brent bozell III bak

===

promoted primary 4/17 on climate and mercer

sa amb afrikaaner BS

longtime player, proto-breitbart MRC

see son david

bak 1 22

htmlCritchlow,

===

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MSN

The ANC, EFF and a parliamentary committee have criticised US Ambassador Leo Bozell’s public comments, with calls growing for the government to consider declaring him persona non grata.© Kris Connor / Getty Images North America / AFP

As South Africa's relationship with the United States hits its lowest point since 1994, a growing chorus in Pretoria is making a pointed distinction: the problem is not America, it's Ambassador Leo Brent Bozell III.

The argument, now openly voiced by diplomats, analysts and politicians, is that Bozell — toxic, impolite and openly contemptuous in his public style — has made himself incapable of doing the core job of an ambassador: building a relationship. And that, his critics say, is why he should be replaced, not because South Africa wants to break with Washington. International relations expert Kingsley Makhubela told the SABC that Bozell is failing in his mission to rebuild relations.

"The basic function of an ambassador is to build relations between the two countries. So based on that, you can see that he's failing. And for anyone to say that these demarches are a usual procedural issue in the function of diplomatic missions, they are misleading the nation," Makhubela said. Makhubela's assessment follows an unprecedented run of diplomatic rebukes.

South Africa's Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) has summoned Bozell for a third formal démarche in nine months — a record for a US envoy in Pretoria.DIRCO accused him of "undiplomatic conduct", while Parliament's Portfolio Committee on International Relations noted that the United States "remains an important trade, investment and historical partner for South Africa" and that "constructive engagement requires mutual respect". The breaking point came after Bozell published an op-ed declaring diplomacy "useless" and saying Washington had "run out of patience" with Pretoria.

"I was taken aback. You can't have a diplomat who says time for talking is over. It's our job to talk. So, if you can't talk as a diplomat and you cannot dialogue… get out of the kitchen," International Relations Minister Ronald Lamola told the Newsnote. Lamola added: "Yes, he has been involved in very undiplomatic conduct. As a diplomat, you cannot interfere in the domestic politics of your host." Bozell responded on X, accusing Lamola of a personal insult: "So here we go again.

Another Minister Lamola personal insult aimed at an American leader (this time me) which, when denounced, will result in a demarche with a lecture about being 'undiplomatic.'"He later dismissed the three démarches as "kabuki theatre." Bozell's tenure has coincided with a rapid escalation: In September, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced targeted visa restrictions against South African officials accused of enabling uncompensated land seizures and race-based discrimination.

On November 2, Bozell announced South Africa's removal from AGOA from January 1, 2027, calling it "predictable and preventable" and blaming Pretoria for rejecting Washington's "Five Asks" on expropriation, B-BBEE, rural crime, Afrikaner refugees and the "Kill the Boer" chant.In interviews with Fox News Digital, Bozell accused President Cyril Ramaphosa of failing to condemn what he called incitement to kill: "You've got a president of South Africa who refuses to condemn an incitement to kill."

He has also said: "I am sorry, I don't care what your courts say, it's hate speech" — referring to a South African court ruling that the struggle song is not hate speech. Critics say that tone — lecturing, dismissing courts, and conducting policy via op-eds and Fox News — is the opposite of diplomacy. The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) has gone furthest, calling for Bozell to be expelled and declared persona non grata. The party said Bozell has expressed contempt for the country, the President, the legislature and the judiciary, and has "taken it upon himself" to dictate South Africa's domestic and foreign policy. "Perhaps most disrespectfully as a diplomat, Bozell stated that he does not care what our courts say about the struggle song Kill The Boer, Kill The Farmer, and that our government must condemn what our courts correctly characterised as free speech," the EFF said.

What is striking about the current debate is what it is not: a call to cut ties with the United States. Even Bozell himself acknowledges the depth of the relationship, pointing to more than 500 US companies operating in South Africa — Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Visa — and billions in potential investment in mining and telecommunications.South African officials make the same point.

The dispute, they argue, is with an envoy who treats Pretoria as an ideological opponent to be coerced, not a partner to be negotiated with. Bozell, a veteran conservative activist with no prior foreign service experience and who had never lived in Africa before his appointment, was confirmed 53-43 on a party-line Senate vote in December 2025. Analyst Ofentse Donald Davhie warned at the time: "He is here to extract concessions, he is not here to make any new friends." For many in Pretoria, that prediction has now come true.

The message emerging from DIRCO, from Parliament and from analysts is consistent: South Africa still wants a working partnership with Washington — on trade, investment, security and AGOA. It just cannot build one with an ambassador who has declared dialogue useless. As one senior diplomat put it privately this week: "Replace Bozell, and the relationship can be repaired. Keep Bozell, and it will keep collapsing — not because America and South Africa cannot agree, but because he cannot talk." CAJ News

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david frum: bb signed never trump ltr, but now big enforcer/attack dog

---

update

Trump’s State Department Is Giving $1 Million to Controversial Group to Study Crimes Against White South Africans

Sharon Lerner and Anna Maria Barry-Jester

November 5, 2026,

After slashing funding for programs that documented atrocities and protected human rights abroad, President Donald Trump’s State Department is now granting one of its first new human rights awards to a controversial South African organization that promotes the disputed notion that white farmers are a violently targeted, persecuted group, according to multiple sources knowledgeable about the funding.

The group expected to receive the nearly $1 million award, AfriForum, is a nonprofit that advocates on behalf of Afrikaners, a subset of South Africa’s white population. The organization says its members, who have a “God-given calling,” fight for Afrikaner interests and self-governance. The money will be used to “document hateful rhetoric and violent acts” against Afrikaners and other minority populations in the country.

