Media Doubles Down on Trump/Charlottesville Lie

Media Lie: Trump Called Klan Types “Good People”

Joe Biden announced his run for the presidency with a demonstrable lie--that President Trump called white supremacists in Charlottesville "very fine people." He didn't. He said the exact opposite. https://t.co/LqTHKUVVlv

— Dan O'Donnell (@DanODonnellShow) April 25, 2019

Implicit Confession

Getting to Be Way Too Routine

Fake News: Associated Press Publishes Falsehoods About Our Case

It just appeared on the Washington Times website (and many other places, doubtless): a story about our suit against Marquette University from the Associated Press.

As has happened before, the reporter (Ivan Moreno) appears to have accepted at face value claims made by Marquette, and pretty much blown off statements from our lawyer (Rick Esenberg) whom Moreno talked to, but apparently paid little attention to.

Doxing Claim

Moreno repeats the claim by Marquette that we “doxed” graduate instructor Cheryl Abbate. Readers of this blog will remember that Abbate told an undergraduate that expressing opposition to gay marriage would not be allowed, since it would be “homophobic” and might “offend” any gay students in the class. We put up a blog post about this. Moreno explains that “Doxing is the practice of publicizing someone’s personal identifying information online to subject them to harassment.”

Moreno claimed:

The post included the student-teacher’s name, a link to her personal website and her email address, and it led to a flood of hateful messages and threats against her.

Moreno quotes Esenberg stating that “all McAdams did was link to publicly available information.”

Had Moreno bothered to get the facts straight, he would have learned that we linked to no contact information at all. Rather, we linked to Abbate’s toxic feminist essay “Yes All Men… Contribute to the Prevalence of Rape,” published on her blog. If somebody dug around her blog, they could have found her e-mail address.

We did absolutely nothing to encourage people to send her any e-mails at all (much less abusive ones) unless merely exposing misconduct amounts to such.

The Washington Post, which published the same “doxing” claim in a column by Kathleen Parker, has now retracted it. From the Post:

Correction: An earlier version of this op-ed incorrectly reported that Marquette University professor John McAdams posted the contact information for a graduate student-teacher online. He posted a link to her personal blog.

Journalistic Norms

Any casual reader of the media will know that when journalists expose misconduct, they name the miscreant. This is certainly the case if a teacher says something racist to a class, or if a coach sexually molests athletes.

We can’t imagine Marquette would have gotten upset if we had exposed a white instructor who said something racist to a black student, or a male instructor who sexually harassed a female student.

Further, Marquette did nothing about the abuse of the undergraduate Abbate insulted and bullied. Indeed, in internal communications, they derided him.

It seems that abuses from politically correct leftists are not merely to be ignored by Marquette, but exposing them should be punished.

Abbate Received No Threats

Moreno repeats Marquette’s claim that Abbate received threats.

The post included the student-teacher’s name, a link to her personal website and her email address, and it led to a flood of hateful messages and threats against her. The threats were bad enough that the university posted a security officer outside of her classroom and she noticeably lost weight.

In fact, Abbate received no threats, as she admitted on her personal blog.

Why Abbate Left Marquette

Moreno, accepting Marquette’s claims, implies that Abbate had to leave Marquette because of our blog post.

The graduate student McAdams named in his blog eventually moved to another university, where she had to repeat three semesters and revise her PhD thesis.

He ignores the fact that Abbate left a Marquette program ranked barely in the top 100 nationally for one (at Colorado) ranked in the top 40.

Further, Marquette Associate Arts and Science Dean (a Philosophy faculty member intimately familiar with the situation) explained other relevant factors. In an e-mail to Dean Rick Holz, he explained:

Friday, December 5, 2014 5:11 PM

Rick,

It’s complicated, but the short version is Cheryl is planning to leave Marquette and go to a different Ph.D. Program, which has offered her significant financial aid and is reputationally superior to MU. She’s working on a letter to Nancy [Snow] about this, which she is also going to send to Jeanne.

