushed to print a story about a young African American girl who was allegedly savagely bullied by white boys at a Northern Virginia private Christian school where Karen Pence teaches. &#8230; And then the girl admitted the attack never happened. She made it up.
It grew worse. You should also buy The Post to avoid &#8220;Intentional bias&#8221; and &#8220;One-sided news,&#8221; the ad said. This needs a laugh track and &#8220;no comment&#8221; from us.
Finally , The Post rejects &#8220;scare tactics.&#8221; It&#8217;s hard to forget that in the summer of 2016, it made a half-page &#8220;photo illustration&#8221; of a nuclear mushroom cloud inside Trump&#8217;s head — with the headline &#8220;Anger management.&#8221; He&#8217;d get us all nuked!
If The Post is really trying to attract new online subscribers during a Democrat debate on the Collusion News Network, it should just say: &#8220;You hate Trump? We hate Trump. Come to us for all the hot Trump-hating scoop. The Washington Post.&#8221;
L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Brent Bozell III and Tim Graham, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Washington Post.

BOZELL &#038; GRAHAM: No Truth In Washington Post Advertising

2020 Election

Media

Washington Post

The National Basketball Association found itself in the middle of a political firestorm of its own making when the Houston Rockets&#8217; general manager tweeted something simple and admirable: &#8220;Fight for Freedom. Stand with Hong Kong.&#8221; The NBA&#8217;s first statement was cowardly. It began: &#8220;We recognize that the views expressed by &#8230; Daryl Morey have deeply offended many of our friends and fans in China, which is regrettable.&#8221; Morey buckled and deleted his tweet.
The NBA then went overseas to grovel.
A statement posted on the NBA&#8217;s Weibo social media network in China stated that they were &#8220;extremely disappointed in the inappropriate comment,&#8221; and as a result, Morey &#8220;has undoubtedly seriously hurt the feelings of Chinese basketball fans.&#8221; China is a huge and lucrative market for the NBA. If business means turning your back on freedom while defending one of the most brutally repressive regimes in human history — so be it.
That abject surrender, that spineless concession to a government now shooting pro-democracy protesters in the streets drew near-universal condemnation in America, ranging in Washington from conservative Sen. Ted Cruz to socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. So the NBA commissioner, Adam Silver, readjusted to insist the league would not discourage their athletes or executives from speaking freely. &#8220;We are not apologizing for Daryl exercising his freedom of expression&#8221; — which is disingenuous. That is exactly what all of their &#8220;extremely disappointed&#8221; remarks implied.
And the duplicity continued. In Philadelphia, a 76ers fan named Sam Wachs and his wife brought a pair of signs that read &#8220;Free Hong Kong&#8221; and &#8220;Free HK&#8221; as the Sixers took on the Guangzhou Loong Lions, a Chinese Basketball Association team. Wachs said he lived in Hong Kong for two years, so he sympathized with the protests. First, security confiscated their signs. When they yelled &#8220;Free Hong Kong&#8221; during the second quarter, Wachs said, they were removed from the game.
Then the same Chinese team played the Washington Wizards in D.C., and the routine repeated itself. Several fans standing with a sign reading &#8220;Free Hong Kong&#8221; and &#8220;Google: Uighurs&#8221; had them confiscated prior to the game. (The Uighurs are a Muslim minority in northwestern China, with an estimated one million people held in concentration camps.)
The NBA now doesn&#8217;t want to be political. But it&#8217;s been very political on the home front, when it has suited its purposes, which is to say, when it placates the left. The league moved the 2017 All-Star Game out of Charlotte over a North Carolina law that in government offices, transgender people should use the bathroom of their gender &#8220;assigned at birth.&#8221; The NBA commissioner criticized President Donald Trump&#8217;s travel ban from seven Muslim countries as going &#8220;against the fundamental values and the fundamental ingredients of what makes for a great NBA.&#8221;
The NBA allowed their players to wear &#8220;I can&#8217;t breathe&#8221; shirts to protest police after Eric Garner suffocated while laying down on the sidewalk in New York. National Review&#8217;s Jim Geraghty underlined the hypocrisy: &#8220;Apparently the NBA is fine with protesting American police brutality, but not Hong Kong police brutality.&#8221;
Speaking of American police brutality, nobody&#8217;s found Colin Kaepernick saying anything about China&#8217;s grip on the NBA. The man with the Nike sneaker-selling slogan of &#8220;Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.&#8221; is silent while Nike orders the removal of all the Houston Rockets merchandise from their stories in China. Apparently, America is still the most horrible country in the world that was founded on racism, slavery and genocide.
L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Brent Bozell III and Tim Graham, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

NBA sign.

BOZELL &#038; GRAHAM: The NBA Grovels To China

China

Communism

Hong Kong

Washington Post book critic Ron Charles made a confession the other day. &#8220;I banned a book,&#8221; he wrote. &#8220;Or at least I helped get it banned, which makes Banned Books Week a little awkward for me this year. Like celebrating Arbor Day by cutting down a tree.&#8221;
The book is titled &#8220;The Trigger: The Lie That Changed the World — Who Really Did It and Why.&#8221; It&#8217;s an 898-page paperback. The author, David Icke, is a longtime conspiracy kook from Britain. The publisher is also David Icke. This book is the latest example of 9/11 trutherism. In this version, the &#8220;satanic&#8221; Israeli government did it, in addition to its role in international drug running and assassinating John F. Kennedy. Charles called it &#8220;harebrained word vomit.&#8221;
He wrote to Barnes &amp; Noble inquiring about a photo a reader sent him that showed Icke&#8217;s book on a &#8220;New Releases in Paperback 20% off&#8221; table. A day later, a spokesperson told him, &#8220;After being alerted to the content, we are removing the book from all stores.&#8221;
When asked more broadly about the national bookstore chain&#8217;s selection process involving &#8220;hate speech&#8221; purveyors, the spokesperson added, &#8220;We work to never allow content with hate speech in our stores, and in cases when something slips through, we take quick and resolute action to remove it.&#8221;
This would thrill most liberal hearts, but Charles asks the obvious question: How will Barnes &amp; Noble determine what is &#8220;hate speech&#8221;? And is &#8220;quick and resolute action&#8221; always the wisest course?
In the spirit of Banned Books Week, Charles wonders how hard liberals would fight to defend free speech, even for a book they consider abhorrent. Would they still fight today as the American Civil Liberties Union fought for the right of neo-Nazis to march down the street in Skokie, Illinois?
There&#8217;s no need to wonder.
Charles noted that the American Library Association has a new list of Top 10 Most Challenged Books in libraries, and &#8220;the list is dominated by books that draw censure for their positive portrayal of LGBTQIA+ relationships,&#8221; such as David Levithan&#8217;s 2013 &#8220;young adult&#8221; novel, &#8220;Two Boys Kissing.&#8221;
The book chronicles Harry and Craig, two 17-year-olds who are about to participate in a 32-hour kissing marathon to set a new Guinness World Record. It has a broader theme about the dreadful toll of AIDS. Libraries and bookstores promote these tomes in Banned Books Week displays and events.
This is where Charles admirably puts his free-speech advocacy to the test: &#8220;I can&#8217;t help noticing that no liberal tastes were harmed in the making of this list. It costs us nothing to celebrate these banned books. The whole campaign is pungent with self-satisfaction, a chance for us enlightened liberals to remind each other that we are freedom fighters.&#8221;
The American Library Association is unlikely to promote its own courage in making &#8220;harebrained word vomit&#8221; about 9/11 available in libraries. This underlines why Banned Books Week often feels like Favorite Books Week. It would be fascinating to know just how many American libraries are stocking the latest David Icke book so we could see how often it is protested by people who don&#8217;t want to aid the spread of his crackpottery.
Troublemakers with time on their hands could have fun compiling a list of books that libraries choose not to stock. We could host a splashy celebration of Books Librarians Hate Week. They should acknowledge that some noxious books and ideas are worth protesting or ignoring.
But you cannot celebrate free speech except for that which you want to ban.
L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Brent Bozell III and Tim Graham, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Books.

