Media Research Center writer Gabriel Hays was filled with hate for anything not as white, heterosexual and Christian as he apparently is — and that’s saying something given the sheer number of haters the MRC employs. But he, like Lindsay Kornick before him, ascended the MRC plane at the end of March for a higher form of right-wing activism: becoming an “associate editor” at Fox News. Whatever it is, it doesn’t involve being fair and balanced; he’s simply doing a lot of what he did at the MRC — attacking liberals for saying and doing things that conservatives don’t like — while presumably being better paid for it.
Let’s mark Hays’ MRC departure by looking back at some of the hate he spewed there over his final few months of employment, shall we?
- In a Feb. 3 post, Hays cheered the reveal of corrupt Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani as a participant on “The Masked Singer”: “Man, politics aside, that’s good reality TV drama.” (Perhaps praising a Fox show helped Hays get his Fox News gig.)
- On Feb. 8, Hays lashed out at an actress who spoke approvingly of having an abortion: “Yes do please keep telling yourself that your abortion was nice. Perhaps then you’ll forget it might be one of the worst things you have done. … How great for her to decide that for her child. Was her prestigious commercial career worth it really worth the abortion?”
- Hays played whataboutism in a March 1 post: “Disney cares about talking trash to Putin, but the company’s still doing business with Commie China. It’s hard not to see why people see this pro-Ukraine stance as yet another empty virtue signal.”
- The next day, Hays sneered at President Biden for not imposing religious views against abortion on the entire country, smearing him as senile in the process: “Yep, total abdication of his moral responsibility. Yet this befuddled, doddering old man sure makes moral pronouncements all the time on other things, like saying that Republicans passing voter ID laws is like “ Jim Crow.” That sure is a huge condemnation, which no sane person agrees with, but still he made it.
- The notoriously transphobic Hays found a fellow hater to praise in a March 10 post, a teacher who was allegedly suspended for not using a student’s preferred pronouns, in which he ranted about the “radical propaganda” purportedly being taught as “The LGBTQ conquest of our nation’s public schools is nearly complete” then gushing of the teacher: “People with strong Christian convictions are at direct odds with LGBTQ activism and need to stand their ground. Good for her.”
- Continuing to believe that it’s “propaganda” for schools to teach that LGBT people exist and are not evil, using a March 10 post to cheer the “don’t say gay” law in Florida and claiming without evidence that it bans “extremely radical LGBTQ indoctrination in schools,” then huffing about “people in Hollywood” who criticized the bill: “These people are crazy. You try and protect impressionable kids from committing to life-altering “transgender” lifestyles before they have any idea about what sex and gender means, and the entire left goes nuts. We are in some dark times.” Yes, Hays’ virulent homophobia is quite dark.
- On March 15, Hays ranted that “radical left-wing group GLAAD has taken it upon itself to pressure the movie industry to fund and advocate for LGBTQ political causes. Be prepared to see a whole lot more gay on and off-screen in Tinseltown because of this,” going on to sneer, “There’s a much bigger chance all your favorite Disney characters are going to end up either gay, bi or trans by the end of this decade.” It speaks volumes about Hays’ homophobia that he is incredibly worried about this.
- Hays wants even his razors to hate gay people as much as he does, so he used a March 23 post to cheer how the Daily Wire is starting up a razor company in a lame response to Harry’s Razors dropping its advertising there for its anti-LGBT stance: “They’re clearly rich and successful and get the ladies without Harry’s ads or his razors.”
- A March 24 post seemed to be encouraging violence against Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife for giving $275 million of her divorce settlement to Planned Parenthood “to fund baby murder,” while of course providing no evidence any of the money, let alone all of it, will “murder” anyone. He didn’t even bother to hide his hate: “Um, lady, donating almost $300 million to the place that slaughters innocent human beings and isn’t ‘helping’ anyone. We’d rather you take your billions and live like a decadent queen. At least kids wouldn’t necessarily die from that.”
- Hays huffed in a March 30 post about Disney dropping gender references from its theme parks: “Disney is going full throttle in the race to erase traditional gender norms, especially now that the Florida state government looks to be protecting young public school kids from radical gender ideology. … Disney doesn’t seem to want to be the family-friendly media company any longer.” Hays didn’t explain how being more inclusive makes one suddenly not part of a “family.”
In his last days at the MRC, Hays was quite obsessed with portraying anyone who wants to admit to a child that LGBT people exist and refuses to spew the kind of hate at them that Hays does — or, really, any LGBT person, period — is a “groomer.”
- A March 23 post called the Florida bill an ” anti-grooming bill” and that an actor who spoke out against it “sounds like an idiot or worse, a child groomer.”
- Hays cheered the signing of the bill in a March 29 post: “Child groomers the world over are convulsing in anger today, because finally, FINALLY Governor DeSantis (R-FL) has signed a bill that blocks public school students in Kindergarten through third grade from being exposed to gender identity curriculum and other LGBTQ lesson plans.” Of course, Hays didn’t explain how the mere act of noting to a child that LGBT people exist equates to “grooming.”
- Hays huffed in a March 31 post that: “Disney and its magical kingdom of groomer-apologists are distraught that Florida’s government has passed legislation protecting young children from deviant sex education class before they’re ten years old,” then lashed out at yet another actor for criticizing it — while, again, not explaining how “grooming” was actually going on before now or that the bill would actually do anything about it.
Proving that he cares nothing about the journalistic norms he helped demand that the “liberal media” follow (but never his fellow right-wingers), Hays breached journalistic ethics soon after joining Fox News. In an April 15 article attacked Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler for not giving a rating to a questionable statement by President Biden, the only person Hays sought comment from was “Newsbusters Executive Editor Tim Graham” — but he didn’t disclose the fact that up until a couple weeks prior, Graham had been his boss. He also sought no comment from a non-conservative or even from Kessler himself, the person he was attacking.
In short: Fox News hired a highly biased virulent hater who cares nothing about how journalism works — and it doesn’t care because the hate and bias is what it hired him to do.