The ABC News story lead as headlined shows how unethical polarising, jamming out homosexualist spin presented under false colours of news reporting works.
Remember, given the "After the Ball" PR agenda of Kirk, Madsen and co, the following is not a mere oversight, accident or mistake. No, it is quite willfully intentional, and is increasingly par for the course in what passes for news reporting today:
Chick-fil-A Has 'Record-Setting' Sales on Appreciation Day
By AMY BINGHAM | ABC OTUS NewsChick-fil-A posted "record-setting" sales on Wednesday as thousands of people swarmed the chicken chain for Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day after the chain's chief made anti-gay comments . . .
Just what were these "anti-gay" -- i.e. (by direct implication) allegedly hate-driven remarks?
“We are very much supportive of the family – the biblical definition of the family unit. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that,” [Dan] Cathy said.
In a separate radio interview, Dan Cathy said, “I think we are inviting God’s judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at Him and say, ‘We know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage. I pray God’s mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude to think we can try to define what marriage is all about.”
In short, to the likes of Ms Bingham, if you dare suggest that there is a naturally evident, creation order to humanity that -- through the obvious complementarity of man and woman -- sets a principled moral, spiritual and valid intellectual context for understanding marriage . . .
-- i.e. the patent basis for the universal consensus of humanity until only a few years ago when radical activists made up the notion that Adam could "marry" Steve, not Eve, and that Eve may then wish to "marry" Mary (and perhaps after this, Sue may wish to "marry" Fido) --
. . . one is inevitably being hateful.
This is an outrage, an affront to common decency and basic civility.
And, remember, this is not a commentary in a column by an advocate of an agenda, it is the lead of what should be a straight news piece. Only, it ain't.
But, it is what is happening now, in 2012.
So, it is entirely in order to clip the same previous KF post, to again see Huckabee and Hayward expose and rebuke this uncivil tactic of attempting to delegitimise people of conscience who have taken a serious position of principle:
Mr Huckabee has a telling point on that:“The militant homosexual advocates have launched an all out assault on Dan Cathy and Chick-fil-A, pushing for a boycott because the Cathy family has contributed to traditional marriage organizations. The attempts to hurt or destroy Chick-fil-A is nothing short of economic bullying. In the name of ‘tolerance,’ there is an effort being mounted to put pressure on people to stop eating at Chick-fil-A. Even worse is the vilification of the company and its employees. The Christian world view of Dan Cathy is being met with intolerance and vicious hate speech,” Huckabee’s announcement said.John Hayward of Human Events, adds:
“The name of the game being played against Chick-fil-A involved ending the discussion, by ruling one side of this important social debate completely out of order, and dismissing their beliefs as unworthy of respect. All resistance to gay marriage is instantly transmuted into personal hatred of gay people. On the other hand, criticism of traditional marriage proponents cannot be viewed as hateful, no matter how angrily it might be expressed. It’s a rigged heads-we-win, tails-you-lose game,” he said.
Cathy isn’t allowed to encourage reverence and support for the traditional family, or even worse, put his money where his mouth is. He’s not allowed to say that he finds moral or practical value in the time-honored definition of marriage, without feeling animosity towards gay people. His ideas and principles are automatic thought crimes, no matter how gently and constructively they might be presented.
It is time that we stood up to such tactics and made it plain that news agencies that tolerate or promote such abuse of journalistic ethics will be red-lined, as having no credibility.
Those who play dirty games with news like this, need to know that they will pay a heavy price in their credibility. Otherwise, this will only get worse and worse.
Time to get out the straight vs spin grid and grade news sources -- traditional, Web based, regional and local.
And those that fail, need to be plainly red-lined and warned against.
That's why it is well worth clipping a critical user comment for the ABC story:
That's why it is well worth clipping a critical user comment for the ABC story:
Maybe journalism has changed or they must not be paying enough at ABC. How many students would be able to get the first paragraph past a college professor twenty years ago? How low can ABC fall?Here you go everyone, my 11 yr. old kid is being called to the computer to edit this so called reporters first paragraph. Chick-fil-A posted "record-setting" sales on Wednesday as thousands of people swarmed the chicken chain for Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day after the chain's chief made anti-gay comments.Ok, the first thing he said after reading this piece and a few others on the subject is that the first paragraph is usually the most important part of the story and she missed big time. She got the who, what, where, why, when and then she made up the how. What a disgrace to a so called news organization to take make assumptions and take comments of a supporter of traditional marriage is now branded as hate speech anti-gay comments. ABC do you understand that there are important questions that your dwindling customers wants answers to? You are making stuff up to fill your dingbat views. Even an 11 yr. old sees it. How do you run a business? As someone that writes a few checks. I say about on par with my six year old. They are gaining confidence everyday so thanks ABC.
That makes a telling contrast to the hostility expressed in the immediately following comment (I don't see a time stamp):
Of this, Plato as long ago as 360 BC, warned in The Laws, Bk X:
The narrow-minded, homophobic folks who decided to make a political statement by chowing down on reprocessed chicken parts are no different than those who vehemently objected to interracial marriage in the previous generation.They too will end up on the wrong side of history.The former highlights a failure of journalism, the latter is caught up in the talking points and loaded words of the moment. Evidently, it has not struck this commenter that there is a world of difference between laws that pretended that a man and a woman of diverse ethnicities do not complement one another as man and woman, and suggesting that there is no distinction between man + woman and the various alternatives that are now being touted as "equal" to it. In turn, that is highly revealing on the nihilistic breakdown of rationality and moral discernment leading to might and manipulation make 'right' amorality imposed by the rise of radical relativism in our day and underlying evolutionary materialist scientism under the guise of avant garde knowledge and flying the false colours of both science and civil rights.
Of this, Plato as long ago as 360 BC, warned in The Laws, Bk X:
[[The avant garde philosophers, teachers and artists c. 400 BC] say that the greatest and fairest things are the work of nature and of chance, the lesser of art [[ i.e. techne],
which, receiving from nature the greater and primeval creations, moulds
and fashions all those lesser works which are generally termed artificial . . . The elements are severally moved by
chance and some inherent force according to certain affinities among
them-of hot with cold, or of dry with moist, or of soft with hard, and
according to all the other accidental admixtures of opposites which have
been formed by necessity. After
this fashion and in this manner the whole heaven has been created, and
all that is in the heaven, as well as animals and all plants, and all
the seasons come from these elements, not by the action of mind, as they say, or of any God, or from art, but as I was saying, by nature and chance only . . . .
In short, something has gone very wrong with news, and with a lot of other centres of influence and leadership in our civilisation.[[T]hese people would say that the Gods exist not by nature, but by art, and by the laws of states, which are different in different places, according to the agreement of those who make them; and that the honourable is one thing by nature and another thing by law, and that the principles of justice have no existence at all in nature, but that mankind are always disputing about them and altering them; and that the alterations which are made by art and by law have no basis in nature, but are of authority for the moment and at the time at which they are made.- [[Relativism, too, is not new; complete with its radical amorality rooted in a worldview that has no foundational IS that can ground OUGHT. (Cf. here for Locke's views and sources on a very different base for grounding liberty as opposed to license and resulting anarchistic "every man does what is right in his own eyes" chaos leading to tyranny.)] These, my friends, are the sayings of wise men, poets and prose writers, which find a way into the minds of youth. They are told by them that the highest right is might [[ Evolutionary materialism leads to the promotion of amorality], and in this way the young fall into impieties, under the idea that the Gods are not such as the law bids them imagine; and hence arise factions [[Evolutionary materialism-motivated amorality "naturally" leads to continual contentions and power struggles; cf. dramatisation here], these philosophers inviting them to lead a true life according to nature, that is, to live in real dominion over others [[such amoral factions, if they gain power, "naturally" tend towards ruthless tyranny; here, too, Plato hints at the career of Alcibiades], and not in legal subjection to them . . .
As a consequence of earlier incidents, I have already had occasion to write off the BBC, and now ABC. And there are several others "too numerous to mention."
If this sort of thing continues, the whole news profession needs to be red lined as in serious need of reformation before we can ever trust news again.
Frankly, limited or even no news is better than propagandistic smears, outright lies and subtle or blatant agendas fed to us in the name of being soberly presented who- what- where- when- why- how facts we need to know about.
(And, BTW, the first paragraph got what, why and how wrong, in service to an obvious agenda. Mr Cathy was plainly not expressing hatred for homosexuals but seeking to stand for marriage as it has historically been understood, expressing his concern for the implications of assuming that we can remake so foundational an institution as we will regardless of what is naturally evident, being rooted in the underlying Creation order of Man and Woman together as the basic unit of reproduction and nurture of the next generation. That is a serious and principled view that needs to be soberly discussed, not smeared and demonised automatically as hate. Nor is it anything but prejudiced projection to assume that the tens or hundreds of thousands who came out in support of a restaurant chain that had been targetted by homosexualist radicals and their fellow travellers could automatically be written off as being motivated by the equivalent of racial prejudice and hate. That is shameful and indefensible. Indeed, it seems to be a manifestation of hostility, broad-brush adverse stereotyping and prejudice.)
If this sort of thing continues, the whole news profession needs to be red lined as in serious need of reformation before we can ever trust news again.
Frankly, limited or even no news is better than propagandistic smears, outright lies and subtle or blatant agendas fed to us in the name of being soberly presented who- what- where- when- why- how facts we need to know about.
(And, BTW, the first paragraph got what, why and how wrong, in service to an obvious agenda. Mr Cathy was plainly not expressing hatred for homosexuals but seeking to stand for marriage as it has historically been understood, expressing his concern for the implications of assuming that we can remake so foundational an institution as we will regardless of what is naturally evident, being rooted in the underlying Creation order of Man and Woman together as the basic unit of reproduction and nurture of the next generation. That is a serious and principled view that needs to be soberly discussed, not smeared and demonised automatically as hate. Nor is it anything but prejudiced projection to assume that the tens or hundreds of thousands who came out in support of a restaurant chain that had been targetted by homosexualist radicals and their fellow travellers could automatically be written off as being motivated by the equivalent of racial prejudice and hate. That is shameful and indefensible. Indeed, it seems to be a manifestation of hostility, broad-brush adverse stereotyping and prejudice.)
Sad, but we need to face what is so blatantly in front of us.
