Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Sean Hannity Isn't Reagan

Sean Hannity’s Bitter Whine

Phil Gramm, at the time McCain’s financial advisor, said that the current economic difficulties weren’t real and are just in our heads. He called Americans a bunch of whiners. Last week, Sean Hannity mirrored the sentiment by saying, “we do whine too much.” Newt Gingrich, on air at the time, put Hannity in is placed by proclaiming, “that is the least Ronald Reagan like quote I’ve heard from you.” To an anti-thought conservative like Hannity, telling him he said something far away from Reagan is like telling a six-year old Santa doesn’t exist and mommy is the tooth fairy. I believe Hannity’s heart didn’t actually stop but medics were on hand.

I have to admit both that Hannity’s point is valid and that there is more to his quote than I presented here. The additional part of his quote minimizes his anti-Reagan comments and provides a rational context for his statement. Even with the context, as Newt said, Hannity had a momentary deviation from Reaganism. Unfortunately I’m petty. Hannity beat Obama with his bitter remarks by only playing a portion of the quote. Hannity refused to provide a context for the bitter remark. Unfortunately, Hannity bills his show as doing the major news networks’ job for them. This would imply a certain obligation to the truth. By not providing context, Hannity’s show does not live up to his own expectations and becomes just an agenda based opinion mongering show. Since I do not claim to provide a news service, I can happily refuse to provide a context and say “Hannity’s not like Reagan”, “Hannity’s not like Reagan”, “Hannity’s not like Reagan!” Since I create no expectation of being a news service, I can say that over and over and over without remorse. Back to you Sean.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice blog. Keep up the good work.

R.Tuggle said...

I am a conservative. However, I find Hannity's attitude to be that of an antagonist. Even in the intro to his radio show you'll hear "Let the battle begin". Why is everything a battle to him? I find it easy to understand the opinions of most people. I like to listen to Limbaugh because he is a far better entertainer than Hannity. On another note, Ronald Reagan was a great leader and his quotes aired on Hannity's show are the highlights of his program.

stormin said...

i for one have to agree with Sen Gramm on this one. it's amazing to me how often you hear the word "recession" the moment a Republican is elected President, or how every bit of good economic news is presented with qualifiers. another thing i love hearing them say is how the good economic news has surprised the "experts". in other words "we've been predicting all this bad news and it didn't happen". the media has gotten way to involved in reporting economic opinion instead of economic facts. is the media trumpeting the news that the price of a barrell of oil has dropped more than $20 in this past week the same way they trumpeted the news of it's rise? NO! has the media trumpeted the news that the national average of the price of gas has been coming down the same way they trumpeted it when it was going up? again, NO! so what i think Sen Gramm was trying to say is that we're letting the media control our attitiudes about the economy by giving us too much opinion and speculation and by hiding any good economic news that may be out there.