Sean Hannity likes to say he believes President Obama is a Christian but Hannity loves to suggest Obama is a Muslim. In fact, in a recent Playboy interview, Hannity again denied promoting the myth – at the same time that he helped perpetuate it. So last night, in a segment that purported to be about President Obama’s speech in Northern Ireland, Hannity twisted Obama’s words about overcoming divisions between Catholics and Protestants into some kind of innuendo that Obama is hostile to Catholic and Protestant schools because he favors Muslim ones.
The snippet of Obama’s speech picked up by Hannity and twisted was this. It’s important to reiterate that he was speaking in Northern Ireland because The Troubles between Catholics and Protestants killed more than 3,600 people there not too long ago.
Because issues like segregated schools and housing, lack of jobs and opportunity—symbols of history that are a source of pride for some and pain for others—these are not tangential to peace; they’re essential to it. If towns remain divided—if Catholics have their schools and buildings, and Protestants have theirs—if we can’t see ourselves in one another, if fear or resentment are allowed to harden, that encourages division. It discourages cooperation.
…Our Civil War was far shorter than The Troubles, but it killed hundreds of thousands of our people. And, of course, the legacy of slavery endured for generations. Even a century after we achieved our own peace, we were not fully united. When I was a boy, many cities still had separate drinking fountains and lunch counters and washrooms for blacks and whites.
What Hannity didn’t include was the part about President Obama calling on young people to promote more tolerance:
But over time, laws changed, and hearts and minds changed, sometimes driven by courageous lawmakers, but more often driven by committed citizens. Politicians oftentimes follow rather than lead. And so, especially young people helped to push and to prod and to protest, and to make common cause with those who did not look like them. And that transformed America—so that Malia and Sasha’s generation, they have different attitudes about differences and race than mine and certainly different from the generation before that. And each successive generation creates a new space for peace and tolerance and justice and fairness.
And while we have work to do in many ways, we have surely become more tolerant and more just, more accepting, more willing to see our diversity in America not as something to fear, but as something to welcome because it’s a source of our national strength.
So as your leaders step forward to address your challenges through talks by all parties, they’ll need you young people to keep pushing them, to create a space for them, to change attitudes. Because ultimately, whether your communities deal with the past and face the future united together isn’t something you have to wait for somebody else to do—that’s a choice you have to make right now.
And, as Media Matters wrote, Obama made a point of noting that the U.S. does not share the religious strife of Northern Ireland, that Catholics and Protestants are not as isolated from each other here and not as distrustful.
But meanings and analysis are for other people. Hannity called this an “unease with the Catholic church” and then teamed up with “I love to talk about murder, even though I’m pro-life” Ann Coulter – in a dress so low-cut, it looked made for a wardrobe malfunction.
Sure enough, Coulter sneered, “What a surprise that Obama was attacking America while he was abroad.” She looked jubilant as she spoke.
“Let’s take a little trip down history,” Hannity said. Any regular watcher knew what was coming. First quote: “I was a little Jakarta steet kid” who once got in trouble for making faces during Koran study classes in his elementary school.
Next quote, a Hannity fave, that Obama once described the Muslim call to prayer as “one of the prettiest sounds on earth at sunset.”
“Now, he went to a Muslim school,” Hannity said disingenuously. “Does that encourage division?”
Unfortunately for Hannity, Coulter was more interested in talking about her opposition to the immigration bill. But, to echo one of Hannity’s favorite phrases, let not any bigoted heart be troubled. He is sure to find another set of remarks to twist into some kind of religious and/or race-baiting attack on President Obama before too long.
The interviewer ask Hannocchio if he ever used pot. A simple question. Still, Hannocchio refused to answer it, and we know why.
If we were the interviewer, we would have ask the Long Island Lolito if he used pot and cocaine.
Hannocchio said he was a troublemaker. For once he told the truth. He’s been troubled since the day he was born.
There’s more to him than what the article reveals. They haven’t touched on his dark side.
Truman, Annie loves visiting Hannocchio on the set. He loves hanging out with her as well, you get our drift.
NOTE TO HANNITY
You are 51 looking 61. A face lift or botox is needed.
What a surprise that rightwingnuts like Crazy Annie and Seannie Poo were attacking President Obama while he was abroad.
Actually, that’s not much of a surprise . . .
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