In 2012, when conservative darling Rush Limbaugh spsent three days hurling every denigrating, sleazy insult he could think of at Sandra Fluke for committing the alleged offense of advocating for birth control in public -- including "slut" and "prostitute" -- the right-wing Media Research Center gave him a pass, insisting that we should all accept Limbaugh's meager, self-serving apology and just move on. The MRC even rewarded Limbaugh's foul-mouthed tirade of misogyny by building an "I Stand With Rush" website, even as Brent Bozell's MRC employees were doing their best (or worst) Limbaugh imitation by hurling their own slurs at Fluke.
All of which makes the MRC's current jihad against CNN host Reza Aslan -- part of its revenge campaign to cover up the fact that others do much better media campaigns that it does -- utterly cynical and hollow.
The MRC is upset that Aslan tweeted -- not said on CNN's air, tweeted -- that President Trump is a "piece of shit" for exploiting the weekend's terror attack in London to push his travel ban. The MRC post by P.J. Gladnick on Aslan's tweet left out that context, instead bizarrely attacking Aslan for purportedly lacking "the slightest hint of sympathy for the victims of the June 3 terror attacks in London."
The MRC was then off and running, with Bozell issuing his call to arms against Aslan:
It’s up to CNN President Jeff Zucker to cut ties with Mr. Aslan and ensure he will no longer have a show on CNN, which still lists him as a host on its website. We will call on him to do so and report back to the public what CNN’s formal position is. Certainly, Mr. Zucker would sever ties if a CNN host had said the same thing about President Obama. The Media Research Center continues to put all media personalities on notice: we will publicly call out your media outlets -- and the decision makers at those outlets – in the event of any personal, character assassination attacks.
Remember: Bozell had no real problem with Limbaugh's personal, character assassination attacks on Fluke. He merely lamented that Limbaugh "crossed a line," and he did not call for Limbaugh to be fired. To the contrary: He insisted that the real issue wasn't Limbaugh's words but, rather, "about roaring hypocrisy and about censorship."
Indeed. Bozell's rant against Aslan can't be heard of the roar of his hypocrisy. And it's painfully clear that the MRC wants to censor Aslan for the offense of criticizing Trump. It's certainly not about the vulgarity of Aslan’s words because he found nothing wrong with Limbaugh's.
(Bozell is intimately familiar with right-wing vulgarity; he did, after all, liken President Obama to a "skinny ghetto crackhead." )
The MRC is so desperate to hurl anything it can at Aslan that it's rooting around his Twitter account for other tweets it deems offensive. It complained that Aslan once tweeted that right-wing author Dinesh D'Souza is an "adulterous piece of sh*t felon." Of course, it's indisputable that D'Souza is an adulterer and a felon -- from which one can reasonably deduce Aslan's final descriptor.
The MRC is not disputing the accuracy of anything Aslan tweeted. It's pretending to be outraged that he said them, and it badly wants to shut him up.