O'Reilly out at FOX!

[JMarie]

So mad that Fox News moved Hannity to 9PM, so now he's opposite Saint Rachel.  Rachel's talking about the head of the VA, who took his wife on ten day vacation, going to the final game of Wimbledon and other fun European stuff (and of those "ten day of work," four days in a row didn't have any work-related meetings).  She also lists all the Cabinet members who are no longer Cabinet members.

Sean's talking to Spencer Tillman, who is a former NFL player.  Spencer says Hannity has it all wrong, and they're not disrespecting the flag at all, but protesting police brutality.  Guess he won't be invited back.  

Rachel is talking about Puerto Rico, and shows many clips of the mayor of San Juan.  Her impassioned words are enough to make you cry (yet Trump is at one of his golf courses, per Rachel).  Then Rachel has an extended live interview with the mayor.  The mayor said that any donation they've received so far has been from non-government groups.  She said that FEMA expected residents to register for assistance via Internet, when they lost access to the Internet.  Anyone who didn't already feel bad for PR does now.

Hannity is showing the second part of a pretaped interview with Rush Limbaugh.  At least Limbaugh realized he was going to be on TV and put on a suit and a tie.  Usually, when Rachel or Anderson Cooper show clips of him, he's wearing a sloppy polo shirt with the EIB logo.  Just because he looks nice doesn't mean he's staying anything substantial.  Much complaining about the unnecessary Russian investigation, fake liberal news, blah blah blah.  Limbaugh claims his wife has been in a much better mood since she stopped watching The Liberal News.  Like we're supposed to believe she watches anything besides alt-right stuff.  Oh, and McConnell's the worst for not getting enough votes to repeal Obamacare.  

Eric Trump stopped by (finally!) at 9:48.  I guess a former NFL player and a radio show host are more important than the First Son.  The National Anthem is sacred, he says, and it's really great to see so many teams coming around to understand that.  Hannity congratulates Eric on his new baby.  A mean librarian refused to accept books from Melania (the librarian actually said her school already had enough resources, and doesn't approve of some of the messages within Dr. Suess books).  Hannity suggests Eric take the books for his new baby.

Rachel moves on to transparency on social media (Twitter and Facebook).  I didn't catch most of what she was saying, because I was hoping Eric would say something interesting or original.  Stupid me.

Hannity claims that he's back at #1 since he moved back to 9PM.  I guess that's a slam at Rachel.

HE NEVER MENTIONED TOM PRICE OR PUERTO RICO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[candygirl200413]

Really want to write a history book and just have a chapter on how Fox destroyed so many people in terms of their fake news. Bless you @JMarie for having the Rachel tidbits.

[Ali]

I think we need to all pitch in and send @JMarie a shipment of the beverage of her choice and favorite snack food.

[JMarie]

1 hour ago, Ali said:

I think we need to all pitch in and send @JMarie a shipment of the beverage of her choice and favorite snack food.

Don't send it to me.  Send it to Puerto Rico.  Anything's better than a president who refuses to help those who need help.

[GrumpyGran]

13 hours ago, JMarie said:

Limbaugh claims his wife has been in a much better mood since she stopped watching The Liberal News.

Wait, Rush Limbaugh is married? Somebody married that? Yeah, his wife is much happier after she quit listening to the liberal media. Why do I feel like this was a situation where she was disagreeing with him and then he started slipping some Oxy into her food and now, why she's just so happy all the time. When she's awake.

[onekidanddone]

14 hours ago, JMarie said:

Limbaugh claims his wife has been in a much better mood since she stopped watching The Liberal News.  Like we're supposed to believe she watches anything besides alt-right stuff.  Oh, and McConnell's the worst for not getting enough votes to repeal Obamacare.  

I was going to ask which wife, but it also occurred  to me..he still has a wife?

[candygirl200413]

But think about this @GrumpyGran and @onekidanddone, he hasn't procreated! So when he's gone that's it.

[Cartmann99]

Limbaugh is still on his third wife, right? 

[GrumpyGran]

1 hour ago, Cartmann99 said:

Limbaugh is still on his third wife, right? 

Well, I hope for her sake, he gets off of her soon. He's going to crush her. 

[GreyhoundFan]

4 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

Limbaugh is still on his third wife, right? 

Per Wikipedia, he's on number four. Just like a good Christian. I'm sure he'll trade this one in soon.

[Cartmann99]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Per Wikipedia, he's on number four. Just like a good Christian. I'm sure he'll trade this one in soon.

Thank you for correcting me. 

I honestly don't understand the appeal of being married to someone like Trump or Limbaugh. Even if you are wealthy enough to eat diamonds for breakfast, drive a car made out of platinum, and have a wardrobe worth a billion dollars, you are still married to an ignorant, bigoted, misogynistic jackass. 