BOZELL &#038; GRAHAM: The Self-Congratulation In Banned Books Week

LGBT

Progressivism

When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi finally announced she would support an impeachment process, she was bowing to left-wing extremists who have never accepted the 2016 election results.
And Tinseltown is positively giddy.
After the election, celebrity leftists made a video urging the Electoral College to reject the election results. That didn&#8217;t fly, so then came a video from Humanity for Progress in which celebrities urged Congress to reject all of President Trump&#8217;s Cabinet nominees. &#8220;The majority of Americans, regardless of who they voted for, did not vote for racism, for sexism, or for xenophobia,&#8221; they proclaimed. &#8220;And yet, Donald Trump won.&#8221;
Comedian Patton Oswalt is probably feeling vindicated, since he tweeted after the election: &#8220;We survived 8 years of Bush. We can survive 2 1/2 years of Trump.&#8221;
The late-night comedians were delighted with Pelosi&#8217;s announcement, so much so that all propriety was cast aside. Conan O&#8217;Brien on TBS was the nastiest, suggesting the president is a murderer. He joked: &#8220;Trump was furious and said, &#8220;This is nuts. I&#8217;ve done way worse things. This?? I&#8217;ve killed people! What are you talking about?'&#8221; His sidekick, Andy Richter, a seriously hateful leftist, added, &#8220;That&#8217;s almost not even a joke.&#8221; How correct he was.
Comedy Central&#8217;s Trevor Noah drew enthusiastic screams for asking, &#8220;Is it finally happening?&#8221; He gushed: &#8220;It&#8217;s impeachment, which Trump hates, plus articles, which he hates even more. &#8230; And if you thought Trump was unhinged before, I can&#8217;t even imagine what he&#8217;s going to be like now! Like, he&#8217;s been crazy! Can you imagine what he&#8217;s gonna be like now?&#8221;
The usual suspects were full of themselves. Bette Midler tweeted: &#8220;#ConaldTrump brought this on himself. The Democrats were cautious until the last straw.&#8221; — What planet is she on? — &#8220;He truly believes he, and he alone, is above the law. If nothing else, he is mentally unfit.&#8221;
Kathy Griffin reminded everyone of her horrific stunt, that pose with a fake severed head of the president, tweeting: &#8220;Trending! #ImpeachTrump Call me an opportunist or call me a genius but admit it, I was aHEAD of my time.&#8221;
This qualifies as wit on the left.
It was just another day of Trump loathing from director Rob Reiner. &#8220;The Liar&#8217;s goin&#8217; down,&#8221; he predicted. &#8220;Virtually every elected member of the GOP knows this President has committed numerous impeachable offenses. The time has come. They will either honor their oaths to our Constitution or be relegated to the dust bin of History.&#8221;
Mia Farrow added, &#8220;Unlike Nixon he wont resign — he has no shame. He is much worse than Nixon.&#8221;
And, of course, if they were to ever get rid of Trump, what then? They would immediately pivot to the next task: ridding America of President Pence. Some are already looking ahead. &#8220;Top Chef&#8221; host Padma Lakshmi cheered the Trump news and then added:, &#8220;While we&#8217;re at it, can we get rid of Pence as well? He&#8217;s a menace and no friend to women, the LGBT community, immigrants &#8230; the list goes on and on.&#8221;
The entertainment elites believe they are unusually gifted people. Yes, in American society, they are the closest things to royalty, a suggestion that should trigger nausea. But that is a reflection of society. What amazes is that these people actually believe they are royalty and, as such, are aghast when the unwashed masses don&#8217;t see things their way. This latest impeachment attempt only underlines two things.
First, they don&#8217;t believe in democracy.
Second, as usual, they have no idea what they&#8217;re talking about, since nothing they&#8217;re proclaiming will come to pass.
L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Brent Bozell III and Tim Graham, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Nancy Pelosi.

BOZELL &#038; GRAHAM: Pelosi Bows To Hollywood Extremists

Donald Trump

Impeachment

Ukraine

Gaianism is alive and well in what we call Western civilization. In advance of the United Nations Climate Action Summit on Sept. 23, leftists are actively practicing their faith. Man has despoiled the Earth and now must &#8230; confess to the Earth.
Think we&#8217;re exaggerating?
On Sept. 17, New York&#8217;s Union Theological Seminary, a progressive Christian adjunct to Columbia University, put out a tweet that many people must have assumed was a satire from the religion pranksters at The Babylon Bee. &#8220;Today in chapel, we confessed to plants,&#8221; it began. &#8220;Together, we held our grief, joy, regret, hope, guilt and sorrow in prayer; offering them to the beings who sustain us but whose gift we too often fail to honor.&#8221; Then they asked for an Amen: &#8220;What do you confess to the plants in your life?&#8221;
The photo accompanying the tweet shows a young female seminarian seated cross-legged on the floor, facing what looks like an assortment of cattails, a peace lily, a majesty palm and potted basil.
Thank God (the other one) for sane people&#8217;s sense of humor. Twitter ridicule quickly followed. &#8220;I think you smoked one of the plants first,&#8221; someone tweeted.
The Catholic blogger called the Curt Jester used Catholic confessional words: &#8220;Bless me ficus, for I have sinned. I promise to turn over a new leaf and nip the root of my sin in the bud. I want to grow in hollyness. I firmly resolve with the hope of thy grapes to sin no more.&#8221;
But the New York Union Theological Seminary isn&#8217;t the only place where folks are apologizing to weeds. On Aug. 31, The New York Times tweeted: &#8220;Dr. Monica Gagliano says that she has received Yoda-like advice from trees and shrubbery. In 2012, she says, an oak tree assured her that a risky grant application — proposing research on sound communication in plants — would be successful.&#8221;
So why not pray to plants and wait for the answers?
NBC News also broke out a confessional, with an interactive webpage titled &#8220;Climate Confessions.&#8221; It explained its brainstorm: &#8220;Even those who care deeply about the planet&#8217;s future can slip up now and then. Tell us: Where do you fall short in preventing climate change? Do you blast the A/C? Throw out half your lunch? Grill a steak every week? Share your anonymous confession with NBC News.&#8221; Categories of &#8220;sins&#8221; against Earth were shown. Here&#8217;s an example in each category:
Energy: &#8220;I sleep with the air conditioner on year-round and justify it to myself by recycling.&#8221;
Transportation: &#8220;I fly private jets. We will often burn an extra 500 gallons of fuel to save 10 minutes.&#8221;
Plastics: &#8220;I admit to using far too many plastic grocery bags while my reusable ones sit in the trunk of my car.&#8221;
Food waste: &#8220;I toss food that&#8217;s fresh enough to eat, but isn&#8217;t visually ok (e.g., freezer burn). Getting a vacuum sealer to help with this.&#8221;
Paper: &#8220;I use enough Q-tips for a family of 8. I have an addiction to them in hygiene purposes, makeup application, even cleaning.&#8221;
Meat: &#8220;I was a vegetarian since 1980. But the last few years I started eating ground turkey. So sad.&#8221;
Some people turned it into bragging instead of confessing: &#8220;I LOVE meat. But I love the earth more. Vegan for over 4 years now.&#8221; Some seemingly conservative people wrote in mocking responses: &#8220;I run my AC 24/7. I&#8217;m not going to sweat to appease this climate religion.&#8221;
Liberal guilt has never been more pronounced. We recommend as proper corporal punishment using the switch, provided liberals then apologize to the bamboo.
Even Gaia is running for the hills.
L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Brent Bozell III and Tim Graham, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Climate activists

