Wouldn't Know It By Listening to My Radio

My name is Gary, and I'm a liberal.

(Stop looking at me like that's a bad thing.)

So it may seem strange to you what I listen to on the radio in the afternoon: The Sean Hannity Show.

Maybe that should be the vice I'm admitting as step one of this little 12-stepper. I think it's my one guilty pleasure above all others: listening to a guy on the radio whom I personally just can't stand, because in my mind, he has such a wrongheaded P.O.V. If the man leaned any further to the right, he'd fall over, or maybe if he just stays vertically and accelerates to the right, he'd be stuck in the Source Wall or something. (People who aren't fans of Jack Kirby's New Gods, need not apply.) I mean sometimes, very infrequently I'll add, I may share an opinion with the guy. We both knew Jacko was guilty (and yet he got off). And I don't feel all that terrible about John Roberts coming up as Supreme Court nominee.

Truth to tell, so much of the Hannity show is a comedy. How can it not be? In the Wild Wild West of Hannity's America, left is right, right is wrong, black is white, up is down, and George W. Bush is the good guy. Those lefties are just doing everything they can to bring the guy in the white ten-gallon hat down! According to Hannity, we lefties are lunkheads whose sole purpose is to come up with as many nonsensical reasons to hate the right as possible. If we happen to be right, that's a complete accident and can be solved by some creative tinkering. Meanwhile, Hannity hangs out with bigots (Mark Fuhrman), traitors (Ollie North), yes-men, and all manner of pondscum renowned for their "honest, insightful" opinions. In fact, his friends and their transgressions make Bill Clinton, whom he so frequently rips to shreds, look like a God's-honest saint.

Okay, some libs deserve the laughter when they call in, because some are so uninformed I have to laugh. But Hannity even makes fun of the folks who have solid opinions that run counter to his neocon ideology! Bush is a god and should never be questioned because he, Condi, Crummy, and D*ckhead Cheney are just so darn cool? Last I heard, it was every American citizen's God-given right to challenge authority, to speak our minds, to let it be known when we think the country is headed in the wrong direction. We got it spat back in our faces saying to suggest anything of the sort is treason and insults our men and women in uniform. "Attention kids, we're at war, so please, save your insults for the bureaucracy until we're finished." Sometimes the most patriotic thing we can do is voice opposition to what we perceive as injustices. That means, dear conservatives, "Nyah-nyah."

Don't get me started on how far to the right the American government is leaning, so far right that--oh, wait, I already used that analogy. So far right that it makes people like me look all that much further left. Where's the centrism? Gone, and apparently replaced by a whole bunch of Evangelical Christians. Born-Again Hypocrites. Say one thing and smoke another. Start a war, find a reason later. Never apprehend the guilty parties because, well, they finance the good ol' U.S. of A. Put all your cronies in one cabinet and toss the dissenters (Colin Powell, whom I like) out on their keisters. Sorry, charlie--we don't like Condi because she's too close to you, not because she's black! Ditto with Gonzales: ill-qualified, not because he's Latino. Yet, the Republican hype machine continues, reducing all us dissenters into blithering idiots, coining such witticisms as "Kerry Catholics" and "Turban Durbin." Yet, when we play the name game back, we're called on it. You call that fair?

I'm going to stop before my fictitious boss fires my quite real butt. (On that note, kids: soon I will wax philosophic about Remington Steele on DVD!)

In the meantime: links!

http://www.tvnewslies.org/html/sean_hannity.html
http://www.spinsanity.org/columns/20020826.html
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=91585
http://www.hannityisamoron.com/

~G.