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Tony Perkins’ Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

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Tony Perkins yesterday had a horrible, no good, very bad day. On Thursday, Perkins appeared on Chris Matthews‘ MSNBC show, “Hardball,” and for the first time ever, Chris Matthews actually played hardball with Perkins. Perkins, head of the certified anti-gay hate group Family Research Council, thought he was appearing to discuss President Obama’s position on same-sex marriage. Perkins no doubt was assuming he could just spew his usual anti-gay religious junk-science-shrouded boilerplate hate, but instead ended up being in the hot seat, having to try to defend his own positions on marriage and homosexuality, rather than attacking the President’s.

Matthews, who has been repeatedly asked to stop inviting Perkins onto “Hardball,” recently admitted he and his producers have been debating just that. Apparently, the decision was to treat Perkins as a hostile witness — which is why Hardball is named Hardball — and not as an emissary of the Holy See. It’s about time.

Matthews attacked Perkins, who has presided over the Family Research Council, one of the most virulently homophobic right wing activist organizations, (which was, to put it biblically, created from the rib of Focus On The Family — another radical religious right anti-gay group,) on his anti-gay positions, including his ludicrous recent statement that he would never have a gay child because he and his wife have been teaching their children the “right ways.”

It was a one-two punch, with Congressman Barney Frank doing some of the heavy lifting when Matthews was done.

This is how leaders of hate groups should be treated by real journalists — instead of how they’re usually treated. Allowed to not answer questions, these anti-gay haters generally get a pass from journalists, like Wolf Blitzer on CNN, and use their time to spew their real agendas: anti-gay hate.

But Hardball wasn’t the only door to close on Tony Perkins yesterday.

Perkins, who has been the head of the anti-gay hate group, FRC, since 2003, (although he was a Louisiana State Representative until 2004,) started his day with Soledad O’Brien on CNN’s “Starting Point.” O’Brien has been very chummy before with Perkins, and even extended that post-interview camaraderie to Twitter, where in March blogger Matt Algren took O’Brien to task for not revealing Perkins’ background. While she claimed she was going to have to disagree with Algren’s comment, “You wouldn’t have a Klan leader on and pretend it wasn’t a problem,” perhaps O’Brien actually did her research this time, and found out that Tony Perkins has financially supported the KKK.

O’Brien asked Perkins what was his “big argument against gay marriage,” and Perkins pulled out his typical boilerplate response. “Well, it’s an argument for marriage.” Any journalist worth their salt would never let that claptrap twisting go unchallenged.

“When government takes a policy position on marriage, it has an effect,” Perkins responded, tossing in 1960s-era no-fault divorce and adoption as culprits in his imaginary war on marriage.

“We’ve seen the consequences of that and have over 40% of children being born out of wedlock. We have a decline in marriage, the rise in cohabitation. The social costs of that are tremendous,” Perkins lamented.

O’Brien challenged: “When government took a position, let’s say, against the ban on interracial marriage it had an effect too, right? It brought legal marriage to blacks and whites.”

“You’re talking about redefinition,” Perkins said. “There is no rational reason to keep people of different races that were of opposite sex to marry. They met the qualifications of the definition of marriage. What we’re talking about here is a further redefinition of marriage…”

“But hasn’t marriage been redefined and redefined?” O’Brien interjected.

“It’s going to intentionally create environments where you have children growing up without a mom and a dad,” Perkins argued.

“But we have environments where children grow up,” O’Brien responded. “Forgive me for interrupting, but we have environments already in heterosexual couples where they grow up without a mom or dad. You’re certainly not arguing gay marriage is fine as long as the couples don’t want to have kids because you will avoid that problem, kids growing up without a mom or a dad, or an older couple who aren’t going to have kids?”

“There’s no argument that those things have occurred and that the state of marriage in this country is problematic,” Perkins conceded. “There’s no argument there. What I’m saying is you look at the consequence, the cost do government as a result of that, the increased social cost. Why would we want to intentionally do more of that? The point here is public policy — what we set doesn’t mean that everybody is going to reach that standard but we should set a standard that is best for society.”