BOZELL &#038; GRAHAM: Earth Worship And Climate Confessions

Climate Change

Environmentalism

Global Warming

It&#8217;s a fallacy to suggest that in the news media, business trumps politics. CNN&#8217;s and MSNBC&#8217;s dismal ratings are in direct proportion to their deliberate decision to embrace far-left anti-Trumpism.
The same holds true for commercialized Hollywood, except in this case, it&#8217;s not just anti-Trumpism that excites. The hatred is deeper. Hollywood is committed to levels of anti-Christian bigotry never before seen in its industry. There&#8217;s no discernible market demand for it, but it believes Christianity must be insulted at every opportunity.
Consider these examples in the past month alone:
1. On Sept. 9, HBO began a new season of &#8220;The Deuce,&#8221; a series about the porn industry in the 1970s and 1980s. In one scene, a sleazy director starts coaching an actress and says, &#8220;Now, Melissa, just talk to him a little bit. You know, like you&#8217;re prayin&#8217;.&#8221; Melissa clumsily turns to a bungled version of the Lord&#8217;s Prayer during sex and says, &#8220;Oh, Father who is in heaven, forgive me for my sins &#8230;&#8221; The director makes a face and says he just wants her to scream things like, &#8220;Oh, God!&#8221; She apologizes and says, &#8220;Oops, sorry. Lapsed Catholic.&#8221;
2. HBO is also airing a new series called &#8220;The Righteous Gemstones&#8221; about a family led by megachurch preacher Eli Gemstone. This Christian family lives to fight while launching obscenities. As HBO believes is typical in these kinds of families, in the first episode on Aug. 18, the F-word was dropped 41 times, and the Lord&#8217;s name was taken in vain 28 times, according to the Media Research Center. Gemstone&#8217;s eldest son, Jesse Gemstone, also a pastor — well, he has another dilemma. He is being blackmailed after being caught on camera at a scandalous party featuring lots of cocaine and nudity. He was attending the Prayer Power Convention. Because that&#8217;s what one does at prayer gatherings.
3. Hulu, the streaming service that routinely trashes Christian theocrats in its hit show &#8220;The Handmaid&#8217;s Tale,&#8221; also offers a show called &#8220;Into the Dark.&#8221; In the Sept. 6 episode, teenage girls are dragged by their Christian fathers to a purity retreat to focus on the need to keep their virginity.
So what&#8217;s wrong with that, especially if you&#8217;re a traditionalist? Nothing, except these Christian men are complete hypocrites. They fiercely advocate female purity while expressing no concern for male promiscuity. One father, who (naturally) is a pastor, insists men &#8220;don&#8217;t need to be monitored the same way women do. &#8230; They are not as easily fooled.&#8221; These nightmarish dads even lock their daughters in cages for daring to meet with boys.
A rebellious daughter named Jo insists the girls need to pray to Lilith, a feminist legend who, in medieval times, was said to be the first wife of Adam and become a demon after rebelling. When another girl at the retreat protests that Lilith isn&#8217;t in the Bible, Jo shoots back and says, &#8220;The Bible is male revisionist history.&#8221;
4. Then there&#8217;s &#8220;Preacher&#8221; on AMC. Why stick to man when you can portray the Lord Himself as an evil buffoon? In the Sept. 8 episode, God the Father plots to destroy all of humanity with the help of Jesus and Adolf Hitler (yes, you read that right). An Irish vampire named Cassidy is looking to foil God&#8217;s plan, and during his search for the Almighty, he tells a story to a room full of observant Jews. It&#8217;s about a Catholic mother of six sons. Five died in war, and one died in a car accident. &#8220;(S)he still loved God, because she was an idiot,&#8221; he says. &#8220;She was a sucker, as are all of you!&#8221;
AMC recently ran an ad for &#8220;Preacher&#8221; featuring outraged reviews from conservative websites. The channel delights in being called &#8220;utter garbage&#8221; (Red State), &#8220;offensive&#8221; (LifeSite News), &#8220;infamous&#8221; (Fox News), &#8220;blasphemous&#8221; (The Daily Caller) and, finally, &#8220;a show that disrespects everything&#8221; (NewsBusters).
That&#8217;s Hollywood. It&#8217;s never prouder than when conservatives call it infamous garbage. If the shoe fits, Hollywood proudly wears it.
L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Brent Bozell III and Tim Graham, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Righteous_Gemstones.jpeg

BOZELL &#038; GRAHAM: God Takes A Beating On Television

Christianity

Hollywood

For decades now, the Hollywood left has romanticized those brave Communist Party members who were blacklisted in the 1950s for refusing to cooperate with congressional investigations into their Soviet espionage. Just three years ago, Bryan Cranston was nominated for an Oscar for best actor for playing communist screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, a man so deluded that he compared North Korea&#8217;s invasion of South Korea to the 1776 American Revolution. Even now, there are two films in development that revisit the history of Roy Cohn, a lawyer for Joe McCarthy &#8230; and, later, for Donald Trump.
But the Hollywood left isn&#8217;t a fraction as tolerant of differing opinions as it likes to pretend. It can&#8217;t stand conservatives, and it especially can&#8217;t stand public supporters of President Trump. The latest example began when The Hollywood Reporter declared that President Trump would appear at a Beverly Hills reelection fundraiser on Sept. 17.
The stars of NBC&#8217;s rebooted gay-agitprop sitcom &#8220;Will &amp; Grace&#8221; announced a new blacklist.
Eric McCormack tweeted, &#8220;Hey, @THR, kindly report on everyone attending this event, so the rest of us can be clear about who we don&#8217;t wanna work with. Thx.&#8221; His co-star Debra Messing tweeted &#8220;Co-signed&#8221; and added another tweet: &#8220;Please print a list of all attendees please. The public has a right to know.&#8221;
Two of the possibly five Trump-supporting actors replied. Kristy Swanson, best known for playing Buffy in &#8220;Buffy the Vampire Slayer,&#8221; tweeted, &#8220;It&#8217;s absolutely heartbreaking that you would say something like this &amp; then ask The Hollywood Reporter to get on board with you (so sad).&#8221; Dean Cain tweeted, &#8220;I&#8217;m not attending, because I&#8217;ll be out of town. Otherwise, I&#8217;d have been happy to attend.&#8221;
Swanson and Cain are not the most popular folks in Tinseltown. They appeared this spring in a Washington, D.C., play by Phelim McAleer called &#8220;FBI Lovebirds: Undercovers,&#8221; about political corruption in the Obama administration. There was nothing contrived, nothing untrue. It wasn&#8217;t even &#8220;based on real events,&#8221; Hollywood-speak for &#8220;We made most of this up.&#8221; They used the actual text messages of former Justice Department officials/illicit lovers Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. The reaction? A leftist tweeted at them, &#8220;Someone set the theatre on fire.&#8221;
(Twitter, predictably, took no action.)
Tolerance, liberal style.
But then, something strange happened. Others did not comply.
The media elites ignored McCormack and Messing&#8217;s call for lists of Trump donors in Hollywood. Defenders were few, and it flopped. In fact, one famous liberal entertainer took to the airwaves to call out the hypocrisy, given all the blacklisting lectures delivered by her industry over the decades. From her perch on ABC&#8217;s &#8220;The View,&#8221; Whoopi Goldberg, no Trump fan, blasted the idea of circulating Trump-backer lists. &#8220;Listen, last time people did this, people ended up killing themselves,&#8221; she argued. &#8220;This is not a good idea, OK? Your idea of who you don&#8217;t want to work with is your personal business. Do not encourage people to print out lists, because the next list that comes out, your name will be on, and then people will be coming after you.&#8221;
The backlash was strong enough that the &#8220;Will &amp; Grace&#8221; stars began pretending they never suggested denying work to Trump backers. McCormack posted on Instagram: &#8220;my social media post from last week &#8230; has been misinterpreted in a very upsetting way. I absolutely do not support blacklists or discrimination of any kind.&#8221; Messing tweeted a photo of his post and added, &#8220;I couldn&#8217;t have said it better.&#8221;
Yes, they could have. They could have kept their mouths shut.
L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Brent Bozell III and Tim Graham, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

BOZELL &#038; GRAHAM: A Hollywood Blacklist For Trump Backers?

