Sean Hannity loves to boast about how much he loves free speech almost as much as he loves to attack liberals for supposedly hating it. But freedom-lover Hannity exposed himself as the Great American Hypocrite in his tweets last night.
If you’ve turned on Fox News lately, you could not have missed the raging against Shakespeare in the Park’s Julius Caesar play. According to Media Matters, the right-wing poutrage began when Fox News criticized it for using a Trump look-alike in the title role. In the play, Caesar is assassinated onstage.
As other conservative media figures and Trump’s own sons joined the chorus, Delta and Bank of America ended their corporate sponsorship of the production. And after a gunman targeted Republican members of Congress practicing on a baseball field last week, wounding Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), right-wing commentators linked the attack to the play.
Media Matters also explains why the poutrage is 100% bogus:
Caesar’s assassination is not glamorized in the production -- indeed, the message of the play is that misguided political violence will inevitably breed disastrous consequences. “Likening Shakespeare’s monarchs and politicians to real-life figures is a long-standing performance practice, seized by directors with sometimes illuminating, sometimes boneheaded results,” Slate’s Issac Butler noted after the initial complaints, pointing out that performances of Julius Caesar have featured then-President Barack Obama in the titular role without incident.
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The controversy culminated in a "protest" at Friday night’s performance, when the production was interrupted for roughly a minute when the “alt-right” online outlet Rebel Media’s Laura Loomer stormed the stage, shouting, “Do you want Trump to be assassinated?” She was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct and criminal trespass. Jack Posobiec, another “alt-right” figure, also interrupted the performance, yelling, “The blood of Steve Scalise is on your hands” and comparing the audience to the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels before being removed from the theater. Posobiec taped the disturbance and posted it on Twitter, where it quickly circulated.
Why did they do it? The incident has the hallmarks of a grift: The disturbances came after “alt-right” personality Mike Cernovich offered a $1,000 bounty to anyone who successfully interrupted the performance, and Loomer is seeking to crowdfund $25,000, supposedly for her legal defense.
But facts and alt-right self-dealing matter nothing to Hannity in the service of trying to obliterate talk that doesn’t adore Donald Trump the way he does. So last night, Hannity engaged in a Twitter frenzy that ignored the tragedy of a terror attack in London and promoted a fascistic shutting down of Shakespeare:
Trump assassination play getting attention. Is this like "liberal resistance"? https://t.co/OqOFMyAhD1
— Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) June 19, 2017
Hannity interspersed his attacks on Shakespeare’s play with a twitter fight with CNN’s Oliver Darcy. But Hannity also went after conservative Ben Shapiro for criticizing him for being a Shakespeare snowflake:
Ben the only person being stupid here is you. I was tweeting "exactly" what was said with video. I'm mature Enuff to let people decide https://t.co/T0UwRR3Qs9
— Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) June 19, 2017
Now if there was a play that killed an Obama look alike every night and people protested, would u call that stupid? This hate is disgusting https://t.co/T0UwRRlrQJ
— Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) June 19, 2017
Well, it’s funny Hannity should mention a play killing an Obama lookalike. Because I don’t recall a peep of complaint out of Hannity when a previous Shakespeare in the Park production of Julius Caesar did exactly that.
But I do recall Hannity defending Ted Nugent for saying Obama should “suck on my machine gun” and calling Hillary Clinton “a b****” who should “ride into the sunset” on his machine gun.
Hannity is nothing if not a hypocrite. He loved the free speech of an extremist, inflammatory Islamophobe but promoted advertiser boycotts against Rachel Maddow. That was after Hannity boasted that he’s against advertiser boycotts, when Stephen Colbert was on the hot seat. And that opposition was a month before Hannity advocated going after the advertisers of Colbert, Lawrence O’Donnell, George Stephanopoulos, “Morning Joe” and more.
(Hannity graphic by Nina Brodsky)
We think it would be a hit on Broadway.