The new award comes from a State Department bureau tasked with promoting democracy and human rights internationally. Until last year, those funds were mainly spent in poor and authoritarian nations — to fight corruption in the Democratic Republic of Congo, for example, or combat child exploitation and sexual abuse in Afghanistan. Since Trump returned to office, his appointees have transformed the bureau, gutting its staff, canceling programs and reorienting some of its funding toward conservative causes in Europe.

Samuel Samson, who was appointed as a deputy assistant secretary to the State Department bureau by Trump, has claimed the U.S. has a “civilizational” connection to Afrikaners, who descend primarily from Dutch migrants and predominantly speak Afrikaans. Samson, who has met with far-right leaders in Europe since joining the administration last year, has framed the U.S. government’s financial support for Afrikaners as grounded in “a common heritage, a common culture, a common way of life, shared history and ultimately a common anthropology.”

Samuel Samson Speaks at Lex Libertas Event

Samson, left, deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, is interviewed by Ernst Roets during a Lex Libertas press conference. Lex Libertas via YouTube

There’s a long shared political history between Afrikaner groups and white nationalists in the U.S., said Audie Klotz, a political science professor at Syracuse University who has studied those connections. But, she said, “There’s no heritage connection here. It’s pure scientific racism. In the history of U.S. immigration, there’s no direct connection between South Africa and the United States.”

AfriForum met with the Trump administration in February 2025 to plead for help. The group told officials that Afrikaners are subject to racial discrimination and murders that are more frequent and asked the administration to “act strongly against hate speech that incites violence” against them, according to a statement.

South Africa is plagued by high rates of violence, and some Afrikaners have been tortured and murdered. But independent researchers have found those killings represent a tiny fraction of murders across the country, whose victims are disproportionately people living in poor urban areas, where residents are predominantly Black. Official government statistics, and two formal inquiries into the matter, do not reveal a pattern of targeted violence against Afrikaners.

But Trump subscribes to the idea that white farmers face a “genocide” and has cited disproportionate violence against them as a reason for punishing Africa’s wealthiest nation. In February 2025, he issued an executive order that cut off hundreds of millions of dollars of aid to South Africa and welcomed Afrikaners to the U.S. as refugees. Since then, the administration has opened the doors to more than 16,000 white South Africans while halting virtually all other immigration. Officials recently told Congress they plan to invite as many as 17,500 Afrikaner refugees to the U.S. in 2027.

AfriForum did not respond to specific questions for this story but said that “our understanding is that the allocation has not yet been finalised. Should the allocation indeed be awarded to AfriForum, we will make a public announcement in this regard.”

The new award is the administration’s latest show of support for the Afrikaner cause. The white South African group governed the nation for decades under a brutal system of segregation known as apartheid, which kept the Black majority an impoverished underclass until the system was dismantled in 1994. Now, with Black South Africans governing the country, white people — of which Afrikaners are the majority — remain one of the wealthiest segments of the population.

The support has caused dismay among several former high-level diplomats, who spoke to ProPublica anonymously because they fear retribution from the administration.

Newly arrived South Africans at Washington Dulles International Airport in 2025. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Two former senior U.S. officials responsible for Africa policy said that they would never have met with AfriForum, let alone funded the group, because it was considered to be politically extreme and not credible. They described the organization as cherry-picking crime statistics to create a misleading narrative. “We would certainly not have funded what we would see as a racially incendiary initiative,” said one of the officials.

The decision to direct money toward the group comes after the Trump administration halted programs that advocated for the end of violence in African countries such as Sudan, where the Biden administration determined in 2025 that there was a genocide, calling it “the world’s largest humanitarian catastrophe.”

“It’s offensive to provide funding solely to this one group after we’ve cut off funding in countries undergoing real documented crises,” said David Jandura, who managed the Africa portfolio for the State Department’s human rights bureau for several years and lost his job during the mass layoffs in 2025.

Congress has also raised questions about how the award was made. A Senate aide to Democrats told ProPublica that despite repeated requests to State Department officials, they had not received a briefing outlining the recipients of funds earmarked for democracy and human rights, which they described as “highly unusual.”

“The Trump Administration proceeded with funding fringe right-wing causes internationally despite objections from Congress,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a New Hampshire Democrat and ranking member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, who described the lack of transparency as “unacceptable.”

In response to a series of questions about the AfriForum funding, a senior State Department official wrote in an email that the department does not comment on funding deliberations and that they routinely keep Congress informed of their actions, consulting extensively on this year’s programming. “The Administration has been clear about its concern about the abhorrent race-based discrimination and violence in South Africa,” the unnamed official wrote. “Human rights protections do not depend on a person’s income or ethnicity.”

In July, ProPublica revealed that the State Department originally intended to give the $1 million research award to Lex Libertas, a small organization founded last year by a former AfriForum executive named Ernst Roets. Trump officials later expanded the potential awardees to a small pool of handpicked organizations. The plan drew outrage from Congress over the content of the award as well as plans to bypass the typical competitive bidding process. After ProPublica’s reporting, the State Department released an open call for the funding opportunity, offering $986,500 to a nonprofit organization to “create a comprehensive record of violence affecting Afrikaner and other South African minority populations.” It’s this grant that is now being awarded to AfriForum.

