There are a number of so-called commentators who are paid enormous sums to distort the truth on Fox News Channel in order to persuade poor and middle class people to vote against their own best interests. Sean Hannity is perhaps foremost among those.
If you tell a sophisticated New Yorker that Sean Hannity is basically from Hempstead, Long Island…they will say “…aha. Ok, that explains it then.” That is where he is from. He has no particular credentials…which means nothing. If a Nobel Laureate had done the exact same thing as another Laureate, but with no education, he or she would not only be considered a superior scientist, but probably a genius.
We will make the opposite claim, however, for Sean Hannity. His genius shows only in his ability to wring a substantial paycheck from a willing and near-criminal broadcasting company who wish to support a plutocracy and disband a largely ignorant American middle class. Hannity finally grew himself out of Long Island mediocrity and self-loathing by lying his way to the top of the business. He is as good as it gets at persuading the great unwashed that facts are meaningless.
So why is he a moron or worse? He is a moron because he pretends to be a believing Catholic. He pretends to believe that he will go to Heaven if he’s good and go to Hell if he’s bad. He is a moron because every time he takes a paycheck he looks at it and knows that, either he simply lies to himself that he is doing good, or he knows he is hurting millions of people but takes the money anyway. Hannity knows he’s going to hell.
He propped up the Bush Presidency which killed hundreds of thousands. He tries desperately to damage the legislation of the Obama Administration that is designed to help people after 8 years of a Bush Administration trying to destroy them.
While 500,000 Americans were annually going broke…literally…bankrupted by health insurance costs, Hannity lied about the health insurance industry. He promoted the Bush tax cuts that massively enriched the top one-half of one percent of our country, but literally stole the money from the Treasury, which got it from China. The Bush drain on the Treasury for war and for shifts of revenue to the rich have caused a potential breakdown in Medicare and Social Security, where money should have gone. Not to Afghan tribesmen and Iraqi oil interests.
The Catholic Church, to which Hannity says he belongs, teaches the words of Jesus of Nazareth. If so, they would have to condemn Hannity as evil. Like dictators and their henchmen the propagandists, he hurts enormous numbers of people and persuades others, with lies, that they should hurt themselves. You don’t get into Heaven by supporting murder and devastation for money.
At this point, we should stop and say that you can read Hannity’s positions on things. He has written two books. The first was titled “Let Freedom Ring.” That book can now be purchased at Amazon.com starting, literally, for $.01. His other book, “Deliver Us from Evil” is also at Amazon.com, but more expensive. It sells for the grand price of $.02. Needless to say, Sean Hannity’s audiences are not readers. They are, of course, haters…as many non-readers are.
But don’t feel bad for Sean Hannity. He does not care whether he is accepted as an author or even a communicator. It is clear that Sean Hannity college dropout, radio vagabond, has finally found his home, shilling for the super-rich. He makes about $5 million a year, tossing up straw men, creating false dilemmas, warning us about the slippery slope of some Liberal legislation designed to make our lives better. He is syndicated by Premiere Radio which is some kind of derivative (radio is more obscure and transitory than a Baltic government) of Clear Channel, the Texas-based oil industry hack-radio network that took control of over 1200 radio stations at one point. Because radio is programmed from one location to, for example, over 240 stations on the Citadel Network, radio is sold as merely mass coverage. Consequently, the owners, being arch-conservatives, can program just about anything they want. And what they want is pretty simple: no taxes, no affirmative action, no immigration, more military domination around the world, no non-profit private health care, no social security or Medicare, no American middle class, no restrictions on hiring and no work rules. No welfare. No Medicaid. No bail outs or assistance for those cheated and taken into bankruptcy or foreclosure.
These are all things Hannity, a member of the Neoconservative Party, promotes. He is the farthest thing from a populist and the closest thing we have to a totalitarian propagandist. He makes his living from people who want to turn this country into a tin-pot Latin American dictatorship.
There’s a lot of evidence of what he believes…in his own words. Unless he wants to attack himself and call himself a liar, he can’t deny it.
Long after Americans knew that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, he said (about Saddam Hussein): “He had weapons of mass destruction. He promised to disclose them. And he didn’t do it.” Of course, the fact is that Saddam didn’t disclose them because as Bush and Cheney knew he didn’t have any. Hannity, being a good little soldier for them, continued to lie about it.
Hannity claimed 18 times in various interviews that President Bush inherited a recession from President Clinton. The Clinton era, even with all the Republican obstruction—they voted 100% against health care, taxes on the very wealthy, and a balanced budget—was the most prosperous succession of months and years in our country’s history. Eight straight years during which the lower classes also made their greatest financial gains in history and more African-Americans were raised into the middle class than ever before. Eight years which saw the budget deficits eliminated. We had government income surpluses and actually began to write down the national debt.
