CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta’s new book, “The Enemy of the People,” was sure to set the Media Research Center’s already high levels of Acosta Derangement Syndrome into the stratosphere, and darn it if that isn’t exactly what happened.
Tim Graham kicked off the MRC’s Acosta book attack with a May 29 post complaining that Acosta used anonymous sources to back up assertions about Trump: “This is exactly the kind of anonymous sourcing that’s irresponsible, just protecting someone taking a pot shot. Did either of these sources — or it could be the same person — work for President Obama? That would color the quote, wouldn’t it? ” Of course, the MRC does invoke anonymous sources when it serves its right-wing agenda to do so (and to attack Acosta).
On June 9, as we’ve noted, Nicholas Fondacaro actually agreed with Acosta that the media are not the “enemy of the people” before his ADS kicked in and he huffed about a “vomit-inducing interview” he did to promote the book.
Graham returned to sneer in a June 11 post after Acosta said in another interview that “I have never witnessed a concerted effort by any news organization to take a stand one way or the other on a political issue, to damage one particular party or help another,” retorting in response: “This is about as plausible as saying ‘I have never witnessed any person eating a hamburger.'”
Graham served up more mocking a couple days later and was too busy sneering at Acosta for serving up “bipartisan-unity talk” to fully acknowledge that Acosta was being interviewed by a conservative, Hugh Hewitt. He sneered that Acosta’s worry about President Trump’s repeated attacks on the media endandering journalisdts is just a “tale” and adding: “Yes, when you think of unifying people — the kind that want to grab a Coke bottle and teach the world to sing in perfect harmony — it’s not Jim Acosta. If you wonder why Acosta doesn’t sound like this on CNN, the answer is simple. CNN isn’t television for Republicans. It’s Resistance TV.”
Then Curtis Houck, the MRC’s Acosta-hater-in-chef, weighed in with a hate-filled rage that was extreme by even his standards. Under the headline “BEHOLD the Worst Quotes from Jim Acosta’s Narcissistic Book of Hogwash,” Houck worked up all the smug right-wing nastiness he could muster:
CNN chief White House correspondent and cartoonishly self-centered Jim Acosta released on Tuesday his 354-page work of narcissism, The Enemy of the People: A Dangerous Time to Tell the Truth in America. And, folks, it’s everything you thought it would be and then some.
From defending his showboating to admitting that he’s at times belligerent on purpose to conceding that fellow journalists loathe him, Acosta’s conceited argle bargle showcased Acosta at its worst and the dangers of the liberal media’s belief that the First Amendment only concerns them, neglecting how it also gives Americans the right to chant “CNN sucks.”
So, without any further adieu, check out this Notable Quotable-style package of quotes. And with 96 Post-It notes in the book obtained by NewsBusters, the following only represents a sampling of the nonsense.
In other words, you’re welcome, America.
Yes, Houck did link to a photo from his personal Twitter account showing how many sticky notes he put in Acosta’s book while “reading” it.
Houck toned things down just a bit for a post the next day in which he proclaimed that Acosta was a “narcissistic Looney Tune” and included more samples from the book, whining at one point that “On pages 14 and 15 in his 354-page screed, Acosta dithered away for seven paragraphs about how he was incensed that, on the eve of the 2016 election, then-candidate Donald Trump ‘refused the time-honored tradition for a presidential candidate of posing in front of the plane for a photo with journalists covering his or here campaign.'”
It seems that if anyone’s acting cartoonish here, it’s Houck in his way-over-the-top hate for Acosta. Does the MRC pay him by the gallon of bile he spews?
Interesting, that last Houck post was the last time the MRC has devoted a post to Acosta, about his book or him in general. Has it finally realized how ridiculous it has looked with its obsessive Acosta-hate?