Media Research Center director of media analysis Tim Graham turns in another choice bit of “media analysis” in a Jan. 26 NewsBusters post headlined “Effete New York Times Asks: ‘Is It Immoral to Watch the Super Bowl?'”
Yes, Graham thinks it’s “effete” to say anything negative about pro football. We’re surprised he didn’t use words like “swishy” or “effeminate” — that would have more directly conveyed the homophobic intent of his words.
Meanwhile, Graham starts his rant proper by devoting an entire paragraph to a non sequitur about … abortion? Oh, yeah, and a personal attack on the writer:
The New York Times has a very strange sense of morality. Abortion at any time for any reason is never savage. When the Kermit Gosnell case erupted, the Times could only editorialize it was irrelevant: “What does the trial of a Philadelphia doctor who is accused of performing illegal late-term abortions by inducing labor and then killing viable fetuses have to do with the debate over legal abortion?”
But on Sunday, the Times Magazine published a column titled “Is It Immoral to Watch the Super Bowl?” Writer Steve Almond, best known previously for resigning an adjunct professorship at Boston College because Condoleezza Rice was picked for commencement speaker, argued that sending men to the NFL was like sending our underclass soldiers off to war in Afghanistan (don’t miss the part about the late Pat Tillman)[.]
When you’re hurling insults at the publication and personally attacking the writer before you ever get around to addressing what the writer wrote, like Graham did, you’ve undermined your case for engaging in legitimate criticism.