Despite the ridiculing and panning of his last big video “exposé,” Sean Hannity presented his second Breitbart-originated “scoop” last night. This one, like the other one, was designed to “expose” President Obama’s radical ties. This one was also just about as persuasive as the last. Here, instead of President Obama hugging a “radical” tenured Harvard Law professor 22 years ago, we had President Obama attending a play about the radical Fox News boogeyman, Saul Alinsky, 14 years ago. Not only that, but Obama sat on a panel after the play! But wait a minute… doesn’t this sound an awful lot like the big revelation on Fox Nation more than a week ago?
Yes, it does. Back for an encore appearance were the Breitbart.com team of Ben Shapiro and Joel Pollak whose last appearance on Hannity left me feeling certain that the Breitbart media empire’s days are numbered. This latest outing only confirmed my belief.
“Didn’t you love the coverage after you showed the tape of him (Obama) hugging Professor Bell?” Hannity asked the pair. I don’t know what coverage Hannity saw. But the coverage I saw included a lengthy mocking by Jon Stewart and a comment from Hannity’s own colleague, Geraldo Rivera, calling the Bell video “a sign of desperation.” Rivera said that on The O’Reilly Factor, Fox News’ #1 show. Host Bill O’Reilly admitted the video was “not getting much traction.”
But you’ve got to hand it to Hannity for sticking to his guns. Or is it desperately clinging?
“The hug was significant because of who (Obama) was hugging – the radical views that Professor Bell had,” Hannity said, in all seriousness.
“The media covered it up,” Shapiro intoned, as all three of them ignored the fact that that video had been on the internet since 2008 – put there by PBS. Last I checked, PBS was a media outlet. But then Shapiro acknowledged that the video was out there, available to the media, if only they had checked! News flash for Shapiro: PBS checked and that’s why they posted the video in 2008. Where were Fox and Breitbart all this time?
Shapiro also acknowledged the “new” Alinsky-play tape was nothing new, either. He solemnly alleged that this one had been “covered up, too.”
“What do you mean by ‘covered up?’” Hannity asked eagerly.
“The person who was in charge of the theater has told us… she didn’t want to release the tape because she’s a political believer in ‘Baraka Obama.’” Shapiro answered, using the name “Baraka” because that was how Obama's name had been misspelled on the old posters about the play. He grinned smugly at his little joke.
In other words, it looks like nothing new since our Margarita reported on March 7, 2012:
So far they don’t know what Obama said in that panel discussion but they’re doing their damnedest to find out. Yesterday, the Fox Nation posted a follow-up from Breitbart informing us that the director of the play has a videotape but won’t release it.
But Hannity acted as though he were breaking something new. “Why, Joel, do you think this is significant?” Hannity asked.
Pollak said Obama was an “authority on Alinksy.” That’s why, Pollak explained, Obama wasn’t just on the panel but also on “the poster.”
No!!!!
Yes, based on that evidence, Pollak stated with confidence that, “Obama wants to distract by going after a particular personal target, a private citizen and aiming the collective might of the mainstream media at that person.” Funny, I can’t think of any private citizen Obama has gone after. The only one Pollak named was the Cambridge, MA police department. But I can think of oh, so many private citizens that Fox and the right have gone after. Starting with Sandra Fluke, including Sheriff Dupnik, the man who had the nerve to suggest that right-wing inflammatory rhetoric played a part in the Gabrielle Giffords shooting, and Dr. George Tiller – the guy O’Reilly repeatedly called, “Tiller the baby killer” until Tiller was assassinated.
So let’s recap: We know Obama attended a play about Saul Alinsky and participated in a panel discussion afterward, though we don’t know what was said. That was the basis for an entire segment called “The Real Obama,” on a prime time news network.
Meanwhile, the “real Hannity” has yet to explain his far deeper association with a guy who “thanks God for slavery” and thinks slave ships were like flying coach and that most women are “little whores.” Hannity hasn’t merely hugged this guy or discussed him after a play. Hannity sits on the advisory board of the charity and treats him as a credible analyst during his many appearances on Fox. Come to think of it, what does repeatedly hosting this guy say about Fox News? We know what Fox News would say about President Obama if, say, Professor Bell repeatedly visited the White House.
