Watch the video and I’ll explain…

Hannity didn’t intro the return to broadcasting the way a host normally does (and Beckel was right to point that out), so even though Beckel was reacting emotionally and foolishly – he deserves an apology from Hannity for not being properly warned. Beckel is consistently a hothead and blustery blob, so dont hire him or have him on your show if you dont want that. If you DO want that, then its not fair play to slip back into commercial when you see an argument like that unfolding and you should take responsibility for the bad call.

The other thing that really annoys me is that Beckel was also the only left-of-center dude on the panel, which is typical of the Hannity show. Hannity is a Republican hack that never criticizes the right-wing, ever and his panel for that segment was Libertarian radio show host Neal Boortz and that Republican woman who was arguing with Beckel about the Head Start program. Hannity is the only place on Fox News that actually does what everyone who hates Fox News and doesn’t watch it THINKS the channel does. O’Reilly is a non-partisan traditionalist populist and doesn’t stack the deck like that. In fact, when it’s stacked, it’s almost always against him – with 2 guests he disagree’s with. WTF is Hannity’s problem that he always has to go up 3 against one like that? No wonder Beckel was angry. He was getting gang banged all evening.

I want a world where people constantly have to fear that someone will call them on their bullshit and that if they are unjustifiably mean, irresponsible witha accusations, dishonest or cruel to others – they will suffer reputation destroying return-fire – HOWEVER, I also want to live in a world where people play fair and don’t use someones weaknesses as a means to humiliate them. If Beckel does this all the time, then call him out on it all the time – Don’t call him your friend and then throw him under the bus like that. God damn that pisses me off.

A real host would have given a loud and clear “ON IN 5! STFU” and pointed out the return from break when he hears his guests bickering that close to going Live. Hannity’s excuse that he thought Beckel saw the Producer giving the 3-2-1-GO signs is bullshit. Hannity wanted to have some of the argument spill over to on-air – which I agree is entertaining and is a fine gamble, but he lost that gamble this time when the profanity was uttered and it was at Beckels expense so Hannity should have apologized for it – not tried to weasel his way out of it and NOT get Beckel to apologize.

The correct handling of that situation was to first tell your co-worker that they’ve returned to broadcasting and that that word made it to air and then turn toward the camera, take responsibility for what happens on your show and apologize for the lapse in your host duties and move on. Instead Hannity dwelled on it, letting Beckel squirm as he tried to figure out what was going on and if they were really on live television or not.

I hate everything about this. I hate dirty tricks. I hate an unfair fight. and I hate hate HATE more than anything, an unwarranted public humiliation. The worst non-violent thing you can do to a person is humiliate them. I don’t think that was Hannitys original intent by not telling him to pipe down before returning to the show, but he should have been groveling in his acceptance of guilt for the incident. YES, I understand that it’s every individuals responsibility to know whats up and pay attention themselves – or better yet – to not be an emotional dick and tell people they “don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about” as if that were an argument and not just a blustery bully tactic. But at the same time: how about a little looking out for your friends, asshole? Even when they’re being assholes. That’s what being a friend IS.

And then later in the show they only drove it home worse after a clearly shaken Beckel noted that he would probably get fired over the incident and Hannity douchily plays the motherly comforter – and then that Republican lady – omg – SO not the time to be kicking the guy while he’s down. YES, he got emotional and made it personal. If he did it while on air, knowingly, I’d be part of the rally bashing him for his shitty manners and conversation skills – but since it was a private outburst that accidentally got publicized – wheres the fkking loyalty to your co-worker of who-knows-how-many years?

Fox News is a cable channel and can thus say whatever words they want, so luckily this isnt an FCC matter or anything, but that’s not the issue for me. I don’t give a fuck about the word “fuck”. I’m livid that Hannity:
1) put his friend in an unfair situation for his own selfish gain,
2) helped foster an event that embarrassed his friend,
3) did not at all help his friend out of the embarrassing situation,
4) immediately passed the buck to said friend, assigning him 100% responsibility for something he actually was only 60% responsible for,
5) milked the situation to make HIM the hero who is going to smooth things over for him in classic “i guess you owe me now, bitch” mode.

Screw that.

Sean Hannity is a shitty friend.

I hate those.

So some jerk working at Fox News for 7 years got a secret job with Gawker to reveal the networks secrets such as Bill O’Reilly having a picture of his youth with friends on a boat that included a topless girl. Um…yawn.. But I perked up when I saw this post about Sean Hannity, whose very existence doesnt make sense to me. Unfortunately it’s an insanely stupid post with absolutely nothing insightful, interesting or even logically accurate to say…

This paragraph is excellent and spot on:

To me, that’s the most offensive thing about him. He practices the laziest form partisan journalism — if Obama does it, it must be bad. Case in point — early in Pres. Obama’s term, he went to a burger place with the media in tow. The outing elicited the sort of embarrassing-in-retrospect media fawning that was typical of the early Obama presidency, but it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary for a president still in his honeymoon phase.

