The Media Research Center is unhappy that Parkland student David Hogg called Fox News host Laura Ingraham for both maliciously taunting him for not getting into a couple of college to which he applied and for her employer’s overall shabby, dismissive treatment of the activism of the Parkland students.
The MRC’s NewsBusters Twitter feed lamented, “Laura Ingraham publicly apologized, so what’s the issue?” MRC chief Brent Bozell whined: “Laura immediately apologized for what she said. Her apology was sufficient and demanding anything more is grandstanding by the radical left. If this is the left’s new standard, advertisers should ditch the majority of liberal talk shows!”
Bozell and the MRC have apprently forgot about their own history.
Last year Bozell and the MRC manufactured some outrage when religious scholar Reza Aslan, who had a weekly show about fringe religions on CNN, who had called President Trump a “piece of shit” for exploiting a terror attack in London to push his travel ban. Aslan quickly apologized, but that wasn’t enough for Bozell, who moved the goalposts and demanded that CNN cut ties with Aslan:
Reza Aslan’s apology was not only insincere, but dishonest. His vulgar remarks towards President Trump this past weekend were only a few of the many hateful comments he has made about conservatives. CNN has yet to respond in any fashion to the backlash over Mr. Aslan’s insults. Allowing Aslan to continue to have any association with the network is not only embarrassing to CNN, but insulting to their viewers.
As we documented, Bozell’s jihad worked; CNN did cut ties with Aslan. But Bozell never explained why he considered Aslan’s apology “insincere” and “dishonest” — and he does not explain why he considers Ingraham’s apology, made only after advertisers began to drop her show, to be “sufficient.”
One suspects that Bozell’s apology standards have nothing to do withi the apology itself and everything to do with the political leanings of the person apologizing.
Bozell’s outrage that Ingraham’s apology was not taken at face value is utterly hypocritical, since he’s criticizing the exact same thing he did with Aslan. It’s an untenable situation, as the MRC is proving in its attacks on the advertisers who dropped Ingraham. One post attacked one Ingraham-dropping advertiser who advertises on the show of MSNBC host Ayman Mohyeldin because of something Mohyeldin said three years before he was given a show. That’s a little desperate.
It seems that Bozell and the MRC are mad at Hogg for playing its own game — and doing just as well.