If Obama is a terrorist because he has a passing association with Bill Ayers, then Sean Hannity is an anti-Semite, full stop.
via Marc Ambinder. Oh, and I apologize to those of you who are repulsed to see Sean Hannity’s mug at the top of this site.
Greenwald has more: “…any Democrat preparing to go on Fox News should study how Obama communications director Robert Gibbs mauled Sean Hannity last night and copy and learn from it as though it is Scripture.”
cleek
here’s some more guilt by association.
Tom65
leave it to Colmes to completely miss the point.
SGEW
Sean Hannity isn’t a racist anti-semite, he just plays one on tv.
Oh, and on the radio too. And in his columns and books and personal interviews.
. . .
No, wait. Never mind. My bad; he is a racist anti-semite.
Scrutinizer
I like Gibbs a lot. This morning on MJ, Joe went off on one of his rants, and Gibbs just sat there smiling and kept saying "Joe…Joe…Joe…Joe…" right on top of Scarborough’s rant, until Joe shut up.
Anna Granfors
This is a *dead* soul! It has ceased to exist!
(via Pharyngula, via DKos)
dailykos.com/story/2008/10/8/21536/7048
Ode to Sean Hannity
by John Cleese
Aping urbanity
Oozing with vanity
Plump as a manatee
Faking humanity
Journalistic calamity
Intellectual inanity
Fox Noise insanity
You’re a profanity
Hannity
Nemoudeis
Looks like lesson number one is: Just keep talking. They’re going to step on everything you say, no matter what you do.
So just keep talking. It’s the only way to get through.
Napoleon
Democrats should not be going on Fox, period. One good thing to come out of this election cycle is the netroots shaming the Dems into not doing debates on Fox and at least somewhat beginning to openly treat them as the partisan operation that they are.
Gibbs did handle him well by the way.
Brian
If Obama really was so tainted by his connections to Ayers one wonders why McCain would shake Obama’s hand and be willing to share a stage with him at the debates…
Brian
Josh Huaco
I think that’s an latent inference to be drawn from Obama’s recent interview, where he called McCain out for not having the stones to say certain things to his face. McCain knows this is all BS but won’t own it. And it reflects poorly on his character.
r€nato
I don’t know that Gibbs mauled Hannity, but he did stand up to the douchebag and I guess that’s a victory.
Watching that clip reminded me once again of how much I loathe Faux Noise and especially Hannity. He is a rhetorical bully, he asks loaded questions and he continually talks over his guests if he doesn’t like them or if they are making a good point against him.
And all the YELLING. For god’s sake, how can anybody watch that shit and NOT be ready to punch someone in the nose? It’s calculated to raise your blood pressure. I cannot imagine watching that shit all day long, it’s the 2 Minutes Hate stretched over 24 hours.
And of course Colmes just sits there quietly, as useless as teats on a bull.
eyeball
I’m not thrilled with Obama’s Ayers connection — he hasn’t explained it yet in a coherent way. But it’s pretty small beer. But if Obama was palling around with G. Gordon Liddy and married to a violent secessionist, I’d dislike that pretty intensely. Young readers here really should learn about Liddy. I’d also point out that McCain’s craps addiction is a seriously scary negative. I don’t think we can make too much of his erratic, all-in, buy-back-table style of politics and his gambling jones.
Earlier today a pretty vapid run-of-the-mill rightist radio talk guy was saying the following (I paraphrase): "I’m not a racist — I know I’m not {why do they always say that?}. But if I indirectly benefit from racists who go to the polls and vote against Obama at the last second because he is black – well, I’ll take it."
… This is why the republican party will be dressing moose for the next decade or so.
By the way, have you seen the footage of Alaskan aerial wolf hunting — which Sarah Palin endorses? Beyond disgusting.
Comrade Bey
Colmes is useless, no doubt. But I swear I saw a couple of subversive grins on him during Gibbs’ takedown of Hannity.
srv
If there really are so many Uhmerica haters, it’s damn well time they had a President.
Prematurely Grey
I keep wondering if I’m the only person who realizes that Johnny Drama has an actual gambling problem. The real deal.
Erratic behavior is 100% standard operating procedure for addicts. Especially addicts who are white knuckling it. I can’t help but wonder if somebody cut off the online poker in August. No gambling outlet–>complete meltdown.
Any of you familiar with quitting cigarettes, booze or other substances knows exactly what I’m talking about here. Connect the dots, people. He’s actually gotten worse over the past six weeks. Weirdly concurrent with Palin.
(Sorry to bring the paranoid. I just love you all too much not to tell you the truth…)
Josh Huaco
That’s why the nutters love the Ayers matter. They get to chant "Obama" and "terrorist" in conjunction with each other over and over. It’s the closest they can come to calling him a "ra9head" without going over the line.
Billy K(hrushchev)
I have a serious question:
Why is it (practically) everyone on Obama’s team seems so damn competent, when we’ve had stupid assclowns running every other Dem race for the past 12 years? Are they entirely new people? Have they been around before but were squelched, or were they just ineffective with other candidates?
Why didn’t this competence rear its lovely head in the last several elections?
Paul L.
So Todd Palin’s membership in the AIP is fair game?
Lets continue down that road.
Web Archives Confirm Barack Obama Was Member Of Socialist ‘New Party’ In 1996
Now what boards was Hannity on with Andy Martin? When was Hannity at his house?
BTW, I guess according to gleenzilla being a anti-Semitic douchebag is now equal to unrepentant terrorist.
Napoleon
Hell he let Gibbs plummel Hannity for 3 1/2 minutes before he finally vouched that Hannity is not anti-semitic. That wasn’t exactly rushing to his rescue.