At the MTV Video Music Awards on August 26, Taylor Swift won the video of the year award for her latest song &#8220;You Need to Calm Down.&#8221; It&#8217;s a song that trashes anyone still dissenting from the LGBTQ agenda and begs them to &#8220;control your urges to scream about all the people you hate / &#8216;Cause shade never made anybody less gay.&#8221;
The network news shows gushed over her leftist activism and the &#8220;Taylor Effect&#8221; they expect it to provide. ABC&#8217;s George Stephanopoulos said, &#8220;she&#8217;s doing it the way she does her music &#8230; with intent and with intelligence.&#8221;
What is Swift&#8217;s political agenda here? She&#8217;s pushing a bill called the Equality Act, sponsored by gay Congressman David Cicilline and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR). As she sang her song about the haters, MTV put the words &#8220;EQUALITY ACT&#8221; in huge bold letters above her.
Swift lobbied her MTV fans in her acceptance speech. &#8220;You voting for this video means that you want a world where we are all treated equally under the law, regardless of who we love, regardless of how we identify,&#8221; she assured, and they fawned all over her.
In her Change.org petition, which she boasted has more than half a million signatures, Swift argued, &#8220;Our country&#8217;s lack of protection for its own citizens ensures that LGBTQ people must live in fear that their lives could be turned upside down by an employer or landlord who is homophobic or transphobic. The fact that, legally, some people are completely at the mercy of the hatred and bigotry of others is disgusting and unacceptable.&#8221;
That&#8217;s flat-out wrong. The so-called &#8220;Equality Act&#8221; enables anti-religious hatred and bigotry. The law would insert &#8220;sexual orientation and gender identity&#8221; into the Civil Rights Act and expand the definition of &#8220;public accommodations.&#8221; The bill amends &#8220;stadium&#8221; and inserts &#8220;stadium or other place of or establishment that provides exhibition, entertainment, recreation, exercise, amusement, public gathering, or public display.&#8221;
Then the laundry list unfolds, as they add &#8220;any establishment that provides a good, service, or program, including a store, shopping center, online retailer or service provider, salon, bank, gas station, food bank, service or care center, shelter, travel agency, or funeral parlor, or establishment that provides health care, accounting, or legal services.&#8221; There&#8217;s even more, including, &#8220;any train service, bus service, car service, taxi service, airline service, station, depot, or other place of or establishment that provides transportation service.&#8221;
The Family Research Council warns that you can expect that over-broad definition of &#8220;a good, service, or program&#8221; to apply to churches, religious private schools and nonprofit social-service groups. It also warns that &#8220;attorneys will likely be required to represent homosexuals in dissolving their same-sex &#8216;marriages,&#8217; Christian schools will likely be required to offer transgendered students the bathroom of their choice, and Christian homeless shelters will likely be required to accommodate same-sex couples.&#8221;
The bill explicitly sets out to guarantee that religion cannot be used as a defense: &#8220;The Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 &#8230; shall not provide a claim concerning, or a defense to a claim under, a covered title, or provide a basis for challenging the application or enforcement of a covered title.&#8221;
The LGBTQ orthodoxy shreds dissent. There is no debate allowed. There are &#8220;allies&#8221; like Taylor Swift, and there are &#8220;hateful&#8221; people who must be punished. This oppressive regime started in Hollywood and aspires to end in every corner where people still cling to their Bibles and their guns — their other cause.
L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Brent Bozell III and Tim Graham, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Taylor Swift

BOZELL &#038; GRAHAM: Networks Endorse Taylor Swift’s ‘Equality’ Lobbying

Transgender

On the verge of a new season, the NFL is trying a new corporate self-defense crouch. Its goal is to counteract criticism from the left that the NFL is insensitive to the Black Lives Matter crowd that urged NFL stars to kneel in disrespect of the national anthem. Those protests, which dramatically drove down NFL ratings and game attendance, came to a stop only when President Donald Trump called out the millionaire ingrates.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell held a press event with gangsta rapper/mogul Jay-Z and announced Jay-Z&#8217;s company Roc Nation will take the lead in selecting the NFL&#8217;s live entertainment programming and advise on its &#8220;social justice&#8221; initiatives.
Jay-Z, also known by his birth name, Shawn Carter, once backed Colin Kaepernick&#8217;s crusade but now proclaims it&#8217;s yesterday&#8217;s news. &#8220;I think we&#8217;re past kneeling,&#8221; Jay-Z said.
It wasn&#8217;t hard to predict that the nation&#8217;s enlightened — or, to use that obnoxious word, &#8220;woke&#8221; — sports writers were going to erupt volcanically over this deal. Jemele Hill, the sidelined ESPN lecturer, summed it up for The Atlantic: &#8220;Jay-Z has given the NFL exactly what it wanted: guilt-free access to black audiences, culture, entertainers, and influencers.&#8221;
Guilt is crucial for racial ambulance chasers. The man whose net worth tops the $1 billion mark by virtue of bad-boy anthems like &#8220;Big Pimpin'&#8221; is now the NFL&#8217;s Uncle Tom, selling his soul at the company store, working for the Man. This is fun to watch.
Our favorite leftist tantrum came from Hemal Jhaveri of USA Today under the headline &#8220;Jay-Z&#8217;s partnership with the NFL is just another reminder that capitalism always wins.&#8221; Wait a minute &#8230; Jhaveri wrote this for USA Today, which is about as entrenched a capitalist company and media power as could be. Does that make her a [capitalist]?
Jhaveri didn&#8217;t protest that evil capitalists subverted social consciousness when Nike signed Kaepernick to a deal worth tens of millions of dollars to hush talk of its Asian labor practices. But this was unpardonable. &#8220;While Jay-Z&#8217;s intentions may be good, this is about acknowledging the limits of how much progressive movements can achieve when they align themselves with entrenched systems of power.&#8221;
Memo to Jhaveri: There&#8217;s a reason Woodstock 2 was canceled. The &#8217;60s are over.
The lecture continued: &#8220;Free market capitalism works in many ways to control political dissent, but one of its most insidious forms is by making protest, the kind that requires real, significant sacrifice, into something that is not only unnecessary but feels beside the point.&#8221;
Capitalism is &#8220;controlling&#8221; dissent in the NFL&#8217;s case by bending over backward to pander to the &#8220;social justice&#8221; crowd &#8230; off the field. Football fans hate having the game ruined with political sideshows. And ESPN discovered fans don&#8217;t want socialist sermonizing as a badgering interruption of their sports highlights.
But the left never wants to leave the game of football alone. Athletes lecturing in press conferences or on cable TV isn&#8217;t enough. They want to get in America&#8217;s face and spur outrage on Sunday afternoon. They want to divide — and conquer. But they didn&#8217;t. The Kaepernick side has been trounced, and they can&#8217;t (and won&#8217;t) acknowledge that the war is over, just like some leftists will never acknowledge that the fight over the Redskins&#8217; name is over.
This all makes sense. The left demands we have a never-ending &#8220;conversation&#8221; about how everything that&#8217;s ever caused America to succeed in the world is based on racist power structures. They can&#8217;t stand the idea of listening to a rebuttal from the other side.
L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Brent Bozell III and Tim Graham, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

Jay-Z

BOZELL &#038; GRAHAM: Jay-Z Sells Out For The NFL?