Both AfriForum and Lex Libertas advocate for Afrikaner rights and have developed relationships with the Trump administration. Trump’s ambassador to South Africa, L. Brent Bozell III, visited AfriForum’s headquarters in September, praising the organization for its neighborhood watch programs while criticizing the South African government for not enacting policies requested by the Trump administration. AfriForum has also met with Trump officials in Washington, D.C., drawing public criticism from South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. And in September, Roets met with administration officials.

AfriForum was founded 20 years ago and, with some 300,000 members, claims to be the biggest civil rights organization in South Africa. It says it aims to “establish self-dependence and growing self-governance” and provides some local civic services, such as garbage collection and systems for reporting pot holes and broken traffic lights. The group has said it distances itself from “white supremacist and extremist groups” and that it disagrees with Trump’s assertion that white South African farmers are experiencing a “white genocide.” But it has also said the South African government is “targeting the continued existence of Afrikaners” through racial legislation and the downplaying of farm murders, among other things. Academics and former U.S. diplomats have repudiated some of the ideas the group promotes as racist.

Members of AfriForum assemble before a neighborhood patrol near Pretoria, South Africa, in 2025. Alet Pretorius/AP Photo

It unsuccessfully challenged a ban on the “gratuitous display” of the national flag flown during apartheid, which a South African court has found to be a form of hate speech. And while the group’s leader, Kallie Kriel, has said apartheid “was wrong,” he has also said it did not constitute “a crime against humanity” as the U.N. has determined, on the grounds that not enough people were killed during that time.

AfriForum has been focusing on farm attacks since at least 2009. In 2018, during Trump’s first presidency, Kriel and Roets, who was then his deputy, met with government officials in Washington, D.C., about the issue, and Roets spoke about it with Tucker Carlson on Fox News, as the chyron below him announced in all caps, “White farmers brutally murdered every week in SouthAfrica.”

Additional research on crimes against white South Africans is an unnecessary and confusing use of U.S. taxpayer dollars, said Carolyn Holmes, a professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, who studies democracy in southern Africa. Holmes noted that AfriForum already produces annual reports on crimes against farming communities. “These data already exist,” she said. “You don’t need a new study. You don’t even need a far-right study, we have those.”

The U.S. support offers more than a financial boost to the organization. “For some time, AfriForum has been campaigning for recognition of their claim that white people face discrimination and persecution,” said Alex Dyzenhaus, a lecturer in international relations and African politics at the University of St. Andrews. “Before, they were only getting the Tucker Carlsons and the far right of the news ecosystem. Now they have the U.S. government on their side.”

The Trump administration has made the plight of white, rural South Africans a key foreign policy issue. In addition to the early executive order, Trump held a contentious meeting with Ramaphosa in the White House last year where Trump claimed white farmers were being executed. The administration has also considered an ad campaign focused on encouraging more Afrikaners to come to the U.S.

In September, Roets of Lex Libertas met with the White House to discuss what he sees as the crisis facing the Afrikaner community and, along with the New York Young Republican Club, placed 3,000 white crosses on the National Mall to commemorate South African farm murders.

Roets declined to answer specific questions from ProPublica but, in a text message, described the murders of several Afrikaners that he knew personally. He also wrote, “I see the suffering of black people in South Africa, I am deeply moved by it, and I spend every day of my life campaigning to make things better for us all.”

Appearing at a press conference for the Lex Libertas event, Samson, the State Department official, showcased the sharp shift the administration has made in U.S. relations with South Africa. While apartheid has been understood globally as a symbol of racist oppression, Samson described the current South African government as having discriminatory “race-based” policies and a cautionary tale for the rest of the world.

At the end of apartheid, in 1994, South Africa was a “flourishing, prosperous society,” Samson said. Since then, the country has gone to “ruin.” He blamed the fall on a “radical ideological leftist movement that wears human rights, that wears tolerance and inclusivity, as a skin suit to advance their Marxist communist worldview.”

Part of the Trump administration’s solution to this perceived crisis, he said, was to provide the research funding.

Alex Mierjeski contributed research.

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10 25?

The Parents Television and Media Council has filed for bankruptcy, ending a three-decade run as a media watchdog that fought to rid the airwaves of sex, violence and profanity.

The organization filed for liquidation under Chapter 7 on Oct. 3, listing assets of $92,000 and liabilities of $285,000. In its heyday in the early 2000s, the group brought in as much as $6.6 million in donations a year — that figure had dwindled to $1.6 million by 2023.

More from Variety

• Parents TV Council Slams Disney Plus for Adding 'Daredevil' and More: 'Destroys Your Brand'
• 'Sons Of Anarchy' Criticism Exposes Sex-Violence Divide
• Parents Org Calls for Overhaul of Movie and TV Ratings

“It’s a tough grind out there for non-profits,” said Tim Winter, who retired as the organization’s president three years ago. “The mission has never been more important… I’m sad. I’m disappointed. I hope the mission continues to find new light.”

SFGate first reported the bankruptcy.

Founded by conservative commentator L. Brent Bozell III in 1995, the Parents Television Council was best known for flooding the Federal Communications Commission with indecency complaints. In 2003, it was responsible for 99.8% of them.

At one time, the group claimed 1.4 million members. When Janet Jackson’s nipple was briefly exposed during the Super Bowl halftime show in 2004, members filed more than 65,000 complaints with the FCC, leading to a record $550,000 fine.

The group also lodged thousands of complaints over fleeting expletives, as when Bono used the “f-word” during the 2003 Golden Globes. In 2004, the group targeted the short-lived ABC show “Life As We Know It,” calling it “drenched in sex.”