Michael Demmons
@Billy K(hrushchev):
I was talking about this with someone the other day. I have no doubt that Obama doesn’t know a lot about a lot of things. I.e., he’s human.
But his brilliance as a leader is in who he chooses to surround himself with.
Idiocy as a leader can be demonstrated by Karl Rove, Tucker Bounds, Dick Cheney, Scottie M., Donald Rumsfeld, Carly Fiorina, etc. I could go on forever.
r€nato
more knowledgable insiders than myself could probably tell you why, but I chalk it up to the demise/defeat of the members of the DLC/GOP Lite/Triangulation brigade. That shit may have worked in the 90s but this is not the 90s any longer. When the paradigm changes, you gotta change with it.
Can you imagine if Hillary had won the nomination? She and her supporters staked a lot of their defense of her slimy campaigning on the ‘fact’ that she was the only one tough enough to take on the Republicans.
McCain would still have a ghost of a chance if Hillary were in the race.
And I am profoundly grateful that I am not hearing from the PUMAs and Hillarybots any longer.
r€nato
really? From what I understand, early in Obama’s political career he allowed Ayers to host a fundraiser for him at Ayers’ (or someone else’s) home.
That’s it. That is all it amounts to.
It is like saying that if you accepted a campaign donation from someone who turns out to have been a KKK member, then obviously you endorse the KKK.
I am very skeptical of guilt-by-association politics, whoever practices it. That doesn’t mean I always discount it; it does mean there is a vast difference between someone who continually pals around with shady characters and someone who was once in the same room as a shady character.
Evinfuilt
I do have a problem with this "parallel", as what Hannity did is way more than just allow someone he "disagrees" onto his show. He had him on and never said who he really was, and why Hannity doesn’t agree with him. Hannity painted the anti-semite as a mainstream author and journalist, full of respectability.
That is so above the "bump into him 3 times" that Obama has had with Ayers. Its apples to oranges, actually apples to tanks, there is no comparison at all.
Hannity let the guy loose and never said anything to make you second guess what he said and that makes it no casual inference that Hannity is a closet anti-semite.
Billy K(hrushchev)
John McPain lived with our ENEMY in Vietnam for five years. When given the opportunity to leave, he chose not to, because he hated America.
John McCain is an America-hating Communist Vietcong.
Comrade Darkness
Given the extreme financial crisis we are currently suffering, I’d categorize Phil Gramm as a terrorist. For hurting America, Ayers couldn’t hold a candle to Gramm, or his Enron Board wife who refused to quit because the position was payback, and damnit she was going to collect on selling the country out.
Guilt by association is fine with me. But lets identify the ones who really hate the country and are doing their best to destroy it.
Josh Huaco
Whenever someone brings up Ayers in a conversation, remind them that their boy W’s grandfather, Prescott, was nailed for violating the Trading With the Enemy Act for having investments in a bank that funded the Nazi war machine. That’s guilt-by-bloodline, not association.
When I was still in community college in 1995/6, I typed papers in a computer lab proctored by Shawn Eckhardt. I even talked with him a few times (he was predictably a dick and no I didn’t dare ask him any questions). I guess this means I’m friends with a TERRORIST!!!1!!1eleven! and I am unfit for elected office. (actually I’m unfit for many other reasons, just not this one :) )
jcricket
FYI – I was a big Hillary supporter, and held out hope she would win for longer than was probably reasonable. Then there was a short time I was a tepid Obama supporter, before becoming a solid one.
But there was never a nano-second where I considered not voting, or worse, voting McCain.
Anyone who supported Hillary who votes McCain is a fucking moron.
It’s difficult to have a coherent answer to a nonsensical question, other than "that’s a stupid question, dumbass".
40 years ago, when Obama was 8 Ayers did some despicable stuff. Despite not apologizing for it, Ayers rehabilitated (largely) his reputation, became a respected college professor and liberal community activist. Obama allowed Ayers to host a fund-raiser in 1995 (13 years ago) for Obama’s first run for state Senate. Since then Obama has not associated in any way with Ayers, but has run into him a few times, as they’re both liberals and active in Chicago politics. Ayers gave a small amount of money to Obama since then.
There’s no "there, there". Obama’s only mistake, if you call it that, was allowing Ayers to host that first fundraiser. If Obama was actually unaware that Ayers was unrepentant, then it would explain why Obama later completely dis-associated with Ayers. If Obama was in fact aware, he still did the right thing afterwards/since.
Bitty
Dude invites all sorts of people on his show.
Dude doesn’t let them talk, though.
flounder
I’d up the ante and dump some Hal Turner neo-nazi association in Hannity’s lap:
thenation.com/doc/20050620/blumenthal
croatoan
Since Sean Hannity talks on his show with people he doesn’t agree with, surely he supports Obama’s position on having diplomatic talks with our enemies, right?
HyperIon
i don’t think this is a mauling.
and i don’t think Gibbs’ analogy is very good.
people are getting worked up about some pretty marginal/silly things. i guess SOMETHING has to be the subject of the next post but….Greenwald should be able to do better than this IMO.
i hope that post-election the DFHs don’t turn into triumphalist douchebags. that would be sad.
Bubblegum Tate
He also does that classic wingnut thing where he recites his talking points, and then when the guy hits back, he just says, "Oh, I see you’re just going to recite talking points now," and dismisses him.
Gus
Okay, now that Paul L has joined the discussion I see that Atanarjuat is, indeed a top-notch troll. Again, that’s a pretty low bar, but it’s something.
ricky
Thanks, but no thanks to those who use the term "fucking moron." Under the umbrella of adjective creation, it implies
those without penises are capable of that which they obviously are not.
TenguPhule
The regular crowd of loser Democratic suckup advisers and hangers on went with the Cool Clinton camp.
Those People went to get paid.
The rest went to Obama to win.