“We’re laying a foundation ‘cause we’re gonna do this every night ‘til election night,” Hannity crowed.
Then so will we, Hannity. So will we.
Please consider contacting Hannity and Fox and asking them how they justify this palsiness while attacking Obama for a far more tenuous connection.
You can reach them via email at [email protected] or [email protected]or by tweeting them @SeanHannity or @FoxNews.
Thank you for the video. I’m going to post about it.
Not that I think “radical” is a bad thing, as Fox viewers are programmed to believe. In fact, how can one not categorize all of the great thinkers and doers throughout human history as “radical”?
It’s not the first time. Remember the Joe Sestak “scandal” in 2010? The one that Hannity trumpeted every night for what felt like forever, insisting that it would cause Obama to be impeached? The one that turned out to be nothing – and in fact the result of former President Bill Clinton making a phone call?
The current list of bizarre connections Hannity is making are:
1. Obama “started his career in Bill Ayers’ living room” FALSE. Obama visited Ayers’ living room on a day when he visited many people’s homes in Chicago as part of his campaign for local political office.
2. Obama is “close friends” or “worked closely” with Ayers and Dohrn, including sitting on a Board with Ayers, “an unrepentant terrorist”. FALSE/MISLEADING Obama barely knows Ayers, who made his living for many years as a professor in Illinois. As a local community member and teacher, Ayers served on the Board of a local foundation at the same time as Obama – a Board that had many people on it and was not an organization where anyone was working “closely” with anyone else. Ayers is certainly an unrepentant protestor, who wishes he could have done more to end the Vietnam War, but is not an “unrepentant terrorist”. He has made clear that people saying he wished he’d set more bombs with the Weathermen are mischaracterizing his statements. It should be noted that Obama made clear that he absolutely denounces the bombings done by the Weather Underground.
3. Obama went to Jeremiah Wright’s church for 20 years. SO WHAT? This claim was vetted during 2008 and hasn’t become any more relevant since then.
4. Obama supported Derrick Bell in a campus speech at Harvard in 1990 and hugged him in public. AGAIN, SO WHAT? Obama supported a popular professor at Harvard, the first black man to receive tenure there. (And who gave up that tenure in protest over black women being denied that tenure.)
5. Obama studied the work of Saul Alinsky and even went to a play about him, and included Alinsky’s writings in the syllabus of a course he taught. ONCE AGAIN, SO WHAT? Many on the right study the work of Saul Alinsky in terms of understanding the principles of organizing people for political purposes. Obama’s presence at a play and panel discussion about Alinsky only speaks to his position as a teacher and his knowledge about this particular person. The Alinsky text on the syllabus also included other materials by right wing authors, but the pundits aren’t complaining about those.
All of this simply goes to support the notion that Sean Hannity is dredging the bottom to find something, ANYTHING that could be the “gotcha” moment that somehow ends Obama’s chances for re-election. This is in spite of the fact that Obama is ahead in the polls, and that the GOP candidates are clearly in terrible shape.
And all of this speaks more to Hannity’s own desperation and dislike of Obama than it does to any substantive issue.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnyaR47gdD8
Hannocchio has a long history of associating with “interesting” individuals like Gene Antonio, Second Amendment Leah of Alabama. There are others who are not as well known like neo Nazi Hal Turner.
This Franklin Square fraud is not so innoccent himself. A cold, calculating, vindictive man who is a master of manipulation. He does everything in his power to scrub his sordid past from the internet. It’s too late.
Everything about this clown will be public knowledge this year. He won’t have an audience when the truth comes out.
NOTE TO HANNITY
You love pimping people’s books on your website. Imagine the commissions you earn from Amazon. Don’t tell the public!
reads books
attends plays
evenings out with wife
law degree
lecturer
He’s Black
He’s Black
He’s Black
He’s Black
He’s Black
He’s Black
He’s Black …
Right …
