While most people were outraged over the racially-tinged antics of an Obama rodeo clown at the Missouri State Fair, leave it to white-rights champion Sean Hannity to stand up for the routine – and use the opportunity to attack African Americans as racial hypocrites. But Hannity ought to be more careful before he points a finger of hypocrisy at anyone else. UPDATE: At least two other Fox shows use this segment to attack liberals.
In case you missed it, here’s how the Kansas City Star described what happened:
“The announcer wanted to know if anyone would like to see Obama run down by a bull,” the posting said. “The crowd went wild. He asked it again and again, louder each time, whipping the audience into a lather.”
Another clown then apparently joined the performance.
“One of the clowns ran up and started bobbling the lips on the mask and the people went crazy,” the posting said. “Finally a bull came close enough to him that he had to move so he jumped up and ran away to the delight of the onlookers hooting and hollering from the stands.”
An audience member who filmed it on his cell phone likened the event to “an effigy at a Klan rally.” He added, “There’d have been no reason to mess with his lips if he’d have been a white president.” The man also noted that the display was “inappropriately partisan for an event that receives taxpayer money.”
Missouri’s Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill and Governor Jay Nixon along with Republican Lieutenant Governor Peter Kinder all condemned the display. But not Hannity!
First, Hannity downplayed the racial/violent connotations by saying the clown “wore a mask of Obama, attached an upside-down broomstick to his rear end and asked the crowd if they wanted to see Obama quote, get run over or run down by a bull.” However, he did play a clip from the incident (minus the teeth bobbling, from what I could tell). Noting that the fair had imposed a lifetime ban on the rodeo clown, Hannity’s voice was dripping with disapproval as he noted the fair had called it “an unconscionable stunt.”
“Why are you so offended by this?” Hannity, in his bullyboy voice, asked his guest, African American Steve Webb, a Democratic Missouri State Representative.
Webb replied, “It offends me that anyone would make a mockery in that way of the President of the United States. …And I am under the opinion that …it was a racial content.”
“Really,” Hannity said sarcastically. “How was it racial?”
Webb correctly noted that Hannity left out how someone had played with the clowns lips. “It’s offensive,” Webb added.
But rather than give any respect or validity to Webb’s point of view, Hannity immediately cast him as a racial hypocrite: “I’m gonna go back, and I can show you, and our show our audience here, images, for example… Google 'Bush mask' and seven million hits show up.” He held up a printout of someone saying, “kick my ass” in a George W. Bush mask. He also showed printouts of George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan masks.
Webb pointed out, “It’s not about the mask. …It’s about the racial content or context behind the stunt.”
The other guest, Allen West (referred to as “Colonel West,” even though he resigned in disgrace from the Army) was Hannity’s African American designated black attacker for the segment. And he did his job, even though he, too, agreed that the stunt was “beyond appropriateness.” But he quickly played the Hypocrisy Card over the lack of outcry of racial parodies of Condoleezza Rice and Michael Steele and himself. Of course, none of them were made as part of the entertainment at State Fairs. But before you knew it, he had moved on to attacking Harry Reid for referring to Obama as “light-skinneded (sic)” and speaking without a Negro dialect and Vice President Joseph Biden’s description of Obama as “clean and articulate.” He used those examples to accuse “some people” of cherry picking.
Hannity, missing the false analogy between some insensitive remarks and a rodeo clown whipping up a crowd to cheer on the stomping of an effigy, pounced He began badgering Webb:
Did you publicly condemn then the things that Colonel West just mentioned? …Any one of those instances where I think you could argue they were racial, did you speak out on any one of them? …Did you speak up at the time? …Did you speak out at the time when those were national issues? …Did you speak out?
Well, it’s a question we’ll turn back on Hannity. He has sympathetically hosted and/or participated in racial condemnations of Oprah Winfrey (for saying she found a parallel between Emmett Till and Trayvon Martin) twice, race baiting attacks on Rev. Al Sharpton after he called for a peaceful reaction to the George Zimmerman verdict and “wondered” if Rep. Keith Ellison is a black version of the Ku Klux Klan because of his long-ago renounced support of Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam. All within the past six months.
Yet, Hannity has trouble spotting what was racially offensive about someone jiggling with “Obama’s” lips and urging a bull to stomp him at a State Fair?
UPDATE: The Fox-loving Mediaite site has at least two other segments, one from Fox & Friends and the other from America's Newsroom, each from today. Great way to reach out to minorities, guys!
You may have to dye your hair completely gray and create many age lines in the Hannocchio face mask. Don’t forget to add crows feet to both eyes.
If we were donning a Hannocchio mask we would visit prostitutes, smoke pot, sniff coke and other fun gems.
1) Every president has a running visual gag based on his appearance- Reagan has the “Who, me?” look, Bush I has the nerd face, Clinton has the huge nose and Don King Hair, and Obama has the big ears. Bush’s gag is that he’s monkey-faced.
2) Forgive me if I think a group of people who casual fling the words Ni**er, spade, Kenyan, slave boy, and bammy, while being seen in public sporting racist pictures of a black man are calling him “chimpy” for any reason other than that they’re incredibly racist.
Same point here- All the presidents have masks, there will always be the jackasses that think they’re funny with how they use them. How this rodeo clown altered and used his might as well have been just saving the money to go out in black face.
The end.
