Democratic Strategist Richard Aborn Defends Al Gore Against Hannity's Insanity
Reported by Marie Therese - September 10, 2007 -
For months Sean Hannity has been obsessed with former Vice President Al Gore. Last week during Hannity & Colmes, he trumpeted to the FOX viewers that he had a damning new video to air during his weekend show, Hannity's America. At first he refused to give the name of the person involved, but by Friday he excitedly revealed that his target was Gore - which came as a surprise to no one. The video clip he aired last night showed Mr. & Mrs. Gore exiting a private plane in California and getting into a limousine. Whoopee! Big news! Extra, extra, read all about it! Hannity seemed to be operating under the delusion that two or three flights on private jets constitute a massive betrayal of Gore's "do gooder" image. As Alan Colmes noted last week, what is it about Al Gore getting off an airplane than disproves global warming? Hannity's guest during his "Hot Seat" segment was long-time Gore supporter Richard Aborn who did a credible job of defense.With video.
Unfortunately for Aborn, who has been down this road before, Hannity controlled the dynamics of the segment. However, it would seem that the attorney has learned a few things since a 2006 appearance, reported on by Ellen. He pushed through the Hannity bombast and was actually able to make a few good points.
At the beginning of the interview, when Hannity claimed that in the clip Gore was "walking down the steps of his own private jet," Aborn immediately challenged him, forcing Hannity to backpedal and agree that it was a rented plane, not Gore's personal plane. Aborn tried to turn the discussion to global warming, but Hannity's response was "No, no. I don't want to talk about global warming."
Bingo!
Of course Hannity didn't want to talk about global warming. He wanted to smear Al Gore personally. At one point he told Aborn "I respect you but you sound silly."
Frequently looking at his notes, Hannity talked about the Global Warming Survival Handbook, which was distributed at the recent Live Earth concerts. In typical fashion he culled out three or four rather outrageous ideas that had been put forth somewhere in the book, then made it sound like Gore was actually advocating that Americans move into homes made of straw!
Finally, Aborn caught Hannity in a lie. Hannity said he didn't know much about what Al Gore had done to mitigate the impact of his own energy usage. Moment later Aborn showed that Hannity did, in fact, know a lot more about Gore than the FOX News host was willing to admit. Hannity was forced to admit that he "knew all about this" and Aborn slammed back, asking him why he didn't admit that earlier.
Aborn contended that Hannity was "focusing on one single thing in a man's life and you're trying to extract that and lay it over everything he's done and I'm sorry, it doesn't work - the people of America are smarter than that."
Hannity ended the segment by insulting Gore, then asking him to appear on the show to defend himself.
COMMENT
There is only one reason that a shill like Hannity would be going after Al Gore like this and that is that the GOP must still be fearful that the independently wealthy Mr. Gore will throw his hat into the ring and run for President in 2008.