Black Lives Matter

Colin Kaepernick

Public schools are reopening for business across America, meaning it&#8217;s time to get back to reading, writing, arithmetic &#8230; and revolution.
As usual in matters such as these, California is leading the way.
On the first day of classes at Denair Middle School near Modesto, science teacher Luis Davila Alvarado handed out a worksheet from a transgender advocacy group titled &#8220;The Gender Unicorn&#8221; asking students about their &#8220;gender identity,&#8221; &#8220;gender expression&#8221; and their sexual and emotional attractions.
These are children. And yet the teacher did not ask permission to hand the worksheet out. Most parents were outraged. The school estimated about 50 children received the worksheet. It turns out Alvarado was educating the children about his own life. He declared he rejects the term &#8220;Mr.&#8221; and prefers to be addressed with the newfangled &#8220;Mx.,&#8221; pronounced &#8220;Mix.&#8221; A school official quickly put a stop to it, but the damage was done.
In California, waiting until middle school for this boatload of propaganda is actually inappropriate! In May, the California State Board of Education established a set of guidelines insisting schools should begin discussing &#8220;gender identity&#8221; in kindergarten. &#8220;While students may not fully understand the concepts of gender expression and identity,&#8221; the guidelines insist, &#8220;some children in kindergarten and even younger have identified as transgender or understand they have a gender identity that is different from their sex assigned at birth.&#8221; Schools apparently must leap to address the &#8220;harm of negative gender stereotypes.&#8221;
Public schools aren&#8217;t just undermining parents with the curriculum. When children &#8220;decide&#8221; they &#8220;might&#8221; be transgender, parents better not object, or else they will be treated as a threat to their own children&#8217;s well-being.
On Aug. 12, USA Today published a chilling op-ed from Jay Keck, a parent in the Chicago suburbs, about how his autistic teenage daughter — who showed &#8220;no signs&#8221; of being unhappy with her gender — suddenly decided in 2016 that she was male and wanted to be addressed with male pronouns.
She first &#8220;came out&#8221; at school, and Keck says the school immediately addressed her with male pronouns and provided access to a gender-neutral bathroom. When Keck and his wife found out, they insisted the school address their daughter by her legal name — and were ignored. They met with an assistant superintendent, who asserted the school had to, as USA Today wrote, &#8220;follow the law&#8221; — a nonbinding directive from the Obama administration, which was repealed by Team Trump.
According to Keck, surprise, surprise: The American Civil Liberties Union has sent threatening letters to schools telling them that &#8220;students have the constitutional right to share or withhold information about their sexual orientation or gender identity from their parents, teachers, and other parties.&#8221;
Then the real nightmare kicked in. Put yourself in the position of the Keck family.
&#8220;My daughter told me that the school social worker was advising her about halfway houses,&#8221; he said. &#8220;The social worker confirmed this when I scheduled a meeting with him to discuss it. This felt like a horrifying attempt to encourage our daughter to run away from home.&#8221;
Keck had his daughter evaluated by a psychologist approved by the school district. He said, &#8220;He told us it was very clear that our daughter&#8217;s sudden transgender identity was driven by her underlying mental health conditions, but would only share his thoughts off the record because he feared the potential backlash.&#8221; When his daughter graduated high school, parental wishes that her birth name would be announced were again ignored.
This growing gender-bending orthodoxy is what Pope Benedict called the &#8220;dictatorship of relativism,&#8221; or, if you prefer, &#8220;the tyranny of tolerance.&#8221; Dissent — even from parents — is being condemned as bigotry, cruelty and hate speech.
This will not stop until the nuclear family is destroyed. Or until parents stand up as one and declare a commitment to destroy this movement.
L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Brent Bozell III and Tim Graham, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

School Classroom

BOZELL &#038; GRAHAM: Parental Nightmares In Public Schools

Education

The &#8220;gender reveal&#8221; has become a growing phenomenon in the world of social media. When expectant parents discover the gender of their unborn baby, they make a big announcement revealing the baby&#8217;s sex, with cakes and balloons and even pyrotechnics.
It&#8217;s a celebration of life, a desire to share the joyous news of the little boy or girl. Ah, but there&#8217;s the rub. A boy or a girl. In today&#8217;s perverted culture, this is wrong — very wrong.
It&#8217;s not surprising that in today&#8217;s war on the &#8220;gender binary,&#8221; major newspaper columnists appointed to write on &#8220;gender issues&#8221; (can you believe it) have written jeremiads attacking the very idea. Enter Monica Hesse of The Washington Post, whose July 31 article was headlined &#8220;Let&#8217;s have a gender-reveal party that reveals gender is a construct.&#8221;
In other words, stop doing &#8220;gender reveals,&#8221; because gender isn&#8217;t &#8220;assigned at birth.&#8221; It&#8217;s something for the child to decide later.
Hesse began by telling the tale of a mother named Jenna Karvunidis, who first made this trend viral by having a gender-reveal party with a pink cake. Now she regrets the whole thing. Karvunidis recently composed a follow-up post about her daughter Bianca — now just &#8220;Bee&#8221; — whose female gender she&#8217;d celebrated. &#8220;PLOT TWIST,&#8221; she wrote on Facebook. &#8220;The world&#8217;s first gender-reveal party baby is a girl who wears suits!&#8221;
Karvunidis included a family photo of &#8220;Bee,&#8221; now wearing a white suit and an androgynous haircut. This regretful mother declared her fealty to the gender-crushing revolution: &#8220;Who cares what gender the baby is? I did at the time because we didn&#8217;t live in 2019 and didn&#8217;t know what we know now — that assigning focus on gender at birth leaves out so much of their potential and talents that have nothing to do with what&#8217;s between their legs.&#8221;
Hesse was delighted by this confession, since she &#8220;was already buried in gender-reveal footage, planning to write a column about the perverse pleasure of watching the ones that fail.&#8221;
She hates the gender-reveal people.
Hesse began the article by admitting she gleefully watched four times the video of a couple in Australia celebrating with blue exhaust fumes, but then the car burst into flames and was destroyed. She also enjoyed another video &#8220;in which a man attempts to hit a pink-powder-filled balloon off a golf tee, and instead thwacks his buddy in the groin. Or another, of a guy accidentally hitting a softball into his wife&#8217;s face.&#8221;
At The Washington Post, civility dies in schadenfreude.
Hesse hates how these parties are often &#8220;hypermasculine&#8221; events, with axes and chainsaws and footballs. Or there was the off-duty Border Patrol agent who caused a 47,000-acre forest fire after he &#8220;shot a blue-dust-filled target that exploded more thoroughly than planned.&#8221;
The Post columnist angrily claimed that &#8220;the entire event is based on remarkable hubris: Parents try to concoct a memorable moment out of exhaust pipes, only to have nature inform them that there are no carefully concocted moments when it comes to raising children.&#8221; Parents must learn today&#8217;s lesson on &#8220;the limits of binary color choices.&#8221; Your child may &#8220;choose&#8221; their gender as they grow, and parents must be expected to promote that choice, and whatever mind-numbing terminology follows.
The cultural deconstructionist left is always reminding us that yesterday&#8217;s religiously informed &#8220;patriarchy&#8221; isn&#8217;t the only orthodoxy that pushes a set of manners and expectations on the culture. They have toppled God, and put the solipsistic anarchy of gender politics in His place.
L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Brent Bozell III and Tim Graham, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Couple

