Wash. Post's Wemple Tries To Get Answers From Loesch And CNN About Obama-Madrassa Smear

In a blog post today, The Washington Post's Erik Wemple reported on an email exchange he had with CNN's Dana Loesch following her revival yesterday of the long-debunked smear that President Obama attended a “madrassa” as a boy, which was first reported by Media Matters.

From Wemple's post:

To get Loesch's take on her invocation of “madrassa,” I sent along these questions to her:

Hi Ms. Loesch: I am a media reporter for the Washington Post and have a few questions about your comments about President Obama having attended a madrassa. 1) What do you think of reports that have vacated his claim? Are you skeptical of them? 2) Have you discussed this matter with CNN? 3) Do you plan to address this again? 4) What is your view of the criticism from [Media Matters]?

That inquiry fetched this response from Loesch:

When MMfA acknowledges that they're under fire for repeatedly publishing antisemitic content, when they can explain why they coincidently received money from SEIU to target black conservatives in the wake of Kenneth Gladney, when they clarify what they meant when they accused the US of bombing Al Jazeera, and when they detail how often they convene with the White House on strategy (i.e. DOJ story), then I'll be interested in responding on a nonstory from this joke of a far-left propaganda smear site. Until then, I'm more interested in seeing stories on why we have 300 dead Mexicans and two dead border agents on Eric Holder's watch.

Thanks for reaching out, it is genuinely appreciated.

OK, so that explains how Loesch feels about Media Matters. But I pinged her back: “But do you have any response to the non-MMFA portions of my inquiry?” Her response: “The entire thing is an MMfA portion.” In another blast, she wrote that " 'madrassa,' doesn't mean 'terrorist school.' I made this point on air, by the way, that it's similar to a Sunday school. Why was that not included in their smear? I find it interesting that the first response from MMfA is to think 'terrorism.' That says more about them, and their ignorance of the word and religion, than me."

There's no way that this blogger is burrowing into the “madrassa” semantic rabbit hole with Loesch. You do not need to be a scholar on world religious education and culture to capture the essence of her exchange with the “Koran” caller. She was expressing ideological kinship with him. The only part of her response that matters is the words “Well, yeah.”

Wemple also attempted, without success, to get a response from CNN regarding Loesch's statement:

In search of another defense of Loesch's “viewpoint” on whether our president once attended a madrassa, I contacted CNN repeatedly for comment. Given that the network did suchyeoman's work in 2007 to debunk the Obama-madrassa connection -- with a story titled "CNN debunks false report about Obama" -- I figured that it would be eager to defend the legacy of its own work.

CNN didn't respond by deadline, so I'll issue its statement instead: Dana Loesch has shown that she's unafraid to push the limits of taste and fact, which is why we need her so badly on our otherwise buttoned-up network.