[GreyhoundFan]

@Cartmann99 -- yeah, I don't get it either. I mean, it's one thing if you married the toad when he was young and he became the creep later, but when a guy is on his third or fourth, you should be able to get the whole picture. Many years ago, I had a co-worker who had been married five times. He kept asking me out. I told him that I had no desire to have to visit the free clinic. I also wouldn't have considered becoming number six, no matter how much money was involved.  About a year later, he did marry number six. Unsurprisingly, they divorced after a few years.

[onekidanddone]

14 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Per Wikipedia, he's on number four. Just like a good Christian. I'm sure he'll trade this one in soon.

Like Trump's wives, are they only after his money? Who looks at a man and says "I know I'm wife number four, this time is for real, he will stay with me ever cheat".  He is a raging misogynist and a philanderer, but he won't be with me". 

Honey, if he cheated on wife number one, two and three to get to number four (you), he will move on to number five. 

12 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

About a year later, he did marry number six. Unsurprisingly, they divorced after a few years.

I worked with a guy who was on wife number five. He kept talking about how would like to ask another woman on our team out. She knew his MO and made it real clear the answer was no. The running assessment of this guy was "he didn't have girlfriends, he had wives".

[GrumpyGran]

2 hours ago, onekidanddone said:

Like Trump's wives, are they only after his money? Who looks at a man and says "I know I'm wife number four, this time is for real, he will stay with me ever cheat".  He is a raging misogynist and a philanderer, but he won't be with me". 

Honey, if he cheated on wife number one, two and three to get to number four (you), he will move on to number five. 

I worked with a guy who was on wife number five. He kept talking about how would like to ask another woman on our team out. She knew his MO and made it real clear the answer was no. The running assessment of this guy was "he didn't have girlfriends, he had wives".

This made me think of Dennis Hopper. He had 5 wives and at the end, when he was dying, I think almost all of them were living on his ranch just waiting for him to die so they could raid the place.

I think it's easier with Thrush, no children. No impediments to the inheritance. Everyone of them hoping they'll be the last wife standing. When it gets intolerable, they just take what they can and move on. Really, he does look like he could keel over from a massive heart attack at any moment. And has for years. 

[onekidanddone]

20 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Many years ago, I had a co-worker who had been married five times. He kept asking me out. I told him that I had no desire to have to visit the free clinic. I also wouldn't have considered becoming number six, no matter how much money was involved.  About a year later, he did marry number six. Unsurprisingly, they divorced after a few years.

Wow, seems just like the guy I worked with. Maybe my former co-worker has a doppelganger or you and I live in parallel universes.  You described the guy I knew almost to a T

[GreyhoundFan]

Fuck you, Geraldo: "Defending Trump, Geraldo Rivera debates the meaning of ‘dying’ with San Juan’s mayor"

Spoiler

...

Fox News host Geraldo Rivera flew to Puerto Rico after the hurricane and — despite grim reports from the devastated island — has not yet witnessed anyone die.

He shook hands with the governor, and no one died. He flew in a big U.S. Marine Corps helicopter. Zero casualties. A week after the hurricane destroyed the island's infrastructure, leaving hundreds of thousands of people without electricity, desperate for food and drinking water, Rivera met 84-year-old "Aunt Ellie."

"She had us all worried but she's doing fine thx," he wrote.

And so after several days on the island, Rivera decided to weigh in on a debate between President Trump — whose administration has been accused of being slow to help the U.S. territory — and San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz Soto, who famously pleaded, "We are dying, and you are killing us with the inefficiency and the bureaucracy."

...

The official death toll in Puerto Rico stands at 16, but is expected to rise as rescue workers struggle to distribute basic supplies and families prepare to live for weeks or months without power.

A Fox News anchor noted this on Sunday, as he introduced Rivera's debate with the mayor about death and Donald Trump.

Before he launched into his "exclusive" interview (which it was not), Rivera criticized the U.S. government's response.

"I don't know why the skies aren't filled with relief aircraft," he said.

But, he went on.

"What I really lament in this politically driven island, where you have a Republican governor and a hard left-wing Democratic mayor, is that the mayor is blaming Donald Trump for the lack of aid."

Then on to the interview, in which Cruz would point out she is not in fact a Democrat, and explain the nuances of "dying."

"The aid isn't getting here as quick as it should be getting here," the mayor told Rivera, as workers packed boxes behind her. "There are people in all municipalities literally starving, dehydrating."

There was no electricity in most of the island, and frequent brownouts in the hospitals, she said — and meanwhile the Federal Emergency Management Agency "asks people to register on the phone or Internet."

As in her past remarks, Cruz praised the federal government's intentions, while criticizing its performance.

"Common sense has to prevail," she said.

Rivera nodded.

"Are people dying?" he asked. "I've been traveling around. I don't see people dying."

"Well, dying is a continuum, right?" Cruz said. "If you don't get fed for seven to eight days and you're a child, you are dying. If you have 11 people like they took out of a nursing home, you are dying."

