Patterico's Pontifications

2/14/2012

Alan Dershowitz: Media Matters Could Be 2012’s Rev. Wright

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 6:34 pm



Why is Prof. Dershowitz upset? Is it because Media Matters proposed to hire private investigators to probe the private lives of Fox News reporters, and discussed using frivolous lawsuits as weapons of terror?

No:

Liberal Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz says Media Matters could become the Rev. Jeremiah Wright of 2012 for the Obama campaign if the White House and the Democratic Party don’t clearly distance themselves from the organization.

“Well I think if swing voters in the pro-Israel community had any idea how extreme Media Matters was on issues of Israel and supporters of Israel, they would regard Media Matters as another, you know, Rev. Wright,” Dershowitz told The Daily Caller.

It’s difficult to evaluate the professor’s complaint based on the linked article. No examples of anti-Israel bias are given. I’m willing to believe it, since I consider Media Matters to be disgusting, dishonest, and incredibly partisan. But I have never read the site with an eye towards the writers’ attitudes towards Israel.

So all I can do at this point is think:

Guess it’s time to sick some private investigators on Prof. Dershowitz . . .

38 Responses to “Alan Dershowitz: Media Matters Could Be 2012’s Rev. Wright”

  1. Oliver Willis luvs Twinkies.

    JD (59fe1b)

  2. Here’s an example:

    “CAP blogger Eli Clifton joined Media Matters Senior Foreign Policy Fellow MJ Rosenberg in using Twitter to promote an article accusing the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Museum of Tolerance of pushing “Western groupthink that has for centuries justified wars and countless atrocities against the Arab world . . .[that’s] representative of the way many Americans feel toward Muslims and Arabs — that they are all terrorists.”

    Brother Bradley J. Fikes, C.O.R. (cc51eb)

  3. I suspect that pales in comparison to the ones Dershowitz was referencing.

    JD (59fe1b)

  4. Here’s a statement by Matt Duss of Media Matter’s soulmate, Center for American Progress.

    Like segregation in the American South, the siege of Gaza (and the entire Israeli occupation, for that matter) is a moral abomination that should be intolerable to anyone claiming progressive values. It’s sad that it should require the deaths of non-Palestinians to finally shake the international community from apathy and inaction, but, as with the tragic murders of Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner, if it contributes to ending the situation then that’s a positive outcome.

    Brother Bradley J. Fikes, C.O.R. (cc51eb)

  5. and yet George Soros, curiously, isn’t bothered a bit by the raging anti-semitism at either this Media Matters organization he created or at National Soros Radio

    it’s a thing

    happyfeet (3c92a1)

  6. You have been reported to AttackWatch, Truth Team, and the PIs for MMfA.

    How do they get to remain a non-profit?!

    JD (59fe1b)

  7. that kind of idiocy and mendacity is toxic, but it’s quite common on the Journolist

    narciso (87e966)

  8. I think a Media Matters/Dershowitz grudge match would be a good thing. I would not wish such turmoil for the Professor, but I bet at the end of the day he would be satisfied and MM would wish they hadn’t gone there. Just an off-the-cuff opinion/wish/hope.

    Somebody has to call to account media malpractice.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  9. The president would much rather you talk about freeee birth control. He really would.

    elissa (687101)

  10. He gets it, can explain it, and Chris Christie leads on Israel. Somebody has to.

    http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/290993/chris-christie-leads-israel-dennis-prager

    elissa (687101)

  11. The president would much rather you talk about freeee birth control. He really would.

    Comment by elissa

    Bingo! Or about anything other than his incompetence, his perfidy, his arrogance, his disdain for Americans, and most especially, his record.

    Colonel Haiku (9b9115)

  12. Breitbart TV has posted a powerful interview with Dershowitz who says Media Matters is full of “Stalinist bigots”. He distinguishes that kind of thinking from liberalism — he says the Media Matters bunch is anything but liberal.

    Brother Bradley J. Fikes, C.O.R. (cc51eb)

  13. Good grief, it’s not like the Rev Wright imbroglio even put a slight crimp in Barry’s prospects. We need, indeed we have, much more than that if only the LSM would care to look.

    Gazzer (4bd98b)

  14. Guess it’s time to sick some private investigators on Prof. Dershowitz . . .

    You racist bastard, you!!!
    :^D

    I Got Bupkis, Fomenter of "small-l" libertarianism (8e2a3d)

  15. Well let’s cut to the chase, Dershowitz like Ed Koch, in the final analysis had terrible judgement
    back then;

    http://tzvee.blogspot.com/2008/10/dershowitz-supports-israel-and-obama.html

    narciso (87e966)

  16. Bingo! Or about anything other than his incompetence, his perfidy, his arrogance, his disdain for Americans, and most especially, his record.

    You forgot to mention his incompetence…

    I MEAN really really MENTION HIS INCOMPETENCE.