BOZELL &#038; GRAHAM: Uncorking Hate For Pink And Blue Parties

FoxNews.com featured two entirely different takes the morning after the second CNN presidential debate. Two highly respected pundits, one Democrat and one Republican, came away with amazingly differing conclusions, based not on the party lines but on professional debate analysis.
Democratic pollster Doug Schoen declared a winner: &#8220;Former Vice President Joe Biden dominated the debate stage and weathered the attacks of nine opponents for the Democratic presidential nomination Wednesday night, emerging the clear winner and standing by his promise to not be &#8216;overly polite.'&#8221;
Trump supporter Liz Peek saw a loser: &#8220;What a sorry spectacle it was. Poor Biden, tripping over his garbled defense of his 1994 crime bill support, his vote in favor of the Iraq war, his op-ed opposing tax breaks for childcare, and so much more. Biden was attacked by nearly every rival, each one hoping that the next day&#8217;s headlines would show that he or she had successfully skewered the former vice president.&#8221;
Schoen: &#8220;The former vice president delivered his message compellingly and convincingly. Even during his less strong moments, Biden remained the focal point of the conversation, speaking for over 21 minutes — more than any other candidate on stage.&#8221;
Peek: &#8220;The other candidates didn&#8217;t need to beat up on Biden to make him look weak; he did it to himself.
&#8220;Several times Biden abruptly stopped speaking, presumably in deference to the debate moderators, but more obviously because he was worried he couldn&#8217;t successfully complete his thoughts. He frequently fumbled facts, not the least at the end when he projected the dire consequences of &#8216;eight more years of Trump.&#8217; Someone needs to remind Biden that President Trump cannot serve eight more years.&#8221;
Schoen: &#8220;Ultimately, the strength of Biden&#8217;s performance made it clear that he is prepared to combine the policy knowledge and experience necessary to take on President Trump and potentially win in November 2020. He clearly remains the candidate who will be tough to beat for the Democratic presidential nomination.&#8221;
Peek: &#8220;Biden also came armed with facts and history with which to take on his rivals &#8230; Biden landed only glancing blows, his delivery rumpled.&#8221;
Schoen&#8217;s big star among the also-rans? &#8220;Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii scored points against Harris while addressing criminal justice reform and race,&#8221; he wrote. &#8220;Gabbard took aim at the racial implications of Harris&#8217; tough-on-crime record as a California attorney general, leaving Harris without a rebuttal on an issue that the senator commanded during the last debate.&#8221;
Peek found someone else: &#8220;Businessman Andrew Yang, who astonishingly has earned an average 1.8 percent in the polls &#8230; stuck to selling his plan to give every adult American $1,000 per month. &#8230; Yang offered up one of the few clever lines of the night, proclaiming himself &#8216;the opposite of Donald Trump, an Asian who loves math.'&#8221;
Schoen&#8217;s view of that? &#8220;Yang did not have a resounding debate moment.&#8221;
What&#8217;s the point here? Reporters will likewise have differing takes on that debate — any debate. Who won, who lost. Who scored, who missed. Who is in and who is out. Their prose may not be as edgy as an editorial, but the thrust is the same, and it goes to show everyone observing politics has a bias.
L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Brent Bozell III and Tim Graham, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

BOZELL &#038; GRAHAM: 1 Debate, Entirely Opposite Takes

Andrew Yang

Joe Biden

Tulsi Gabbard

You follow the antics of AOC and the so-called &#8220;Squad&#8221; of hers and you wonder if the left has lost its mind. Your instincts are correct. And if it&#8217;s any comfort to the left, it is not alone. In fact, there are even loonier elements loose among the elites.
On the East Coast, the Manhattan-based leftist Jesuit magazine America regularly produces copy that assaults the teachings of the Catholic Church. (Some Jesuits are born with that DNA.) But the magazine has outdone itself now, even by its standards. It has published an article titled &#8220;The Catholic Case for Communism&#8221; by its Toronto-based correspondent Dean Dettloff, who just happens to be a member of the Communist Party of Canada.
Dettloff concedes, &#8220;Christianity and communism have obviously had a complicated relationship. That adjective &#8216;complicated&#8217; will surely cause some readers to roll their eyes.&#8221; Well, he&#8217;s right. It did. Communists have murdered millions of Catholics all over the world. Millions more in China, Cuba and elsewhere continue to be persecuted. &#8220;Complicated&#8221;? Programming a remote control can be complicated. There&#8217;s a better word for this communist-Catholic dynamic. It&#8217;s called &#8220;genocide.&#8221;
This communist argued, &#8220;though some communists would undoubtedly prefer a world without Christianity, communism is not simply a program for destroying the church.&#8221; Except that is precisely what communism has tried to do all over the world since its founding, and for good reason. Catholicism is its mortal enemy.
Rod Dreher wrote a devastating piece for The American Conservative titled &#8220;Jesuits Rehabilitate Communism.&#8221; He wrote how in Warsaw recently, he knelt at the grave of the Blessed Jerzy Popieluszko, the chaplain of the Solidarity labor union movement, who the communist security forces beat to a lifeless pulp in 1984. In communist countries, faithful priests and believers weren&#8217;t just killed; they were tortured and forced to watch their beloved Christ and his cross be mocked in lurid and disgusting ways.
It wasn&#8217;t &#8220;complicated.&#8221; It was obscene.
So, do you think it can get any more intellectually incoherent than that? Let&#8217;s just mosey over to the West Coast now and see what we find there. Hollywood is about as left-wing as you can get, but you can never be left-wing enough if you&#8217;re on the left, and here Hollywood goes again.
Hollywood is facing intense pressure from the left to be more &#8220;progressive.&#8221; Now the left is targeting movies for children. What&#8217;s the problem there, you ask? Just read Esquire magazine and you&#8217;ll learn that Disney movies like &#8220;The Lion King&#8221; are unacceptably uber-capitalist.
Gabrielle Bruney acknowledges in her piece that this is a movie about animals, not humans. But that doesn&#8217;t matter. &#8220;The politics of a cartoon savannah shouldn&#8217;t be taken too seriously, of course,&#8221; she writes. And then she becomes instantly serious: &#8220;but regressive class messaging abounds in children&#8217;s films. A 2016 study of G-rated blockbusters found that nearly a third of all the main characters in the films were upper class, while another quarter were upper middle class. Just 20 percent of leads were working class or poor.&#8221;
You see, the lions are the rich, and this means their prey is somehow the poor. Bruney complains that the hyenas in the film are the villains, even though the lions also prey on animals. She writes: &#8220;The problem with the hyenas, then, appears not to be that they eat meat, but that they&#8217;re trying to eat above their station. In the class structure of Pride Rock, Disney pretty much made villains of the hungry poor, outcast animals who just wanted to literally eat the rich.&#8221;
Similarly, the Washington Post published a column by Dutch professor Dan Hassler-Forrest in which he denounced &#8220;The Lion King&#8221; as a &#8220;fascistic&#8221; film that portrays &#8220;a society where the weak have learned to worship at the feet of the strong.&#8221; He adds, &#8220;The hyenas transparently represent the black, brown and disabled bodies that are forcefully excluded from this hierarchical society.&#8221;
Holy smokes. Can you follow this nonsense? Then again, did we just say &#8220;holy&#8221; (slyly inserting religion) and &#8220;smokes&#8221; (we must support the tobacco lobby)?
Maybe, just maybe, there&#8217;s some hope here. Maybe the intolerant left will find fault with everything and one day, like a black hole, implode upon itself.
L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Brent Bozell III and Tim Graham, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

