Sean Hannity is very upset about a possible “rush to judgment” in the Trayvon Martin case. Of course, when Hannity worries about a rush to judgment, he means he’s worried that a white person will be unfairly judged. When it comes to a black person – even the newly shot and killed Trayvon – Hannity’s concern is not so much. Anyone else remember his disgusting behavior in the Abner Louima case? Last night, Hannity’s “concern” was little more than an exercise in making Martin look guilty and then playing the race card against civil rights leaders who have championed his family's cause. Oh, and Louis Farrakhan. No Hannity race-baiting would be complete without an attack on that Fox News uber-black boogeyman. 

Hannity devoted not one but two segments to Trayvon Martin. There was plenty of time for racial attacks in each.

The first segment featured Shannon Butler, from Fox in Orlando, conservative talk show host David Webb and prosecutor Faith Jenkins.

Butler was there to discuss her interview with a witness who, as Hannity told it, had seen the unarmed Martin, shortly before he was shot by Zimmerman, “on top of Zimmerman, pounding on and beating George Zimmerman.” In other words, quite possibly giving Zimmerman good reason for shooting him.

Butler must be angling for a job at Fox News. Not only was her hair an improbable shade of blonde, but she regurgitated just the kinds of talking points Fox News loves and left out the ones it wouldn’t. Butler said her witness was “very clear” that he had heard Zimmerman “yelling for help while Trayvon Martin was on top of him… beating his head into the sidewalk at that point. He told the cops, Zimmerman, that he was yelling for help but nobody came to his rescue. He had no choice but to fire that gun.”

Butler probably meant that Zimmerman felt he had not choice but to fire that gun - but that's not what she said. If Hannity noticed his guest had just pronounced a judgment of "not guilty" on a potential defendant, he didn't seem to mind. 

As Jenkins later pointed out, it was never in dispute that Martin and Zimmerman had gotten into a physical altercation. Why is it that “objective” Butler didn’t offer up the possibility that Martin had acted in what he considered self defense?

After having established the suggestion that Zimmerman was the real victim, Hannity said, insinuatingly, “We see that there have been many quote, civil rights leaders out there protesting. It appears now that this may, this is developing into a very different story than what has been portrayed.”

What do the civil rights leaders have to do with getting to the bottom of what really happened to Trayvon? Nothing, unless you’re looking for an excuse to smear them.

Jenkins was terrific and added some real balance to the discussion. She pointed out that what we’re getting now is Zimmerman’s side of the story but Hannity interrupted her to demonize Martin again, this time saying that it’s new “information” that Zimmerman’s head was “being pounded into the cement and him, and Trayvon Martin on top of him, beating him up.” Again, Hannity overlooked the possibility that Martin was responding to aggression from Zimmerman.

Good to know Hannity cares about a rush to judgment because God only knows how he might have characterized Martin if he didn’t.

Then came Webb, the African American outsourced to do the actual race baiting. It’s a time-honored Fox News tradition, as the third video below shows. Webb got right to it:

"The media didn’t do its due diligence in this and that’s the starting point, Sean… The narrative, the visual and the due diligence they didn’t do shows this collusion between the race hustlers, the institutional left and this idea. I mean, this is what Andrew Breitbart and I have been fighting against for years. Showing things truthfully for what they are. Media fail. Sharpton, Joe Madison, Mark Thompson, they all went into this.”

Andrew Breitbart? Speaking of rushing to judgment, Breitbart’s the one whose rush to judgment cost Shirley Sherrod her job. Funny how that didn’t bother Hannity. Nor when Breitbart told Hannity that one of the ACORN videos supposedly showing an ACORN worker admitting to shooting her ex-husband (later revealed to be a hoax) had not been vetted.  Or how about Hannity deciding that Abner Louima – a black Haitian immigrant who accused the police of sodomizing him – was a liar (before it was proved otherwise). As FAIR reported:

Hannity really distinguished himself with his crusading efforts to defend the police against charges of brutality. When Haitian immigrant Abner Louima accused New York City police officers of sodomizing and badly injuring him with a wooden rod in 1997, Hannity used his WABC show for a vicious counter-offensive targeting the victim.

The father of chief defendant Justin Volpe, an NYPD police officer, regularly appeared on show during the 1999 trial. And Hannity and various guests repeated rumors that Louima’s injuries resulted from a “gay sex act” and not from police brutality. Playing on the homosexual rumor and inconsistencies in Louima’s story, Hannity and his producer sang a parody of Lionel Richie’s song “Three Times a Lady,” changing the words to “you’re once, twice, three times a liar.” Hannity stopped referring to the victim as “Lying Louima” only after Volpe confessed to sodomizing Louima with the help of another officer.

Isn’t it funny how the rushes to judgment Hannity is OK with all condemn black people?

Webb went on to say that the attorney for the Martin family “invited Sharpton into this,” as if that were indicative of something sinister.

Hannity, his white conservative victimhood now enabled, put up a tweet of Farrakhan saying, “Where there is no justice, there will be no peace… The law of retaliation may be applied.” Hannity went on to complain about the New Black Panther Party “putting up a bounty” for Zimmerman’s arrest.  Instead of doing his part to bring calm, Hannity was deliberately fanning the flames of racial resentment.

Jenkins denounced the NBPP’s and Farrakhan’s comments and said, “Those things really only distract from what we should be focusing on in this case.” She pointed out that there was more to the case than a black kid being shot by a white man, such as the police investigation having been “short-circuited,” and “things that the police simply didn’t do, things that should be a part of their everyday checklist when you have a case like this.”

Hannity acknowledged that Jenkins had “a legitimate point” and that he “didn’t like” that Zimmerman continued to tail Martin even after being told not to. But Hannity showed no interest in those aspects of the case. Instead, he quickly turned to Butler to further paint Martin as a thug, i.e. by getting to “an important point” suggesting Martin was the aggressor against Zimmerman. “Trayvon Martin very well may have approached (Zimmerman) at that point when he was going back to his car.”

Later, in Part 2 of the “Great American Panel” segment, Michael Meyers was now in the David Webb seat and he, too, wasted no time complaining about “the race demagogues who always run to the cameras and the microphones whenever they can create and invent an issue.”

Hannity – the guy who smeared Abner Louima and gave Breitbart a pass on discredited videos now whined, “The NBC’s of the world.” They’ve been “absolutely, totally, completely, utterly biased and irresponsible.”

If Meyers knew about that aspect of Hannity’s history, it apparently didn't bother him. In fact, Meyers went the extra mile for Hannity by dragging President Obama's name into the racial mud. Meyers said, “These civil rights leaders are still living in the past. And they, they drive this, this racial rhetoric home every day, all day on MSNBC and other places. And I’m sick of it.  And we don’t need another White House conference on race, to talk about race as demagogue points, on their terms. No more of that!”

Hannity smiled broadly at that last comment as he closed the segment.

By the way, Hannity's slavery-loving, woman-hating pal, Jesse Lee Peters, hasn’t waited for the facts before he rushed to this judgment:

The recent actions of these black leaders and their followers are not about justice— it’s about getting even with whites and gaining political power. This is black hatred of white people and a result of more than fifty years of brainwashing by racist civil-rights leaders.

Hannity sits on the advisory board of Peterson’s charity.