We can talk more on Monday. But several programs reached out to her and offered her aid and [she] finds MU to be very uncomfortable and toxic. She walks around afraid for her safety and feels unsupported by the senior faculty of the department.

James

South gave more information in another e-mail to Holz:

Hi Rick,

If you have a few minutes, could we talk about this tomorrow? Cheryl is not just leaving because of McAdams, but because she did not feel comfortable in the department — for several reasons, not least because of how [Department Chair] Nancy [Snow] treated her, her research area, and her mentor, Susanne [Foster].

Moreno throws in a few other claims from Marquette, such as “McAdams had been advised previously, in 2011, not to mention a student’s name on his blog.” In fact, Provost John Pauly demanded we not blog about undergraduate students. We only blog about highly visible political activism among undergraduates, so Pauly’s demand was absurd, and we ignored it. We were never disciplined in any way by Pauly.

Conclusion

What we have here, from Moreno, is a fairly typical example of a journalist who accepts uncritically what Marquette says, and largely ignores facts inconsistent with Marquette’s version.

Any journalist who is familiar with contemporary higher education would know to be skeptical of what university bureaucrats say. Particularly when those bureaucrats are pandering to the forces of political correctness on their campus.

Driving Your Adversaries Crazy: More Anti-Trump Media Blunders

First, the supposed “17 agencies” of the U.S. government who agreed that the Russians had interfered with the 2016 presidential election.

The New York Times and Associated Press this week quietly issued major retractions in stories concerning alleged Russian interference in last year’s presidential election.

For months, Democrats have tried to connect President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign to Russia’s alleged interference in last year’s election. The most prominent narrative has accused Trump of “collusion” with the Russians, although no concrete evidence has proved the claims correct.

One of the other prominent claims, one touted by many Democrats, has been to say all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies have confirmed that Russia attempted to interfere in the election.

Last Sunday, the Times ran a report titled, “Trump’s Deflections and Denials on Russia Frustrate Even His Allies,” and claimed that “all 17 organizations in the American intelligence community” had confirmed Russia orchestrated cyberattacks to interfere in the election.

The Associated Press made similar claims in stories on April 6, June 2, June 26 and June 29.

Losing 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton even made the claim during a debate last October and fact-checking website PolitiFact ruled Clinton’s claim to be completely true.

However, as fate would have it, not all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies made that claim nor had they confirmed it. In fact, only four agencies did: the CIA, the FBI, the NSA and the office of the director of national intelligence.

That fact forced the Times and the AP to issue retractions and corrections.

The Times wrote in a correction on Thursday: “A White House Memo article on Monday about President Trump’s deflections and denials about Russia referred incorrectly to the source of an intelligence assessment that said Russia orchestrated hacking attacks during last year’s presidential election. The assessment was made by four intelligence agencies — the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency. The assessment was not approved by all 17 organizations in the American intelligence community.”

While the AP wrote in a similar correction on Friday: “In stories published April 6, June 2, June 26 and June 29, The Associated Press reported that all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies have agreed that Russia tried to influence the 2016 election to benefit Donald Trump. That assessment was based on information collected by three agencies – the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency – and published by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which represents all U.S. intelligence agencies. Not all 17 intelligence agencies were involved in reaching the assessment.”

Trump reacted to all this by asking:

Since the Obama Administration was told way before the 2016 Election that the Russians were meddling, why no action? Focus on them, not T!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 24, 2017

By the way, if Russia was working so hard on the 2016 Election, it all took place during the Obama Admin. Why didn't they stop them?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 22, 2017

The Meeting That Didn’t Happen

From Brietbart:

A Breitbart News investigation has led to the correction by the Associated Press–which originally resisted–of the fake news it printed as deeper questions of responsibility, accountability, and journalistic ethics consume the AP heading into Fourth of July weekend.