The PTC took a prim view of promiscuity, drug use and violence on prime-time TV. The group lamented the decline of the broadcast “family hour,” noting that the 8 p.m.-9 p.m. time slot had been taken over by risqué shows like “Melrose Place” and “Friends.” Researchers tallied up vulgarities like “ass,” “bastard,” and “son of a bitch,” as well as instances of premarital and extramarital sex.

In 1998, the organization took out newspaper ads seeking to pressure advertisers to drop support for televised “filth.” Featuring Steve Allen, the former “Tonight Show” host and the group’s “honorary chairman,” the ads warned: “TV Is Leading Children Down a Moral Sewer.”

The organization took repeated aim at adult-themed cartoons like “Family Guy” and “American Dad.” Seth MacFarlane, the creator of those shows, had a long-running feud with the group, calling them“terrible human beings,” and likening their complaints to “getting hate mail from Hitler.”

Over the years, the PTC expanded its mandate from broadcast into cable TV and streaming, issuing warnings about “Stranger Things” on Netflix and HBO’s “Euphoria,” which it called “child-themed pornography.” The group regularly criticized TV’s self-imposed content rating system as being too lenient to racy programming.

The group added “media” to its title in 2021, recognizing the proliferation of distribution channels for illicit influence, and later weighed in on TikTok, artificial intelligence and smartphone bans in public schools.

All in all, the PTC found itself in a losing battle. The group recently lamented that Hollywood sex scenes were more explicit than ever and warned parents that this year’s best picture Oscar winner, “Anora,” contains graphic sex and glamorizes prostitution.

“I keep saying to myself, it can’t get worse, but it does,” Bozell said in 2001. “It is just now commonplace to use cuss words in a gratuitous fashion.”

Yet MacFarlane and Winter, the group’s president, were able to forge an unlikely friendship. The L.A. Times reported in 2019 that MacFarlane came to acknowledge the PTC as a “healthy, necessary thing” to coexist with his shows.

“Seth was the first person to reach out to me this morning to say how bummed he was,” Winter told Variety on Thursday.

===

rww

01/23/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

• Jacqueline Alemany @ The Washington Post: Johnson aide advised against Hutchinson subpoena over concerns about lawmakers’ ‘sexual texts’

An aide to House Speaker Mike Johnson advised Republican colleagues against subpoenaing former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson as part of their investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack in an effort to prevent the release of sexually explicit texts that lawmakers sent her.

• Charisma Madarang @ Rolling Stone: Trump Brushes Off Jan. 6 Rioters Beating Cops: ‘Minor Incidents’

The president’s pardoned 1,500 individuals, including offenders convicted of violently assaulting police.

• Zoë Richards @ NBC News**:{: Trump picks father of convicted Jan. 6 rioter to serve as CEO of U.S. Agency for Global Media}:

> L. Brent Bozell III wrote a letter last year defending his son L. Brent Bozell IV, who was charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

• Stephen Robinson @ Public Notice: The shitcoin presidency

Donald Trump declared on the campaign trail that he’d be a “crypto president” during his second term. He said he’d make America “the crypto capital of the planet” and a “bitcoin superpower.” His sudden and wholehearted embrace of cryptocurrency thrilled the industry, but just days before taking office, Trump surprised his crypto supporters with a cash grab that’s shameless even by his standards.

• Nicole Lafond @ Talking Points Memo: Trump’s Long, Not Terribly Convincing Con On Abortion Policy Is Over

Donald Trump’s Week One actions on abortion appear to be just as brazen and trollish as his attempts on the campaign trail to convince voters he’d moderated on abortion.

• Jordan Green @ Raw Story: Nashville school shooter's social media shows he embraced white supremacy

The 17-year-old who killed a female student at a high school in Nashville before taking his own life was an African-American Reserve Officers' Training Corp member who hated Black people and identified as involuntarily celibate, according to a manifesto apparently posted by him online.

===

open ltr ~ jan 6

We ask that the GOP conference meet immediately to vote on stripping Reps. Cheney and Kinzinger from their membership in the GOP conference. We further inform you that conservative leaders are launching a nationwide movement to add citizens’ voices to this effort.

The Honorable Edwin Meese III}nl}Attorney General{nl}President Ronald Reagan (1985-1988)|The Honorable J. Kenneth Blackwell{nl}Chairman, Conservative Action Project (CAP){nl}Chairman, Constitutional Congress, Inc.|

:{All organizations listed for IDENTIFICATION purposes only.

Signatures updated: 12/21/21.}:

this is II vs III (MRC) and iv?

https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/how-a-joseph-mccarthy-speechwriter-and-franco-fanboy-became-the-supreme-courts-inspiration-author/

Back in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, the late Republican L. Brent Bozell Jr. was controversial even on the right. Many conservatives and libertarians denounced him as a crackpot and an extremist, and with good reason. Bozell was a proud member of Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s staff, considered Richard Nixon much too liberal, slammed the Supreme Court’s Brown v. the Board of Education ruling of 1954 as an assault on states’ rights, and was an apologist for Spain’s fascist dictator Francisco Franco, a.k.a. El Generalísimo.

When Bozell temporarily moved to Spain in 1965, he loved the fact that Franco favored a very strict version of Catholicism; Bozell opposed not only abortion, but also, contraception. And even though Bozell was married to National Review founder William F. Buckley’s sister, Buckley eventually distanced himself from Bozell’s politics.

Bozell was 71 when he died on 1997. Journalist/author Jacob Heilbrunn, in an essay published by Politico on July 7, argues that Bozell’s far-right ideas are much more influential now than they were when he was alive— ideas that, according to Heilbrunn, are a blueprint for the radicalized U.S. Supreme Court and former President Donald Trump’s MAGA movement.