"Don't you wish you had characterized that a little more?" Rivera asked, but the mayor cut him off.

Since she first criticized Trump's government on Friday, the president has called Cruz a weak leader and complained of "politically motivated ingrates" on the island. The mayor has mocked the president's ire, but otherwise argued that politics have no role in the relief effort.

"I don't have to characterize anything in any way that's not reality," she told Rivera. "He who has eyes will be able to see it. He who has an open heart will be able to feel it."

Next question: "How much of that is politics, the fact that you and the president are different parties?" Rivera asked. And she corrected him.

Trump had accused Cruz of being controlled by the Democratic Party, and Rivera had erroneously said she belonged to it.

In fact, as The Post reported, the island's party system is different from the mainland United States. Republicans and Democrats have little bearing on Puerto Rican politics. While Cruz has been friendly with some mainland Democrats, her Popular Democratic Party is defined largely by its stance in Puerto Rico's independence from the United States.

"I'm not a member of the Democratic Party," she told Rivera, who did not ask another question in the clip.

"I could find no one dying," the host summarized after the segment, the second half of which will air on Fox on Sunday night.

Still intent on forging a truce between the mayor and the president, Rivera chided Trump for tweeting about Cruz and ingrates and such.

"Unnecessary," he said.

But that mayor. "She's very partisan," Rivera said. "I think she has a loathing for Donald Trump."

"I think she needs an open heart and some gratitude," he concluded.

The mayor had in fact spoken of open hearts in her nonexclusive interview. And Trump had accused her of mislaid gratitude. So in the end, maybe Rivera found common ground after all.

How dare he say those things. Just because he didn't see someone draw their last breath, doesn't mean the person isn't dying.

[Cartmann99]

31 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

How dare he say those things. Just because he didn't see someone draw their last breath, doesn't mean the person isn't dying.

I was thinking about him the other day. Remember that television special where he opened Al Capone's vault on live television? Or when he had that talk show and his nose got broken when the guests started brawling?  

Now, he kisses Trump's ass on Fox News for a living. 

[JMarie]

57 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Fuck you, Geraldo: "Defending Trump, Geraldo Rivera debates the meaning of ‘dying’ with San Juan’s mayor"

  Hide contents

...

Fox News host Geraldo Rivera flew to Puerto Rico after the hurricane and — despite grim reports from the devastated island — has not yet witnessed anyone die.

He shook hands with the governor, and no one died. He flew in a big U.S. Marine Corps helicopter. Zero casualties. A week after the hurricane destroyed the island's infrastructure, leaving hundreds of thousands of people without electricity, desperate for food and drinking water, Rivera met 84-year-old "Aunt Ellie."

"She had us all worried but she's doing fine thx," he wrote.

And so after several days on the island, Rivera decided to weigh in on a debate between President Trump — whose administration has been accused of being slow to help the U.S. territory — and San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz Soto, who famously pleaded, "We are dying, and you are killing us with the inefficiency and the bureaucracy."

...

The official death toll in Puerto Rico stands at 16, but is expected to rise as rescue workers struggle to distribute basic supplies and families prepare to live for weeks or months without power.

A Fox News anchor noted this on Sunday, as he introduced Rivera's debate with the mayor about death and Donald Trump.

Before he launched into his "exclusive" interview (which it was not), Rivera criticized the U.S. government's response.

"I don't know why the skies aren't filled with relief aircraft," he said.

But, he went on.

"What I really lament in this politically driven island, where you have a Republican governor and a hard left-wing Democratic mayor, is that the mayor is blaming Donald Trump for the lack of aid."

Then on to the interview, in which Cruz would point out she is not in fact a Democrat, and explain the nuances of "dying."

"The aid isn't getting here as quick as it should be getting here," the mayor told Rivera, as workers packed boxes behind her. "There are people in all municipalities literally starving, dehydrating."

There was no electricity in most of the island, and frequent brownouts in the hospitals, she said — and meanwhile the Federal Emergency Management Agency "asks people to register on the phone or Internet."

As in her past remarks, Cruz praised the federal government's intentions, while criticizing its performance.

"Common sense has to prevail," she said.

Rivera nodded.

"Are people dying?" he asked. "I've been traveling around. I don't see people dying."

"Well, dying is a continuum, right?" Cruz said. "If you don't get fed for seven to eight days and you're a child, you are dying. If you have 11 people like they took out of a nursing home, you are dying."

"Don't you wish you had characterized that a little more?" Rivera asked, but the mayor cut him off.

Since she first criticized Trump's government on Friday, the president has called Cruz a weak leader and complained of "politically motivated ingrates" on the island. The mayor has mocked the president's ire, but otherwise argued that politics have no role in the relief effort.

"I don't have to characterize anything in any way that's not reality," she told Rivera. "He who has eyes will be able to see it. He who has an open heart will be able to feel it."

