Let's hit Hannity again... he's a great dipshit target.
On October 3 an important study was released, analyzing Americans' beliefs about the war in Iraq. Three mistaken impressions were common, and a majority of Americans had at least one of them. They were:
U.S. forces have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
There is clear evidence Saddam Hussein worked closely with the Sept. 11 terrorists.
People abroad either backed the U.S., led war or were fairly evenly split between supporting or opposing it.
According to the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, 60% of Americans believed at least one of these falsehoods. PIPA also correlated these mistaken beliefs with what media outlets they watched. 80% of those who said they relied on Fox News held at least one of these misconceptions, substantially more than from any other media outlet.
See:
http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/new...aq/6918170.htm
Of course, George Bush is primarily responsible for betraying America's trust. But that 80% of Fox News viewers were misinformed while only 47% of newspaper readers and 23% of those who relied on PBS or NPR demonstrates the responsibility is not his entirely.
Sean Hannity, one of Fox's media stars, must take significant responsibility for betraying the Founders' faith that freedom of the press would lead to informed citizens. To a breath taking degree he combines a contempt for the facts with vicious attacks on those with whom he disagrees. For example:
"Forty-eight hours we're sending our men and women in harm's way, and there's the leader of your party [Tom Daschle] in the United States Senate disgracefully attacking our president at a time we're going to war." (May 18, 2003)
"Here we are in a conflict, in a war, and the President is trying to direct things, and they just can't put aside their partisanship for five minutes and support the troops and support the President, and these are the leaders of the Democratic Party." (April 6, 2003)
We take these two quotations from Al Franken's devastating demolition of Hannity in his Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, p. 130.
Patriotism, Hannity style, is an on and off kind of thing. During another time when American troops were in harm's way, he had these words of wisdom to say
"Explain to the mothers and fathers of American servicemen that may come home in body bags why their son or daughter have [sic] to give up their life." (April 6, 1999)
See:
http://www.fair.org/extra/0305/kosovo-doves.html
"They haven't prepared for anything in this. And they're running out of weapons to do it. And frankly, I don't think Clinton has the moral authority or ability to fight this war correctly." (May 10, 1999; Al Franken, Lying Liars, p. 129)
The massacres in Kosovo were not only lethal and ongoing - they were meticulously planned. Thousands of people are alive today because of Clinton's successful intervention.
See:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/12/in...12HAGU.html?th
Hannity is another of the Radical Right chicken hawks who attack people who have served their country in uniform, like Tom Daschle, while themselves carefully avoiding having to wear their country's uniform. Wrapping themselves in the flag seems, for them, an adequate substitute. The English language has a short clear term for people like Hannity: hypocrite.
As any careful reader of this web site will grant, he has lots of company.
Like so many on the Radical Right, Hannity parades his supposed religiosity as evidence of his moral superiority over those he criticizes. But anyone even mildly conversant with Scripture would quickly see the deep contradiction between his hard hearted contempt for the poor and weak, his relentless attacks on the moral failings of those with whom he disagrees and his solicitude for ideological allies like Bob Livingston and Newt Gingrich, who often act even worse than the liberals he attacks. Gingrich has been married twice. He went to his first wife's hospital bed where she was recovering from cancer surgery, to discuss the terms of divorce. Later he dumped his second wife to marry a much younger Congressional aide, with whom he had long had an extramarital affair. Hannity's approval of Gingrich and loud and incessant disapproval of Clinton's far tamer affair with Lewinsky seems just another instance of his hypocrisy.
If Hannity is sincere about his religion, which frankly we doubt perhaps he should meditate on Matthew 25:31-46. But taking those words seriously would alienate himself from his huge salary and the powers of Mammon, which seems really to attract his allegiance.
See:
http://www.therationalradical.com/ta...an-hannity.htm
Seeking a better relationship with Mammon, Hannity is now trying to cash in on the plethora of Right Wing books that have done so much to spread lies and suspicion throughout our country. Hannity's book, Let Freedom Ring is as well researched and accurate as Ann Coulter's work, as careful of truth and integrity as Bill O'Reilly's. In other words, it is a mélange of half truths, misleading statistics, and simple lies. Spinsanity has done a devastating online review, and Al Franken pulverizes it in his Lying Liars.
http://www.deal-with-it.org/clubs/hannity.htm
Lies of the Right-Sided Media
"Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they've made a difference. The Marines don't have that problem." Ronald Reagan 
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