You’d think that with the recent spate of sexual harassment scandals — some of which involving employees of the so-called “liberal media” — the Media Research Center would adjust its policy of judging the veracity of the accusers by the claimed or suspected political orientation of the accused. But it hasn’t — the MRC still implicitly trusts the claims of accusations made against liberals, while ranging from indifferent to hostile regarding women who accuse conservatives of bad behavior.
For a quarter of a century, the MRC has repeatedly trashed Anita Hill for raising accusations of sexual harassment against conservative icon Clarence Thomas. And as Hill’s name has come up amid the current spate of scandals, it’s trashing Hill anew.
The MRC’s Nicholas Fondacaro suggested that Hill was a liar in a Nov. 19 post attacking “make-believe Republican” Matthew Dowd (apparently in Fondacaro’s world, “real Republicans” must never hold their own to account) for bringing up Hill:
They basically called Anita Hill a nut and a liar in order to get Justice Thomas on the court. They empowered Bill Clinton, ” he continued to proclaim, devoid of any facts or reason. “ But in order to get those things, they decided the ends justify the means. They decided that a tainted person was better to get what they wanted.” He also claimed Trump’s supporters were guilty of siding with a tainted person just to get what they wanted. But his “tainted” label could also be applied to the Clintons.
Apparently, in Dowd’s version of history, there were no Senate hearings or Senator Joe Biden grilling Thomas in a “high-tech lynching” over Hill’s claims, or her evolving story, or all the testimonies from other women who contradicted her.
Yes, Foncacaro suggested Hill was lying in the very next paragraph after accusing Dowd of lacking “facts or reason” to back up his claim that Hill was attacked as a liar.
Two days later, Tim Graham proved Dowd right again as he once again portrayed Hill as a lying gold-digger who made her accusations solely in order to get a book advance and a cushy law-school job:
Republican Sen. Arlen Specter suggested Hill may have committed perjury, which outraged the liberals. Hill insisted she wasn’t making the allegations to make a buck….and then signed a million-dollar book deal and took a prestigious law professor job at Brandeis, where she still works.
Over at the MRC’s “news” division CNSNews.com, Craig Bannister cranked out a “flashback” blog post insisting that “Hill’s claims were discredited by, among other things, the testimony of more than a dozen female former co-workers who came forward to declare, in no uncertain terms, that Thomas was ‘a man of the highest principle, honesty, integrity and honor in all of his personal and professional actions.’ They called Hill’s claims ‘ludicrous’ and ‘unbelievable.'”
As evidence, Bannister cites a website called ConfirmationBiased.com (whose name Bannister gets wrong), which he writes was “launched to expose the political bias and inaccuracies of the 2016 HBO movie ‘Confirmation’.” But he doesn’t mention that the attack website was created by Mark Paoletta, an attorney who worked on the team assembled under President George H.W. Bush to forward Thomas’ nomination and who considers himself a personal friend of Thomas. It’s hardly an objective view of things.
Yep, trashing women who threaten conservative politicians and media figures will always be a part of the DNA of the MRC.