Next question: "How much of that is politics, the fact that you and the president are different parties?" Rivera asked. And she corrected him.

Trump had accused Cruz of being controlled by the Democratic Party, and Rivera had erroneously said she belonged to it.

In fact, as The Post reported, the island's party system is different from the mainland United States. Republicans and Democrats have little bearing on Puerto Rican politics. While Cruz has been friendly with some mainland Democrats, her Popular Democratic Party is defined largely by its stance in Puerto Rico's independence from the United States.

"I'm not a member of the Democratic Party," she told Rivera, who did not ask another question in the clip.

"I could find no one dying," the host summarized after the segment, the second half of which will air on Fox on Sunday night.

Still intent on forging a truce between the mayor and the president, Rivera chided Trump for tweeting about Cruz and ingrates and such.

"Unnecessary," he said.

But that mayor. "She's very partisan," Rivera said. "I think she has a loathing for Donald Trump."

"I think she needs an open heart and some gratitude," he concluded.

The mayor had in fact spoken of open hearts in her nonexclusive interview. And Trump had accused her of mislaid gratitude. So in the end, maybe Rivera found common ground after all.

How dare he say those things. Just because he didn't see someone draw their last breath, doesn't mean the person isn't dying.

He's neither God nor Santa Claus.  He's not watching everyone all the time.

[GrumpyGran]

1 hour ago, Cartmann99 said:

was thinking about him the other day.

Don't do that. It's like standing behind a car, breathing in the exhaust. I did that when I was a child and now I have asthma. No shit. He's like methane. If you lit a match in front of his mouth...

[47of74]

Blowhard O'Really got stupid over Las Vegas

Quote

Former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly wrote a blog post on Monday where he said that last night’s mass shooting is part of the price Americans pay for living in a free country.

The shooting in Las Vegas has been established as the country’s worst mass casualty event since the 9/11 terror attacks. O’Reilly went over the details behind the attack on the country music festival, calling it a “gruesome display” of “the big downside of American freedom.”

 

[Cartmann99]

2 hours ago, 47of74 said:

Former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly wrote a blog post on Monday where he said that last night’s mass shooting is part of the price Americans pay for living in a free country

Great news! American fashion designers can start designing trendy Kevlar clothing to protect people from all of the "freedom" flying around! 

 

[JMarie]

14 hours ago, 47of74 said:

calling it a “gruesome display” of “the big downside of American freedom.”

Like the freedom to bear arms -- that pesky Second Amendment that the liberals are always trying to squash?

[GreyhoundFan]

If you look at the article, please heed my warning. You will need an airsick bag or two. There are pictures of Hannity in college. I couldn't scroll past it fast enough, so I saw his smug face, which made me ragey. "The making of Sean Hannity: How a Long Island kid learned to channel red-state rage"

Spoiler

The president and his favorite prime-time pundit are both New Yorkers of significant means who talk like they grew up in the tough part of town. One drenches his well-done steaks in ketchup and the other favors Coors on ice. Both have long traveled by private jet, yet both feel somehow spurned by the elites.

Donald Trump and Sean Hannity champion the little guy, the forgotten men and women, the audience that has cheered Hannity on as he emerged in the past nine months as perhaps the most dependable pro-Trump voice in the mainstream media, as well as a friend and adviser to the president.

In the process, Fox News’s top-rated host has regained ratings supremacy, pushed back against an organized boycott of his advertisers and quieted rumors of his impending departure from the network.

Hannity, long a movement conservative, nonetheless embraced Trump, who is largely allergic to ideology. Like the president, who has been a Republican, a Democrat and an independent through the years, Hannity isn’t necessarily what he appears to be.

He denies being a journalist, but has said, “I think a lot of the reporting we do is better than the mainstream media.” He covets being in a position of authority, leading a movement, yet he repeatedly embraces storylines that prove to be inaccurate. He’s not a politician, but he takes positions, which have, as he puts it, a way of “evolving.” He was, for example, against amnesty for illegal immigrants, and then he was for creating “a pathway to citizenship,” and then he was against that idea.

What Hannity has stood for — at least for the past couple of years — is Trump. Rival TV host Joe Scarborough calls him Trump’s lap dog. Hannity, a still-rambunctious 55, insists he’s not; he’s pushed back against the president on tax reform and health care, for example.

But the president instinctively understands that his people are Hannity’s people and vice versa. At an August rally, when Trump bashed the media as “the source of division” in the nation, he made a single exception: “How good is Hannity?” he said to rising cheers. “How good is Hannity? And he’s a great guy and an honest guy.”

When the president was still opening casinos in Atlantic City, Hannity was systematically building a following, identifying the issues that could stir up listeners (homosexuality, he declared in his first radio gig, is “disgusting”) and portraying himself as a brash truth-teller whose plain talk was too blunt for the entrenched and the powerful.