The fact is that the first Bush recession began on March 1, 2001, according to all accounts from most of those economists who do not work for the Republicans. So it began…began…two months after Bush took office. The Bureau of Economic Research made the definitive determination and President Bush has also said that himself on several occasions. But Hannity made up his own lie and repeated it 18 times on television and radio to tens of millions of people who believed him.
Of course, one of Sean Hannity’s big talking points is his implied morality, but only through “Christianity.” He’s a Catholic, a former seminarian. On the other hand, it is clear that he does not believe in “do unto others as you would have others do unto you” or “love your neighbor as yourself.” He speaks out, for his bosses, against social programs of any kind and against shutting down wars of any kind. In fact, his single important charity seems to be related to war. He helps raise substantial amounts of money for children of soldiers killed in battle.
Hannity has said that: “It doesn’t say anywhere in the Constitution this idea of the separation of church and state.” He would apparently like a state religion, and we can only surmise that the religion would be Roman Catholicism. He is a Roman Catholic.
But the constitution disagrees with Mr. Hannity. The First Amendment says: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” In other words, we’re not going to have a state religion, but you are free to be a Jew or a Muslim or a Christian and no one is going to bother you. Hannity…wrong again.
On his program, Hannity made the comment that disabled people between certain ages get housing free. His guest said no, that is not true and in fact some in public housing pay almost market rates.
Hannity said: “…that is so ridiculous and false that it is hardly even worth spending the time.” Another Hannity lie. People in public housing do pay for it. Sometimes not much. But they do pay. The basic formula is 30% of adjusted gross income. There are deductions for dependents and disabilities but the fact is that everyone pays at least some minimal amount.
During the 2004 election, Hannity said: “If he (Kerry) had his way and the CIA would almost be nonexistent.”
The fact is that Senator John Kerry, a recipient of the Silver Star for valor during his voluntary tour in Viet Nam voted for intelligence funding increases seven straight years during the time in question, with increases in Intelligence funding amounting to 50% by the end of that period.
Sean Hannity’s attacks on social programs for the vast majority of American people, like Medicare, for example, would cost him enormous support if he were sponsored by individual advertisers. But like Glenn Beck, who stays on television, spewing his venom every night on behalf of Rupert Murdoch, despite the fact that 48 advertisers cancelled their advertising with Fox because of his racist and anti-American attacks, Hannity is funded by the networks themselves…arch-conservative, international oil and energy corporation owners who will stop at nothing to break down the middle class.
The middle class and its vote and its layer of modest affluence between the rich and the poor is all that keeps this Democracy together. And the very rich, who used to be people like H.L. Hunt but are now people like the Koch and the Walton families, and the major stockholders of EXXON, who fund the Cato Institute and fund campaigns against the Inheritance tax will do whatever it takes to bring down the middle class.
Sean Hannity is an evil person. Apparently his one good deed is a charity to make it easier for families where the main family earner is deceased. But then, only if that deceased parent was killed in battle. In other words, you go to war for any whim of a President like Bush, and since you cannot take advantage of the G.I. Bill if you’re dead, we will help your son or daughter…until we get tired of doing these fund raisers. Then you’re on your own.
Some of the people in that charity are believable. Colonel Ollie North is a militant, Marine (there are no ex-Marines) and a royal pain in the ass. But he fought and saw his men die in battle. He lived a life, for good or ill, for his country. And he is patriotic, and was, long before there was a pair of cowardly jerks, Bush and Cheney, the twin draft dodgers, running this country. But Hannity is an opportunist, using this charity to pretend to do at least one good thing. He’s not fooling anyone.
Hannity has been either stupid or a liar…no other choices…on so many issues of importance. He claimed that drilling in ANWAR would generate 750,000 jobs when the most over-the-top estimates were, in fact, 160,000 jobs. He claimed that President Reagan wanted to spend 25% less than Congress actually spent during his presidency. It turned out to be less than 2.7%. Hannity claimed over and over again that President Obama had not released information about his birth certificate long after the Washington Post and the New York Times and some Republican Congressmen had actually gone to Hawaii to see it and after it had been published on line in Snopes among other places. Authoritative sources would come on and say that, no, it has been checked and the allegations refuted, and Hannity would simply say…no they haven’t. No evidence. Again, only two options: he’s stupid or a liar.
Hannity has made his very substantial income as a liar. He knows what he says is not true but he says it anyway. And the bad news is that Hannity, no matter how bad, is not the worst of the Right Wing Propagandists.
