Sanitize Your Mind

A Scathing Rant about Sean Hannity

By: Marcus Phillips

 

Let me Sanitize your mind a bit...

It is a wonder that we, as a country, continue to be. In the aftermath of the 2004 election, the fallout has cleared and the smoke is disappating. We have a new leader. It just happens to be the leader we already had.

During the last stretches, I had the singular displeasure of having to listen to Sean Hannity on the radio. My town being as small as it is, we have only the one talk radio station, and I being a Postal Contractor means I had little choice in what I listened to while doing my daily rounds.

It is not so much that I disagree with the political views and opinions as presented on his show as much as I care about the hypocrisy and extreme propogandizing. O'Reilly, who is also on the Republican front, is far less often offensive to my own sensibilities than Sean Hannity is.

Not innocent, just less offensive.

You see, I am a classically trained theologian and socratic. I was taught to ask questions about everything I hear, and to doubt even the most flamboyant and fanatical claims of truth-telling. As such, it is direct anathema to me to hear someone who quite clearly lacks any sense of objectivity about their allegiances or words.

Yet Hannity has one of the largest public radio shows on the air. It is no surprise, through his behavior he appears to appeal to the passionate inner workings of many republicans, doing so through staunch rhetoric and repetition of doctrine and dogma (which changes depending on what happened that week in the news).

The danger in this is it energizes the Right. Why is that bad? If you're a republican, you might come to his defense and decry the wicked souls that would condemn his behavior. How does his drum-beating and war-crying benefit you? Even when he is polite, he is condescending and arrogant. There is little humility in the man.

So why is it bad? When we are not able to understand the people we live amongst, be it a single individual or the city we call home, and when it is discouraged to even attempt at some level of tolerance... how can you call that good? It is bad when people look down upon others for whatever reason... be it out of pity or self-righteousness. As such, Hannity has procured both in the defense of the righteous cause of the re-election of President Bush.

Which may or may not be a bad thing in itself, but when you have friends like these, who needs enemies? The democrats are no less guilty of the shield-smacking and howling at the moon. We moderates have learned to keep our heads down during the cross-fire, but perhaps we should be trying to smack our proverbial brethren back to their senses.

However, I digress. Sean Hannity took it upon himself to condemn Tereza Heinz-Kerry for her language and treatment of press officials. The Hypocrisy of that is when he has guests on which he calls "Completely out of touch with reality" and "conspiracy theorists" and announces all of this without the person to defend such accusations. Not that it matters, as soon as the person starts discussing their point of view, he shuts them down and implies that his perceptions are actually the reality of the situation and that they must obviously be just wrong or insane.

Can you not see how insulting this can be, regardless who is doing it? I would condemn any other person doing such to me, I find it pedantic and loathesome.

Which of course brings me to another issue. It's obvious all of his calls are screened, which may or may not be normal on radio today (on that I am not sure). But what I cannot get over is how often people give Sean Hannity rim-jobs to his ego. Yes, Hannity's public love to lick his shit-hole, they spew forth the same rhetoric and repetition that their "Great American" spouts off. I swear, if I had a radio show I could not stand the amount of sugar enemas that Sean Hannity gets on a daily basis.

And to top off the candy-coated fanatical propogandizing, when he does have Democrats on they fall into one of three categories;

1) Intelligence bordering somewhere between mold and slime.

2) In the "Betrayers" camp, people who break party lines to agree vehemently with Hannity.

3) Intelligent people who are attacked in a Sophist manner, if they don't have documents of proof sitting on their desk, they obviously must be full of crap. Hannity makes a SOPHIST argument, which is "If you cannot prove me wrong, that means I'm right."

A note on number two; If they do disagree with Hannity on any major point, he pretends to be the congenial dolt who is still quite aloof and somehow privvy to secret information or just trapped in his own little world of self-styled freedom and victory.

Sean Hannity also believes that, regardless of how we screw the world we should not care in the least what they think. Yes, the world comes to us for many solutions to problems they could probably handle on their own (And God knows, they SHOULD be handling them on their own). Yes, there are certainly many countries that do NOT like us and wish us only to come to harm, preferably by their hands. Should we be increasing the latter with our arrogant behavior?

What? War on Iraq/Afghanistan? No, I don't care about either of them. You commit to an act, follow through with it. You start a job, finish it. You don't do anything half-assed. That doesn't mean we're liked.

Why should we be liked? Well, I don't know... with the inevitable march of progress forwards and the proliferation of nuclear power and weapons, perhaps we should be nice if we do not want Detroit or any other major city to wake up DEAD.

There is a good reason that America has such a negative view in other countries. It is the blaisse superiority we toss around like wads of used toilet paper, wondering why everyone doesn't think we are the greatest thing since the wheel. We act like the world should respect us, like a snotty little teenager who just turned eighteen; "I'm an adult! You treat me with respect, dammit!"

I have a certain love of slapping children like that and saying, "You don't deserve what you never earned."

Respect is an uphill battle, it isn't WON however. It is ongoing and unyielding. So what, we bailed millions out during the World Wars. SO THE HELL WHAT? That was over fifty years ago now. The world doesn't OWE us anything. They should not be GRATEFUL, they should not be RESPECTFUL, they shouldn't be FEARFUL.

But that last one is what they are. History tends to repeat itself... and with the Reich screaming so loudly through the AM air waves across the sea, I'd get shivers if I were them too. Gladly they don't have to listen.

We didn't have to listen during WWI or WWII, but it was in our best interest that we not ignore what was going on in the world. Do we expect other countries to ignore us? "Just look over there, chum, while I shoot this a-rab. Next Ahm gunna kill me some injuns and mebbe some of those Chinks, there's plenty of them ta shoot."

Lastly....

*Sighs*

Lastly. Don't you people understand? Hannity, don't you GET what is going ON? Realize something; the ideals that America is founded upon, the ideas that we hold dear and special in our hearts... they do not BELONG to us.

They do not even belong to the U.S.A.

If you believe in the Constitution, if you believe for what our forefathers died for; what brothers killed brothers for; what thousands upon thousands of troops have thrown themselves into the rain of bullets for-

Understand something. All men are created equal... all men have inaliable rights. That means the terrorists deserve a right to trial too. That means terrorists, who want nothing but to kill us, deserve our rights and liberties because they are not OURS. They are the people's, by the people, for the people... and the people are not Us. It's every body. Every single individual life. Just because they want only to commit malice against our lives and way of life is no reason to deny them everything we stand for... it is every reason to cling to those things we hold most dear, because once we start on that road... there is no going back.

Now suck on that for a while.