Esquire didn’t mince any words in its article about Sean Hannity’s promotion of the Bundy family’s armed insurrection in Nevada: Hannity is going to help get somebody killed one of these days. And they are right on the money about it.

Charles P. Pierce wrote:

Not to put too fine a point on it but, one day, Sean Hannity, or someone very much like him, is going to help get somebody killed. Back in 2005, Hannity, and a lot of someones very much like him, ginned up a mob during the Terri Schiavo situation in Florida. Ultimately, this resulted in bomb scares that closed an elementary school down the block from the hospice in which Ms. Schiavo was being cared for, death threats against judges that were serious enough that they had federal marshals sleeping in their living rooms, and a bounty on the head of Michael Schiavo that one guy got arrested for trying to collect. (I visited the hospice a couple of years after the craziness had ended and the one name that was the unanimous subject of utter loathing was Sean Hannity’s.) Over the weekend, Hannity, and a lot of someones just like him, were at it again.

Pierce is talking about the Cliven Bundy situation in Nevada which Hannity and his colleagues at Fox News have been recklessly and deliberately inflaming despite the presence of armed militia types. Pierce also notes:

Americans For Prosperity jumped right on the Bundy case. Of course, AFP—and the Koch brothers who fund it—isn’t in this for airy philosophical debates on the role of government. They’re in it to break the control of the federal government over the lands that they want to exploit for their own profit, and they are willing to help engage the single most destructive political theory (nullification) in the country’s history to help them do it. It is reckless and dangerous, and anybody who gets used by these people is a sap. And useful idiots, like Sean Hannity and all the someones like him, are going to get somebody killed behind this stuff.

That’s exactly what I’ve been saying and thank God other people, especially those with bigger platforms than I, agree. Tonight, Hannity complained about the Esquire article but that didn’t stop him from turning Bundy into some kind of old-west-style hero and deliberately fanning the flames of government antagonism even higher.

In his “EXCLUSIVE” report in advance of some fawning interviews with the Bundy family, Hannity showed Cliven Bundy speaking in front of a cheering crowd. He said things like, “We’re not ready to negotiate with them, are we?” and in what was described as a ”one hour ultimatum” Bundy said “until that time, we’re going to stand and be ready to fight.” It wasn’t clear to me what the demand was. But you didn’t need to.

That was followed by footage that made the Bundy supporters look like the cavalry. The caption on the screen read, “CROWDS ON HORSEBACK STORM BLM CHECKPOINT” as the group, many holding American flags, galloped toward the camera and then passed cheering crowds.  Then one “brave” rebel man said, “We were actually strategizing to put all the women up in the front. If they were going to start shooting, it’s gonna be women that are gonna be televised all across the world getting shot by these rogue federal officers.” Classy.

Then armed BLM agents were seen retreating as a crowd shouted, “We, the people.” 

There was not a single interview with a frightened BLM officer whose life was being threatened for following the rule of law.  Not a single view from the other side of how Bundy has spent 20 years refusing to pay grazing fees and then refusing to remove his cattle from public lands and, despite attempts to negotiate a settlement, is now having an armed hissy fit that the federal government is enforcing the law.

Instead, we got a woman, presumably freshly saved from being a martyr to Bundy’s cause, saying, “I’m so emotional, I don’t know if I can even talk at this point. We’re so happy. I mean, this is what we wanted. It was one man standing but now he has thousands on his side.” Another woman was crying with joy over the BLM’s release of the cattle. “It’s the most wonderful day in all the world!” she exclaimed tearfully. Clearly, we were meant to agree with her.

As Vyan, at DailyKos points out, Bundy is ripping off you and me of money. Just like that food stamp slacker Fox loves to demonize. And it’s funny how, despite Fox’s obsession with waste, fraud and abuse and our federal debt, Hannity doesn’t mind a bit that Bundy has ripped off “we, the people” for decades. As Vyan suggested, can you imagine if Bundy was black, had been collecting food stamps and other welfare benefits for 20 years and when the government came to collect, he holed himself up with a bunch of armed welfare kings and queens?

But Bundy is white, he has the affect of a good ol’ boy and if you just ignore the facts of his lawlessness and mooching, he makes a great poster child for Hannity’s bottomless antipathy and animosity toward the federal government (under President Obama), Harry Reid, the (Democratic) U.S. Senator from Nevada, and opening up his fat TV/radio-fed purse to pay taxes to the country he claims to love.

So while Hannity eggs on Bundy from the comfort of his Long Island mansion or cushy New York City TV studio thousands of miles away from any federal employee who might be put in personal danger defending the rule of law, what’s a few armed confrontations, death threats, bomb scares or worse to a great patriot with a mission like Hannity? And while it's frighteningly true that one of these days he or somebody like him is going to get somebody killed, you can rest assured his own chickenhawk fanny will never be on the line.

Oh, and one other thing? Hannity was so busy with his Bundy BFFs, he never had any time to discuss the hate crime shootings by a former KKK Grand Wizard at Jewish centers in Kansas City yesterday.