This time, the Associated Press invented an imaginary meeting between EPA administrator Scott Pruitt and Dow Chemical CEO Andrew Liveris, and then alleged that some kind of impropriety happened as a result.

Under the headline “EPA chief met with Dow CEO before deciding on pesticide ban,” the AP’s Michael Biesecker alleged that some super-secret covert meeting occurred between Pruitt and Liveris—and that awful things came as a result of that meeting.

The problem with Biesecker’s piece, which ran over the Associated Press wires on Wednesday evening, is that as Breitbart News has confirmed from both sides: No meeting ever occurred, despite one appearing on Pruitt’s schedule. Sure, both were at the conference and briefly shook hands when introduced, but they never had a “meeting” because of scheduling conflicts.

“Administrator Scott Pruitt did not meet privately with Andrew Liveris, the CEO of Dow,” Liz Bowman, the EPA’s spokeswoman, told Breitbart News. “The AP article is inaccurate and misleading. Despite multiple attempts to provide the Associated Press with the facts, this article has not been corrected.”

Lies? Fake News?

So we have an out and out epidemic of bogus stories from the Mainstream Media, all tending to discredit the election of Donald Trump and his Administration. We have documented more here and here.

Is this “fake news?”

The concept was invented by the liberal media during the 2016 election season to claim that fake news was responsible for the election of Donald Trump. And it was deployed to attack all conservative media.

But soon enough the tables were turned and conservatives, along with Trump himself, flung that epithet at the Mainstream Media.

Poetic justice.

But genuine fake news is stories that are known to be false by the people who write them. They are intentional frauds, in other words. Classic example: the story that Pope Francis had endorsed Donald Trump.

In fact, what we have from the Mainstream Media is not intentional lies but rather a radical lowering of journalistic standards, fueled by the loathing media people feel toward Trump. Since they so badly want stories reflecting badly on Trump to be true, they fail to show the skepticism and careful sourcing good journalism requires.

And of course, Trump’s excoriation of the media simply reinforces the loathing, and leads to more journalistic blunders, which gives Trump more material which which to attack the media.

It could be seen as a brilliant strategy on Trump’s part to discredit his critics. Except we don’t think the terms “Donald Trump” and “strategy” fit together. Trump is not Machiavelli. In terms of strategizing, he’s not even your average cribbage player. But when he pops off, it drives his adversaries crazy.

That is a political asset. It’s not the one we’d most like to see in a president, but it’s not a trivial one.

Insane

GLENN MCCOY © Belleville News-Democrat. Dist. By UNIVERSAL UCLICK. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

Not News

GLENN MCCOY © Belleville News-Democrat. Dist. By UNIVERSAL UCLICK. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

Media Hypocrisy: Filibuster Judicial Nominee

Now, with Senate Republicans poised to use the “nuclear option” to quash a Democratic filibuster against Trump Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch, the media is portraying this as some sort of radical coup d’état. But back in 2013, when the Democrats used the same tactic to get Obama judicial appointees approved, the media spin was much different.

From the Media Research Center, a roundup of media reaction from the time the Democrats went nuclear.



The print media were equally bad.

. . . the cable network news hosts and analysts weren’t the only ones championing the nuclear option. On the pages of the Los Angeles Times, Reid’s move was celebrated in a November 22 editorial “Democrats bust the filibuster, and good for them.”

The Times editorial board crowed: “We welcome this action not because it represents a comeuppance for arrogant Republicans but because filibustering presidential nominees is undemocratic and violates the spirit if not the letter of the Constitution, which says that the president shall appoint judges and other officials ‘by and with the advice and consent of the Senate’ — not by and with a supermajority of the Senate.” The Times went on to call it “a victory not just for the Democrats but for good government.”

That same day, The New York Times championed the procedure in an editorial headlined “Democracy Returns to the Senate.”

Of course, the Republicans would be foolish to let the Democrats use the “nuclear option” and not use it themselves. That would simply make them suckers. Of course, often the Republicans have acquiesced in the role of suckers, but they seem to be wising up.

