MEDIA WATCH--Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) is quietly signaling that he may vote against the Equality Act as sources say that he’s telling colleagues that a massive rightwing call-in campaign has him scared. 

During his campaign, President Joe Biden said that he would sign the Equality Act in his first 100 days in office. But 71 days in and it doesn’t have a clear path in the Senate. Several moderate Republicans have come out against it, and now there’s doubt that even all Democrats support it.

The Equality Act would add sexual orientation and gender identity to existing federal civil rights legislation, extending discrimination protections to LGBTQ people. The bill is popular – 70% of voters support it and even most Republicans support banning discrimination against LGBTQ people – but Christian conservatives fiercely oppose it, arguing that not being allowed to discriminate would violate their religious freedom.

MEDIA WATCH--Women know that our progress is often characterized by two steps forward, one step back.

For women of color, the obstacles are even greater. And so, as the Biden-Harris administration makes a groundbreaking effort to nominate more women of color to high-level positions, the backlash has been swift and vicious. (Photos above: Deb Haaland (left) and Marcia Fudge (right) / Shutterstock)

Anyone watching cable news will know this already, having seen the strident ad campaigns against an early Justice Department nominee, Vanita Gupta. Gupta is in the vanguard of what we hope will be an historic wave of women of color nominated by the new administration to positions in the executive branch and — importantly — on the federal bench, too.

Gupta is an extraordinarily qualified individual who’s come under fire. So have other extremely qualified nominees — like Deb Haaland (confirmed as Interior Secretary), Marcia Fudge (confirmed as Housing and Urban Development Secretary), and Kristen Clarke (nominated to head the Justice Department’s civil rights division).

MEDIA WATCH-Last week, the NAACP wrote a letter to the NFL making a request for the good of humanity: stop giving money to fucking Fox News.

Okay, that wasn’t their exact phrasing, but it captures the spirit close enough. And who could fault them? No matter how much you want to pretend Fox News doesn’t exist, the propagandist network is indeed growing more dangerous by the day, and more organizations need to confront that reality. No matter the issue — race relations, the 2020 presidential election, or the ongoing pandemic — day and night they bombard their viewers with racism, sexism, and xenophobia while ignoring mass shootings that don’t fit their narrative. (Fox News couldn’t even be bothered to carry the Boulder Police’s press conference after Monday’s mass shooting.) And their newest tactic is promoting anti-vaccination conspiracy theories that will contribute to the massive (and still rising) coronavirus death toll.

MEDIA WATCH-To Your Unborn Royal Majesty,

Please forgive me for the protocol breach of writing you in utero.

But after watching your parents—Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex—tell their Santa Barbara County neighbor Oprah Winfrey that you are expected this summer and will be biologically female, I’ve been thinking about what your arrival might mean for California.

We Californians, whether we realize it or not, need you. Because the next great start-up here must be our very own monarchy. And you would be the perfect person to serve as our very first queen.

MEDIA WATCH--The most dramatic change in American capitalism over the last half century has been the emergence of corporate behemoths like Amazon and the simultaneous shrinkage of organized labor. The resulting imbalance has spawned near-record inequalities of income and wealth, corruption of democracy by big money, and the abandonment of the working class. (Photo above: Jeff Bezos, chairman and founder of Amazon.com and owner of the Washington Post, addresses the Economic Club of New York, at the Sheraton New York Times Square Hotel, October 27, 2016 in New York City. (Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

All this is coming to a head in several ways.

Next week, Amazon faces a union vote at its warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama. If successful, it would be Amazon's first U.S.-based union in its nearly 27-year history.

MEDIA WATCH--A Japanese court has ruled that the country’s ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional. While the ruling is being celebrated, it doesn’t mean that marriages can start being performed immediately. 

Four other court cases are working their way through the system and the decision by the Sapporo District Court is expected to influence the outcomes.

The court ruled that sexual orientation, like race, is not a matter of individual preference and therefore denying same-sex couples the same benefits as straight couples is unconstitutional.

MEDIA WATCH--Talk about turning the bleak page: On his first day as Attorney General, the honorable, long maltreated Merrick Garland was movingly welcomed by an applauding crowd of jubilant DOJ employees and survivors of the last regime visibly relieved to witness the return of competence and normalcy. 

Garland, 68, began his career at the DOJ in the 1970s under Jimmy Carter; he described his first interview there at 26 as "awe-inspiring." He already stood out among peers for his integrity: As valedictorian at his high school graduation, he departed from his prepared remarks to give an eloquent oration on the 1st Amendment after an earlier speaker enraged the audience by condemning the Vietnam War. 

MEDIA WATCH--In hopes of spurring wary Americans to get the COVID vaccine, two national ad campaigns launched Thursday starring all four former presidents - Obama, Bush, Clinton, Carter - who along with their wives urge people, "The science is clear...This is our shot...Now it's up to you."

A joint project of the Covid Collaborative and the Ad Council, a nonprofit that produces PSAs, the ads feature a one-minute spot showing them all being vaccinated, and a 30-second one of Clinton, Bush and Obama at Biden's inauguration, where Obama calls the vaccine "the first step to ending the pandemic and moving our country forward."

