The Way I See It @ The Sounding Board

Sean Hannity's Unscheduled Brain Surgery?
Recently, while I was listening to the Sean Hannity radio show,
an event occurred that, while fairly commonplace, was handled
by Mr. Hannity in a manner that I had been hoping to see for quite
some time. Sean had been recently excoriated in the magazine
�Entertainment Weekly� for not being quite as intellectual as some
may like in a radio and television host. The quote, from an article
written by one Jim Mullen, was:

�Greta van Susteren has the bags under her eyes removed
and everyone's talking about it. Sean Hannity has his brain
removed and no one says a word.�

Obviously, a remark such as this greatly upset Mr. Hannity, al-
though he tried to take it in the sense of humor that it was (hope-
fully) meant. Wanting to face his accuser mono e mono, he then
went as far as having the writer as a call in guest on his nationally
broadcast �Sean Hannity Show.� Mr. Mullen seemed to have
some sort of personal gripe with Sean, who tried as best he could
to maintain an air of politeness and decorum. The basis of his ob-
vious angst became clear, however, when the writer admitted that
he was a liberal, whereas Mr. Hannity is a well-known conservative. Having impugned his intelligence, Sean then asked the gentleman if he could do something as basic as recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Mr. Mullen responded that he did not think that that would serve any purpose, and then retorted that Sean could probably not answer a question about a recent movie. Sean accepted Mr. Mullen�s challenge, answered the gentleman�s question, and then pressed him again to recite the Pledge. The clearly quite �intellectual� and well educated Mr. Mullen hemmed and hawed until, at last, he admitted to not knowing the Pledge of Allegiance. Later in the show, Mr. Hannity stated that his daughter, who happens to be the wizened old age of three, can easily recite the Pledge (as can my daughter, age four). However, he did not go so far as to ask the all-important follow-up question, �How is it that an imminently intellectual, modern university educated, world renown journalist such as Mr. Mullen (a legend), could possibly fail to know something that a great number of toddlers know?�

Of course, later in the show when Mr. Hannity declared that he planned on using the call as material for the �Hannity and Colmes� television show, we listeners were all subjected to the loud protestations of his notoriously liberal producer, Flipper. Was her objection rooted in some sort of logic about how the Pledge was an archaic form of ritual, and that no thinking individual should be judged on his or her abilities to pull such trivial knowledge out at the whim of a radio talk show host? Not exactly. The crux of her complaint was that such a public showing of his ignorance would unduly embarrass Mr. Mullen. Moreover, the fact that he is apparently not qualified to lead a group of 1st graders in reciting the Pledge, much less subject us to the spewing of his quasi-enlightened pap in �Entertainment Weekly� may cause him to lose his job. Excuse me a moment whilst I shed a single tear for Mr. Mullen. OK, that�s done.

Perhaps the thought never crossed the mind of Mr. Hannity's call screener, but it just may be that if a person that makes a great show of insinuating thae intellectual merits of someone in a nationally distributed magazine is subsequently show to be an ignorant bafoon that he may not quite qualify for a position at "Entertainment Weekly". What am I complaining about, though? This is the kind of treatment that conservatives have been getting in the media for decades now. Ever since Ronald Reagan was elected, we have been subject to the argument that the only reason that we believe the things that we do as conservatives is that we are simply a bunch of hayseeds. We�ve heard that we just aren�t �enlightened� or �cosmopolitan� enough, and that if we could just take the time to pull our collective heads out of the sand (or some similar dark place), we would readily see the wisdom behind such wonderful ideas as homosexual adoption, at-will condom distribution to minors in school, and partial birth abortion. Of course, the same people that accused Reagan of being a rube and someone who could very likely cause a nuclear war with all his �evil empire� talk to the Soviets were very happy with the idea of a cosmopolitan Ronald Reagan when he was a registered and publicly elected Democrat. The fact that Bill Clinton more than adequately fitted the mold they tried to force Reagan into is also of no concern to these people. George Bush should take it as a compliment that these self-effacing media figures are trying their best to paint him with the same brush as Mr. Reagan, and just as unsuccessfully. If Mr. Mullen is any indication of the heights (or depths) of their current knowledge, they will be lucky if they can find their way back from thebathroom, much less a political solution to defeating what is good and right with this country (and its leadership) today.