April 1989: The voice on the answering machine at the Santa Barbara chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union had a distinctive New York sound. The young man seeking help had just been thrown off his show on the radio station at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He was being discriminated against because he’s a conservative, the voice said. Could the ACLU help Sean Hannity get his show back?

Stewart Holden, a local lawyer who volunteered for the ACLU, was intrigued. He asked his local board to take the case, even if Hannity’s show, “The Pursuit of Happiness,” had already achieved some notoriety. People had heard about the rookie host’s inflammatory style, how he railed against “liberal fascists” and hung up on callers he didn’t like.

Every Tuesday at 9 a.m., Hannity, then 27, spent an hour figuring out how to build an audience, how to connect with the bedrock conservative Americans he knew were out there, even in a solidly liberal college town like Santa Barbara.

“It’s my hope to make radio a career at some point,” Hannity wrote in his application for a no-pay position at KCSB in 1989. He wrote that he had “developed alot of dicipline and good-working habits.”

Hannity had come to Santa Barbara in part because his sister lived there. He supported himself as a house painter, wallpaper hanger and contractor, all the time listening to talk radio. He told people that he was “a serious intellectual” who was studying political science. In fact, Hannity attended three colleges — Adelphi, New York University and UC-Santa Barbara — but never graduated.

In his first months on the air, Hannity developed themes that would sustain him for decades — blasting the news media, lending credence to fringy theories, speaking up for the little guys who felt overrun by the elites. “America’s lost its virtue,” he said.

That April, Hannity shared his theories about AIDS, as a tape of the show reveals: “What is the coverup all about that the media is hiding from the general public? Contrary to what we hear in the general media, you can get AIDS from saliva, from tears. . . . They won’t let you say it’s a gay disease.”

More listeners called to complain about Hannity than about all of KCSB’s other shows combined, according to former managers. But the calls really spiked after Hannity’s show about AIDS. He said he wouldn’t want a gay teacher telling his child that homosexuality “is an alternative lifestyle.” He egged on a guest who claimed that AIDS was spreading among gay men because they consumed each other’s feces.

Jody May-Chang, who also had a show, “Gay and Lesbian Perspectives,” on KCSB, heard Hannity’s AIDS episode and felt compelled to call.

“I have a son, okay?” she said on the show. “I just gave birth to him about eight weeks ago and I certainly hope he doesn’t grow up to be like you.”

“Artificial insemination,” Hannity replied. “Aren’t you married to a woman, by the way?”

When May-Chang confirmed that she was, Hannity and his guest, Gene Antonio, an anti-gay activist, bantered about how her son came to be.

“Turkey baster babies,” Antonio said.

“Yeah, isn’t that beautiful?” Hannity said. “I feel sorry for your child.”

Later in the hour, Hannity added that “anyone listening to this show that believes homosexuality is just a normal lifestyle has been brainwashed. . . . These disgusting people.”

May-Chang asked the station to silence Hannity. “For me, the goal was ‘Get this guy off the air, he’s fomenting hatred,’ ” she said. “In retrospect, the higher thing was the First Amendment, but at the time, what he was saying was just abhorrent.”

The station’s student manager told Hannity he was being taken off the air. The young host did not take the news well. “He was extremely upset,” recalled the manager, who declined to have his name published. “I thought he was going to hit me.”

Even though some of its leaders found Hannity’s message reprehensible, the ACLU took his case and informed the university it would sue, alleging discrimination against Hannity’s conservative views. Hannity was called before a university board that governed the station.

“The station did not like my opinions,” Hannity argued, according to a transcript of the board hearing. “I stood for conservative, traditional, loving family values.”

Under pressure from the ACLU, the university counsel “just wanted us to do whatever Sean wanted,” said Elizabeth Robinson, the KCSB manager. “They didn’t want to be on the wrong side of a First Amendment case.” The board concluded that Hannity had been improperly removed and offered to put him back on the air. But Hannity demanded a public apology and double his old airtime. The station stuck with its initial offer, which Hannity rejected.

“We were gleeful,” May-Chang said. “We thought that was the end of him.”

Finished with Santa Barbara, Hannity put an ad in the trade magazine Radio & Records, promoting himself as “the most talked-about college radio host in America.”

From then on, Hannity, who declined to be interviewed for this article, would portray the KCSB chapter as a symbol of liberal intolerance. The ACLU’s role was written out of the story, unmentioned in his own account.

Years later, Hannity accused his liberal foil on their Fox News show, Alan Colmes, of being “a card-carrying member of the ACLU.” Colmes said he was proud to be a member, “because they defend all free speech.”

“No, they don’t, actually,” Hannity replied.

Robinson lost track of Hannity. Seven years later, when she saw him for the first time on Fox News, she said she saw “nothing surprising. The older we get, the more we become who we were.”