BOZELL &#038; GRAHAM: The Cultural Left Goes Berserk

Catholicism

In the most liberal cities in America, the goal of maximum &#8220;inclusion&#8221; often requires an energetic scrubbing of language, especially gender terms. This week in California, the Berkeley City Council voted to amend its municipal code to achieve maximum sensitivity for the ever-increasing demands of the gender-smashing left.
A council member explained, &#8220;In recent years, broadening societal awareness of transgender and gender nonconforming identities has brought to light the importance of non-binary gender inclusivity.&#8221; It was high time to &#8220;make the environment of City Hall and the language of city legislation consistent with the principles of inclusion.&#8221;
Some of the allegedly offensive terms are unsurprising. Apparently, there&#8217;s no excuse for &#8220;fireman,&#8221; &#8220;patrolman,&#8221; &#8220;policeman&#8221; and &#8220;watchman.&#8221; But the council is even scrubbing the word &#8220;manhole&#8221; and replacing it with &#8220;maintenance hole.&#8221; Patriarchy doesn&#8217;t rest on the word &#8220;manhole.&#8221; The level of snowflakery on this one is impressive.
Berkeley&#8217;s language cops reject the term &#8220;master,&#8221; instead insisting on terms like &#8220;captain,&#8221; &#8220;skipper&#8221; or &#8220;pilot.&#8221; Let&#8217;s hope the University of California doesn&#8217;t have to change &#8220;master&#8217;s degree&#8221; to &#8220;skipper&#8217;s degree.&#8221; The council also objects to the word &#8220;heir,&#8221; preferring the term &#8220;beneficiaries.&#8221; But there&#8217;s no gender reference in &#8220;heirs.&#8221; The dictionary definition is &#8220;a person legally entitled to the property or rank of another on that person&#8217;s death.&#8221;
There were other terms on the Berkeley list that suggest the end of gender specificity. &#8220;Brother&#8221; and &#8220;sister&#8221; should be rejected for &#8220;sibling,&#8221; and &#8220;fraternity&#8221; and &#8220;sorority&#8221; must be replaced with &#8220;collegiate Greek system residence.&#8221;
College campuses are especially fertile ground for this kind of speech &#8220;correction&#8221; exercise. The website Campus Reform reports that Colorado State University&#8217;s latest Inclusive Language Guide rejects gender-specific terms like &#8220;male,&#8221; &#8220;female,&#8221; &#8220;ladies and gentlemen&#8221; and &#8220;Mr./Mrs./Ms.&#8221; It even objects to the term &#8220;freshman&#8221; as gendered. Perhaps next it will find &#8220;sophomore&#8221; offensive, since &#8220;sophomoric&#8221; is a pejorative term and could damage emotional well-being.
You can&#8217;t say &#8220;homosexual,&#8221; and you must say &#8220;heterosexual&#8221; because calling someone &#8220;straight&#8221; implies that LGBT folks are &#8220;crooked.&#8221;
The most noticeable dictate in the Colorado State list is the scolding of &#8220;American&#8221; and &#8220;America&#8221; as noninclusive words &#8220;to avoid,&#8221; since America encompasses more than just the United States. Referring to the U.S. as America, the guide says, &#8220;erases other cultures and depicts the United States as the dominant American country.&#8221; Which, of course, it is.
The following terms are all categorized as insensitive to African Americans: &#8220;cakewalk,&#8221; &#8220;eenie meenie miney moe,&#8221; &#8220;food coma&#8221; and &#8220;peanut gallery.&#8221; Asian Americans might be offended by &#8220;long time no see,&#8221; because it might sound like &#8220;Chinese pidgin English,&#8221; as well as &#8220;no can do.&#8221;
&#8220;Hip hip hooray!&#8221; is somehow a Holocaust reference, so it&#8217;s out. &#8220;Starving&#8221; is offensive to people who are insecure about food. Saying you&#8217;re &#8220;addicted&#8221; to something like Netflix or pizza is insensitive to &#8220;those who are truly experiencing drug addiction.&#8221; Please don&#8217;t use &#8220;basket case,&#8221; since that used to refer to a person without limbs. &#8220;Hold down the fort&#8221; is offensive to Indians — whoops, make that Native Americans. But wait; can we say Native Americans?
All this hypersensitivity would make almost anyone want to get their college degree online.
L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Brent Bozell III and Tim Graham, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

BOZELL: Beware The ‘Inclusive Language’ Minefield

California

Political Correctness

If you&#8217;re a liberal, what&#8217;s more fun than watching the liberal press trash conservatives seven days a week? How about watching the entertainment media mock conservatives for complaining about all this abuse?
CBS-owned Showtime has created a Trump-blasting animated series called &#8220;Our Cartoon President,&#8221; reminiscent of that George W. Bush-bashing &#8220;Lil&#8217; Bush&#8221; series that Comedy Central made while Bush was in office. Can you imagine Showtime having aired a president-mocking cartoon while Bill Clinton or Barack Obama were in office? How about one about President Hillary? They wouldn&#8217;t dare.
Showtime thinks it&#8217;s funny to claim that conservatives say they are &#8220;oppressed&#8221; and need a &#8220;safe space.&#8221; The network says its &#8220;cutting-edge comedy presents the truish adventures of Trump &#8230; and his family.&#8221;
&#8220;Truish.&#8221; That word gives you a clue. It&#8217;s like the truth.
The executive producer is CBS late-night star Stephen Colbert, so the &#8220;truish&#8221; part is fascinating. In 2005, Colbert was celebrated for mocking then-President Bush with the word &#8220;truthiness,&#8221; insisting, &#8220;We&#8217;re not talking about truth. We&#8217;re talking about something that seems like truth — the truth we want to exist.&#8221; It was celebrated by Merriam-Webster as word of the year in 2006.
&#8220;Truthiness&#8221; perfectly defines this nasty cartoon, made by a nasty man who announced on national television that this president&#8217;s mouth is a holster for Russian President Vladimir Putin&#8217;s penis. He presents Trump and conservatives as the worst kind of loathsome idiots, because that&#8217;s the truth he wants to exist. It&#8217;s &#8220;his truth,&#8221; as the left so illogically tries to explain these things. It&#8217;s just another dose of ongoing therapy for liberals who feel oppressed because Trump is president.
In the July 7 episode, titled &#8220;Save the Right,&#8221; a cartoon Ben Shapiro convinces doltish Trump to sign an executive order declaring conservatives a protected class. Shapiro tells Trump, &#8220;someday we will achieve true equality and be able to wear a Confederate flag unitard to Soulcycle,&#8221; the indoor-cycling gym franchise. At the end of the episode, Shapiro — who grew up in Los Angeles, not Alabama — rips off his outer clothes and is wearing the unitard.
That&#8217;s &#8220;truish,&#8221; Tinseltown style.
The episode also depicts Justice Brett Kavanaugh as a frat-boy drunk, an idiot. He counsels the president saying that to get what you want, you cry &#8220;until the tears make such a huge puddle it won&#8217;t be clear if it&#8217;s tears or pee.&#8221; He adds, &#8220;Everyone will be afraid to ask, so they&#8217;ll just take whiffs to see if they can smell pee. Once they&#8217;re sure it&#8217;s not pee, they&#8217;ll be so grateful you&#8217;ll get exactly what you want from them.&#8221;
&#8220;Truish.&#8221;
When conservatives march on Washington to rally against their critics, cartoon Anderson Cooper announces: &#8220;Conservatives from all over the country have gathered in Washington to fight for the rights of Republicans. Or, said another way, the president has hosted a white power rally. The grand wizard is about to speak.&#8221; Then the assembled conservatives sing: &#8220;Why do we fight?/ To protect the lives of rich men who are white/ so Rush Limbaugh can sleep sound at night.&#8221; They continue: &#8220;This is why we fight for proud boys and alt-rights/ for rich white men and rich white men&#8217;s wives.&#8221;
In the &#8220;truish&#8221; vision of Colbert &amp; Co., all conservatives are racist fanatics who already have &#8220;all the money and all the power,&#8221; as Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin snapped in the show. If that were the slightest bit true, that the right has all the power, would this cartoon exist?
L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Brent Bozell III and Tim Graham, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

