Anti-Religious Bias

Waiting to have sex until marriage? How 19th Century! According to liberal websites like “Jezebel” and “The Stir,” saving oneself for marriage is too old and out-dated for this “progressive” world we live in.

Cue outrage from liberal mouthpieces when Steven Crowder, a conservative commentator and Fox News contributor, published his testimony on why he remained celibate until marriage.

Corrected from earlier | Time magazine managing editor Richard Stengel appeared on the September 27 Morning Joe to give viewers a preview of the latest issue of the magazine, the cover story of which is devoted to Mitt Romney's Mormon faith. At the tail end of the segment, teasing other articles in the issue, Stengel plugged Bobby Ghosh's interview with Mohammed Abdel Rahman, the son of Omar Abdel Rahman, the "blind sheikh" serving time in a federal prison for his role in aborted 1993 bombing plot targeting the World Trade Center.

"We have a great piece by Bobby Ghosh, who's been on here before about the rise of the Salafis, in the Middle East, they're the Tea Party of Muslim democracy, and that's a fantastic, insightful story as well," Stengel noted. Neither Joe Scarborough not co-host Willie Geist threw a penalty flag at Stengel's unnecessary roughness, comparing the Tea Party to radical advocates of stringent Sharia law. [MP3 audio here; video at bottom of post]

He's a liberal Catholic who thinks the Catholic Church needs to just give it up already with its silly fixation with defending the sanctity of life for the unborn. He also once compared the Church's bishops to Southern segregationists. So it should come as no surprise that Tim Padgett -- who is previously on record as dissenting from the Church on the celibate male priesthood -- should use the "Jesus wife" papyrus discovery as a fresh opportunity to attack the Church on the issue, working in a swipe at the Vatican for its rebuke of theologically-errant nuns for good measure.

From his September 25 TIME Ideas blog post (emphases mine):

Anne Gearan of The Washington Post reported Friday that the Obama administration paid $70,000 to buy ads on Pakistant television disavowing the “Innocence of Muslims” video on YouTube in an attempt to defuse street protests. “Since our founding, the United States has been a nation of respect, that respects all faiths. We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others,” Obama says in the ad, which is stamped “paid content.”

This is a different kind of political ad, with an important U.S. government goal. But will it draw scrutiny from Post “Fact Checker” Glenn Kessler, a former State Department correspondent for the Post? It can’t be accurately stated that Obama and his financial supporters (ahem, Bill Maher) have rejected “all efforts to denigrate” Christians. [Ad below]

While CNN's ratings continue to slump, reaching record lows, its hosts and anchors seem intent on alienating what few socially-conservative viewers they may have left. Morning talk shows like Starting Point with Soledad O'Brien generally prefer to have roundtable discussions with maybe one token conservative panelist while the rest of the gang predictably parrots liberal talking points and espouses left-of-center convictions on policy issues.

Take for example how televangelist and author Joel Osteen was treated during his Thursday morning appearance to  promote his new book. Guru Deepak Chopra joined in on a conversation about the health and wellness of our mind, body, and soul. Chopra was completely ignored as soon as the topic transitioned to the matter of gay marriage. All attention was given to the pastor, who had the temerity to, as Christian pastors tend to do, stick to Biblical teachings on the matter. (audio available here; video below)

While the Innocence of Muslims is still being blamed for the riots and murders in the Middle East, the national news media has no problem running a speculative story that disrespects the teachings of the Christian faith. New "evidence" now suggests that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene after all, but the artifact in question dates back to the 4th century A.D. 

This all began when Harvard historian Dr. Karen King received a tiny strip of papyrus from an anonymous collector. After translating the Coptic script thereon, she found two phrases, one which reads, "Jesus said to them my wife. Elsewhere on the paper it continues, "She will be able to be my disciple." 

ABC and CBS News brought it up on Thursday evening, but could only afford to allot a few seconds of coverage. NBC Nightly News did not mention it at all. All three network morning news broadcasts devoted significant attention to the story, and predictably worked in references to Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code novel.

Discussing the violent anti-American demonstrations erupting across the Middle East outside U.S. embassies in Arab capitals, MSNBC contributor Michael Eric Dyson put a share of the blame on, well, "horrible" Americans.