Even if one believes that requiring sixty senators to confirm a presidential appointee is appropriate, what the Republicans are doing will make that outcome more likely. So long as the Republicans fail to retaliate for the Democrat’s use of the tactic, the Democrats will have no incentive to stop using it.

For readers with a tolerance for academic jargon, the proper tactic in a Prisoner’s Dilemma is “tit for tat.” Or in everyday language, “we are not going to let you get away with screwing us over.”

Fake News from the Anti-Trump Media

From The Federalist, a list of stories, virtually all negative about Donald Trump, from mainstream outlets that have turned out to be bogus. We will just list them, and you can read about them as you wish:

• Early November: Spike in Transgender Suicide Rates
• November 22: The Tri-State Election Hacking Conspiracy Theory
• December 1: The 27-Cent Foreclosure
• January 20: Nancy Sinatra’s Complaints about the Inaugural Ball
• January 20: The Nonexistent Climate Change Website ‘Purge’
• January 20: The Great MLK Jr. Bust Controversy
• January 20: Betsy DeVos, Grizzly Fighter
• January 26: The ‘Resignations’ At the State Department
• January 27: The Photoshopped Hands Affair
• January 29: The Reuters Account Hoax
• January 31: The White House-SCOTUS Twitter Mistake
• January 31: The Big Travel Ban Lie
• February 1: POTUS Threatens to Invade Mexico
• February 2: Easing the Russian Sanctions
• February 2: Renaming Black History Month
• February 2: The House of Representatives’ Gun Control Measures

The concept “fake news” came into currency during last year’s election, mostly used by liberal media to condemn stories that favored Donald Trump. And a good number of genuinely fake stories, apparently intended a click bait, did appear.

But the cudgel has been turned on the liberal media, and the alternative conservative media (such as The Federalist) has scrutinized the liberal outlets.

One of Donald Trump’s “achievements” (if you want to call it that) is to excite such hostility and even rage in the liberal mainstream media that they create stories as wild and irresponsible as Trump’s own worst pronouncements.

Finally: New York Times Cares About Anti-Semitism

The media, of course, tends to report things that fit their favored narrative, and the favored narrative of the liberal mainstream media is that the Trump campaign and Trump presidency has empowered the forces of bigotry in American life.

Of course, since they can’t actually quote Trump saying anything anti-Semitic, they have to resort to that evasive verbal formula.

Thus the mainstream media has enthusiastically reported a spate of anti-Semitic attacks and threats against Jewish institutions.

But similar attacks have happened for years under Obama. And they have gone virtually unreported.

Thus the website of the Jewish newspaper The Algemeiner explains how “Making the New York Times Care About Antisemitism” is “Trump’s Big Achievement.”

President Trump has been in office for barely a month, but he already deserves credit for at least one major accomplishment: He’s gotten the New York Times to discover a new interest in intensively covering antisemitism.

What am I talking about?

Consider the following brief recent history of vandalism of Jewish cemeteries and their coverage, or lack of it, in the New York Times.

Then, following, is a long list of ant-Semitic incidents during the Obama Administration that the New York Times failed to report, or reported summarily with no attempt to tie them to any larger theme.

To summarize: Ten Jewish cemetery desecrations, of which two — one of which was outside the US — were covered by the New York Times. Both times the Times bothered to cover the attacks, the newspaper did so in a way that minimized the potentially antisemitic aspect of the attack.

In November of 2016, Donald Trump was elected president.

In February 2017, there were two attacks on Jewish cemeteries. About 200 tombstones were affected at a graveyard near St. Louis, Mo., and about 100 at one in Philadelphia, Pa.