    I would say that all over again. Mention his
    ==========================
    >>>> ****incompetence**** <<<<<
    ==========================

    I Got Bupkis, Fomenter of "small-l" libertarianism (8e2a3d)

  17. Breitbart TV has posted a powerful interview with Dershowitz who says Media Matters is full of “Stalinist bigots”.

    An obvious lie. They are clearly racist Fascists.

    I Got Bupkis, Fomenter of "small-l" libertarianism (8e2a3d)

  18. Israel is the ox that may not be gored, true enough.

    nk (3d837f)

  19. The word for Dershowitz is disingenuous, not naive. Take everything he says with a large saltshaker of salt.

    nk (3d837f)

  20. I don’t want to be too harsh on the good professor, it’s hard to emerge from the cave, that you sealed yourself in,

    http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150557220588435

    narciso (87e966)

  21. I don’t want to be too harsh on the good professor, it’s hard to emerge from the cave, that you sealed yourself in,

    narciso (87e966)

  22. Oliver Willis luvs Twinkies.

    Comment by JD — 2/14/2012 @ 6:47 pm

    Okay. I confess, I snorted rather loudly and laughed at that one. 😀

    Pat in Michigan (7b58f8)

  23. I have to admit, I gotta respect the guy. I knew when I started reading how MMFA and Think Progress was going after the “Israel First” crowd, that sooner or later that it would catch up to them. Looks like I was very right.

    Pat in Michigan (7b58f8)

  24. Alan Dershowitz said that he subscribes to a neo-Nazi website (to keep track of this sort of thing obviously) and they regularly forward him material from Media Matters. He does not subscribe to Media Matters itself and doesn’t read much of it except what he gets forwarded.

    Possibly what set him off, just today, if this happened today, was this:

    http://mediamatters.org/blog/201202130002

    Why Conservative Media Are Wrong About Attacking Iran

    February 13, 2012 10:34 am ET by Mike Burns

    Conservative media are pushing for Israel or the United States to launch a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, claiming that inaction will cause great harm to Israel. In doing so, however, they are ignoring questions about whether Iran is planning to build nuclear weapons at all and minimizing the dangers of war with Iran.

    Now Alan Dershowitz no doubt believes that Iran is planning to get a nuclear bomb, and that it’s totally preposterous to think or say that they are not, and that furthermore, the current regime fully intends to USE that bomb, preferably on Tel Aviv, even if maybe some people in Israel aren’t so sure, and that if anybody cares at all about that not happening, they need to be for some kind of attack on Iran. So to take the position that Media Matters does is to take a position in favor of the mass murder of Jews, and there’s no two ways about it.

    Now Media Matters’ position is that an attack on Iran would only delay a bomb, not prevent it.

    That’s true, if you attacked only one time. It’s very easy to contain all of this is you promise to come back every two or three months if they attempt to rebuild.

    Media Matters has other arguments. They are really a collection of unrelated arguments. Iran isn’t really close to a bomb. An attack would set off a regional war. And finally that most of Israel’s leaders don’t think Iran would actually use it, but they are merely worried about the balance of power.

    Now all this is just part of what Media Matters write about many things, but on December 7, 2011 there was a Politico story that Media Matters and
    The Center for American Progress “are challenging a bipartisan consensus on Israel and Palestine that has dominated American foreign policy for more than a decade” and that they are “vocal critics of their party’s staunchly pro-Israel congressional leadership and have been at odds, at times, with Barack Obama’s White House, which has acted as a reluctant ally to Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israeli government.”

    http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1211/69929.html

    Apparently the really bad stuff is on Twitter.

    Sammy Finkelman (5048f3)

  25. “the Rev. Jeremiah Wright of 2012”

    What’s that now? You mean an issue that causes 10 days of non-stop media coverage and then turns into a big fat nothingburger that we all forget about on the way to an Obama victory?

    Ok then. Keep me posted.

    sloan (f704ba)

  26. “It’s War.” Breitbart.

    sickofrinos (44de53)

  27. The average Leftist, and non-observant Jew, will not care a whit about the Obama Administrations anti-Israel slant; in fact, many would find that a feature, not a failing.

    AD-RtR/OS! (7f57d2)

  28. “Western groupthink that has for centuries justified wars and countless atrocities against the Arab world . . .[that’s] representative of the way many Americans feel toward Muslims and Arabs — that they are all terrorists.”

    Silly me. I thought it had something to do with the Arab armies over-running the old Roman provinces of North Africa, invading and conquering Spain, invading France until turned back by the mailed fist of Charles the Hammer, stealing the Levant from the Byzantines until finally taking the entire Byzantine Empire, and marching into Europe until being thrust back at the gates of Vienna.

    Nope. All wrong.

    It’s the “groupthink.”

    OK, arab dudes, I apologize. It was completely unwarranted, what with the unceremonious way we kicked you out of southern Italy and Sicily.

    Friends?

