Okay, I realize that from the title I chose you could be expecting virtually anything having to do with Sean Hannity. Anything at all. But, specifically, this post refers to last evening's debut of his new show, Hannity, sans Colmes.
Now, it's true enough that many installments of Hannity & Colmes had little to do with Colmes. Alan's a nice man, I'm sure. But he seemed content to serve as a punching bag for Hannity and his pals. I used to make note of the number of times Alan Colmes' opinions were rudely smacked down by the likes of Rove and Gingrich. But I lost count. So it was with great interest that I tuned into Hannity to see what version of "fair and balanced" he serve up without even the hint of liberalism that Alan Colmes used to be allowed to provide.
It was exactly as the name implied. All Hannity. All right. No fair. No balance.
There's little of interest to report except for one new feature called "Liberal Translation." What happened was that Sean played quotes of people he derogatorily labeled as liberals and then gave his opinion of what he thought they really meant to say. Now to be fair -- he did say these were his opinions. So, per usual Hannity's comments can't be held to any journalistic yardstick. After all, he's not a journalist. He's just a guy with opinions. Well, so am I.
So let's play.
I'll mention a few things that Hannity often says on his shows and tell you what I think he really means.
He often tells his callers that they're great Americans. He doesn't know them. He doesn't know anything about them other than the fact that they have greeted him by saying that he's a great American. So when Sean Hannity says, "You're a great American," I think what he really means is, "You're another one of the sheep who agrees with me."
He often says they he wants Barack Obama to succeed. I believe that what he really means when he says that is, "No, I don't. I want Barack Obama's administration to be a horrible failure."
He describes his daily radio show as a hard hitting broadcast that gives his listeners the most complete and honest accounting of the day's events. I think what he really means is "You'll hear what I want you to hear colored from beginning to end with my own personal radical conservative bias."
Gee this is a fun game, Sean. Let's do some more.
He compliments people like Dick Morris, Ann Coulter, Laura Ingram and their ilk by calling them objective and informed. I think what he really means is that he can't believe people are still falling for any of their acts and hopes his checks continue to clear.
He said that Sarah Palin was "absolutely qualified to be Commander In Chief." What was he really thinking? "If this ditz is ever Commander In Chief I could conceivably run for President myself." And I think even Sean knows that's insane.
You know what? This is too easy. You're all way ahead of me. Sean doesn't tell his audience the truth.
Translation: Sean's a big partisan bag of wind.
Could that be true? I don't really know. But, hey, that's just my opinion. It's what I think I really meant to say.