The Times responded in a markedly different way than it did to the earlier, pre-Trump attacks, which it had either ignored or minimized. One Times news article about the Missouri attacks carried the bylines of two Times reporters and was accompanied by two images shot by a Times-commissioned photographer. The article prominently noted that critics said the attacks “were an outgrowth of the vitriol of last year’s presidential campaign and Mr. Trump’s tone during it.” The Times reinforced this point with not just one, but two op-eds commenting on the attack, both of which were accompanied by additional photographs and carried headlines reaching speculative conclusions about the motive: “The New American Anti-Semitism” and “When Hate Haunts a Graveyard.”

Yes, the media report what fits their preferred narrative.

What happens when something radically contradicts their preferred narrative? They minimize or downplay it. Thus when the perpetrator of several of the phone threats against Jewish institutions was discovered to be an anti-Trump leftist, ABC News failed to report that.

And of course, the mainstream media have been little concerned about anti-Semitism where is is most overt, and most mainstream: on college campuses.

[Update]

Likewise, CNN completely failed to report the leftist, anti-Trump political views of the perp.

Coming Out

Dunce

Oops!

Klan Chief Endorsed Trump? Communist Party Chief Endorsed Hillary

From NewsBusters:

The media just loves the Ku Klux Klan. Here’s a small sampling of headlines:

The New York Daily News: Donald Trump supported by former KKK leader David Duke: ‘I hope he does everything we hope he will do’

The Daily News gasped:

Donald Trump’s been knighted by racist David Duke.

The former grand wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan told his bigoted followers that not voting for Trump would be “treason to your heritage” and implored them to volunteer for the billionaire candidate because they would find like-minded haters in the campaign.

Then there was USA Today: Former Ku Klux Klan leader declares support for Donald Trump.

The paper then wrote in breathless style:

Donald Trump once said he’s “the least racist person there is.”

Even so, multiple white nationalists have found appeal in Trump’s message and have aligned their support with the presidential candidate.

The latest is David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard, who called for listeners of his radio show to support Trump and volunteer for his campaign.

‘Go in there, you’re gonna meet people who are going to have the same kind of mindset that you have,’ Duke said Wednesday on the David Duke Radio Program, as first reported by Buzzfeed.

Duke reasoned that ‘voting against Donald Trump at this point is really treason to your heritage.’

And so it went in the mainstream media universe, Trump’s rejection of Duke irrelevant to their stories.

Did Trump stumble in that now-famous CNN Jake Tapper interview when asked about Duke? Yes. But he not only corrected the next day, as documented here by McClatchy he was well on record speaking out against Duke not only before the Tapper interview but as long ago as the early 1990’s. Wrote McClatchy’s reporter, with bold print for emphasis supplied by me:

Trump eagerly denounced Duke on more than one occasion decades ago, according to Factcheck.org.

In 2000, Trump told NBC’s “Today” that he wouldn’t seek the Reform Party nomination because he said the party was “self-destructing.”

Matt LAUER: “When you say the party is self-destructing, what do you see as the biggest problem with the Reform Party right now?”

Trump: “Well, you’ve got David Duke just joined – a bigot, a racist, a problem. I mean, this is not exactly the people you want in your party.”

The New York Times also reported at the time that Trump issued a news release referring to Duke as “a Klansman” and not the “company I wish to keep.”

Trump also spoke out against Duke in 1991 – three days after Duke lost a race for governor in Louisiana.

CNN’s Larry KING: “Did the David Duke thing bother you? Fifty-five percent of the whites in Louisiana voted for him.”

Trump: “I hate seeing what it represents, but I guess it just shows there’s a lot of hostility in this country. There’s a tremendous amount of hostility in the United States.”

So with all this attention to Trump on David Duke, surely you read the news about John Bachtell, right? He endorsed Hillary and the headlines were everywhere. Oh, wait, sorry. Mr. Bachtell’s Hillary endorsement was apparently not newsy enough to make the mainstream media headlines. Curious, yes? If the endorsement of Trump by the ex-head of the Ku Klux Klan is big news, one would expect a Hillary endorsement by the head of the Communist Party USA would be a big deal as well.