READ MORE: [Texas GOP Lieutenant Governor: 'We are being invaded' by immigrants 'just like Pearl Harbor'

“Ever since Donald Trump’s ascension in the GOP,” Heilbrunn writes, “a kind of intellectual treasure hunt has taken place to try and identify the true source of the political right’s embrace of radicalism…. With the Supreme Court’s dismantling of Roe v. Wade and its decision to examine the ‘independent state legislature’ theory this fall, it’s time to nominate a fresh candidate: Buckley’s brother-in-law, L. Brent Bozell, Jr. Often dismissed as a kook during his lifetime, ‘Hell Bent’ Bozell did more than perhaps anyone to create the blueprint for the militant conservatism now triumphant at the High Court and the grassroots.”

Heilbrunn describes Bozell as the Republican Party’s “first theocon,” noting that after the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, Bozell angrily railed against the “tide of death set loose by the contraceptionalists, the population planners, the war planners, the pornography legitimizers, the sex educationists, the women’s and gay liberators, the genetic manipulators, and of course, by the abortionists’ own massive successes in the great population centers.”

Heilbrunn interviewed Niskanen Center historian Geoffrey Kabaservice, who discussed Bozell’s influence.

Kabaservice told Heilbrunn, “Bozell valorized the theocratic authoritarianism of Spain under Francisco Franco. The radical conservatives on today’s Supreme Court, wittingly or not, have channeled Bozell’s vision and are in the process of overthrowing the rights-based liberal vision of equality that in many ways began with the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision.”

READ MORE: [Trump loyalists move ahead with 'sham' election project designed for voter intimidation: report

McCarthy, Heilbrunn notes, thought enough of Bozell to hire him as a speechwriter and an adviser during the 1950s. And in the early 1960s, according to Heilbrunn, Bozell “became a fan boy of Franco whose strict adherence to the Catholic creed and readiness to crush dissent struck a chord with him.”

Heilbrunn also points out that Bozell had a falling out with Buckley when his brother-in-law decided to “excommunicate the John Birch Society from the conservative movement.” And like the MAGA movement, Heilbrunn observes, Bozell was willing to resort to violence.

“In June 1970, Bozell organized the first violent anti-abortion protest, leading a Spanish Carlist faction calling itself the Sons of Thunder to a George Washington University Student Clinic,” Heilbrunn recalls. “Bozell was later convicted on several counts, including assaulting a police officer with a 5-foot wooden cross.”

===

wiki 2 22

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Research_Center

Media Research Center (MRC), formerly known as Culture and Media Institute (CMI), is an American content analysis group based in Reston, Virginia, founded in 1987 by L. Brent Bozell III.^[2] It characterizes itself as a media watchdog.^[2]

The CMI promoted its mission through editorials and research reports. Among its viewpoints include opposition to the Fairness Doctrine^[3] and same-sex marriage.^[4] In March 2007, the CMI published a "National Cultural Values Survey" and concluded from its results that most Americans perceived a decline in moral values.^[5] One study released by the organization in June 2007 claimed that television viewing time correlated directly with one's liberal attitude, even possibly degrading to moral attitudes.^[6]

The nonprofit MRC has received financial support primarily from Robert Mercer,^[7] but with several other conservative-leaning sources, including the Bradley, Scaife, Olin, Castle Rock, Carthage and JM foundations, as well as ExxonMobil.^[8][9][10] It has been described as "one of the most active and best-funded, and yet least known" arms of the modern conservative movement in the United States.^[11] The organization rejects the scientific consensus on climate change, and criticizes media coverage that reflects the scientific consensus.^[9][12]

Contents

• :{1:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{Foundation and funding:(style="display:table-cell"):}:
• :{2:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{Projects:(style="display:table-cell"):}:
  • :{2.1:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{Reports on the media:(style="display:table-cell"):}:
  • :{2.2:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{MRC Business:(style="display:table-cell"):}:
  • :{2.3:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{CNSNews.com:(style="display:table-cell"):}:
  • :{2.4:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{NewsBusters:(style="display:table-cell"):}:
  • :{2.5:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{MRC Culture:(style="display:table-cell"):}:
  • :{2.6:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{MRCTV:(style="display:table-cell"):}:
  • :{2.7:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{CBS crime drama Cold Case:(style="display:table-cell"):}:
• :{3:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{Viewpoints:(style="display:table-cell"):}:
• :{4:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{Criticism:(style="display:table-cell"):}:
• :{5:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{See also:(style="display:table-cell"):}:
• :{6:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{References:(style="display:table-cell"):}:
• :{7:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{Further reading:(style="display:table-cell"):}:
• :{8:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{External links:(style="display:table-cell"):}:

Foundation and funding

bozell and a group of other American conservatives founded the MRC on October 1, 1987. Their initial budget was at US$339,000.^[13] Prior to founding the MRC, Bozell was the chairman of the National Conservative Political Action Committee; he resigned from that position a month before establishing MRC.^[14] A wealthy donor whose name has been kept anonymous helped set up the MRC.^[15] The MRC has received financial support from several foundations, including the Bradley, Scaife, Olin, Castle Rock, Carthage and JM foundations.^[8] It also receives funding from ExxonMobil. The organization rejects the scientific consensus on climate change, and criticizes media coverage that reflects the scientific consensus.^[9][10][12] The MRC received over $10 million from Robert Mercer, its largest single donor.^[7]

As of its 2015 reporting to the IRS, the organization had revenue approaching $15 million and expenses in excess of $15 million. Bozell's salary during this year was reported as close to $345,000, with nearly $122,000 in additional compensation from the organization and related organizations.^[16]...