Yes! Great! More of that! oh…Unfortunately it comes AFTER this selection, which is stupid, meritless, and is rotten with the political hackery it’s accusing of.

Hannity’s welcoming cocoon even extends to fake-conservative Mitt Romney. If you listen to Sean on a regular basis, you can tell that he’s suspicious of Mitt—rightfully so, because now that Romney has sewn up the nomination, he’s going to attempt to pivot away from conservatives so fast and hard that Ronald Reagan’s tombstone is probably going to crack in half. But Hannity can read the writing on the wall, so he invites him on the show and makes nice with him.

In the clip above—taken from the same interview I published earlier this week, in which Romney rhapsodized about his Austrian Warmbloods and Missouri Foxtrotters—Romney and Hannity talk about how important it is for politicians to use teleprompters while they attack Obama for using a teleprompter. “It does make some sense,” Romney says. “It keeps you from saying something you don’t mean, you get the message out.”

“Yeah, of course it does,” Hannity concurs. “It’s smart. You don’t want to make a mistake. I’ll tell you, they’re out to eviscerate anybody who makes a mistake.”

Contrast that with just one of the innumerable (202 at least, according to Nexis), prompter potshots Hannity has taken at Obama: “I think he’s got a teleprompter on each side of the bed when he goes to sleep every night. I think most Americans have figured out that you take away that teleprompter, he’s in trouble. as evidenced by earlier today. Let’s roll this tape.”

The ongoing right-wing obsession with Obama’s teleprompter remains a mystery to me. He doesn’t use one any more often than any of his predecessors, or any more often than the men who want to replace him. Yet it’s always “har har har he has to write down his words before he says them” and so on. Yet Hannity advises Romney to use one lest his enemies find an error to exploit.

If you don’t notice that Barack Obama uses a teleprompter a shit ton more than other public figures, you’re not paying attention.

If you don’t find that funny, especially considering that President Obama is regarded as a grand public speaker (accounting for his presidency – as Hillary Clinton noted during the 2007 primary), then you’re a hack.

If you say that anyone is claiming that the issue is over any use of a teleprompter, then you’re either an idiot or dishonest.

Fail, Fail, Fail. too bad. could have been an interesting thing with this Mole business.

“This JCPenney thing is a witch hunt, and it shouldn’t happen,” said O’Reilly. and he’s right, of course. The Million Moms’ only objection was the fact that Ellen is gay. that’s insane and O’Reilly called it out as the McCarthism tactic that it is. Don’t hire gay people? Seriously? and ELLEN of all people? It’s not Perez Hilton or some sodomy activist that planned to usher in a new advertising campaign with JC Penny featuring dicks and buttholes and flaming baby jesus statues. wtf?

Later on the show, actress Julie Bowen who plays Claire on Modern Family echoed Ellens comments, offered her own support and own appreciation of O’Reilly’s words, saying “I never thought that I would want to make out with Bill O’Reilly. It turns out today is the day.”

As investigations against News Corp. get rolling in the U.K. and possibly the U.S. over e-mail and phone hacking, critics of CEO Rupert Murdoch have been trying hard with the lengths they’re going to to try and make this an America relevant scandal to rock the ages and sink the Murdoch empire. Instead of letting it play out to find out who the bad guys in this situation are, I have been seeing tons of blog and press from Murdochs competitors make that decision.

Mostly it’s just silly grasping at straws. Like this video was posted by the increasingly disappointing ThinkProgress.org with the headline “FLASHBACK: Rupert Murdoch Smacks Down Fox News Host For Bringing Up Hacking Scandal”. I fell for the bait thinking that I was in for a treat with something juicy. What kind of twitchy body language of annoyance or anger would Murdoch show as he told one of his employees to shut up and fall in line? What degrading “don’t forget your place here, boy” type of slam was I in for?

MURDOCH: I’m not talking about that issue at all today, I’m sorry.

and thats it… The dude essentially said “no comment” and Lee Fang writing at Think Progress just made up an alternate reality over it.

VARNEY: The story that is really buzzing all around the country and certainly here in New York is that the News of the World, a News Corporation Newspaper in Britain, used–

MURDOCH: I’m not talking about that issue at all today, I’m sorry.

