If you don’t quite recognize the smug little pug in the photo here, don’t feel bad – he’s nobody important and I promise you can go right back to ignoring him as soon as you’re finished reading this post. He’s Dan Gainor, a staffer at the Media Research Center (MRC), and just another member of Brent Bozell’s Cabal of Conservative Wrath.  Gainor holds the totally awesome title of MRC Vice President of Business & Culture and The T. Boone Pickens Free Market Fellow.  As if that isn’t impressive enough, Gainor has racked up kudos from Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Newt Gingrich and makes frequent appearances (as an expert witness) on Fox News, the last bastion of fair and balanced news coverage – in the WORLD!

In other words, Gainor is a mainstay on the front lines of the battle against the diabolical lefty-liberal media bias and a modern-day Sir Lancelot of principled, ethical journalism.  Gainor’s usual strategy in this noble struggle appears to be a “fight fire with fire” and to root out liberal media bias and plant conservative media bias in its place.  Like so many of his colleagues, Gainor fails to see the hypocrisy in this approach and goes on his merry way fairly unnoticed save by those who share his stunted views.

Today, however, Gainor is enjoying his “fifteen minutes of fame” because, yesterday he indulged his inner passive-aggressive child and tweeted this offer (complete with misspelling):

As The Church Lady would say: “Isn’t that special?” 

The occasion that so enraged Dan Gainor was Grayson’s speech, in Congress, prior to the vote on the emergency extension of unemployment benefits.  Grayson aptly anticipated a GOP united attempt to deny passage and ended his speech with the words “May God have mercy on your souls” if they did that.  Grayson’s emotional indictment of obstructive Republicans obviously rubbed Gainor the wrong way; evidently the GOP is feeling a little proprietary about political grandstanding these days, since it has become their sole contribution to the legislative process.

When a fellow journalist twittered anxiously over the notion of publicly soliciting violence, Gainor backed off just a smidge, said it was all in jest, but still allowed that if it happened he’d “love to see a video of it.” 

Ah, that classic and classy conservative sense of humor . . .

For his part, Rep. Grayson (who is twice the man that Gainor is – in size and other things that matter) brushed the silly little weenie aside with a reminder that “I hit back.”  Put that in your video, Gainor.  Ah, but then, I’m forgetting, this is an arch-conservative – he doesn’t do his own intimidation, he pays someone else to do his dirty work.  He doesn’t get up in Congressional representatives or fellow journalist’s faces when he doesn’t like how they conduct themselves, he writes smarmy, whiny little rants from the safety of Fort Conservative on the Potomac.

In a recent lamentation about journalism going to hell in a handbasket, Gainor offered this little gem in a Congressional hearing:

“The Society of Professional Journalists, to which I belong, has a detailed Code of Ethics. At its heart, it says journalists should provide “a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues.” They do neither. It’s fitting, then, in a hearing to discuss the “diversity of voices,” that everyone here grasp a key point. Diversity of voices in print isn’t about news, it’s fiction.”

Fair enough.  Here’s a random samling of Gainor’s recent contributions to the world of professional journalism . . . you be the judge:

In the lead-up to the recent World Cup, Gainor offered this tidbit about the politics of soccer:

“Soccer is designed as a poor man or poor woman’s sport, the left is pushing [soccer] in schools across the country.”

Gainor must have impressed himself with that stupefying insight because he pulled it out of his bag tricks while visiting his conserva-buddy, G. Gordon Liddy on his radio program (June 10, 2010), and added further insight, while he was on a roll:

“the problem here is, soccer is designed as a poor man or poor woman’s sport” and that “the left is pushing it in schools across the country.”  He added: “generally football games in this country don’t devolve into riots or wars.”  He later added that the sport of soccer “is being sold” as necessary due to the “browning of America.”

Here’s a little report from Media Matters on Gainor’s crusade against Dave Weigel:

“From Politico, in an article about David Weigel’s resignation from the WashPost, where he wrote about the conservative movement [emphasis added]:”

“Starting last month, Dan Gainor, vice president for business and culture at the Media Research Center, the conservative media watchdog group, went on something of a crusade.”

“Angered by a joke that David Weigel made about Matt Drudge on his Twitter feed, Gainor contacted conservative groups asking them to stop cooperating with Weigel, who had recently taken his blog about the conservative movement to the Washington Post.”

“We encouraged conservatives not to deal with him,” he said. “We contacted other conservative organizations and said, ‘This guy is no friend of the conservative movement. We recommend that you deny him access.’ Some did.”

“Got that? A right-wing group that ostensibly monitors the media, contacted like-minded, right-wing organizations and urged them not to cooperate with a Washington Post reporter because the reporter was, supposedly, not a “friend” of the conservative movement.”

Gainor’s permanent snit about the unworthiness of Barack Obama to have taken up in the Oval Office, along with his mandatory adoration of Ronald Reagan, of course leads Gainor to compare Obama unfavorably with the Gipper; unfortunately, Gainor doesn’t have enough of a grip on the history required to do that very well.  Gainor offered an assessment of Obama’s first year in office, which, of course, featured poor Obama falling deplorably short.  At least that’s the point Gainor attempted to make — for the record, Gainor fumbled:

According to Gainor, when Obama increased defense spending in his first year it was somehow the exact opposite of Reagan’s first year increase in defense spending. Likewise, Obama’s stated goal of a “world without nuclear weapons”, and proposals to bilaterally reduce our nuclear weapons arsenal by 30 percent is somehow totally different from Reagan’s “ultimate goal” of “eliminating all nuclear weapons.”

As Christine Schwen of Media Matters put it:

“So, Gainor claimed that “Barack Obama’s no Reagan,” but it’s pretty clear that Gainor’s Reagan was no Reagan either.”                    

“Sarah Palin would be proud.”

When the Right invented the ACORN crisis, Gainor was beside himself that only Fox News had the courage and journalistic integrity to cover the story the way that it should be covered (24/7 with screaming headlines and lots of tsk-ing and finger-wagging).  Like a voice crying in the wilderness came Gainor’s lament that the story had everything the media could possibly want in a blockbuster story (really, he thought that) “and yet no one, NO ONE, I say” in the lamestream LIBERAL media is covering it.  This, of course, is proof that the liberal media are protecting Obama.

Except, as usual, Gainor was looking at the thing through elephant-colored glasses.  According to Nexis/Lexis, these were mainstream media outlets that, prior to the publication of Gainor’s piece, had covered the ACORN story out of Baltimore.  They were: Baltimore Sun, New York Post, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Grand Rapids Press, Kansas City Star, Newsday, Newark Star-Ledger, Washington Post, Washington Times, CNN.com, Washingtonpost.com. 

Yup, those lousy lefties buried the story rather than tell the truth . . .

With that hole plugged, Gainor took on network TV and accused them of the same media bias because, I guess, the networks didn’t suspend normal programming to provide 24/7 coverage of ACORN.

* * * 

So, that, in a nutshell, is the pathetic little puke that would like to pay one of the big kids to punch Alan Grayson’s lights out.  Now you can go back to ignoring him . . .

DISCLOSURE:  I am a totally unscrupulous old fart of a blogger with no ‘ethical journalist’ constraints and a liberal mean streak.   I am also sick to death of the whining and social pathologies of the far Right.  So sue me . . .

P.S.  I’ll give a free 3-day pass to Dollywood to the first Republican who eats Dan Gainor’s lunch.

Technorati Tags: Dan Gainor, Rep. Alan Grayson, Media Research Center, Brent Bozell, G. Gordon Liddy