That’s right. Hillary-supporter Bachtell is, as seen here, the very proud “national chair of the Communist Party USA.” That’s right, Mr. Bachtell is a literal card-carrying Communist. You recall the Communists, yes? The folks who produced Stalin and Mao? The advocates of a political philosophy that is described in The Black Book of Communism as being responsible for “between 85 million and 100 million” deaths in “the most colossal case of political carnage in history.” Ring a bell? The Soviet Union? The Cold War? The Iron Curtain? Korea? Vietnam? The Khmer Rouge? Come on, you remember.

Apparently the mainstream media does not remember what Mr. Bachtell’s Communist Party represents — or maybe it’s something else. Maybe, just maybe, the media doesn’t care about Hillary receiving the Communist Party chairman’s endorsement because, well, if you’re a lefty to begin with there’s nothing seen as out of the ordinary much less wrong with this.

Finger in the Dike

GLENN MCCOY © Belleville News-Democrat. Dist. By UNIVERSAL UCLICK. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

Hoax Racist Incidents on Campus: A Roundup

From the Daily Wire. We won't repost the entire article, but you can read the whole thing here. But we will list the headlines, so you can get the flavor of what is happening.

• ‘Confirmed’ KKK Presence At Mizzou
• Racism, homophobia and anti-Semitism at Oberlin
• KKK is Coming to Berkeley High... Or Not
• Hangman Graffiti
• ‘White Only, Black Only’ Signs
• Students Sends Racist Text Messages to Himself
• Students Target Themselves With Racial Graffiti
• Students Target Themselves With Hurtful Messages
• Fabricated Case of Police Harassment
• Student Posted Racist Facebook Messages to Himself

The number of such faked incidents has become massive. They are the result of the fact that university administrations are easily manipulated by any claims of racial grievance.

Of course, when those bureaucrats try to redress the claimed racism, the policies they implement have no plausible connection to any real racism on campus (and there is very little real campus racism). They respond by hiring diversity bureaucrats. They respond with mandatory “diversity training” (read: Stalinist thought reform). They respond with “programs” that cater to minority students.

Of course, any real racist on campus is not going to repent because of any of this. On the other hand, students who aren’t racists come to resent being marginalized, subjected to indoctrination, and watching institutions treat black activists as privileged characters.

But the entire charade gives the minority students a feeling of power. Unfortunately, it teaches them that articulating grievances (rather than studying, learning and achieving) is the way to get ahead.

It also grows the bureaucratic empires of the campus bureaucrats. Which is part of the reason they react so supinely.

The other reason is that they are scared to death of being called racist. Real racial progress requires that people be willing to stand up to the racial bullies. Principled people might be surprised at how easy it is to endure charges of “racism” now that the term has become so debased, and now that so many people know how debased it is.

Missouri Protests Based on Fake Incidents

From the Daily Wire:

Show us the evidence of systemic racism at Mizzou.

So far, it doesn’t exist.

According to press accounts, four specific incidents drove the ouster of the liberal president of University of Missouri, Tim Wolfe. Three of the four have no evidence to support them, and the remaining incident was rightly investigated by Wolfe’s administration.

Here are the crucial racial incidents that brought down the top official at a major publicly-funded university.

The First N-Word Incident. On September 12, student government president Payton Head alleged that a red pickup truck of young white people slowed and began screaming the n-word at him. Head posted the story on social media along with a litany of supposed slurs experienced by various groups of Americans (“Many of you are so privileged that you’ll never know what it feels like to be a hijab-wearing Muslim woman…You don’t have to think about being transgender and worrying about finding a restroom…”). He then told the press, “this story is not just something that happens here. It’s not a Mizzou issue. It’s a societal issue.” He added, “This happened to me, but it happens all the time, not only here, but everywhere.” According to the campus police, the incident happened near campus, not on it, and the Columbia Police Department did not receive a report on the incident from Head. In other words, other than Head’s social media post, there’s no evidence the incident occurred.

