Hint: MRC has very little to do with media or media criticism. It's just a right-wing hate organization that happens to hate the press almost as much as it hates Democrats and liberals and gays and scores of other favorite targets. It's just that now with the Smithsonian crusade, Brent Bozell's MRC operation isn't even pretending its mission is to police the press.

Oh, I realize that's what it still says on its website:

The mission of the Media Research Center, “America's Media Watchdog,” is to bring balance to the news media.

But that's not what the group really does. In terms of the media, all it does is whine incessantly about some far-flung conspiracy among working journalists who have taken a supposed oath of loyalty to the Democratic Party. Meaning, its media analysis has always been a joke.

But hating the media only takes up part of MRC's time. It also launches smear campaigns against great American institutions, such as the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery. (See here, here and here.)

What does today's manufactured controversy have to do with the media? Nothing. Zero. As in, zilch. There is no connection. Instead, the story is about how Bozell and others in the angry, far-right spectrum hate government-funded art.

Bozell's ringmaster role in the Smithsonian witch hunt would be like if the head of Media Matters started writing letters to senators and went on TV demanding the START nuclear treaty be ratified, while all the time lying about the facts in play.

The MRC's attack on the Smithsonian is a misguided one, but at least it helps reveal what the right-wing group is really all about: Hating all things liberal, real or imagined.