Make no mistake about it; I am a Sean Hannity fan. Not only do I agree philosophically with him, I also know that Sean does a lot of good work on the side, for example, raising funds for our wounded soldiers and Marines. Having said that, I have to be critical of his new Fox show, "Hannity", re-structured after the departure of his liberal co-host, Alan Colmes.
First of all, Hannity's show is very one-sided, notwithstanding the appearances of folks like Bob Beckel, who offer some measure of debate. The new version of the show only gives Fox opponents more ammunition to deride Fox's claim of "fair and balanced" coverage. (I always have considered Fox to be more fair and balanced than the others, but still leaning conservative.) As it stands now, Hannity's show is more similar to the shows of Keith Olbermann or Rachel Maddow on MSNBC (which are completely one-sided-no debate-no opposing voices).
Tonight, Bernie Goldberg chastised Hannity on his show for his attempt to find criticism in President Obama's handling of the pirate incident. Goldberg pointed out that had Obama made an ill-advised comment during the standoff and the ship captain had been harmed, Hannity would have led the charge to condemn the President. Goldberg's point was that conservatives can only lose credibility if they refuse to give any praise whatsoever to Obama no matter what he does. I have to agree with that assessment.
Undoubtedly, there will be plenty of opportunities to find fault with Obama's handling of foreign policy if he stumbles. It may be entirely possible that the people in the White House behaved like politicians once the naval rescue operation proved successful. The fact remains, however, that the president, whomever he/she may be, gets credit as Commander-in-Chief when a military operation is a success. Let's acknowledge the success here and hope that it will inspire the president to organize an international operation to clean up this pirate mess once and for all. It doesn't seem that complicated. It just requires a little will and ruthlessness.
C'mon, Sean. Bring back Colmes.
4 comments:
Honestly, I think that Hannity is like a cartoon character. I bet if I lined up a bunch of quotes from him and Stephen Colbert, you couldn't tell them apart.
Of course he'd have something bad to say no matter what. Obama could have personally taken down all of those pirates with nothing but a canoe and a rubber band, and Hannity would find some way to spin it into a negative.
I'm guessing that you probably never caught the episode of Colbert's show shortly after Colmes left. The show was temporarily entitled Colbert and Colmes until the end of the show when Colbert fired him. Funny stuff.
Having a token liberal on the show was nothing but a facade, and at least the show is being more upfront about its bias now. Here's how this works:
you have Sean Hannity, this very clean-cut, all-American-looking man, the conservative.
then there's Alan Colmes, this weinie, pencil-neck-geek-looking guy, the liberal.
That's the whole point. Colmes was nothing but a shill. A punching bag for Hannity, to give some sort of semblance of "fairness" and "balance" to the show. Believe me, if Hannity gets a replacement co-host, I can almost guarantee you that it will be another nerd, to contrast with with Hannity the quarterback.
Lance,
Sounds like a conspiracy theory.
That was me, not Lance. It's not a conspiracy theory. TV producers know what they're doing and they know how to project a certain image to their viewers.
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