In 1990, Bill Dunnavent was trying to bring a relatively new concept to northern Alabama — highly opinionated political talk radio. Three years earlier, the Federal Communications Commission had repealed the Fairness Doctrine, which for nearly four decades had required broadcasters to provide equal time to people who disagreed with views expressed on the air. The rules kept political talk on the airwaves within civil bounds, some people said. Others said it unfairly limited debate, keeping it dull and centrist.

Dunnavent advertised for show hosts, got more than 50 tapes from eager young talkers, and narrowed the field to two candidates. One had a distinctive New York accent, a Joe Sixpack affect, and a collection of headlines from California that proved he could win attention.

“I hired Sean because he had enough guts to stand up for his convictions and because he sounded different from everybody else in our area,” said Dunnavent, who put Hannity on WVNN in the afternoons and paid him $19,000 a year.

The station owner told his new hire he had only two rules: “We don’t talk about religion, and we don’t talk about abortion.”

One day soon after Hannity had started work in Huntsville, Dunnavent flipped on his car radio to hear the kid interviewing a madam from the Mustang Ranch brothel in Nevada.

“I found a pay phone and told him, ‘Don’t ever do that again!’ ” the owner recalled. “He was doing what he does, pushing the envelope. Sean understood that the job is to say something that evokes someone’s emotions.”

Hannity started out “very raw,” Dunnavent said, but improved dramatically over a couple of years, becoming the area’s top-rated host. His official station biography said that he “made a proud name for himself by insulting lesbians.” (“Over the years, I have evolved into more of a libertarian when it comes to people’s personal lives,” Hannity said in 2013.)

Hannity met his future wife, Jill Rhodes, in Huntsville, where she was a newspaper columnist. At a prenuptial meeting, Hannity lit into their minister, arguing that the church had become too liberal. The pastor suggested that Jill was “crazy to be marrying this guy” and she left the session in tears, Hannity later said.

In 1992, a salesman who’d been driving through northern Alabama called up Eric Seidel, the station manager at WGST in Atlanta, and told him about a great guy on the radio in Huntsville.

Seidel happened to have a cassette Hannity had sent him. The manager popped it into his tape deck and heard an eager talent with strong conservative views and a knack for landing big-name guests, including the voluble local congressman, Newt Gingrich. Seidel hired the kid just as right-wing radio voices were becoming an alternative to traditional news media, a battalion arrayed against Bill Clinton, his wife, and their liberal, multicultural vision.

Hannity’s show had a lot of rough edges at first. He would get angry at callers and hang up on them. His righteousness, blue-collar Long Island diction, and plain-spoken rhetoric struck his Georgia audience as refreshingly authentic, Seidel said: “Sean’s not somebody who’s going to make you laugh a lot. He’s not like Rush. There was a blue-collar nature to his family.”

Hannity was also extremely competitive. In Atlanta, he’d listen to promos for his main competitor, Neal Boortz at WSB, and counterprogram his own show. When Boortz booked Robert Shapiro, O.J. Simpson’s lawyer, for a 10 a.m. interview, Hannity called the lawyer’s PR rep and begged for a 9 a.m. slot with Shapiro. He not only beat the competition by an hour, but Hannity kept extending the interview, making Shapiro late to the Boortz show.

Boortz and Hannity competed for the same audience — conservative men — but their approaches were radically different. “I would tell Sean, ‘I am here to attract a large audience so the station can play commercials for them,’ ” Boortz said. “Sean is truly, truly there to save the country. . . . His whole appeal is two words: Earnest and honest. I have never heard Sean say anything off the air that was different from what he’s said on air.”

Few listeners feel a connection to the personal lives of Rush Limbaugh, with his stories about his Palm Beach, Fla. estate and private jets, or Glenn Beck, with his armored cars and guard dogs. But when Hannity talks about his martial arts practice or his beer drinking or his afternoons spent hauling his kids to sports practice, he makes a regular-guy connection that sticks.

“He’s easy to listen to,” said Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters for America, a liberal media watchdog group that has tracked Hannity for decades. “There aren’t a lot of complicated narratives like Beck or Limbaugh. He doesn’t claim to be the expert on anything. He’s just kind of a guy.”

Hannity proudly says he never backs away from a battle, but he leavens his aggressive side with the occasional you-got-me shrug. In September, Hannity asked a guest, a radio psychologist, to diagnose Hillary Clinton’s mental health.

“You can’t do that,” interrupted another guest. “You don’t like it when people say Trump is insane.”

“Okay,” Hannity said — flashing his impish smile — and dropped the topic.

Though he’s fixed in the public mind as a TV talker, Hannity is the nation’s second-highest-rated radio host, behind only Limbaugh. He’s No. 1 in the key 25-54 audience among cable news shows. He makes $36 million a year, according to Forbes, which ranked him No. 77 among the world’s top-paid celebrities. (Two other radio hosts, Howard Stern and Limbaugh, made the top 100, both way above Hannity’s pay grade.)