“Doesn’t public policy follow culture? But it sounds to me like you’re saying public policy sets culture. I would say culture maybe actually goes first and public policy follows?” O’Brien followed up. “Certainly if you’re going to talk about equality and rights to sort of say, well, you know, I’m concerned about this issue, so we’ll overlook the equal rights part of it. seems a little unfair at the least.”

“Well, it’s not an issue of equal rights,” Perkins said. “Everybody has the same rights.”

O’Brien wasn’t having it, and continued pressuring Perkins, who trotted out his incest laws as reasons to discriminate against gays, and added in all the terrible trouble, albeit unsupported, same-sex marriage would cause businesses.

Noting that, “my mom’s white, my dad’s black,” O’Brien said that “marriage is always being ‘redefined.'”

“Marriage has always been the union of a man and a woman,” Perkins said.

“Marriage has always been, as someone has decided to define it,” O’Brien said. “We’re going to agree to disagree on this one,” she added.

http://videos.mediaite.com/embed/player/?content=S7K17G386SJWZ74L&content_type=content_item&layout=&playlist_cid=&media_type=video&widget_type_cid=svp&read_more=1

But it wasn’t just the all-out war on Hardball or the rough and tumble on CNN that was troublesome for Perkins.

GLAAD’s new President, Herndon Graddick Thursday afternoon posted an excellent op-ed on The Huffington Post, “CNN Has Its Own ‘Evolving’ to Do on Marriage Coverage,” attacking the news network for hosting Perkins without telling the audience exactly who Tony Perkins really is:

So with a wealth of political thinkers, analysts and strategists to go to — why has CNN turned to Tony Perkins three times in the last few days to represent the “other side?” He was on with Piers Morgan Tuesday night to talk about the vote in North Carolina. He appeared with Wolf Blitzer Wednesday evening to talk about the President’s support for marriage equality, and then was interviewed by Soledad O’Brien Thursday morning on the same topic.

All of this is fine, as long as Perkins is put into the proper context. Which he sort-of was by Morgan and O’Brien, but Blitzer didn’t even come close.

Here’s the crux of the problem — and the exact reason why GLAAD’s Commentator Accountability Project was born. Tony Perkins and others of his ilk cannot be used to exemplify those who simply oppose marriage equality. CNN is more than welcome to interview him on the issue of marriage equality, of course. His is unquestionably one of the loudest voices in the nation speaking about the issue.

But when Perkins gets interviewed, a responsible journalist needs to tell the audience exactly who Perkins is speaking for. Based on his own statements — Tony Perkins represents people who believe supporting LGBT equality is akin to being a terrorist. Who believe marriage equality is the same as bestiality. Who say that gay people are “vile,” “hateful,” “spiteful” “pawns of the enemy.” Tony Perkins does not represent people who oppose marriage equality. Tony Perkins represents those who oppose LGBT people — period.

If CNN wants that side represented in this discussion, then Perkins is absolutely the right man for the job. But they need to make it clear to the audience that that’s what he’s there for. And by not doing so, they have not told the whole story. Wolf Blitzer’s interview with Perkins is a perfect example of this.

Blitzer asked Perkins how he felt when he heard the news, that Obama supports marriage. Fine. He then asked Perkins “What’s wrong with giving gay Americans the same rights as heterosexual Americans?” Then he asked Perkins whether he agrees with Romney about giving same-sex couples hospital visitation rights. He followed it up with “What about allowing gay couples to be on each other’s health insurance policies? Would you have a problem with that?”

What on earth was Blitzer doing here? Why were we spending so much time finding out exactly which rights Perkins does and doesn’t support gay couples having? Finally he ended the interview.

Blitzer: “Do you accept the concept that gay people are born that way?” (Which Perkins answered by incorrectly claiming “there is no conclusive evidence to suggest being gay is genetic.”)

Seriously. That’s what he closed with. Blitzer had five minutes to discuss the significance of a sitting president endorsing marriage equality with one of the leaders of the country’s anti-gay movement, and the audience learned next to nothing about this issue.

