Salon plums depths of dark side

Salon.com has never made any secret about its political agenda.

Here's what the online magazine says about itself: "Founded in 1995, Salon is the leading progressive news site, combining award-winning commentary and reporting on the most important issues of the day."

This is not a "news" site, as many of its unsuspecting readers may think. It is one of those many Internet content sites created because its founders and deep-pocket investors believed what we euphemistically call "the mainstream media" is not "progressive enough" – read socialist, anti-American, evil arm-chair warriors for cultural revolution.

But I just noticed something about Salon that suggests the e-mag has completely given itself over the dark side without pretense. And, as today is Friday the 13th, it seems an appropriate time to bring it to your attention.

Salon is shamelessly – even proudly – republishing content from the Southern Poverty Law Center, a racketeering scam rejected by even decent progressives with a conscience.

I only noticed this development because one of those articles is about me – one of SPLC's favorite targets of demonization.

Right there above the article, an editor's note from Salon explains: "Salon is proud to feature content from the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit civil rights organization dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry, and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of society."

That, of course, is one of the most generous descriptions of an organization that actually promotes hate and bigotry – and does so while raking in hundreds of millions of dollars in the process through lawsuits, shakedowns and direct-mail scare tactics. It should more appropriately be named the Southern Poverty Lie Center – if only it had anything to do with the south and poverty. Not only is the SPLC nasty, brutish, extremist and anti-American, but it's also one of the biggest con games around – an anti-capitalist moneymaking machine.

To give you just one example of what I mean, five years ago, Stephen Bright, one of those civil rights activists and progressives with a conscience, was invited to an event honoring SPLC's director, Morris Dees.

Bright politely declined the invitation, stating: "Morris Dees is a con man and fraud, as I and others, such as U.S. Circuit Judge Cecil Poole, have observed and as has been documented by John Egerton, Harper's, the Montgomery Advertiser in its 'Charity of Riches' series, and others. The positive contributions Dees has made to justice – most undertaken based upon calculations as to their publicity and fundraising potential – are far overshadowed by what Harper's described as his 'flagrantly misleading' solicitations for money. He has raised millions upon millions of dollars with various schemes, never mentioning that he does not need the money because he has $175 million and two 'poverty palace' buildings in Montgomery. He has taken advantage of naive, well-meaning people – some of moderate or low incomes – who believe his pitches and give to his $175-million operation. He has spent most of what they have sent him to raise still more millions, pay high salaries and promote himself. Because he spends so much on fundraising, his operation spends $30 million a year to accomplish less than what many other organizations accomplish on shoestring budgets."

But there is Salon magazine not only giving credibility to SPLC, but holding it up as an honest broker of news!

The group's stock-in-trade is raising hundreds of millions of dollars through fanning the flames of phantom threats posed almost exclusively by those who love America and its Constitution. It also files lots of lawsuits, sometimes even on behalf of real victims of racism, and pockets most of the money raised through heart-wrenching direct-mail pitches.

The most famous example was a judgment SPLC won for a black woman whose son was killed by the Ku Klux Klan. While Dees and company raised $9 million sending out solicitation letters featuring a gruesome picture of the victim, the mom received a total of $51,875 in the settlement. Dees pays himself more than $280,000 a year from the "charity."

I think Reason writer Jesse Walker may have said it best when he wrote: "The Southern Poverty Law Center … would paint a box of Wheaties as an extremist threat if it thought that would help it raise funds."

And now Salon has joined itself to this corrupt and dark entity.