Noticeably missing from this pageant of good will and commonality is the former guy, who secretly got vaccinated this winter. He issued a "statement" proving that once a sick, racist, subhuman ghoul, always a sick, racist, subhuman ghoul: "I hope everyone remembers when they're getting the COVID-19 (often referred to as the China virus) vaccine, that if I wasn't president you wouldnt be getting that beautiful "shot" for 5 years, at best, and probably wouldn't be getting it at all.

MEDIA WATCH-The White House warned states that are considering anti-transgender bills this year that those bills are illegal under federal law.

“The president believes that trans rights are human rights and that no one should be discriminated on the basis of sex. Not only is this the law of the land, it’s his own deeply held view,” said White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki during a press briefing.

Psaki was asked about President Joe Biden’s views on the dozens of states that are considering anti-transgender laws. According to HRC’s latest count, 37 bills have been proposed in state legislatures that would ban transgender girls and women from playing school sports.

MEDIA WATCH--White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki is a master at shutting down “gotcha” questions from right-wing reporters. Owen Jensen of the EWTN Global Catholic Network found out the hard way.

Jensen asked Psaki about the Equality Act, landmark civil rights legislation that would protect LGBTQ people, women, and the disabled from discrimination. The bill is opposed by the religious right who have been making wild claims about “religious freedom” and transgender teenagers.

“There’s pro-life groups, right now, who are very concerned about the phrase ‘pregnancy discrimination’ in the Equality Act — you’re familiar with that, I’m sure — that it would force doctors to perform abortions even if it violates their conscience,” Jensen said. “There are also concerns the bill would force doctors to perform gender transition surgeries and sterilizations, again, even if the violates their conscience.”

“What does the president — President Biden — say about those concerns?”

MEDIA WATCH--CPAC 2021! Wingnut City on Steroids! The first day of this year's exercise in flamboyant delusion featured a parade of alternate-reality speakers laboring hard and loud to out-bonkers-and-hoodwink each other, with impressive results. 

There was Ted 'Braveheart' Cruz, devotee of violent insurrection, who ended his incoherent speech by shrieking "FREEDOM!" - from masks, Democrats, people making fun of Cancun? - in an attempt to channel William Wallace without the face-paint, we think, though many noted Wallace got drawn and quartered and Cruz is just like Wallace "except for all the courage, honor, patriotism, bravery, strength, integrity, morality, virtue, toughness, wisdom, fearlessness, goodness, scruples and righteousness" which makes him "less like Braveheart and more like Naivefart." 

MEDIA WATCH-I missed the first round of talk about the New York Times’ publication of a moving and forthright letter by Woody Allen’s adopted daughter, Dylan, regarding his alleged sexual molestation of her over two decades ago. 

Woody Allen is an American icon as well as a human being capable of all things human, perhaps including the capacity for exercising the inhumanity of humans.

I admire those on this website who have taken on the subject and expressed a philosophical and/or moral stance about Allen’s reported alleged behavior. 

It is a troubling scenario with only speculation not evidentiary confirmation achievable from our distance as citizens and consumers.  His alleged crime is certainly inflammatory in nature and thus all the more fodder to be sensationally skewed by a mainstream corporate media so often less than reliable in framing scenarios within mature, moral, restrained and empathetic boundaries. 

MEDIA WATCH--Donald Trump reported making more than $1.6 billion in outside revenue and income during his four years as President of the United States, according to a review of his financial disclosures by CREW. While Trump publicly took credit for donating his taxpayer-funded salary, that ended up being less than 0.1% of the revenue and income he disclosed during his presidency. Far from being a sacrifice, the donation was merely a fig leaf to cover up four years of brazen corruption.

Despite seeing a major dropoff in hospitality related revenue in 2020 due to the pandemic, in total Trump disclosed at least $1,613,583,013 in revenue from the Trump Organization and other outside income. Trump disclosed a high end of $1,790,614,202, but it is impossible to know exactly how much he pocketed as president, as some of his assets list a vague “Over $5,000,000” in yearly income and because of the structure of Trump Organization businesses, reported revenue does not necessarily reflect his personal income from them. One of the reports also included 19 days of revenue and income before Trump assumed the presidency.

MEDIA WATCH--As Texas reels under a historic polar vortex that's left millions without heat or power and at least 23 dead, GOP state leaders have responded with their usual grace and logic, feverishly blaming their own catastrophic failures on wind turbines, Democrats, socialism, federal regulation, "corrupt 'green' policies that leave us in the dark" and anything else that isn't them. In harrowing stories, residents describe a once-in-a lifetime "classic cascade failure" as the storm hit and stayed, from miscalculations by power grid operators to unprecedented winter demand to plunging temps: "Then it froze. 

The whole state in one night." Experts say the cold has ravaged an out-of-date, fossil-fuel-based energy infrastructure, for years deliberately de-regulated and privatized in the name of profits for a few, in a state run 80% by natural gas, coal and nuclear power. 

