Sean Hannity

[Xenu]

The following is written in response to viewing the clip at:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/02/21.html#a7244

Sean Hannity is my new least-favorite pundit.

A quick explanation is in order. Most left-of-center people enjoy heaping tons of scorn on Bill O'Reilly, who I guess is the reigning bogeyman of the Fox News punditry corps. While I don't particularly like O'Reilly, and have found myself enraged on more than one occasion while watching his show, he's never struck me as being that egregious. Yes, he's self-aggrandizing; yes, he has an inflated opinion of himself; yes, his crusades (France, Pepsi, anti-anti-Christmas, "far left smear sites") are laughable and bizarre in their foci and intensity. But I've found myself agreeing with him more than once, and he has an odd tendency to humanize himself just when you wish he wouldn't, as when he seems perfectly OK with Colbert's parody of him (and indeed feigns outrage about it on the Daily Show). He's basically a curmudgeon. This dissonance makes me wonder whether his "persona" is in fact just a cleverly crafted, company-man "front." I dislike O'Reilly, and dislike what he does, but I don't find him as obnoxious as...


...Sean Hannity. I've seen an uncomfortably large number of episode of Hannity and Colmes, and never once has Sean seemed like anything but a rude, smug, sermonizing lout. Never. More astounding, his tactics never change; he's fond of the ambush, the distraction, the question-with-question and attack-the-attacker. He'd make an excellent Scientologist.

Sean demonstrates all of these traits in the clip C&L spotlights above. The basic summary is as follows: Ann Coulter (yay!) is the in-studio guest, while Huffington* is the guest FROM THE FUTURE.

(I know it's fashionable, by the way, for those on the left to say that Ann is spacey, or that she seems kind of gaunt, or that she has a disturbing laugh...but wow. She really does not look good in this clip, and her odd little schoolgirl mannerisms are really off putting. Her "retort"--which I'll get to in a second--seems weirdly "prepared," and she recites it in an odd cadence that makes it sound like she memorized it by rote)

The conversation is, ostensibly, about the recent Cheney press fiasco that I'm sure you've all heard about once or twice. It doesn't take long, though, before Hannity hijacks the segment by reading something Alec Baldwin apparently posted on Huffington Post and asking the dame in question whether she's "proud of this." Now, I saw Hannity do the EXACT SAME GODDAMN THING to a cartoonist in a clip a few weeks back. He keeps harping. "LOONY LEFT." "Fringe!" "Far left hijacked by CRAZIES like Al Gore, Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi." While he's doing this, he's shooting little conspiratorial glances towards Ann, who's nodding rhythmically.

Huffington attempts to point out the bizarre hypocrisy Hannity evidences by acting so sensitive while sitting next to Ann Coulter, of all people (oddly, she doesn't bring up the recent "raghead" comment). Coulter eagerly announces that she has "evidence" that Democrats love Al Quaeda and terrorists and so forth, and she proceeds to cite a sentence from the New York Times editorial Op-Ed page (I shit you not) as her "evidence."

All through this, Hannity is smug, smug, smug. His segues into outrage suck; he's got the attitude down, but doesn't actually have the righteous fury to pull off his condemnations. He smugly congratulates Coulter on her poor-even-for-her joke about Democrats and knowledge of hunting (umm, Ann, you were raised in New Canaan and apparently now live in Florida. Quit pretending you've ever seen a wild animal). "HOW DARE YOU?" "FRINGE LEFT." Etc.

Has anybody ever seen Hannity act in even a somewhat redeeming fashion?


*Huffington holds her own in this clip, but my feelings about her are decidedly mixed. I have a nagging feeling that she's so good at confrontations like this because she's just as good at the prerequisite skeelz: question dodging, attack the attacker, etc. I knew a bit about her prior, right-wing incarnation, and figured that she must have had some sort of change of heart. After having read Peter McWilliams' astonishing Life 102: What To Do When Your Guru Sues You--which devotes an entire chapter to Arianna's affiliation with John-Roger's MSIA cult--I feel even less comfortable with her, as intelligent and as "on my side" as she might be.

[lukpac]

I think that gave me a headache.

[lukpac]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-h ... 16109.html

[Bennett Cerf]

The basic difference between O'Reilly and Hannity is that the former is fucking nuts and the latter is a fucking asshole.

[Xenu]

I don't want to think about "Coulter crack."

[krabapple]

Huffington should just have said something like , 'If Baldwin's got you clowns ranting like this, he must be doing something right."

[MK]

I remember when someone, I think a priest, was on O'Reilly's attacking gays who adopt kids. The idea was gay parents shouldn't be allowed to raise children, but O'Reilly wasn't having ANY of that. I think the guy was surprised to find O'Reilly shutting him down instead of backing him up. I sure was surprised.

[Rspaight]

O'Reilly's many things, but a reliable neocon mouthpiece isn't one of them.

Ryan

[lukpac]

http://mediamatters.org/items/200603130004

GINGRICH: -- how -- how many times you are going to want to go at this, but I concede this was a mistake. I -- you know, I feel very strongly this was a mistake. I'm glad it's now over.

HANNITY: Mr. Speaker, hang on one -- right there one second. And -- and, actually, we are not Kool-Aid drinkers, like some of the Clinton supporters that defended the indefensible, which is interesting.

Check out the link for various instances of Hannity drinking the Flavor Aid.

[lukpac]

Heh.

You must certainly understand the "formula". When Bush appears to be in some kind of compromising position - ATTACK CLINTON!

Find some tenous link! Reach for some ridiculous parallel. Create some grade school analogy! Deflect reality. Then ATTACK CLINTON!

Mr. Hannity's makes full use of that "formula" quite skillfully. Thusly, there is never a negative Bush Administration development that Hannity can't diminish without proclaiming Bill Clinton was worse at it!

[Xenu]

The indefensible?

Oh wow.