But like the president, Hannity retains enough blue-collar cred to position himself as a scrappy fighter for the regular guy. “My overpaid friends in the media, well, they have their chauffeur-driven limousines, they like their fine steakhouses and expensive-wine lifestyles,” he told viewers last fall. “The people you’re watching on TV” do not feel your pain. “And therein lies the contempt.”

Hannity grew up on Long Island, son of a probation officer and a homemaker. Something of a troublemaker as a kid, he and his pals would go “skitching,” grabbing onto the bumpers of passing cars to hitch a ride.

He was a news junkie, delivering the New York Daily News and Long Island Press, listening deep into the night to the pioneers of raucous talk radio. His heroes were rabble-rousers such as Bob Grant, famous for shouting “Get off my phone!” and dumping callers who annoyed him. As a teenager, Hannity would call in to the shows, testing his conservative arguments.

Gingrich, who got to know Hannity in 1990 and has remained a frequent guest, said the connection Hannity forged with Trump “is the New York thing. They talk the same language. I can’t possibly interact with the president in that same way that Sean can.”

Hannity’s big move up came courtesy of a fellow talk-radio fan, Roger Ailes, who created Fox News for owner Rupert Murdoch in 1996 and essentially translated conservative radio to a TV format. Ailes hired Hannity to host a debate show that the new network initially referred to internally as “Hannity and LTBD” — “liberal to be determined.” That turned out to be Alan Colmes, who shared the 9 p.m. hour with Hannity until 2009, when Hannity went solo.

Hannity has done one hour of TV and three of radio every day for 21 years. Through the George W. Bush years, he loyally supported the president’s policies. Then, during the Obama presidency, Hannity’s tone shifted. He leaned more heavily on stories he believed were being given short shrift by the “liberal media” — stories about where Obama was born, and who deserved blame for the attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya.

It wasn’t winning over a new audience. By 2013, Hannity’s audience was shrinking; it was the year after a presidential election, when cable news numbers typically droop, but Fox News, still under Ailes’s iron leadership, was talking about changing the channel’s approach.

“We are beginning to dramatically change the way news is presented to the public,” Ailes wrote in a memo announcing that Hannity would move from 9 p.m., the heart of prime time, to 10 p.m., losing the cherished time slot to Megyn Kelly, who, Fox hoped, might lure a younger audience. Kelly’s numbers soared. Hannity’s fell by a quarter between 2009 and 2014.

Four years later, Kelly is gone, moved to NBC; Ailes is dead, having spent his final months denying sexual harassment allegations, which also felled former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly. Hannity is the only remaining original prime-time talk show host from Fox’s launch.

Last month, he returned to his 9 p.m. home, making way for Laura Ingraham to take over the 10 p.m. slot. His numbers are back, and a drive last spring to get his advertisers to dump him seems now to have been a bump in the road.

Hannity’s comeback coincided with his early, eager embrace of his fellow New Yorker. As early as the fall of 2015, Hannity wore a Trump-brand necktie to interview the upstart candidate at the CPAC convention in Maryland. As some conservative talk hosts pronounced themselves Never Trumpers or came to his side late and halfheartedly, Hannity went all in.

Hannity had come to see conservatives as not just a political movement, but a cultural tribe. In 2008, he launched Hannidate, an online dating service “where people of like conservative minds can come together to meet.” It didn’t last long, but Hannity’s sense of his audience as vanguard of a crusade to restore a fading culture only strengthened. Hannity made his name as a movement conservative, but he was loyal to the first rule of talk shows: As radio host Mark Levin put it, “In this business, you don’t get out ahead of your audience.”

When Hannity “hitched his wagon to Trump,” Carusone said, “he got access and access brought ratings.” Trump insiders used Hannity’s show as their safe space. When things got hot, Donald Trump Jr., Sebastian Gorka and the candidate himself went on Hannity.

Trump attacked the Gold Star father, and Hannity stood by him. Trump went after a federal judge of Mexican descent, and Hannity backed him. Even after the “Access Hollywood” tape emerged of Trump boasting about grabbing women, Hannity defended his guy: “King David had 500 concubines, for crying out loud.”

After the inauguration, the first interview the new president gave to a cable news channel went to Hannity.

Hannity’s “advocacy journalism” sometimes entails passing along stories that never quite check out. He used his TV show last year to promote the false rumor that Hillary Clinton was hiding a severe health crisis. He let Trump push the baseless idea that Ted Cruz’s father was somehow involved in the John F. Kennedy assassination. “I saw that somewhere on the Internet,” Hannity said.

After the election, Hannity doubled down on his loyalty. He defended the administration’s false contention that Trump’s inauguration crowd was the biggest ever.

And Hannity spent many hours hawking a discredited theory whereby a murdered Democratic National Committee employee, Seth Rich, was said to have been killed by Democratic operatives because he supposedly had leaked emails that were embarrassing to Hillary Clinton. Fox News retracted its report that had lent credence to the theory, and police affirmed that the scenario had no validity; the murder was the result of a robbery gone bad.

