Last fall, the Media Research Center promoted a washed-up musician who performs under the name Five for Fighting — who hasn’t had a major hit in a good 15 years — and his new song spouting right-wing anti-Biden talking points. Now he’s claiming to be a victim, and we all know how much the MRC loves their right-wing victims. Alexander Hall conferred victimhood on the musician in a Jan. 11 post:
Musician John Ondrasik, also known by his stage name Five for Fighting, slammed YouTube for reportedly temporarily censoring his music video about Biden’s incompetence in the Afghanistan troop withdrawal.
Biden mishandled the end of America’s longest war so badly that Big Tech is haphazardly handling criticism of the president. “Ondrasik spoke out against censorship on Monday during an appearance on America’s Newsroom after YouTube temporarily removed and then reinstated a music video of his song ‘Blood on my Hands,’ which criticized the U.S. for its handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal,” Fox News reported on Monday. While YouTube reinstated the original video, Ondrasik slammed Big Tech leadership for being too quick to remove content.
Ondrasik explained to co-host Dana Perino that concern over free speech has become a value Americans only protect selectively rather than universally. “This YouTube issue, umm, it seems that freedom of expression only matters when the censorship applies to our side, our tribal team,” he observed. “If it’s criticizing some, somebody that is on our side, ‘Well, so what?’ Censorship, it’s all political.”
If Ondrasik has a ready platform at Fox News he can run to whenever he has a complaint to make, he’s not really being “censored” the way he thinks he is. Besides, even Fox News itself called the video “graphic and chilling,” including “horrifying videos of those who died trying to escape the country as well as those who were hanged, beaten and tortured by the new regime in power.”
In other words, it appears to be little more than an artsy version of a snuff video — content that Hall didn’t reference in his post and more than likely the reason YouTube temporarily pulled it. Ondrasik apparently didn’t reference the video’s graphic content when he ran to cry to Fox, since Hall didn’t note it.
The problem with the MRC’s victim narrative is that it usually has to hide inconvenient facts to sustain that victimhood.