Hannity and Hypocrisy

I listened to the �Sean Hannity Show� on my way home from school today. I do these things to myself not because I love listening to Sean Hannity's divine whining (he is my favorite news anchor by the way), but to get an idea and understand the other side of the political aisle. On most days when I subject myself to this audio torture, I might laugh or just shake my head. However, today was different.

            Just to add to my suffering, Hannity decided to interview Newt Gingrich while I was listening because Gingrich is definitely somebody with a sound moral compass and deserves a platform. Anyways, the interview basically devolved into a pulpit for Newt Gingrich to defend the embattled Republican running for Congress in Alabama, Roy Moore. Moore has recently been accused of sexual harassment by five women. A former staffer for Moore also vouched for the women. I�m not going to go into the contents of those accusations, I am merely here to address the response and the hypocrisy surrounding the situation.

            Gingrich started off by spreading doubt about the credibility of the women coming forward and the Washington Post who first broke the story about the accusations. He criticized GOP leaders like Mitch McConnell for believing the �funky Washington Post and immediately rushing to judgement.� Just to be clear, Newt Gingrich just disavowed the Washington Post. It�s not like these accusations came from some random radio talk show host. It came from one of the most credible and commonly sourced publications in the world.

            Speaking of random radio talk show hosts, I believe there were accusations of murder that came from a radio talk show host just last year. Alex Jones (another one of my favorites) pedaled the conspiracy theory that Hillary Clinton�s campaign coordinated to assassinate a young DNC staffer in 2016. Like a dog who senses the presence of a squirrel, Hannity darted after the story and proceeded to bark about it for weeks on his nightly show on Fox News and his radio show.

            Now, something does not seem right. If Hannity treated this case with the same caution and gave Clinton the benefit of the doubt like he did with Moore, he should have reacted differently. According to Hannity, we should let the person being accused defend themselves before jumping to conclusions. That did not happen here. He only stopped talking about the DNC staffer conspiracy because it started to become obvious that it was completely untrue and the family of the victim pleaded for the media to stop politicizing his death.

            Once again, Sean Hannity acted hypocritically because it was politically convenient to do so. As I listened to Newt Gingrich vent about how angry he was at Republicans and the media for trying to sabotage the Moore campaign accompanied by the occasional �Yeah� from Hannity, I grew a bit angry myself. So much so that I�m writing a blog about it when I should be doing my homework.

            And while Sean Hannity is a very visible example of a person who is selectively outraged by political happenings, there is a very large group of people in our country who are the same way. This group of people extends across the political spectrum. There are people who are completely hooked on the Hillary email scandal and ignore the Trump-Russia collusion scandal and vice-versa. There were people who were outraged at Bill Clinton during the Lewinsky scandal but not at Newt Gingrich who had an affair while his wife battled cancer. It�s also important to note that Gingrich was one of the more vocal critics of Clinton while he was having an affair of his own. Karma did eventually come around and Gingrich�s disloyalty was revealed to the country.

            While we are on the subject of Sean Hannity (a person who I have repeatedly and joyously discussed on this blog), I thought I would end this article with some jokes about him.

1.     Hannity recently predicted that 98% of people who watch his new movie, Let There be Light, will cry afterwards. The reason for this crying is of course because they must have realized that they just sat through a movie produced by Sean Hannity.

2.     While Hannity often talks tough about going to war, his critics have often noted that he has no military service experience at all. These critics must have forgotten Hannity�s sacrifice and bravery during the War on Christmas.

3.     During his time on Earth, Jesus healed the sick, the blind, and the lame. But when he came across Sean Hannity he exclaimed, �Sorry. I�m afraid that�s a preexisting condition!�

4.     Hannity has said that he is both a journalist and not a journalist. Similarly, his crew has said that he is both unqualified and not qualified for his job.

5.    Hannity once said, �My father hit me with a belt. I turned out ok.� Immediately, fathers across the country stopped hitting their sons with a belt in a desperate attempt to prevent the creation of another Sean Hannity.

That�s all for today.