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: Cursing the Conservative Court Award.
WINNER
“Make no mistake: John Roberts has been an enemy of black people voting for his entire legal career. Indeed his first job after he finished clerking was to work for the Reagan White House arguing against an expansion to the Voting Rights Act that was eventually pushed through….John Roberts has been our enemy on voting rights for his entire life and he’s going to continue to be our enemy this month.”
— The Nation justice correspondent Elie Mystal on the June 2 edition of the Roland Martin Unfiltered podcast. Justice Roberts ended up voting Mystal’s way just six days later on June 8.
RUNNERS-UP
“A lot of people worrying about things like Jim Crow. Could somebody decide they want black folks to come in the back door, because they don’t want them in their store. I mean, how far might this go?”
— Co-host Sara Sidner CNN News Central, June 30.
“He [Justice Clarence Thomas] is such a mutilated version of a black justice that he is able to make these proclamations that, well, just fly in the face of law and facts….One of the other things you really realize….is just how angry he is at Ketanji Brown Jackson for having the temerity to be another black person on the Supreme Court. He apparently thought he got to be the only one. He thought that he had pulled up the ladder for everybody else, right?...He’s just, like, plucked out his own eyes and he doesn’t want to see anything that Ms. Ginni [Virginia Thomas] tells him he shouldn’t be able to see. That’s where he is in his head space right now.”
— The Nation justice correspondent Elie Mystal on MSNBC’s The ReidOut, June 30.
Host Geoff Bennett: “Let’s start with the Supreme Court siding with a web designer in Colorado who said that she had a First Amendment right to refuse to provide services to same-sex couples, despite a law in Colorado that forbids discrimination against gay people.”…
New York Times columnist David Brooks: “That strikes me, just as someone who lives in American society, as doing great harm to American society….It’s just a poison in our society.”…
Washington Post Associate Editor Jonathan Capehart: “This ruling and a bunch of other rulings from this Court pains me. And it pains me personally….This decision is definitely a poison on society.”
— PBS NewsHour, June 30.
“It’s not just that the radical conservative Supreme Court is undoing decades of advancements in women’s rights and civil rights, it’s that they’re once again ruling in line with an extreme far-right agenda that’s wildly out of step with public opinion….The Court’s conservative supermajority, four white men, one white woman, and Justice Clarence Thomas, ruled that affirmative action programs ‘unavoidably employ race in a negative manner’ and ‘involve racial stereotyping,’ violating the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution. Now, try to wrap your head around that. What they’re claiming is that programs designed to counteract racism by increasing racial diversity are, in fact, racist.”
— Substitute host Jonathan Capehart on MSNBC’s The Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell, June 29.
