Okay, Steven Spielberg said what he said about Democrats and Republicans at his prerelease press conference promoting "Lincoln," his next movie which will be released just after Election Day. And of course he's spectacularly wrong in claiming that the country's two major political parties have "traded political places over the last 150 years."
If that were the entire story and Reuters reporter Christine Kearney (pictured here at LinkedIn) had simply relayed what Spielberg said, this post wouldn't be about media bias. But is, because Ms. Kearney herself took a journey into the land of make-believe with this subsequent sentence:
In contrast to today, the Republican party to which Lincoln belonged was founded by anti-slavery activists and Republicans were often tagged "radicals."
She's not quoting Spielberg. It's purely her assertion.
Yes, Christine Kearney is effectively telling readers that today's Republicans are typically pro-slavery and are seldom characterized as "radicals."
First off, Christine, if you can't name one prominent current Republican who is pro-slavery -- and you can't -- how dare you write what you wrote? Yours truly and many readers here can surely name plenty of Democrats throughout the 150 years following the Civil War who were either members of the Ku Klux Klan (up to and including West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd, who died in 2010), supported and enforced Jim Crow laws, bitterly opposed state-sponsored school desegregation, murdered civil rights advocates, and opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (including Al Gore's father). The 1964 act would never have passed without strong Republican support.
As to "radical Republicans" or "Republican radicals," Google News archive searches on each of the two terms (in quotes) indicates that they are used with enough frequency that any claim that they are currently "often" used is clearly bogus -- and that's before finding the certainly thousands of citations out there of Republican officials and proposals, most of which follow the Constitution far more closely than those originating from today's Democrats, described as "radical," especially since the rise of the Tea Party movement 3-1/2 years ago.
But Christine Kearney and much of the rest of the establishment press have their narrative, and all the facts in the world would appear to have little chance of penetrating their wall of routinely expressed ignorance.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
