Hannity's Lame-Ass Damage Control

So I’m totally bored while driving home last night and I switch on Hannity for a few laughs. The topic is the impending indictments in the Valerie Plame case and the spin is this: Patrick Fitzgerald, the investigator in the case, is a QUESTIONABLE CHARACTER.

Immediately, we should realize that this is a tip-off that the neocons are so unable to defend the investigatee’s that they can only resort to attacking the investigator.

Hannity is in rare form on this. He’s got no solid material to work with, so his delivery comes across about as weak as a sweater woven out of cotton candy. But the lame-ass right-wing tactics are in full bloom. First, he delivers a convoluted, incomprehensible litany of past exploits that he only indirectly attributes to Fitzgerald, and tries to make them sound shady. These involve alleged pressuring of suspects to testify against other suspects in return for plea deals, “creative interpretation” of law to force indictments and other various and sundry acts, none of which, by the way, I could identify as being illegal, unethical or non-typical for the profession.

Then he says – “I don’t know what to make of this, really. I’m just mentioning it, because I think the people should know.”

Human beings with IQ’s above 10 should really be offended by manipulative weasel statements like that. I call them “Fox Trots”, because they are used day in and day out on right wing talk radio/TV. Another one is the insidious – “Some people say….” followed by a totally unsupported allegation against the enemy of the day. “Some people say that Hillary Clinton is actually a lesbian abortionist with ties to Al Qaeda. Is that something the voters should be concerned about John?” “Well, I’ve never seen hard evidence that she’s a terrorist, per se,” John replies, in a fair and balanced way. Note that these two ass holes think they’re not engaging in slander because THEY didn’t actually say anything bad about Hillary Clinton. Heck, John DEFENDED her. Note that nobody ever raises the question of WHO actually might have said something like that or what it’s based on. But for the bobble-headed minions who eat this crap for dessert every day, that stuff about Hillary is as true as the Earth is young.

So basically, Hannity insinuates that Fitzgerald is really quite an evil fellow and then Fox Trot’s out of it with the weasel words “I don’t know what to make of this really.” Yes you do, you cheese-ball. You want US to think he’s a Bad Guy, which, by virtue of some vacuous, Left Behind Series logic, makes Karl Rove and Scooter Pie Libby good guys.

Hannity wonders out loud why the “mainstream media” is not reporting on this. Well, Sean, because a) Fitzgerald is not under investigation, somebody else is, b) it’s not really information, c) they don’t have neoconservative cognitive dissonance and finally, d) maybe, like you, they wouldn’t know what to make of it!

Through all this, Hannity is careful not to mention that Fitzgerald is a REPUBLICAN. I’m sure half his listeners are convinced at this point that he’s a raving liberal, or maybe even a North Korean spy.

The next part of the dance is where Hannity takes a pre-screened, pre-approved phone call from a sycophant. “Sean, this is Terry from Dipstick Bog, Louisiana. You are a Great American. Thank God for you. Without you, how would Americans know the TRUTH?” Sean coos back – “Well, I couldn’t do it without the support of Great Americans like you Terry.” This mutual foot-licking goes on for a while, and I drift off to ponder the idea that people who think and act like Sean Hannity are Great Americans, so what kind of Americans does that make the rest of us?

Finally, we cut to a station break where we are informed that the Sean Hannity show is America’s most reliable source of “news and Information”.

Chaysus.