It was the "demonization of a predictable minority," in this case Muslims, that was the spark that light the conflagration, Dyson argued on the September 14 edition of the noon Eastern program Now with Alex Wagner. "It's not as if, oh in America, we've resolved this with equanimity and grace," he added, seeking to conflate isolated incidents of hate speech against Muslims inside the United States with the violent response of the Arab street to an obscure low-budget YouTube video. [MP3 audio here; video follows page break]

Finding racism in ridiculous places: It isn’t just for MSNBC anymore. The Huffington Post has performed a neat trick, exercising its own religious bigotry by accusing someone else of racism. The result is a breathtakingly inane article. (The crusade to re-elect Obama has spurred his media acolytes to heroic exertions, hasn’t it?)

Writing in HuffPo on Sept. 9, Paul Harvey and Edward J. Blum broke incredible news: Mormon iconography commonly includes a statue of a white Jesus! And that white statue first appeared in Salt Lake City in 1966, “the middle of the Civil Rights movement.”

After offending religious Americans by appearing to boo God, the Democratic National Convention had the top ranking Catholic official in the country perform the closing Benediction Thursday night. Cardinal Timothy Dolan did the same for the Republicans last week in Tampa Bay, but those delegates didn’t seem to have a problem with a party platform that included God and Jerusalem.

The only networks respectful enough to show the prayer in its entirety without interruption was Fox News, Fox Business and C-SPAN. ABC, CNN, and PBS kept it in background while talking over it. MSNBC completely ignored it, cutting the audio feed to let their pundits share their opinions without distraction. CBS and NBC returned to local news affiliates as soon as he began.  

[See video below.  MP3 audio here.]

Methinks the MSMer doth protest too much. If Mark Halperin weren't keenly aware that he was about to try to whitewash a huge vulnerability for the Democrats, why would he have prefaced his remark with the disclaimer that he and others weren't showing liberal bias by claiming it was no big deal?

But that's exactly what Halperin did this on today's Morning Joe.  The show rolled video of the DNC delegates clearly voting against putting God and Jerusalem-as-the-capital-of-Israel back in the platform from which they had been removed.  We then saw the convention chairman fraudently declare that two-thirds had in fact voted to reinsert the language.  But there was Halperin, claiming "I don't think it's liberal bias to say that the story is pretty much done." View the video after the jump.

Near the end of his Wednesday night speech at the Republican National Convention, vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan told his audience and the nation that "sometimes, even presidents need reminding, that our rights come from nature and God, not from government."

John Hayward at Human Events noted that MSNBC's Touré Neblett did not handle Ryan's self-evident assertion very well. In fact, Thursday morning, Toure went into a bit of a tirade:

Opening an hour-long special on the Mormon Church for Thursday's NBC Rock Center, anchor Brian Williams proclaimed to viewers: "Most Americans say they know next to nothing about the Mormon Church. Tonight, a rare look inside the lives of modern Mormon families....A church still dealing with the issue of polygamy....And other issues of inequality."

Teasing a report on the history of the Church, Williams promised to answer the question of "why so many Americans still today are suspicious of the religion." Introducing that portion of the broadcast, Williams touted pop culture mocking the faith, starting with a clip of Fox's Family Guy in which lead character Peter Griffin declares: "I'm going to be a Mormon....Come on, nailing a different wife every night. That's a no-brainer."

"These are two of the most moronic statements I have ever heard," NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell, himself a practicing Catholic, complained after watching video of MSNBC host Martin Bashir and MSNBC contributor Jimmy Williams attacking Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) as championing an "unbiblical" budget that doesn't comport to Catholic social teaching.

"Consider that one of these morons is saying that Paul Ryan's budget is unbiblical?! I mean, what book of the Bible dealt with Paul Ryan's budget?" the Media Research Center founder asked on the August 23 "Media Mash" segment, going on to note that seeing as that the Catholic Church is suing the Obama administration over the religious liberty-infringing contraception mandate, it's laughable to suggest that Joe Biden is a better Catholic. [watch the full segment below the page break]

UPDATE AT END OF POST: CNN issues apology.

Eight days after playing the song "Stupid Girls" before a story about former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, the scoring geniuses at CNN were at it again.

After coming out of a break following a long segment about the Sikh temple shootings in Wisconsin, viewers of Monday's Starting Point were treated to Billy Joel's "Only the Good Die Young" (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

On the Saturday Washington Post “On Faith” page, columnist and Newsweek religion editor Lisa Miller insisted it was not a news story that black ministers came to the National Press Club and insisted Obama’s support for gay marriage “might cost him the election.”