The LGBT media has had a field day with this. The Advocate’s headline, “Barney Frank, Chris Matthews Shred Tony Perkins for Antigay Views,” one example, AmericaBlog’s “Chris Matthews takes down Tony Perkins over gay rights,” another.

But mainstream media outlets have not let this go unignored, with even The Washington Post weighing in: CNN’s O’Brien jousts with Tony Perkins on gay marriage, and of course, Mediaite: “Soledad O’Brien Tangles With Tony Perkins Over Whether Marriage Has Ever Been Redefined.”

(In all fairness, we should note the CNN video and some of the O’Brien-Perkins transcript were from the Mediaite piece.)

But Perkins didn’t even have to be present for his day to end poorly. Thursday night, MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell schooled a non-present Perkins on the Bible, and marriage.

Via The Advocate:

Social conservatives like Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, have grown accustomed to claiming that allowing same-sex couples to marry is “redefining” marriage, and that redefining it alone is a radical step.

But marriage has actually had to be legally redefined several times — to allow interracial marriages, for example. Or, to ban polygamy. O’Donnell points out that Perkins and other religious aficionados should know this well if they read their Bibles.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32545640

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Tony Perkins on Wednesday no doubt thought President Obama’s embrace of same-sex marriage would keep him in business for a long time to come.

On Thursday, responsible journalists decided otherwise.

Perkins yesterday had a really bad day. And unlike the children’s book by a similar title, it’s not going to end well. There will be no lessons learned, no optimism to find. This was the first of many more.

It won’t be long before Perkins appearing on CNN, MSNBC, or in other polite media outlets will be as unconscionable as David Duke or other KKK leaders being interviewed on cable TV.

And that’s the way it should be.
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OPINION

Noem Defends Shooting Her 14-Month Old Puppy to Death, Brags She Has Media ‘Gasping’

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April 26, 2024

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Republican Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota, a top potential Trump vice presidential running mate pick, revealed in a forthcoming book she “hated” her 14-month old puppy and shot it to death. Massive online outrage ensued, including accusations of “animal cruelty” and “cold-blooded murder,” but the pro-life former member of Congress is defending her actions and bragging she had the media “gasping.”

“Cricket was a wirehair pointer, about 14 months old,” Noem writes in her soon-to-be released book, according to The Guardian which reports “the dog, a female, had an ‘aggressive personality’ and needed to be trained to be used for hunting pheasant.”

“By taking Cricket on a pheasant hunt with older dogs, Noem says, she hoped to calm the young dog down and begin to teach her how to behave. Unfortunately, Cricket ruined the hunt, going ‘out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life’.”

“Then, on the way home after the hunt, as Noem stopped to talk to a local family, Cricket escaped Noem’s truck and attacked the family’s chickens, ‘grabb[ing] one chicken at a time, crunching it to death with one bite, then dropping it to attack another’.”

READ MORE: President Hands Howard Stern Live Interview After NY Times Melts Down Over Biden Brush-Off

“Cricket the untrainable dog, Noem writes, behaved like ‘a trained assassin’.”

Except Cricket wasn’t trained. Online several people with experience training dogs have said Noem did everything wrong.

“I hated that dog,” Noem wrote, calling the young girl pup “untrainable,” “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with,” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog.”

“At that moment,” Noem wrote, “I realized I had to put her down.”

“It was not a pleasant job,” she added, “but it had to be done. And after it was over, I realized another unpleasant job needed to be done.”

The Guardian reports Noem went on that day to slaughter a goat that “smelled ‘disgusting, musky, rancid’ and ‘loved to chase’ Noem’s children, knocking them down and ruining their clothes.”

She dragged both animals separately into a gravel pit and shot them one at a time. The puppy died after one shell, but the goat took two.

On social media Noem expressed no regret, no sadness, no empathy for the animals others say did not need to die, and certainly did not need to die so cruelly.

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But she did use the opportunity to promote her book.

Attorney and legal analyst Jeffrey Evan Gold says Governor Noem’s actions might have violated state law.