The Second N-Word Incident. On October 5, members of the Legion of Black Collegians were confronted by a drunk white man who called them the n-word. The group issued a public statement: “At about 12:45 AM, we noticed an obviously intoxicated white male staggering down Conley Ave. on the sidewalk…while still on the phone he says ‘These n*****s are getting aggressive with me.’” Members of the campus administration and the police received reports, and the young man in question is reportedly living off-campus and is under investigation. The administration responded with mandatory diversity training on October 8.

The Car Bump. On October 10, Concerned Student 1950 protesters blocked the homecoming parade, and attempted to confront Wolfe by surrounding his car. Graduated student Jonathan Butler said, “We disrupted the parade specifically in front of Tim Wolfe because we need him to get our message.” Butler then alleged that the car had hit one of the students (tape shows no such thing) and went on a hunger strike. Wolfe apologized for asking the police to remove the protesters.

The Feces Swastika. On October 24, officials supposedly found a swastika drawn in poop on the floor and wall in the bathroom. Resident Halls Association president Bill Donley said, “After this event, it has become clear to me that the inclusivity of our residence halls has been threatened.” But according to Sean Davis at The Federalist, “No evidence of the alleged incident…has ever been made publicly available.” Donley refused to respond to requests, and other RHA staffers said they hadn’t seen the poop swastika. There are no public photographs of the swastika. The University of Missouri has now been hit with a public records request by The Federalist.

So there you have it. Four racial incidents, three of them evidenceless, and one of them taken care of by the administration.

Obviously something was rotten at Mizzou, but it isn’t systemic racism by the administration.

Of course, none of this really matters. The entire point is to bully university administrations, and get more politically correct initiatives on campus (“diversity training,” more campus bureaucrats to pander to politically correct groups).

This is all made worse by affirmative action, which admits students who aren’t really qualified and thus struggle academically. Add to this professors and campus bureaucrats who pamper and pander to minorities, and encourage a sense of grievance, and you get a bunch of bullies who seek a sense of power in the hothouse that is campus politics.

[Update]

The Federalist has turned up evidence that the poop swastika actually existed. Of course, a swastika would seem to be more an expression of hatred of Jews, rather than blacks.

Further, a real swastika might have been yet another of the hoax hate crimes that have proliferated on college campuses.

[Further Update]

The Federalist has been all over this. It seems that the key suspect is a student who “has also been reported to have made anti-Semitic remarks to the members of a Jewish fraternity.” This suspect has not been (and probably will not be) charged, but this seems more an anti-Semitic than an anti-black incident.

Fake Victimization Stories Accepted by Media

From NewsBusters, a list of fake victimization stories: bogus incidents stated by members of some “marginalized group” in order to claim victimhood.

We won’t repeat the entire article here, since you can read the original. But we will list the cases.

• Gay bar owner’s business burned down in 2012, he complained he was ‘targeted’ because of his sexual orientation.
• Lesbian couple had spray painted anti-gay slurs on their own garage before burning their house down and blaming it on their neighbor.
• June 2015: Gay pizza shop owner robbed, assaulted, mutilated….by himself.
• Oct. 2012: Black woman claims she was burned by KKK for wearing Obama shirt.
• April 2014: Muslim man kills wife; sets up her murder as an ‘Islamophobic’ hate crime.
• June 2015: Muslim cleric’s suspicious soda tale.
• Nov. 2013: Gay server receives hate note on receipt, snubbed with no tip.
• March 2013: Oberlin ‘KKK’ Hoax.
• February 2012: Hate notes outside dorm rooms target minorities.
• Gay men injured themselves, fake ‘hate crimes’ to cover up for embarrassment.
• October 2014: Racial Profiling Viral Video Staged.

As NewsBusters notes:

The left loves to portray the right as bigots who hate minorities, women, Muslims, and gays. So the media latch onto any claim of perceived discrimination or hate, real or not, and report it with glee (forget investigation and due diligence!).

