Down the rabbit hole: Hannity and Bozell decry talk of revolution -- the kind Hannity indulged two years ago
Watching Fox News is always a bit of a funhouse mirror, like going down Alice's rabbit hole and sitting down for a sip at the Mad Hatter's Tea Party.
Last night, Sean Hannity and Brent Bozell of the right-wing propaganda outfit Media Research Center were all aghast at a boneheaded segment on Dylan Ratigan's MSNBC show featuring Ted Rall talking about the value of armed revolution to bring about change in America:
Hannity: They're unhinged. The Anointed One is elected, and the anchors would thrill up and down their legs and up every part of their body. Now all of a sudden conservatives win, because there's a repudiation of Obama and his liberal agenda, and now the suggestion of a revolution.
Bozell: Sean, now remember, we're the haters. Just hold that thought for a second. This is what his guest actually said on the show. He said, "The government, the corporations and the extreme right are prepared to coalesce into an axis of evil. Are we going to fight back. Will you do whatever it takes, including taking up arms?" This is a man who is a guest on this MSNBC show -- and utter silence from the hypocritical left, that they have that kind of person on there, but yet we are the haters.
Sean, I've asked this question a million times: Would you last -- if you had that kind of a guest on, that your show wouldn't be over before Roger Ailes fired you?
Hannity: Probably.
Bozell: Correct?
Hannity: There's a double standard. We all know this. I mean, it's transparent.
Bozell: The double standard is, Fox doesn't do that. You all would never allow on your show as your guest someone advocating violence in America.
Well, I dunno about guests, but what about Sean Hannity himself?
You may recall, as John and I explained in Over the Cliff, that it was Hannity who came unhinged immediately after the 2008 election of "the Anointed One" and began making suggestions of a revolution:
Hannity had made plain his intentions even before the inauguration. At his Web site, he began organizing in December what he called “the conservative underground” and asking people to “join the resistance” to the Obama administration. At the site’s discussion forum, one of his regulars posted an online poll asking respondents to answer: “What kind of revolution appeals most to you?” The possible answers: "A. Military Coup. B. Armed Rebellion. C. War for Secession."
Here's a screen grab:
[Via Political Carnival.]
Then, shortly after the inauguration of Obama, we got this:
The whole segment, as you'll see, almost explicitly urges an armed revolution to preserve "the tree of liberty". As Ellen at NewsHounds noted:
Hannity concluded by saying, “This administration has plucked the tree of liberty bare. It took more than 200 years but it now looks like we are headed back to where we started.” Meaning revolution? Hannity never said one way or the other.
He didn't need to; his meaning was clear enough.
More recently, he practically encouraged violence against liberals with some classic eliminationist humor:


