The Media Research Center’s Curtis Houck devoted a May 16 post to complaining that non-right-wing media wasn’t obsessing like he was over the right-wing controversy du jour:
Late Thursday, former FBI Director and cringe, lefty D.C. Boomer James Comey posted and deleted seashells shaped into “8647” while walking on the beach that he claimed to have found interesting while not aware until later it translated to call for President Donald Trump’s assassination.
But on the Friday morning network news shows, ABC’s Good Morning America was nowhere to be seen and saw no reason to cover this act of dangerous political rhetoric.
Instead, they spent nearly ten minutes (9:37) treating Bill Belichick to a softball-filled interview that barely touched on the ongoing soap opera that is his relationship with girlfriend Jordon Hudson and just over four minutes (4:02) celebrating the 70th anniversary of Disneyland in Anaheim, California.
NBC’s Today only tacked 48 seconds onto the end of a segment about President Trump’s trip to the Middle East.
[…]Here was how [NBC’s Garrett Haake] wrapped: “Comey, after taking the post down, said he didn’t understand what the numbers meant and that he doesn’t support violence against anyone. Meanwhile, the Secret Service says they take posts like this seriously and they’re investigating.”
Isn’t it nice being a D.C. liberal in which your kindred spirits in the so-called news business take you at your word?
Of course, Houck and his fellow MRCers always take Trump and other right-wingers at their word whenever a controversy pops up.
Houck joined Nicholas Fondacaro on the MRC’s podcast later that day to rehash all of this: “Comey might be trying to sell seashells down by the seashore, but we weren’t buying his pathetic excuse that he didn’t know what “86 47” meant. Curtis walks us through his coverage and analysis of the broadcast networks’ Friday morning reporting of the dust up.”
Mark Finkelstein ranted further about this in a May 17 post:
Snorting “seriously, come on,” on Saturday’s edition of MSNBC’S The Weekend, co-host Jonathan Capehart dismissed former FBI Director James Comey’s posting of a photo of “8647” as a “pseudo controversy.”
Right! After all, in taking down the post, Comey claimed “I didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence. It never occurred to me.”
Of course he didn’t realize it! After all, who would expect the former top federal crime fighter to be familiar with . . . criminal code?
[…]The New York Times published an article yesterday citing Columbia professor Jesse Sheidlower [see photo], a slang specialist, on the meaning of “86.” While acknowledging that “it can mean murder,” Sheidlower claimed:
“Without any very specific indication that that’s the intended meaning, you’d never assume that. The notion that Comey was suggesting this is completely preposterous.”
“Completely preposterous” — great point, professor. Because in posting “8647,” Comey didn’t specify, “I mean that to say, murder the president.”
Case closed!
None of these MRC writers mentioned that prominent right-wingers have directed “86” at their preferred targets — as we noted when WorldNetDaily made these same hypocritical complaints, Human Events editor Jack Posobiec tweeted “86 46” at President Biden, while then-Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz sent an “86” message to fellow Republicans he despised. No MRC writer called these out as the death threats they apparently were.
Alex Christy spent a May 21 post complaining that Comey was given a platform to defend himself:
Former FBI Director James Comey took his book tour to CBS and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, where he promoted his new novel about a violent right-wing podcaster while the eponymous host absolved him of any wrongdoing over his recent 8647 Instagram post that some interpreted as a call to kill President Trump.
Colbert began by begrudgingly bringing up the Instagram post, “You stirred up a little controversy recently. I was going to say that you landed in some hot water, but it’s not hot water. It’s just water because I don’t know if you do this on purpose just to get attention, but you—is this Instagram? You gram-ed this. You are walking down the beach. What happened? You’re walking down the beach, and you saw this on the beach?”
Comey recalled strolling down the beach with his wife and “She looked at it and said, ‘Why’d someone put their address in the sand?’ And then we stood at it, looked at it trying to figure out what it was, and she’d long been a server in restaurants, and she said, “You know, I think it is, I think it’s a reference to restaurants when you’d 86 something at a restaurant.’”
Even if one grants Comey the benefit of the doubt that he was not seriously calling for Trump’s assassination, he did just admit to posting something on Instagram despite not knowing what it means.
Like his co-workers, Christy failed to mention the right-wingers caught sending “86” threats to their enemies. It’s as if that sort of behavior is OK if you’re a Republican.