MEDIA WATCH-Very little about America surprises Black people. We are only startled by things that happen, never by the potential for things to happen. When Trump supporters attacked the Capitol on January 6, Black people collectively checked our watches, muttering, “Oh, is today when that’s going down? Guess we’re not going south of Massachusetts Ave. today.” Shocked, but not surprised. (Photo above: James Baldwin at home in Saint Paul de Vence, France in September 1985. Photo: Ulf Andersen/Getty Images.)

By contrast, White America’s reaction to the attack on Capitol Hill was marked with unadulterated surprise, as if it truly did not know itself, as if Sam Cooke did not mention it in the very first line of “Wonderful World” (which I know for a fact is a song White people like very much). Mainstream media seemed overcome with shock and revulsion. Politicians everywhere crossed their chests, shocked at what America had “become.” As if violent and entitled were not things America has always been.

MEDIA WATCH--One of the biggest “whines” from conservatives is their response when people of common sense require accountability for the actions and rhetoric of the last 4 years, especially when it comes to their attempted coup of our government and their wanton demand to murder elected representatives. Those that are whining are typically trumpers, demanding that we just forget about everything and when you object, they say “I thought you wanted unity.” When you quote the late Rep. John Lewis’ statement of “No Justice- No Peace,” their response is “so you just want to go on bickering.” This is where the Republican Party stands today, refusing to acknowledge that they did anything wrong and continue to do wrong, while making a passive aggressive way to “try” to blame the Democrats for not buying into their crap.

MEDIA WATCH--The Republican Party’s post 2020 state-by-state assault on voting rights has begun with the demand that all mailed-in paper ballots include photo ID.

The Jim Crow racism is beyond obvious. Instead of having to guess, mailed-in photo ID lets election officials quickly identify which ballots came from citizens of color … and then pitch them on the spot. By banning student IDs, they can also eliminate ballots coming from college campuses.

Thus the Nixon-Trump/Atwater-Rove-Bannon Republicans have picked up the KKK burning cross straight from hands of the Jim Crow Democrats.

MEDIA WATCH--On the last Friday before the Inauguration the Minnesota businessman named Mike Lindell—better known as Mr. Pillow—visited the White House. It was not the first time that Lindell had visited Trump in the White House, but it was different from his previous visits. 

The White House was quiet, emptied of much of the staff who had moved up their departures after the assault on the Capitol the previous week. Why put up any longer with Trump’s surliness and tantrums? Or risk being sucked into a conversation with him that might expose them to legal problems? By the time Lindell showed up, Trump’s staff was down to the most pathetic remnants. The mutts that slink back even after they get kicked. 

THE INSURRECTION--Hours after the attack on the Capitol ended, a group calling itself the Last Sons of Liberty posted a brief video to Parler, the social media platform, that appeared to show members of the organization directly participating in the uprising. Footage showed someone with a shaky smartphone charging past the metal barricades surrounding the building. Other clips show rioters physically battling with baton-wielding police on the white marble steps just outside the Capitol. 

Before Parler went offline — its operations halted at least temporarily when Amazon refused to continue to host the network — the Last Sons posted numerous statements indicating that group members had joined the mob that swarmed the Capitol and had no regrets about the chaos and violence that unfolded on Jan. 6. The Last Sons also did some quick math: The government had suffered only one fatality, U.S. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, 42, who was reportedly bludgeoned in the head with a fire extinguisher. But the rioters had lost four people, including Ashli Babbitt, the 35-year-old Air Force veteran who was shot by an officer as she tried to storm the building. 

MEDIA WATCH--The far-right evangelical leader is upset that MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell has been permanently banned from Twitter for spreading fake claims of election fraud as retailers nationwide stop carrying the company’s products. Lindell has subsequently claimed that Twitter was secretly running his account after “freezing” him out in a bizarre rant to local news.

Both Perkins and Lindell are rabid supporters of former President Donald Trump, but Lindell, in particular, was a favorite of Trump. Lindell spewed multiple conspiracy theories about COVID, the election, and just about anything else that would catch the former president’s attention.

MEDIA WATCH--After an election, an attempted insurrection, and a transfer of power defined in part by a massive amount of disinformation, what would it take to get Americans to begin trusting their institutions—and one another—once again? The answer might lie in organizations that have been just as battered as our sense of trust in the digital age: local media. 

But first, what exactly is local media these days? California Newsroom managing editor Joanne Griffith, the moderator of today’s Zócalo/Center for Social Innovation event, Can Local Media Restore Trust and Destroy Disinformation?,” opened the discussion with that very question. (Photos above: Panelists discuss “Can Local Media Restore Trust and Destroy Disinformation?” Courtesy of Zócalo Public Square.)  

A key part of local news is “original reporting,” said American Journalism Project CEO Sarabeth Berman. Her venture philanthropy organization invests in nonprofit, nonpartisan newsrooms; the ultimate goal of those newsrooms, she said, is to get people “the information they need to be able to take informed action, to show up at the ballot box, and engage in their communities.”