“You slaughtered a 14-month-old puppy because it wasn’t good at the ‘job’ you chose for it?” he asked. “SD § 40-1-2.3. ‘No person owning or responsible for the care of an animal may neglect, abandon, or mistreat the animal.'”

The Democratic National Committee released a statement saying, “Kristi Noem’s extreme record goes beyond bizarre rants about killing her pets – she also previously said a 10-year-old rape victim should be forced to carry out her pregnancy, does not support exceptions for rape or incest, and has threatened to throw pharmacists in jail for providing medication abortions.”

Former Trump White House Director of Strategic Communications Alyssa Farah Griffin, now a co-host on “The View” wrote, “There are countless organizations that re-home dogs from owners who are incapable of properly training and caring for them.”

The Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson blasted the South Dakota governor.

“Kristi Noem is trash,” he began. “Decades with hunting- and bird-dogs, and the number I’ve killed because they were chicken-sharp or had too much prey drive is ZERO. Puppies need slow exposure to birds, and bird-scent.”

“She killed a puppy because she was lazy at training bird dogs, not because it was a bad dog,” he added. “Not every dog is for the field, but 99.9% of them are trainable or re-homeable. We have one now who was never going in the field, but I didn’t kill her. She’s sleeping on the couch. You down old dogs, hurt dogs, and sick dogs humanely, not by shooting them and tossing them in a gravel pit. Unsporting and deliberately cruel…but she wrote this to prove the cruelty is the point.”

Melissa Jo Peltier, a writer and producer of the “Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan” series, also heaped strong criticism on Noem.

“After 10+ years working with Cesar Millan & other highly specialized trainers, I believe NO dog should be put down just because they can’t or won’t do what we decide WE want them to,” Peltier said in a lengthy statement. “Dogs MUST be who they are. Sadly, that’s often who WE teach them to be. And our species is a hot mess. I would have happily taken Kristi Noem’s puppy & rehomed it. What she did is animal cruelty & cold blooded murder in my book.”

READ MORE: ‘Blood on Your Hands’: Tennessee Republicans OK Arming Teachers After Deadly School Shooting

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OPINION

President Hands Howard Stern Live Interview After NY Times Melts Down Over Biden Brush-Off

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April 26, 2024

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President Joe Biden gave an nearly-unannounced, last-minute, live exclusive interview Friday morning to Howard Stern, the SiriusXM radio host who for decades, from the mid-1990s to about 2015, was a top Trump friend, fan, and aficionado. But the impetus behind the President’s move appears to be a rare and unsigned statement from the The New York Times Company, defending the “paper of record” after months of anger from the public over what some say is its biased negative coverage of the Biden presidency and, especially, a Thursday report by Politico claiming Times Publisher A.G. Sulzberger is furious the President has refused to give the “Grey Lady” an in-person  interview.

“The Times’ desire for a sit-down interview with Biden by the newspaper’s White House team is no secret around the West Wing or within the D.C. bureau,” Politico reported. “Getting the president on the record with the paper of record is a top priority for publisher A.G. Sulzberger. So much so that last May, when Vice President Kamala Harris arrived at the newspaper’s midtown headquarters for an off-the-record meeting with around 40 Times journalists, Sulzberger devoted several minutes to asking her why Biden was still refusing to grant the paper — or any major newspaper — an interview.”

“In Sulzberger’s view,” Politico explained, “only an interview with a paper like the Times can verify that the 81-year-old Biden is still fit to hold the presidency.”

But it was this statement that made Politico’s scoop go viral.

READ MORE: Justices’ Views on Trump Immunity Stun Experts: ‘Watching the Constitution Be Rewritten’

“’All these Biden people think that the problem is Peter Baker or whatever reporter they’re mad at that day,’ one Times journalist said. ‘It’s A.G. He’s the one who is pissed [that] Biden hasn’t done any interviews and quietly encourages all the tough reporting on his age.'”

Popular Information founder Judd Legum in March documented The New York Times’ (and other top papers’) obsession with Biden’s age after the Hur Report.

Thursday evening the Times put out a “scorching” statement, as Politico later reported, not on the newspaper’s website but on the company’s corporate website, not addressing the Politico piece directly but calling it “troubling” that President Biden “has so actively and effectively avoided questions from independent journalists during his term.”