VARNEY: Okay. No worries, Mr. Chairman that’s fine with me!

Murdoch: I’m too far removed out of here.

Isn’t lying in journalism – even if you don’t like the person or thing you’re lying about – bad journalism? Shouldn’t people who criticize Murdochs publications for doing that, maybe…not do that themselves? It’s also amusing that the beef against Newscorp publications is that they’re allegedly fake news (“Faux News” is an old meme), yet this whole scandal is about Newscorp being so dedicated to reporting news that employees may have illegally hacked into politicians and crime victims phones.

Fox News Watch, a weekend show on the Fox News Channel that discusses media reaction to news items sums up the details of the scandal before discussing here:

Outrage over the audacity of Fox News to allege that their critics and competitors excessive coverage has been excessive has of course already started and will continue with this clip, I’m sure, as it reiterates what I’ve been saying for weeks and what was said during a brief segment on FNC’s morning show Fox & Friends earlier: y’all are lookin silly as f#ck over this.

Rebekah Brooks, Newscorp International CEO has been arrested in London. if she’s guilty of hacking someones phone – throw the book at her. If Rupert Murdoch knew this was happening – throw a copy of the first book at him too. It’s interesting news on it’s own. why do people feel compelled to lie about it to make it even more sensational?

Mediaite describes:

Radio talk show host Nancy Skinner sparked an entertaining–and at times somewhat bizarre–discussion on Fox News Thursday afternoon, as host Martha MacCallum attempted to lead a discussion of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign announcement. Skinner, who has a show on Detroit radio and has served as a political commentator for Fox, MSNBC and CNN, quickly shifted from Romney to Bush. She suggested that Romney’s speech was about “laying out the case of how badly President Bush screwed up our economy” before beginning a disjointed defense of President Obama that led to an argument over poll results.

I’m making the shriek that came out of her my new ringtone for every female in my address book.

Rule: If this chick can handle it then you should be able to also:

“they want his mane but they wont say his name… im talking of course about Justin Bieber the 16 going on delicious pop star”… and people doubt that this is the best show on cable news?

Call it the Flip and Switch, the Flow, or the Twitch: the Bieber hairstyle — with sideswept bangs that end about an inch past where the Beatles snipped theirs off — is everywhere. Tim Urban wore it on “American Idol” before he was voted off in late April, and Miles Heizer wears it on the NBC show “Parenthood” to play a brooding teenager. The idea is that the front-combed bangs are so long that they must be flicked aside constantly with a whole lot of attitude.

The majority of boys in the sixth-grade class of Ms. Friedman’s son have the Bieber. “You can’t see any eyes,” she said, describing the scene at a school dance she chaperoned recently. “There are no eyes, and there’s a lot of flipping.”

Just last week, a boy who came to Cozy’s Cuts surreptitiously showed his stylist a picture of Justin Bieber on his camera and asked her to replicate the look. “He said, ‘That’s what I want — don’t tell my mom,’ ” said Ms. Friedman, whose three salons charge $29.95 for the cut.

-from the article Bangs Like Justin’s (but Don’t Say So), in the New York Times.. whose motto is “all the news that’s fit to print”…

This part of the speech is what Hannity was referring to:

The worst part is that he could have actually made a point there if he weren’t such a knee-jerk Republican shill that thought non-hilarious one-liners like that were acceptable retorts to the opposition in power.

He could have, for instance, maybe brought up the fact that Obama is going to triple the national deficit this year and even the Whitehouse’s own estimates show they plan to put Bush’s spending to shame.

And it doesn’t stop there, Woody. This Buzz Lightyear is going to Infinity and Beyond:

Karl Rove gave an ACTUAL response to the Bush stuff (is it too late to give him Hannitys job?):

transcript from Karl Rove’s segment with Greta Van Susteren:

“I can find no administration in which there is such a frequent recourse to blame the previous administration…

They want to blame the Bush Administration for the debt. I happened to be last week in a debate with David Plouffe in which he blamed the Bush Administration for the deficit this year. And I said, “Wait a minute, what about your spending bill? It was your bill, President Obama’s $787 billion Stimulus Bill. What about the $33 billion SCHIP bill that he signed? What about the $410 billion Omnibus Bill?” In reflection didn’t Senator Obama support the rescue package the recovery package last fall, the $750 billion to help rescue the banks? $350 billion dollars of that was spent by the time he got into office. If he didn’t like that spending he could have said, “You know were not going to spend another dime of that $350 billion,” and yet he did…

I think this is wearing thin. This is causing the American people to say, “Wait a minute. This is all your spending. Why do you keep blaming the guy who came before you?”