^crit:

Extra!, the magazine of the progressive media watch group FAIR, criticized the MRC in 1998 for selective use of evidence. MRC had said that there was more coverage of government death squads in right-wing El Salvador than in left-wing Nicaragua in the 1980s, when Amnesty International stated El Salvador was worse than Nicaragua when it came to extrajudicial killings. Extra! also likened a defunct MRC newsletter, TV etc., which tracked the off-screen political comments of actors, to "Red Channels, the McCarthy Era blacklisting journal."^[57]

Journalist Brian Montopoli of Columbia Journalism Review in 2005 labeled MRC "just one part of a wider movement by the far right to demonize corporate media", rather than "make the media better."^[58]

On December 22, 2011, Media Research Center president Bozell appeared on Fox News and suggested U.S. President Barack Obama looks like a "skinny ghetto crackhead".^[59]

The Media Research Center has also faced scrutiny over the group's $350,000 purchase in 2012 of a Pennsylvania house that a top executive had been trying to sell for several years.^[60]

In 2013, Media Research Center president Bozell appeared on Fox News to defend a Fox interview in which Fox journalists conducted almost no research into the background of Reza Aslan to prepare for its interview with him, and its putative biases.^[61]

Progressive media watchdog group Media Matters for America has repeatedly criticized the MRC, charging they view the media "through a funhouse mirror that renders everything--even the facts themselves--as manifestations of insidious bias".^[62]

When the Media Research Center bestowed an award named for William F. Buckley to Sean Hannity, neoconservative columnist for The New York Times, Bret Stephens, wrote an editorial in which he lamented, "And so we reach the Idiot stage of the conservative cycle, in which a Buckley Award for Sean Hannity suggests nothing ironic, much less Orwellian, to those bestowing it, applauding it, or even shrugging it off. The award itself is trivial, but it's a fresh reminder of who now holds the commanding heights of conservative life, and what it is that they think."^[63]

See also[

Bozell and William F. Buckley Jr.promote their book McCarthy and His Enemies, 1954

"A young, energetic red-haired Yalie from Omaha", as he is described in Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, Bozell was the best friend and debating society teammate^[4]of William F. Buckley, Jr. at Yale University, where he was President of the Yale Political Union and the campusWorld Federalist Movement.

In 1958, Bozell ran for the Maryland House of Delegates but lost.^{[citation needed]} After this defeat he proposed the formation of a new political party at one of the editors' evening meetings in New York; the idea was summarily rejected by the more fusionist editors Buckley and James Burnham.^[5] He later worked as a speechwriter for Senator Barry Goldwater, for whom he ghost-wrote the 1960 book The Conscience of a Conservative.^[6] He was a founding member of Young Americans for Freedom.^[7]

In 1960 he took his family to Spain for the first time, making him absent from the Palm Beach decision of Buckley, Goldwater, Russell Kirk, and William Baroody Sr. to freeze out the John Birch Society from the conservative movement. Kirk inferred that Bozell would not have had any reason to be opposed to the decision^[8] but in fact he, along with Frank Meyer and William Rusher, protested the exclusion of the Society from the conservative movement.^[9] After the failed attempt to draft Barry Goldwater at the 1960 Republican National Convention, Bozell, a strong proponent of a Goldwater candidacy, was disappointed and annoyed by the would-be candidate's firm endorsement of the moderate Nixon-Lodge ticket. In 1962, addressing a 18,500 strong conservative rally in New York City's Madison Square Garden, he issued a rhetorical order to the Berlin commander to "Tear down the Berlin Wall," which would be echoed more famously 25 years later by Ronald Reagan, who exhorted Mikhail Gorbachev to "Tear down this wall!"^[2]

Conservative Catholic[edit]

See also: Triumph (magazine)

In 1964, Bozell ran for the U.S. House of Representatives from Maryland against Charles Mathias, one of the leaders of the then-influential liberal wing of the Republican Party;^{[citation needed]} references to the gnostic heresy and to the "arcana of Spanish legitimism" made during his campaign speeches may have contributed to his loss.^{[citation needed]} In 1965 he moved his family to Spain purportedly because "you breathed the Catholic thing there"^[10] and, along withFrederick Wilhelmsen and William Marshner among others, founded the Catholic magazine Triumph in 1966 which Bozell intended to be a bulwark of Catholic orthodoxy and a sort of National Review for Catholics. The magazine featured contributions from distinguished names such as Russell Kirk (a Catholic convert), Christopher Dawson, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, John Lukacs, Thomas Molnar, Jeffrey Hart, Sir Arnold Lunn, Charles Journet, Rousas John Rushdoony (a Calvinist), and initially received an enthusiastic endorsement by Buckley in the pages of National Review.

But the relationship between Bozell and his brother-in-law had already begun to sour; in March 1966, when Buckley wrote a column warning that Catholics should not try to seek legislation that would impose on others their belief that abortion is murder, Bozell wrote a letter to the editors of National Reviewprotesting that the column "reeks of relativism... Mr. Buckley writes in this instance as though he had never heard of the natural law." Buckley was stung by the letter and had composed a bitter reply, but decided against sending it. In 1966 Bozell published The Warren Revolution, a scholarly critique of theSupreme Court of the United States under Chief Justice Earl Warren. Despite his relocation to Spain Bozell remained conscious of U.S. politics; he opposed the Richard Nixon administration, intoning in the pages of Triumph that by supporting Nixon's candidacy in 1968 the conservative movement had "ceased to be an important political force in America".

