"In the spirit of the Fairness Doctrine," Sean Hannity allowed Obama backers a half-hour devoted to gloating calls. Since Hannity and fairness never quite belong in the same sentence, it wasn't a real half hour. Between Hannity's interruptions and rebuttals, plus ads and plugs for his upcoming Freedom Concerts, gloaters may have gotten 10 minutes.
Not that there was much gloating. Most callers seemed more interested in getting the country back together after a long election. Hannity apparently has no such interest. He was rude and combative and weirdly certain that Republicans would be fine if they just went back to being conservatives.
Everyone can take away from the election the lessons they wish. Here is the lesson I took: Voters gave the Hannitys, Becks and Limbaughs of the world a hard slap in the face. They rejected the cheap shots, the grandstanding and the propagandizing and looked at the election with clear and open eyes. This election gave the worst of the talk show world their worst of all possible worlds: A Republican they didn't like, a Democrat they liked even less, and a result they liked least of all.
So will Hannity learn and grow? Hint: On Friday's show, he led with the g______ America quote from Jeremiah Wright.
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7 comments:
I honestly believe those guys did more to harm John Mc Cain than the poor economy. What a bunch of idiots. I can't imagine that anyone listens to them on purpose. Oh, and I am a conservative. I believe one can be conservative and still be sensible, sensitive, and polite.
Anonymous 611,
I think you may be right. Hannity keeps worrying that Democrats will try to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine, but why should they? Hannity is doing their work.
Maybe we should just allow politicians to sue for libel and slander by innuendo, even if they are public figures.
David Crisp bangs on the Hannity drum to an annoyingly redundant degree, yet, oddly, never mentions the bias and vitriol spewed daily by Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and other key members of Team Obama, Big-Time News Division.
While certain complaints about Hannity are spot-on, the fact remains that those on the left who are at least as far over the line as Hannity, are left untouched. If that's supposed to pass for clear objective news analysis, don't bother.
Jay,
Let me straighten this out once more: My weekly update is drawn from radio because I listen to talk radio all day Thursday while I am delivering copies of the Outpost all over town for a dozen hours.
I hardly ever watch Chris Matthews and really have no idea what sort of "bias and vitriol" he spews. I have been watching Olbermann occasionally since he seems to get mentioned here a lot, and I have been trying to watch Rachel Maddow some because I've heard a lot about her. Both seem to me to be several notches above Hannity, but unless they are on the radio, you won't read much about them here.
My basic Thursday lineup:
-- NPR news from 7-9 p.m.
-- Dave Rye on KBLG (with occasional diversions to the lamentable Dennis Miller) from 9-10 a.m.
-- Bill O'Reilly from 10 a.m. to 10:10 a.m. and from 11:45 a.m. to noon (the big gap is for German class).
-- NPR noon news.
-- "To the Point" on NPR from 1-2 p.m.
-- Hannity from 2-4 p.m. or as long as I can stand it.
-- Glenn Beck at 4 p.m. for as long as I can stand it (usually 15 minutes or so).
-- Then jazz and NPR news until I teach my night journalism class.
Hannity has been doing TV ads for KFYI radio here in the Phoenix area, and they've all been of the nagging, sore loser variety. I didn't care much for him to begin with, but I really can't stand the SOB now.
What these guys can't seem to figure out is that the voters aren't really interested in the snake oil they've been selling. The national mood is neither left or right but in the center -- right there with Jim Hightower's dead armadillos, I suppose. Had Bush and his cronies showed any competence at all, Big John probably would be measuring the drapes for the Oval Office right now (and remember, I am a registered Democrat).
I started watching both Olbermann and Maddow during the election. Both are liberal and biased, the anti-FOX. Some have taken this to mean that NBC is a liberal outlet, but MSNBC is just exploiting a market niche.
Olbermann gets ranty, but seems to have toned down a bit since Ben Affleck pilloried him on SNL (that was masterful).
Maddow is very liberal, but chatty and friendly. She has trouble landing conservative guests since she undressed a McCain spokesman (she's a Phd from Oxford and very brainy in addition to her other positive attributes). I wish her much success but fear she will tumble in the ratings now that the election is over.
MSNBC is definitely biased. They don't pretend otehrwise.
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