It’s not a story, Miller insisted, because Rev William Owens is “enough to make a cynic blush...He’s a figurehead in what political operatives call an ‘Astroturf’ campaign...and his threat is not a threat.” Miller complained about the news sites that somehow found this “nearly empty” press conference newsworthy:

If the left’s response to Chick-fil-A proves anything, it’s that the left has a clear method of attacking anyone who supports a traditional definition of marriage. Label that person a bigot and then protest everything they do.

This of course is the same plan of action applied to actor Kirk Cameron. During his 'Love Worth Fighting For' conference held in Ocean City, N.J., July 27, over 6,000 married couples showed up seeking counsel on how to better their marriages. Instead they found themselves the target of a protest launched by Ocean City's LGBT community, Ocean Grove United.

The manufactured controversy over Chick-Fil-A won’t be dying down anytime soon, if media figures get their way.

Chick-Fil-A President Dan Cathy stated that he was “guilty as charged” when it came to supporting the traditional family, and commented on a radio show that “I think we are inviting God’s judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at him and say: You know, ‘We know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage.’”

That’s tantamount to heresy in Hollywood and in New York and D.C. newsrooms. The media have proven themselves in the tank for same sex marriage, and Chick-Fil-A is learning what it means to cross them.

San Francisco media outlet SFist has adopted the language of the Westboro Baptist Church to bash Chick-fil-A, referencing the death of Chick-fil-A spokesman Donald Perry with the question “God Hates Flacks?”

A July 27 article about the death of Chick-fil-A PR Vice President Donald Perry was titled “God Hates Flacks? Chick-fil-A Spokesman Dies of Heart Attack.” The headline references the disgusting slogan of the Westboro Baptist Church – God Hates Fags.

ABC's The View honored Roseanne Barr with a guest-host spot on July 19, which shows they probably aren't in the habit of evaluating her sanity based on her Twitter rants. Take her wishing cancer on Chick-Fil-A fans this morning: "anyone who eats S--t Fil-A deserves to get the cancer that is sure to come from eating antibiotic filled tortured chickens 4Christ".

This came after she told the restaurant chain to suck an appendage she doesn't have:

The Washington Post is watering down the incivility and radicalism of AIDS activists at the International AIDS Conference in Washington. A prominent picture on page A-4 carries the caption “Ken Bunch, known as Sister Vicious, left, and Tracy Skinner, aka Sister Loosey, at the conference."

The Post did not explain these pseudo-nuns were members of the Catholic-mocking “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence,” and the online caption proves “Sister Vicious” has an even stronger fake name:

The Boston Herald has reported that Mayor Tom Menino is threatening to make obtaining the necessary licenses for a family business to operate "very difficult" -- not because the business's products are controversial or hazardous, but because the privately-held company believes that marriage should be between a man and a woman.

The middle three paragraphs of an unbylined Associated Press report predictably watered down Menino's threatening posture against the Chick-fil-A fast-food chain to an issue of "discrimination" and made it appear as if there is some kind of rift between the president and the company (bolds are mine throughout this post):

The media crusade against Christian company Chick-fil-A for upholding Christian values and support companies favoring traditional marriage has reached new depths of insanity. In a satire piece blasting Chick-fil-A, Huffington Post contributor Domenick Scudera used his biblical ignorance to bash the Christian restaurant.

Scudera lambasted the Christian firm in a July 19 article snidely titled “Did Jesus Eat Chick-fil-A at the Last Supper?” His beef with Chick-fil-A: that the owner, Dan Cathy, stated that his “restaurant is based on biblical principles.”

The title of a post at Business Insider crows, “Here's The Ballsy Businessweek Cover That's Going To Piss Off The Mormon Church.” In truth, it should anger anyone who finds it low and, frankly, un-American, to attack a candidate – directly or indirectly – through his religion.

But with Mitt Romney running neck and neck with Barack Obama, Bloomberg Businessweek saw the opportunity to further the Obama campaign’s jihad against Romney the super-wealthy tax-avoiding capitalist, while reminding readers that Romney belongs to this sort of strange, secretive cult that’s also a business empire of questionable legitimacy.