Obviously, crimes do occur that are genuinely motivated by someone’s ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation. But many are simply hoaxes committed by liberal activists for the cause of furthering their agenda. The media makes no distinctions in figuring out which ones are real and which are staged.

ABC in 2009: Global Warming Disaster by 2015

This from the Media Research Center. Of course, the fact that the media has puffed absurd scenarios doesn’t mean there is no man-made global warming. But numerous examples like this mean you can’t trust what the media tell you about the issue. Following is a part of the transcript of the segment from Good Morning America.

GMA
6/12/08
8:34am

CHRIS CUOMO: Now, we will have a dramatic preview for you of an unprecedented ABC News event called “Earth 2100.” We’re asking you to help create a story that is yet to unfold: What our world will look like in 100 years if we don’t save our troubled planet. Your reports will actually help form the backbone of a two-hour special airing this fall. ABC’s Bob Woodruff will be the host. He joins us now. Pleasure, Bob.

BOB WOODRUFF: You too, Chris. You know, this show is a countdown through the next century and shows what scientists say might very well happen if we do not change our current path. As part of the show, today, we are launching an interactive web game which puts participants in the future and asks them to report back about what it is like to live in this future world. The first stop is the year 2015.

[NOTE: ABC provides no graphics or identification for any of the following individuals/activists featured. Identifications taken discerned from web article.]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE #1: The public is sleepwalking into the future. You know, sort of going through the motions of daily life and really not paying attention.

JAMES HANSEN (NASA/AL GORE SCIENCE ADVISOR): We can see what the prospects are and we can see that we could solve the problem but we’re not doing it.

[Graphic: Welcome to 2015]

PETER GLEICK (SCIENTIST/PACIFIC INSTITUTE): In 2015, we’ve still failed to address the climate problem.

JOHN HOLDREN (PROFESSOR/HARVARD UNIVERSITY): We’re going to see more floods, more droughts, more wildfires.

UNIDENTIFIED “REPORTER:” Flames cover hundreds of square miles.

UNIDENTIFIED VOICE: We expect more intense hurricanes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE #5: Well, how warm is it going to get? How much will sea level rise? We don’t know really know where the end is.

UNIDENTIFIED VOICE #2: Temperatures have hit dangerous levels.

UNIDENTIFIED VOICE #3: Agriculture production is dropping because temperatures are rising.

HEIDI CULLEN (WEATHER CHANNEL/CLIMATE CHANGE EXPERT): There’s about one billion people who are malnourished. That number just continually grows.

...

CUOMO: I think we’re familiar with some of these issues, but, boy, 2015? That’s seven years from now. Could it really be that bad?

WOODRUFF: It’s very soon, you know. But all you have to do is look at the world today right today. You know, you’ve got gas prices going up. You got food prices going up. You’ve got extreme weather. The scientists have studied this for decades. They say if you connect the dots, you can actually see that we’re approaching maybe even a perfect storm. Or you have got shrinking resources, population growth. Climate change. So, the idea now is to look at it, wake up about it and then try to do something to fix it.

...

WOODRUFF: But the best of these regular reports that come from people that are watching, we’re going to put those on, all of this on our two-hour production that’s going to happen in the fall. And we just want more of these people to watch. And we’ve gotten already some remarkable interviews from these people. And just take a quick look.

UNIDENTIFIED TEENAGER: It’s June 8th, 2015. One carton of milk is $12.99.

SECOND UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Gas reached over $9 a gallon.

THIRD UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I’m scared [bleeped] right now, but I have to get this out.

WOODRUFF: So the producers actually work with those people that send in their ideas into the website. And then we’re just hoping that the goal is ultimately get these ideas very soon.

CUOMO: Lovely. Bob Woodruff. Thank you very much. You can find out much more about how you can be part of this exciting and important show. You can go to Earth2100.tv. Earth2100.tv or you can go to ABCNews.com.

Being the Mainstream Media, of course, means never having to say “we are sorry we lied to you.”