He later repudiated his support for the American experiment itself, as well as his own book The Warren Revolution. Buckley summarized Bozell's new position as follows: "[Bozell's] thesis now is that the republic of the Founding Fathers was doomed because of their failure to adequately enthrall the city of man to the City of God." Bozell himself felt estranged from the United States in general and in particular the conservative movement he was once a rising star in, denouncing conservatism as "an inadequate substitute for Christian politics."^[11] Especially following the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision, Bozell began to see the United States as a force of evil comparable in magnitude to the Soviet Union and denounced both democratic capitalism as well as Communism.Triumph idealized Francoist Spain, criticized the events leading up to the Vietnam War - including the U.S.-backed assassination of the Catholic President of South Vietnam Ngo Dinh Diem - and the conduct of the conflict thereafter as irreconcilable with Just War Theory, declared against chemical warfare and nuclear deterrence (the latter Bozell had once been a strong proponent of), and identified its economic views with distributism.^[12]

Friends of Bozell blamed his increasing devotion to Catholicism, his radicalism, and his dissolving relationship with Buckley (who was reportedly traumatized by the loss of his closest friend) on alleged mental deterioration; Neal Freeman had said "Brent simply started to fade and you could see it happening, but you couldn't do anything about it." John Judis writes in William Buckley, Jr.: Patron Saint of the Conservatives: "The breakup of their relationship probably could not have occurred ten years prior or ten years hence. It was very much a product of the tumultuous sixties, which exhilarated Buckley and which lifted him to new heights of celebrity, but in which more troubled, less stable souls like Bozell capsized."

After founding Triumph Bozell also founded the Society of the Christian Commonwealth whose educational arm, the Christian Commonwealth Institute headed by Dr. Warren Carroll, conducted annual classes, lectures, and seminars at the El Escorial in Spain. The entirety of the original faculty of and many of the donors to Christendom College had attended the program in Spain and were subscribers to Triumph. Carroll later remarked in his obituary for Bozell that "In a very fundamental sense, Christendom College was a Triumph enterprise."^[13]

Bozell was a staunch supporter of :{Pope Paul VI:(style="background-color:#fff200;"):}: and strongly defended his condemnation of :{birth control:(style="background-color:#fff200;"):}: in the encyclical Humanae Vitae, though he disagreed with the Pontiff's decisions regarding the liturgy.^[13] He was a founding member of and served as a special ambassador for Catholics United for the Faith.^[14] Since its founding, Triumph teetered on the verge of collapse and Bozell was planning on shutting the magazine down until Patricia Bozell attended a forum at the Catholic University of America featuring radical feminist Ti-Grace Atkinson in March 1971. When Atkinson said the Virgin Mary was more "used" than if she had participated in a sexual conception, Patricia attempted to slap her and her hand hit the microphone and she was escorted out. When Bozell heard what his wife had done, he rose to his full height (he was a tall, Lincolnesque figure) and bellowed "To Hell with Catholic University!"^[13]The positive reader feedback convinced him to keep the magazine alive. In 1975, coinciding with the death of Francisco Franco and the beginning of theSpanish transition to democracy, Triumph ceased publication.

In 1985, Bozell founded Misión Guadalupe, a program devoted to the assistance and evangelization of Hispanic immigrants.^[15]

Bozell faithfully visited the inmates of Washington's Lorton Correctional Complex in Northern Virginia every week for years until his death.^[2]

Pro-life activity[edit]

In June 1970, three years before the Roe v. Wade decision and when abortion was illegal in most of the United States, Brent and Patricia Bozell led the first "Operation Rescue" mission to try by direct action to stop it at George Washington University Hospital in Washington D.C. where it was permitted for the mental well-being of the mother. Bozell and a group of 230 rallied and met at St. Stephen Martyr Church for a "Funeral Mass for The Holy Innocents" celebrated by four priests, including an African American, a Chinese, and a Hispanic. The protest included the Spanish group "Los Hijos de la Tormenta" (the Sons of Thunder), who dressed in khaki and red berets (reminiscent of the Carlists, whom Bozell came to admire while in Spain), wore Rosariesaround their necks and carried papal flags. They walked a few blocks to the hospital from the church and Bozell put on his red beret and took hold of a wooden cross. Patricia led the women present in a recitation of the Rosary. The group heard speakers, including one who declared "America... you are daggering to death your unborn of tomorrow. The very cleanliness of your sterilized murder gives off the stench of death." Along with others Bozell was met by police and was clubbed on the head. A police officer grabbed Bozell's cross and broke it in half. He was thrown down and handcuffed. In the ensuing scuffle between the protestors and the police, a plate glass window was broken. Bozell and seven others were arrested and given suspended sentences.

Four years earlier Bozell had written "Disorder has become characteristic of a society when the streets of its cities, even its country lanes, can no longer be passed safely at night." When this was brought up to him after the GWU episode, he replied somewhat testily: "If disorder is necessary to stop this murdering of babies, I'm in favor of disorder."^[16] This demonstration dismayed "law and order" conservatives already upset with anti-war and student demonstrations on the left. Buckley denounced his brother-in-law's actions, declaring in the pages of National Review "the Sons of Thunder have moved precious few of the unconvinced over to their side." Bozell and the Triumph staff were undeterred and remained active in early pro-life work, including the organization of the first March for Life.