BOZELL: Colbert Cartoon Crumbles Truth

Liberals are loudly denouncing President Trump for his plans to insert himself into Fourth of July festivities in the nation&#8217;s capital. He&#8217;ll deliver a speech — as if that is unique — and provide tanks for the parade — as if that&#8217;s controversial. And so they compare Trump to Kim Jong Un.
Then there are others who are using this anniversary to take it in the opposite direction. Those same leftists are using the celebration of our nation to attack her. Their actions are deliberately designed to offend &#8230; to grab everyone&#8217;s attention &#8230; to please the people who really can&#8217;t stand the thought of American exceptionalism. This nation needs to be diminished. Why not do so on her birthday? Here&#8217;s some evidence.
1. Nike announced it&#8217;s scrapping an athletic shoe featuring the Betsy Ross flag because, apparently, former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick objected to it. The cable and broadcast networks jumped on this story — and supported it. You read Nike&#8217;s statement in disbelief. It claimed it pulled the flag shoe &#8220;based on concerns that it could unintentionally offend and detract from the nation&#8217;s patriotic holiday.&#8221;
Poppycock. Nike succumbed to leftist pressure for the worst possible reason: greed. When Nike signed up Kaepernick, the reaction was overwhelmingly negative, and Nike&#8217;s stock plunged. But the radical left is united and resilient. It bought and bought and bought. Now sales are up. This only fuels that kind of marketing.
2. The New York Times Opinion section yanked at flag wavers by tweeting a video opinion piece with a caption reading, &#8220;The myth of America as the greatest nation on earth is at best outdated and at worst, wildly inaccurate. If you look at data, the U.S. is really just O.K.&#8221;
The video declared America is certainly No. 1 in some things: &#8220;civilian gun ownership, mass shootings, TV watching, prescription drug abuse and prison population.&#8221; And we&#8217;re &#8220;almost number one in environmental damage, edged out by China.&#8221; The narrator also claimed, &#8220;you can confuse America for a developing country,&#8221; like Pakistan or Nigeria, because &#8220;how great America is really depends on how rich you are.&#8221;
The video also showed a picture of President Trump as the narrator insisted, &#8220;while a bit of patriotism is great, jingoism is dangerous, especially when it&#8217;s built on old or fake news.&#8221; At this writing, the video has drawn almost 1.8 million views and more than 7,000 likes. It&#8217;s a perfect match for The Times&#8217; liberal subscriber base.
This seemed designed for people to shoot back, as one did: &#8220;Millions of people are desperately trying to get into the US. If New York Times reporters don&#8217;t appreciate our country, they should move out and make room for immigrants who do.&#8221;
3. The city council of Charlottesville, North Carolina, voted on July 1 that the city &#8220;will no longer celebrate Thomas Jefferson&#8217;s birthday as an official city holiday and instead will observe a day recognizing the emancipation of enslaved African-Americans,&#8221; the Associated Press reported. They could mark both, of course, but Jefferson has to be pulled down off a pedestal, just as the council voted to remove Confederate monuments. These five unanimous liberals want to make the statement that Jefferson is embarrassing, and they seemingly timed the vote for maximum national publicity.
George Washington, you&#8217;re next.
This decision might not seem as business-oriented as Nike&#8217;s or The New York Times&#8217;, but these liberals may believe that looking &#8220;woke&#8221; is politically correct and economically correct for this college town.
All this just underlines that being divisive can be very effective politics — and business. But it also underlines that the left is totally disingenuous when it talks about tolerance and unity yet its actions betray the opposite. The antifa group is fascist, and the &#8220;patriotic&#8221; protesters burn American flags &#8230; even on our nation&#8217;s birthday.
L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Brent Bozell III and Tim Graham, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

BOZELL: Trolling The 4th Of July

New York Times

Patriotism

Trump Administration

One reason many Americans don&#8217;t trust those &#8220;fact-checker&#8221; websites is because to know them is to see right through their incessantly liberal worldview. These impartial arbiters of truth routinely defend Democrats as being &#8220;Mostly True&#8221; on everything while savaging Republicans as just the opposite. It&#8217;s not just Donald Trump, mind you. It&#8217;s Ted Cruz. And Rick Santorum. And Newt Gingrich. And pretty much anyone who challenges liberal orthodoxy.
So it was maddening that NBC News put its &#8220;fact-checker&#8221; Jane Timm on the first Democrat debate, who then proclaimed on the &#8220;NBC News Now&#8221; livestream, &#8220;It was a pretty clean debate.&#8221; No errors? Timm proceeded to support Julian Castro for tying the &#8220;tragic death of that father and daughter to Trump&#8217;s own immigration policies.&#8221; She added, &#8220;And we checked that. It is true!&#8221;
Saying that Trump policies kill immigrants is graded as true? That, according to NBC, is a natural consequence of following the rule of law.
MSNBC viewers woke up to Joe Scarborough touting how incredible the Democrats were. &#8220;Not only were they talking substantive policy but also making it a very boring night for fact-checkers who haven&#8217;t slept for two and a half years!&#8221; There was laughter and applause from the breakfast crowd he assembled for his show. His wife, Mika Brzezinski, chimed in saying, &#8220;They took the night off!&#8221; MSNBC analyst Eddie Glaude seconded the emotion, oozing that the Democrats brought &#8220;fact-based reality&#8221; to their policy talk.
The &#8220;independent fact-checkers&#8221; at PolitiFact issued seven fact-check tweets during the first debate. Check the tilt of these rulings, delivered after each candidate spoke:
1. Beto O&#8217;Rourke: Half True.
2. Cory Booker: True.
3. Booker: Half True.
4. O&#8217;Rourke: Half True.
5. Julian Castro: Mostly True.
6. Elizabeth Warren: Mostly True.
7. Booker: Mostly True.
That certainly sounds like taking the night off. Nothing stated by these socialists with their the-Earth-is-dying-and-it&#8217;s-rich-people&#8217;s-fault scare tactics was controversial, even questionable?
PolitiFact actually boasted on Twitter during the debate: &#8220;We&#8217;ve been fact-checking @ewarren since 2014. She has never received a rating lower than Half True.&#8221; How is that possible? Easy. For one, PolitiFact has never issued a Truth-O-Meter ruling on Warren&#8217;s claim of being part Cherokee Indian.
Warren and Cruz were both elected to the U.S. Senate in 2012. But from 2012 through 2018, Warren was assessed seven times, all favorably. Cruz was evaluated on 157 statements — roughly 22 times as often! In 2018, as both ran for re-election, PolitiFact evaluated Cruz 16 times &#8230; and Warren zero.
Doesn&#8217;t this underline how these &#8220;independents&#8221; think liberals are incapable of dishonesty and conservatives lie once a minute?
Let&#8217;s give one cheer for The Washington Post Fact Checker, which found several glaring falsehoods in the first debate. Beto O&#8217;Rourke claimed that Purdue Pharma, the maker of the opioid OxyContin, has &#8220;been able to act with complete impunity and pay no consequences.&#8221; Wrong. The Post had reported that in March, the company &#8220;agreed to pay a $270 million civil settlement in Oklahoma and faces lawsuits around the country.&#8221; (FactCheck.org also tagged him on that one.)
Rep. Tim Ryan claimed the top 1 percent in America controls 90 percent of the wealth. The Post team said no, it&#8217;s 40 percent. Ryan was only wrong by 50 percent!
Our favorite whopper of the night was when Julian Castro asserted that a &#8220;trans female&#8221; should have a right to an abortion, when a &#8220;trans female&#8221; is someone who is born male, born without a uterus.
Anyone who gets through a Democrat debate and pronounces that it was &#8220;pretty clean,&#8221; implying every utterance was true, cannot be taken seriously as nonpartisan and independent.
L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Brent Bozell III and Tim Graham, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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L. Brent Bozell III

Articles by L. Brent Bozell III

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BOZELL & GRAHAM: Parental Nightmares In Public Schools

BOZELL & GRAHAM: Uncorking Hate For Pink And Blue Parties

BOZELL & GRAHAM: 1 Debate, Entirely Opposite Takes

BOZELL & GRAHAM: The Cultural Left Goes Berserk

BOZELL: Beware The ‘Inclusive Language’ Minefield

BOZELL: Colbert Cartoon Crumbles Truth

BOZELL: Trolling The 4th Of July

BOZELL & GRAHAM: ‘Fact-Checkers’ Find Democrats Are Truth Tellers