Thursday, January 06, 2005
A Loathsome Finale
The readers of this blog have spoken, and so it is with pride in our democratic system that we crown Sean Hannity and his pals at Fox News, in the aggregate, the Most Loathsome Conservatives of 2004.
When I nominated Hannity for the award in December, I noted that "the truth is not in him." So it's only fitting that we'd announce the award today, when Salon and other media outlets are reporting Hannity's egregious misrepresentation of the words of U.N official Jan Egeland, who criticized wealthy nations for slowness to respond to the tsunami in Asia. Hannity has also been criticizing various Hollywood types for their slowness to give money to disaster relief. Fact is, people on the left generally got on board the relief bandwagon long before those on the right did, as many in the blogosphere have already noted. Many lefty websites had posted links to relief organizations long before supposedly "Christian" right-wing organizations did. Although a coordinated effort has taken a bit longer than it did after September 11, various Hollywood types have already donated money and plan to donate time and talent to relief efforts. NBC is gearing up to present a benefit concert for tsunami relief, to be broadcast across its family of channels on January 15--which is more than Fox has done.
Hannity's criticism of the left on tsunami relief is a textbook example of life in the right-wing echo chamber, where believing in something makes it so. In other words, you just make stuff up. But hey, if it works for the president . . . .
The readers of this blog have spoken, and so it is with pride in our democratic system that we crown Sean Hannity and his pals at Fox News, in the aggregate, the Most Loathsome Conservatives of 2004.
When I nominated Hannity for the award in December, I noted that "the truth is not in him." So it's only fitting that we'd announce the award today, when Salon and other media outlets are reporting Hannity's egregious misrepresentation of the words of U.N official Jan Egeland, who criticized wealthy nations for slowness to respond to the tsunami in Asia. Hannity has also been criticizing various Hollywood types for their slowness to give money to disaster relief. Fact is, people on the left generally got on board the relief bandwagon long before those on the right did, as many in the blogosphere have already noted. Many lefty websites had posted links to relief organizations long before supposedly "Christian" right-wing organizations did. Although a coordinated effort has taken a bit longer than it did after September 11, various Hollywood types have already donated money and plan to donate time and talent to relief efforts. NBC is gearing up to present a benefit concert for tsunami relief, to be broadcast across its family of channels on January 15--which is more than Fox has done.
Hannity's criticism of the left on tsunami relief is a textbook example of life in the right-wing echo chamber, where believing in something makes it so. In other words, you just make stuff up. But hey, if it works for the president . . . .