The cover of the January 1973 issue of Triumph was solid black in mourning for Roe v. Wade, except for a small logo at the top and a white cross and the words "For the children" in the lower right hand corner.^[13]

Illnesses and death[edit]

Bozell suffered from bipolar disorder, writing publicly about his experiences, suffering, and recovery in the introduction to Mustard Seeds, a collection mostly of his post-National Review writings (including many from Triumph) published in 1986. The book included "Poland's Cross—And America's," Bozell's firstNational Review essay in almost two decades. It also included the National Review essay for which he may be remembered best, "Freedom or Virtue," which touched off a robust debate between himself and Frank Meyer, mostly around whether freedom or virtue should be the paramount consideration for American conservatives.

Bozell died of pneumonia in a nursing home in Bethesda, Maryland on April 15, 1997 at the age of 71 ^[17] after years of numerous and crippling health problems. His son, L. Brent Bozell III, spoke of those struggles when eulogizing him:

Dozens of times over...25 years the attacks would come, and with each bout, yet another blow, yet another public humiliation. There were arrests and forced hospitalizations, escapes and re-arrests and recommitments. There was the never-ending parade of lawyers, police, doctors, and, yes, from time to time the State Department was on the line to brief us on yet another prospective international upheaval caused by this very unpredictable man.

Manic depression by itself is enough to break the spirit of any man, but Pop was no ordinary man. He suffered from peripheral neuropathy,sleep apnea, osteoporosis, degenerative disc disease, asthma, and Alzheimer's. One by one they came, and when it seemed that no part of his body had been left untouched yet a new illness was diagnosed. We wondered how he could endure so much, accept this torture with such nobility, with never one word of complaint.^[18]

Works[edit]

• (contributor) The Best of Triumph. Lawrence, E. Michael, ed. Front Royal, VA: Christendom Press ISBN 0-931888-72-7.
• McCarthy and His Enemies (with Buckley, William F., Jr.) Chicago: Regnery, 1954. Reissued as ISBN 0-89526-472-2.
• The Warren Revolution. (New York: Arlington House, 1966.)
• Mustard Seeds: A Conservative Becomes a Catholic. Front Royal, VA: Christendom Press ISBN 0-931888-73-5.

References[edit]

1. ^ [1]
2. ^ ^a(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L.Brent_Bozell,Jr.#cite_ref-Edwards_2-0) ^b(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L.Brent_Bozell,Jr.#cite_ref-Edwards_2-1) ^c(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L.Brent_Bozell,Jr.#cite_ref-Edwards_2-2) Edwards, Lee (June 9, 1997). "A modern Don Quixote fought the good fight". Insight on the News.
3. ^ Edwards, Lee (June 9, 1997). "A modern Don Quixote fought the good fight". Insight on the News.
4. ^ Yale Debate Association officers, Yale University Manuscripts & Archives, Digital Images Database, Yale University, New Haven, CT
5. ^ William F. Buckley, Jr.: Patron ... - Google Books
6. ^ Frohnen, Bruce (2006). American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia. Wilmington: Intercollegiate Studies Institute. pp. 179–180. ISBN 1-932236-43-0.
7. ^ Young Americans for Fascism ...err Freedom and William F. Buckley, Jr
8. ^ http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/goldwater—the-john-birch-society—and-me-11248
9. ^ The Political Thought of William F. Buckley Jr: Standing Athwart History | The Heritage Foundation
10. ^ Catholic Intellectuals and Conservative Politics in America, 1950-85. - Free Online Library
11. ^ Strictly Right: William F. Buckley ... - Google Books
12. ^ The conservative press in twentieth ... - Google Books
13. ^ ^a(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L.Brent_Bozell,Jr.#cite_ref-catholicsocialscientists.org_13-0) ^b(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L.Brent_Bozell,Jr.#cite_ref-catholicsocialscientists.org_13-1) ^c(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L.Brent_Bozell,Jr.#cite_ref-catholicsocialscientists.org_13-2) ^d(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L.Brent_Bozell,Jr.#cite_ref-catholicsocialscientists.org_13-3) http://www.catholicsocialscientists.org/CSSR/Archival/1997/1997_323.pdf
14. ^ Being right: conservative Catholics ... - Google Books
15. ^ Amazon.com: Mustard Seeds (9780937495063): L. Brent Bozell: Books
16. ^ The Free Lance-Star - Google News Archive Search
17. ^ The Political Graveyard: Index to Politicians: Boyles to Bradburn
18. ^ Henry, Lawrence (March 14, 2008). "The Fountain of Youth". The American Spectator. Retrieved February 11, 2011.

Sources[

• Bridges, Linda; Coyne, John R. Jr., Strictly Right: William F. Buckley Jr. and the American Conservative Movement
• Buckley, William F., Jr.
• Buckley, William F., Jr., 1997. "L. Brent Bozell, RIP," National Review, May 19.
• Critchlow, Donald T., The Conservative Ascendancy: How the GOP Right Made Political History
• Critchlow, Donald T., Intended Consequences: Birth Control, Abortion, and the Federal Government in Modern america
• Hudson, Deal, Onward, Christian Soldiers
• Perlstein, Rick, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus
• Stout, David, 1997. L. Brent Bozell, 71, a Champion of Conservatism. The New York Times: April 19.

Categories:

• 1926 births

 - 1997 deaths

• American anti-communists
• American pro-life activists
• American Roman Catholic religious writers
• American Traditionalist Catholics
• Buckley family
• Christendom College
• Conservatism in the United States
• Converts to Roman Catholicism
• Maryland Republicans
• National Review people
• People with bipolar disorder
• Roman Catholic activists
• Traditionalist Catholic writers
• Yale University alumni
• 20th-century American writers