Megyn Kelly and Howard Kurtz misleadingly spun public revulsion toward the Duggar family as knee-jerk, left-wing ideology akin to the homophobic attacks on Caitlyn Jenner when she came out.
In a discussion on The Kelly File, Megyn Kelly once again did her best to whip up sympathy for The Duggars, while largely glossing over some very troubling issues raised since the revelations that their son Joshua sexually molested five young girls, including four of his sisters, when he was a teenager.
In Touch, the magazine that broke the story, alleges that the Duggar cover up continues. Their interview with Kelly the night before, In Touch wrote, “was filled with misinformation and the reality TV couple also withheld crucial facts, according to public documents, obtained by In Touch magazine through the Freedom of Information Act.”
In other words, as Raw Story noted, “multiple statements made by Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar” during the interview “could have been easily disproved on air if Fox researchers had done their homework and read the documents and statements that were publicly available before Kelly conducted her interview.”
Kelly touched on some of those issues later in the hour. But in this segment, which led off the show, Kelly suggested that Duggar critics were merely left-wing ideologues.
“This feels like it’s splitting into some sort of an ideological battle! Why?” Kelly complained to Kurtz.
Kurtz called it “the latest round in the sexual culture wars.”
KURTZ: Some people on the right at least expressing sympathy for this family but many liberal media types denouncing the Duggars in part because they did give some weak and troubling answers to some of the interview questions and that’s fair game. But also in part because they’re viewed as overly preachy and now hypocritical Christian conservatives.
Fair enough. But then Kurtz reached around for a “both sides do it” way of delegitimizing the Duggar criticism.
KURTZ: And we see the same pattern, Megyn, with Bruce Jenner who also is doing a reality show. Hailed by the mainstream media as a hero for becoming Caitlyn Jenner but at the same time - I have absolutely no problem with that. At the same time, some conservative pundits viewing that story and that movement as an assault on traditional values.
Actually, Howie, there’s no similarity. It’s one thing to disapprove of someone’s lifestyle or life choice in undergoing a sex change. It’s quite another to object to a family that markets itself as a paragon of Christian purity – all the while burying a skeleton of one son’s child molesting in a way that looks a lot like a deliberate cover up of a crime.
Furthermore, that whole left/right thing was disproved on Fox News. As I’ve previously posted, first Fox host Greg Gutfeld went off on the “sick creeps” aka The Duggars. Then Fox’s Dr. Keith Ablow said he was “stunned” by the family’s denial. Neither Gutfeld nor Ablow are liberals.
But instead of challenging Kurtz’s absurd analogy, Kelly helped validate it. Kelly echoed Sarah and Bristol Palin and added Lena Dunham’s revelation that she had behaved “very inappropriately with her younger sister.”
“At that time, many on the right, went after her and many on the left defended her,” Kelly continued. “I mean, is there sort of nothing that we can keep our politics out of? …Why must it go to the red/blue place every time?”
Kurtz replied, “Because we live in such a polarized media and political culture that that becomes more important than anything else. …It saddens me.”
And yet the two of them work for a news network whose entire mission plan revolves around polarizing and dividing red and blue.
Watch it below, from the June 4 The Kelly File.
Rightwingnuts: still can’t do analogy to save their lives . . .
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It kills me to say it, but Hannity actually presided over a pretty good right-right debate on all this tonight between Ablow and that vile Pastor Robert Jeffress.
I loathe Ablow ordinarily, but I found I agreed with almost everything he said about the Duggar situation. Jeffress tried to shout him down, but nobody shouts Ablow down.
Then Jeffress tried to morph the argument into left-bashing, but Ablow roared at him, “I’m a conservative!”
Hannity, for once, had the good sense to mostly just shut up and let the two of them go at it.
As a follow-up, he had Tammy Bruce and Andrea Tantaros, neither of whom was prepared to defend the Duggars, but neither of whom had anything particularly cogent to say — particularly Bruce, who just wandered around seemingly authoritatively, as she does, but totally aimlessly — and I lost interest and changed the channel.
I understand the politics involved, but never the insanity of using the comparison of defending someone who did harm to others and someone who didn’t do a damn thing wrong except not stand in line with the majority.
