Corinne Weaver sounded quite alarmed in her July 18 Media Research Center post:
The media can turn anyone into a hero or a villain. In the case of R&B pop star R. Kelly, they’ve promoted his career and downplayed at least 15 years of sex crime allegations. He’s been featured both as a guest and musical performer on top network shows.
Late night TV talk programs such as The Tonight Show and Jimmy Kimmel Live!, as well as daytime’s Good Morning America, have given the singer glowing airtime and promotions for his many albums. Kimmel gave a friendly interview to the singer on December 4, 2013, and said to him, “There is so much I could learn from you.” Nothing was said about allegations about sex with underage girls.
The latest allegations against Kelly are the most alarming. BuzzFeed News unveiled a shocking expose alleging in the title that that the singer is “Is Holding Women Against Their Will” as part of a “cult.”
The claims, if true, are disturbing. (Kelly’s people have denied it.) But Weaver is engaging in a double standard here.
We’ve noted that the MRC is loath to talk about how right-wing darling Ted Nugent loved to brag about bedding underage girls during his peak rock-star days. So obsessed was Nugent with them, in fact, that he had himself declared the legal guardian of one underage girl to put a patina of respectability on the relationship.
The one time that we could find that Nugent’s love of jailbait was mentioned at the MRC, it was immediately dismissed with a Clinton Equivocation. In the 2014 post, Tim Graham (who else?) did the honors, attacking a New York Times article for committing the offense of bringing it up:
[Reporter Manny] Fernandez and the Times had no problem throwing the rhetorical kitchen sink at Nugent: “Democrats had no shortage of comments or behavior from Mr. Nugent’s past at which to take offense. They called him a ‘sexual predator,’ citing an episode of VH1’s ‘Behind the Music’ that stated he had admitted to liaisons with underage girls and had persuaded one girl’s mother to sign papers making him the girl’s legal guardian.”That’s really rich from Democrats who didn’t mind Clinton’s liaisons with college-age interns, or charges of rape. But when you call Bill Clinton a sexual “predator,” as Rand Paul did on TV, the Times avoided any mention of the word.
If a Clinton did it first, it’s OK for a Republican. The MRC doesn’t give non-conservative entertainers the same pass.