MRC Still Defending Moms For Liberty As Voters Sour On Its Right-Wing Extremism

Last year, the Media Research Center ran to the defense of Moms for Liberty as its right-wing extremism got exposed. As voters started to reject that extremism in school board elections, the MRC remained in defense mode. Tim Graham complained in a Nov. 20 post:

NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday could have also been titled Wishful Thinking Saturday, as they touted “The waning influence of Moms for Liberty.” NPR anchor Scott Simon began: “The right-wing group Moms for Liberty has been a force in clashes over what public schools can teach or not about sexuality and race, but its influence may be on the wane.”

NPR reporter Jim Zarroli chronicled the heroic liberal activists in their story, starting with Karen Svoboda in Dutchess County, New York. She founded an opposing group called Defense of Democracy. Conservatives might joke it’s Defense of Depravity, since both women are activists on the LGBTQ beat. NPR turned to another leftist group for “classification.” 

Does Graham really think all LGBTQ people are “depraved”? Seems a little judgmental. He whined further:

Zarroli explained that Svoboda’s group is “part of a nationwide grassroots counteroffensive against conservative efforts targeting schools. Katie Paris, who founded a network of liberal suburban women called Red Wine and Blue, says the culture warriors running for school board in many places are out of step with most voters.”

Paris claimed “They don’t represent the majority, but they are very loud, and their views are very extreme. And we have seen what can happen when just a few people start to sow chaos in any individual school district.”

On taxpayer-funded NPR, only the conservatives are “very extreme.” The ones that champion amputation surgeries for middle-schoolers are the “normal” people. When they win, it’s democracy. When anyone opposes them, it’s “sowing chaos.” 

Zarroli naturally let Svoboda claim she got death threats on the phone (helps with the “hate group” spin). This was the oddest line. Zarroli said the group Defense of Democracy “lost some battles. Her group tried and failed to get Moms for Liberty barred from a local community day parade.” Does that compute? The “democracy” group wanted to ban the conservatives from a parade? 

Graham, of course, never lets anyone respond to his homophobia. If he doesn’t want anyone to point out that people who don’t hate LGBTQ people are getting death threats, perhaps his friends should stop making those threats. He concluded by huffing: “NPR touts ‘energized and growing grassroots opposition’ and conservative groups with ‘waning influence.’ There’s a word for this: cheerleading.” As if Graham isn’t cheerleading for far-right groups like Moms for Liberty.

Brad Wilmouth wrote a similarly themed Jan. 26 post:

On Thursday’s CNN This Morning, correspondent Carlos Suarez devoted a full report to promoting wishful thinking by liberals that Moms for Liberty is losing influence in the right-leaning group’s push for parents’ rights in schools.

Co-host Phil Mattingly referred to the “wild story” that is “rattling conservative politics” as he set up the report recalled a prominent member of the group being involved in a sex scandal. This hasn’t been their line on Fani Willis, and CNN rallied around the Clintons during their raging sex scandals. But this is conservatives, and a sex scandal for a group opposing graphic sex in the school libraries is fun for them: 

Yes, Wilmouth really thinks that people opposed to right-wing censorship support “graphic sex in the school libraries.” He then tried to spin losses by Moms for Liberty-linked candidates:

After recalling that Moms for Liberty has also tried to have questionable books removed from some schools, Tina Descovich was allowed to defend their group, that they’re not “waning.” Suarez sought to rebut that argument: “But the numbers tell a different story, according to Moms for Liberty. In 2022, 55 percent of the 500 candidates the group endorsed won their race for school board while, in 2023, only 43 percent of 202 endorsed candidates won seats. They insist they’re not losing traction.”

Suarez did not address whether 2023 elections might have been held in disproportionately more liberal areas although, without directly connecting the two, later in the report he did note that the conservative group is making more pushes into “liberal” parts of the country.

Wilmouth offered no proof to support his speculation.

Meanwhile, Graham returned for a Jan. 21 post defending an appearance by a Moms for Liberty activist on Joy Reid’s MSNBC show. First, he spun right-wing the group’s anti-library activism:

Every once in a while, MSNBC host Joy Reid grants a platform to a conservative, risking that her audience will faint at the presence of an opposing viewpoint. On Friday night’s edition of The Reidout (aka Freakout), Reid gave time to Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice.

Reid began with a weird exercise in getting Justice to agree that liberal parents have rights to bring up their children as they see fit. (Agreed, duh.)

Then she pulled out a recent Washington Post review of “book challenges,” which found “The majority of the 1,000-plus book challenges analyzed by The Post were filed by just 11 people.” The implication is that somehow this is unrepresentative of public opinion. But it is democratic, in that it challenges decisions made by unelected public-school bureaucrats. 

Notice that unelected school librarians are never unrepresentative in liberal eyes — because the presumption is the schools are in liberal hands. They are also presumed to be the experts, and the parents challenging them are presumed to be morons.

Graham did not explain why he presumes that school librarians who have received years of training in their jobs are “morons” simply because they don’t follow the right-wing agenda (or why he apparently thinks that librarians should be elected). He then complained it was “liberal media spin” to point out that a tiny handful of people are launching an assault on libraries nationwide, then touted Justice’s spin:

Justice made the great point that schools crack down on graphic sexual content inside schools on the internet, so why not the library? Reid had no answer. Reid then tried to grill Justice about the details in the sexually graphic book All Boys Are Blue, about what was the name of the main character. She weirdly suggested keeping the book out of a school library forced people to buy the book, so it’s “a tax.” As if public libraries don’t have it? As if liberals aren’t distributing free copies at the LGBT centers? 

But mostly, Reid just wants to stick to the theme that conservatives can’t be Experts. Only liberals are that smart. 

Graham gave no indication that he has actually read “All Boys Aren’t Blue” — clearly he hasn’t, since he couldn’t be bothered to get the name of the book correct. And if he’s complaining that it’s “weird” for Reid to claim that “keeping the book out of a school library forced people to buy the book,” he has apparently never heard of the Streisand Effect. Graham then gushed over Justice’s deliberately inflammatory talking points (while still getting the name of the book wrong):

Justice asked “In what context is a strap-on dildo acceptable for public school?” Again, Reid has no answer. Instead, the D-word sends her off on an interruption frenzy. Reid contended that conservatives are hypocrites for reading their objectionable passages at school-board meetings. Imagine reading a passage from a book like All Boys Are Blue on Reid’s show. Reid wants to complain conservatives take these books “out of context,” but she shouts down any attempt to establish a context. 

What’s funny about this is that Reid wants the kids to have a library book that talks about anal rape and strap-on dildos, but she’s blanking it out on Twitter! 

Meanwhile, the MRC was silent on other Moms for Liberty-related controversies that demonstrated its extremism in recent months — from having anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorist Robert Kennedy Jr. speak at one conference to additional favorable quotes of Hitler in newsletters to staging a coughing fit to disrupt a moment of silence for Holocaust victims.