    Steve (20a23f)

  29. Bye the bye, what sort of “western groupthink” justifies the Salafists attacking defenseless Copts?

    Steve (20a23f)

  30. “Silly me. I thought it had something to do with the Arab armies over-running the old Roman provinces of North Africa, invading and conquering Spain, invading France until turned back by the mailed fist of Charles the Hammer, stealing the Levant from the Byzantines until finally taking the entire Byzantine Empire, and marching into Europe until being thrust back at the gates of Vienna.”

    Yeah, lefties usually get everything backwards. Minor point: It was the Muslim Turks who overran the last vestiges of the Byzantine Empire (which had been seriously pared down by centuries of Arab attacks and conquests), and were subsequently turned back at Vienna.

    “Muslim groupthink that has for centuries justified wars, imperialism, colonialism and countless atrocities against the Western world.”

    FTFY, lefties.

    As for Media Matters it’s a cesspool of leftard disinformation, put out by Muslim-loving renegades, frustrated commies, acolytes of the Great God Obambi, and other trash of that ilk.

    Dave Surls (46b08c)

  31. Most of us are mentally trapped to think Jewish. Actually, it is safe to say that virtually every mainstream publication or or other type of media organ is “nothing more than a screen to present chosen views.” The great battle over the last century has been a battle for the mind of the Western peoples, i.e., non-Jewish Euros. The chosen won it by acquiring control over essentially the complete mainstream news, information, education and entertainment media of every type, and using that control to infuse and disseminate their message, agenda and worldview, their way of thinking, or rather the way they want us to think. Since at least the 1960s this campaign has been effectively complete. Since then they have shaped and controlled the minds of all but a seeming few of us in varying degree with almost no opposition or competition from any alternative worldview. So now most of us are mentally trapped in the box the chosen have made for us, which we have lived in all our lives. Only a few have managed to avoid it or escape it, or to even sometimes see outside of it, and so actually “think outside of the (Jewish) box.” –Michael Santomauro @ ReporterNotebook@gmail.com

    Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/02/14/alan-dershowitz-media-matters-could-become-rev-wright-of-2012-for-obama/#ixzz1mSvXB400

    Michael Santomauro (f45586)

  32. Dershowitz just adds his anti-Semitic rhetoric for additional effect. I don’t remember him ever coming out against the right-wing anti-abortion extremists the publish the names and addresses of abortion doctors and clinicians.

    tadcf (ead2bd)

  33. Tadcf bringing DA BUNNIES !!!

    JD (59fe1b)

  34. Just remember, in the end Dershowitz and all of the media (think MODO), academic, legal and other lefty darlings will be voting for BO. There ain’t a chance in hell that they would vote otherwise. Any preening on thier part is just to make it look good for the rubes in fly over country.

    Ipso Fatso (7434b9)

  35. Fantastic, a visit from historical revisionist holocaust loon Santomauro to let everybody know they have been brainwashed.

    Good times!

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  36. hey, Santeriamauro…

    Da Few… Da Proud… Da Joos!

    Colonel Haiku (1d81d3)

  37. Alan Dershowitz now (Feb 27) says he is declaring war against Media Matters. I saw this first in today’s Jewish press, now I saw it via Newsmax.

    He’s going to make speeches about it, unless it fires someone, OR changes its position ON ISRAEL, or President OPbama disassociates itself from them.

    http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/dershowitz-media-matters-israel/2012/02/27/id/430618?s=al&promo_code=E475-1

    Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz says he’s declaring war on the left-wing, George Soros-financed website Media Matters for America over its depiction of Israel. And Dershowitz says he’s going to make it into a re-election issue for President Barack Obama.

    The information comes amid recent news, according to WND, that White House staffers held regular meetings and even a weekly conference call with Media Matters on campaign strategy.

    Dershowitz is particularly angry with Media Matters’ coverage of Israel, especially rhetoric from Media Matters Action Network senior fellow M.J. Rosenberg, who is known for his extreme anti-Israel views.

    The site uses the phrase “Israel Firster,” implying those who support the Jewish state put Israel’s needs before those of the United States.

    “Not only will [the Media Matters controversy] be an election matter, I will personally make it an election matter,” said Dershowitz.

    “I will speak to every Jewish group that invites me, and I think it’s fair to say I speak to more Jewish groups than probably any other person in the world. I spoke to over a million Jews over the years,” Dershowitz said. “You know, just last Thursday I spoke to 1,200; just in the next weeks alone I’ll be speaking — and in the past weeks — to thousands of American Jews. And believe me, I will not let them ignore this issue.”

    Dershowitz spoke Sunday on “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio” on New York’s WABC Radio.

    “I don’t know whether President Obama has any idea that Media Matters has turned the corner against Israel in this way,” Dershowitz said. “I can tell you this: He will know very shortly because I am beginning a serious campaign on this issue and I will not let it drop until and unless Rosenberg is fired from Media Matters, or Media Matters changes its policy or the White House disassociates itself from Media Matters.”

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)


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