Media watchers and critics pushed back on the Times’ statement.

READ MORE: ‘To Do God Knows What’: Local Elections Official Reads Lara Trump the Riot Act

“NYT issues an unprecedented statement slamming Biden for ‘actively and effectively avoid[ing] questions from independent journalists during his term’ and claiming it’s their ‘independence’ that Biden dislikes, when it’s actually that they’re dying to trip him up,” wrote media critic Dan Froomkin, editor of Press Watch.

Froomkin also pointed to a 2017 report from Poynter, a top journalism site published by The Poynter Institute, that pointed out the poor job the Times did of interviewing then-President Trump.

Others, including former Biden Deputy Secretary of State Brian McKeon, debunked the Times’ claim President Biden hasn’t given interviews to independent journalists by pointing to Biden’s interviews with CBS News’ “60 Minutes” and a 20-minute sit-down interview with veteran journalist John Harwood for ProPublica.

Former Chicago Sun-Times editor Mark Jacob, now a media critic who publishes Stop the Presses, offered a more colorful take of Biden’s decision to go on Howard Stern.

The Times itself just last month reported on a “wide-ranging interview” President Biden gave to The New Yorker.

Watch the video and read the social media posts above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Doesn’t Care if Pregnant Women Live or Die’: Alito Slammed Over Emergency Abortion Remarks

 

 

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CNN Smacks Down Trump Rant Courthouse So ‘Heavily Guarded’ MAGA Cannot Attend His Trial

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April 26, 2024

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Donald Trump’s Friday morning claim Manhattan’s Criminal Courts Building is “heavily guarded” so his supporters cannot attend his trial was torched by a top CNN anchor. The ex-president, facing 34 felony charges in New York, had been urging his followers to show up and protest on the courthouse steps, but few have.

“I’m at the heavily guarded Courthouse. Security is that of Fort Knox, all so that MAGA will not be able to attend this trial, presided over by a highly conflicted pawn of the Democrat Party. It is a sight to behold! Getting ready to do my Courthouse presser. Two minutes!” Trump wrote Friday morning on his Truth Social account.

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins supplied a different view.

“Again, the courthouse is open the public. The park outside, where a handful of his supporters have gathered on trials days, is easily accessible,” she wrote minutes after his post.

READ MORE: ‘Assassination of Political Rivals as an Official Act’: AOC Warns Take Trump ‘Seriously’

Trump has tried to rile up his followers to come out and make a strong showing.

On Monday Trump urged his supporters to “rally behind MAGA” and “go out and peacefully protest” at courthouses across the country, while complaining that “people who truly LOVE our Country, and want to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, are not allowed to ‘Peacefully Protest,’ and are rudely and systematically shut down and ushered off to far away ‘holding areas,’ essentially denying them their Constitutional Rights.”

On Wednesday Trump claimed, “The Courthouse area in Lower Manhattan is in a COMPLETE LOCKDOWN mode, not for reasons of safety, but because they don’t want any of the thousands of MAGA supporters to be present. If they did the same thing at Columbia, and other locations, there would be no problem with the protesters!”

After detailing several of his false claims about security measures prohibiting his followers from being able to show their support and protest, CNN published a fact-check on Wednesday:

“Trump’s claims are all false. The police have not turned away ‘thousands of people’ from the courthouse during his trial; only a handful of Trump supporters have shown up to demonstrate near the building,” CNN reported.

“And while there are various security measures in place in the area, including some street closures enforced by police officers and barricades, it’s not true that ‘for blocks you can’t get near this courthouse.’ In reality, the designated protest zone for the trial is at a park directly across the street from the courthouse – and, in addition, people are permitted to drive right up to the front of the courthouse and walk into the building, which remains open to the public. If people show up early enough in the morning, they can even get into the trial courtroom itself or the overflow room that shows near-live video of the proceedings.”

READ MORE: Justices’ Views on Trump Immunity Stun Experts: ‘Watching the Constitution Be Rewritten’

 

 

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