Cheering that Bari Weiss temporarily killed a segment is not the only concern the Media Research Center has had about “60 Minutes” of late. Tim Graham spent a Nov. 12 column whining that the show profiled author Margaret Atwood while pretending that book bans don’t count if schools do it:
That’s not even counting the 13-minute puff piece by Jon Wertheim on radical feminist author Margaret Atwood, who the Left reveres for warning of right-wing Christian authoritarianism around the corner. The 60 Minutes X account gushed: “Margaret Atwood, author of 64 books including The Handmaid’s Tale, has seen her work banned for content deemed overly sexual, morally corrupt, and anti-Christian.”
A “ban” in this case is normally in public school systems, not in wider society. You can find Atwood’s craptastic books easily, and hand them to your kids. A “ban” is not always a ban, either. The American Library Association admits most book challenges fail to remove books from classroom or library shelves completely. But any book that is challenged is considered a “banned” book.
This terminology allows the Left to celebrate the “brave” authors, as CBS did with its segment title: “The Indomitable Margaret Atwood.” As in “she’s impossible to defeat.”
[…]This statistic on schools came from PEN America, a leftist lobbying group fighting conservative “challenges” to books. Earlier this year, they gave Atwood their “Eleanor Roosevelt Bravery in Literature Lifetime Achievement Award,” which CBS failed to mention.
Here’s the first thing we know about CBS. No one will be brave enough to read out loud the passages in Atwood’s books that are too overtly sexual for 12-year-olds. Book “challengers” are always painted as silly and uptight. In The Handmaid’s Tale, there is forced intercourse, where a “commander” has sex with a “handmaid” in the presence of the “commander’s” wife, which is all about systematic misogyny.
Atwood attacked school authorities in the Canadian province of Alberta as dunces: “The government put out an edict to all school boards saying that they couldn’t have any books in the library that had either direct or indirect sex. What is indirect sex? I don’t know.”
I couldn’t find any document that said “indirect sex.” The government of Alberta did distinguish between “explicit” and “non-explicit” sexual references. This isn’t rocket science.
But somehow, Graham knows knows the rocket science that a book ban isn’t really a book ban if a school does it.
Graham spent a Jan. 5 post being angry that “60 Minutes” found someone who said Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro was not a “bloodthirsty drug dealer” as the Trump administration claimed: “Has he had people killed? Sure. Is Venezuela pumping out drugs? Yes. But trust the Expert located by CBS.”
A Jan. 19 post by Curtis Houck complained that a segment on anti-ICE protesters didn’t hate them enough:
Sunday’s 60 Minutes should be the clearest sign yet that little has changed at CBS News under editor-in-chief Bari Weiss as, despite the apocalytpic claims from so-called “media reporters,” they’re still churning out partisan drivel. Along with airing the story on the El Salvadoran jail CECOT (which was nearly identical to the one Weiss held up last month), 60 Minutes opened with a pity party for Minneapolis by correspondent Cecilia Vega sucking up to Minneapolis and huffing about Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE).
Vega immediately sought to illicit sympathy for the illegal immigrants and never say a word about their criminal records:
[…]It was five minutes and 11 seconds before she even spoke to someone with ICE (or anyone presenting the other side):
[…]The only micro-dose of truth serum about what’s happening in Minneapolis came next when Vega asked O’Hara if he’s okay with anti-ICE protesters hurling phrases like “Nazi.” O’Hara insisted anyone should be able to say what they want (even if it’s “disrespectful things,” but conceded “physically obstruct[ing] law enforcement from performing a function” is “illegal.”
Houck concluded by declaring that all protesters are left-wing extremists:
One problem: Even O’Hara’s fellow leftists — including O’Hara and his bosses — are opposed to even “the worst of the worst” being deported by ICE. If they were supportive, the city would not be a sanctuary city.
Houck offered no proof for this assertion.