It was a challenging task but an esteemed panel of NewsBusters editors led by MRC President L.Brent Bozell and MRC’s Vice President for Research and Publications Brent Baker boiled down all the biased outbursts from lefty hack hosts, anchors, reporters and pundits in 2023 and on December 18 announced The Brian Stelter Memorial Award for Quote of the Year.
Of course, every year there is way too much bias for just one category. So Baker led a panel of NewsBusters editors to break down the Worst of 2023 into eight additional categories (The Craziest Analysis Award; The Damn Those Conservatives Award; The Joy of Hate Award for Joy Reid Rants; The Jihadist Journalism Award for Helping Hamas; The Damning Florida’s Dictator Award; The Praising and Protecting Old Joe Award; The Cursing the Conservative Court Award and the Celebrity Freak-Outs Award).
Today we present the WORST OF 2023: The Craziest Analysis Award.
Without further ado here is the winner (followed by the top runners-up):
WINNER
“[Former UN ambassador] Nikki Haley isn’t in her prime — sorry. A woman is considered being in her prime in her 20s and 30s and maybe 40s. Prime, if you look it up. If you Google, when is a woman in her prime? It’ll say 20s, 30s, 40s.”
— Co-host Don Lemon CNN This Morning, March 16.
RUNNERS-UP
“And he’s [Sen. Tim Scott] one of these guys, you know, he’s like Clarence Thomas, black Republican, who believes in pull yourself by your bootstraps, rather than, to me, understanding the systemic racism that African Americans face in this country and other minorities. He doesn’t get it. Neither does Clarence. And that’s why they’re Republicans.”
— Co-host Joy Behar on ABC’s The View, May 23.
“I’m not saying that ‘Animal House’ led directly to the election of Ronald Reagan two years later. But I am saying the movie empowered a generation of 20-somethings to aspire to a new hedonism.”
— Movie critic Ty Burr in the August 15 Washington Post article “I was on campus when ‘Animal House’ debuted. It changed everything. National Lampoon’s 1978 college comedy bred an era of excess, sometimes disguised as conservatism.”
“Fall’s favorite spice blend has a violent history, Historians say the instance of ‘corporate genocide’ was over nutmeg, without which there would be no Pumpkin Spice Latte.”
— Headline to October 6 Washington Post article by staff writer Mahim Javaid.
Co-host Joy Behar: “I read this book. It’s charming….It’s a children’s book. It’s called Pride: The Story of Harvey Milk and the Rainbow Flag….It was one of the most banned picture books last year.”
Co-host Sunny Hostin: “There are mothers groups where I live and they’re picking up banned books and giving them back to schools, giving them back to libraries. And there are mobile little libraries filled with banned books. And I think maybe that’s the only way that we can stop this paper genocide that we’re seeing of our history.”
— ABC’s The View, June 16.
“Hey, how about a little baseball? Climate change and home runs. That’s right, home run weather. Heat and humidity reduce air density so baseballs can fly further. Well, guess what, they have been taken off, the baseball season has warmed over two degrees since 1970, each two degrees of warming adds 95 runs per season. That's right, and that’s why we've been seeing all of these home runs.”
— NBC weatherman Al Roker on NBC’s Today, April 13.