Through much of the spring, Hannity kept at the story, backing off only after Media Matters urged his advertisers to pull their ads. Several did, though one, USAA insurance, returned to his show because “we heard from our members, and . . . the lines between news and commentary are increasingly blurred,” a company statement said.

In late May, Hannity, facing pressure from Rich’s parents, dropped the story. “Out of respect for the family’s wishes for now, I am not discussing this matter at this time,” Hannity said on TV. Fox News and Hannity declined to comment on the Rich coverage.

The Rich debacle led some people who know Hannity to believe that his time at Fox was nearing an end, that the next generation of the Murdoch family was looking to tone down the sensationalism. But Hannity has told friends he would never cave to those who want to take him down.

“I’ve told you for years what’s going on here,” Hannity said on the radio in May. “I’ve told you that every single conservative host on radio that you like and you listen to is being recorded every second of every day by these losers in their bathrobes or in their underwear . . . being paid to do it in the hope that we conservatives say one word, one sentence, one phrase that they don’t like and that they can then use to attack our advertisers in the hopes that our advertisers will bail out, the show becomes financially unfeasible and that the host gets fired.

“This is a kill shot. . . . This is to silence me.”

When Ted Koppel interviewed him in March, Hannity asked the CBS newsman, “You think I’m bad for America?”

“Yeah,” Koppel replied, “because you have attracted people who are determined that ideology is more important than facts.”

Like Hannity, Chip Franklin, a radio host at KGO in San Francisco, started out in the business as a conservative, but Franklin switched sides and now runs a liberal show. “I know Hannity knows that Koppel was right,” Franklin said.

“I’ve seen what happens to people like Hannity because I was seduced in the ’80s and ’90s when I was yelling about what Clinton did to Monica Lewinsky and things like that. I know Hannity knew that Obama was born in the United States. I know Hannity has the same facts we all do about the crowd size at the inauguration or the Russian connection. I know that because I knew him in New York and he was always a conservative, but not like this.

“And then he got in this boat and didn’t realize how strong the current was, and he couldn’t get off. Because people adore him now. Nobody around him wants him to change. So he doubles down. He can’t go against his audience because he’ll lose millions of dollars.”

“Donald Trump and Sean Hannity are both disrupters of the status quo,” said Kellyanne Conway, counsel to the president and an architect of the administration’s communications approach. “Disrupters project a strength and moxie that fascinates some people and causes envy in others.”

Trump watches and values Hannity’s show, she said: “Hannity’s monologues have caught our attention. There’s a deeper, investigative component, and in this predictably vanilla and mediocre media environment, somebody like Hannity can break through with a steady stream of undercovered stories.”

The administration uses Hannity’s show because that’s where Trump’s base is. “Sean gets programming and the president gets a platform for his message,” said a senior White House official who spoke on condition of anonymity to be candid. “But between the two men, it’s not a transactional relationship. They’re genuinely friends.”

Last spring, Fox News’s Howard Kurtz asked Hannity if there was “anything so far in the Trump presidency that’s disappointed you?”

“Not yet,” Hannity replied.

I hadn't heard about the pastor telling the future Mrs. Hannity that she was crazy to be marrying him. I would have to agree with the pastor.

[GreyhoundFan]

Another airsick bag warning: "President Trump to Sean Hannity: ‘You have been so great’"

Spoiler

On Wednesday, President Trump held an event to promote his tax plan to a crowd of truckers at an Air National Guard hangar in Middletown, Pa. Sean Hannity of Fox News showed up for this Trump event and interviewed some people. The results were shocking.

“Before you arrived here, I had an opportunity to interview a lot of people in this great crowd,” said Hannity to Trump as part of an edition of “Hannity” devoted almost entirely to a sit-down with the president. “And I asked them basically three different questions — what they thought of you. Overwhelmingly, there’s a lot of support for you here.”

Think of that — there’s a lot of support for Trump at a Trump-orchestrated event.

Hannity draws a hefty paycheck from one of the richest properties in all of media. Thanks to boosterish programming of this sort, Fox News pulls down north of $1.5 billion in profits. Though, really, the network deserves a little extra bonus from the Trump campaign for Hannity’s services.

In his Wednesday night special with Trump, Hannity:

• Called Trump’s tax plan “Reaganesque,” though the president said his cuts would be bigger than those of the 40th president.
• Assisted Trump in fending off criticism that his tax plan is a sop for the wealthy: “Every time I tune into anybody else in the media except Fox, [they say] ‘Tax cuts for the wealthy.’ The rate for some people goes down, but if you live in a state like New York or Illinois, New Jersey or California, you won’t be able to deduct your state or local income tax. In other words, if you elect politicians that want to raise taxes, you’re going to pay the penalty, so that’s not really true that this is a tax cut for the wealthy as they’re portraying it.”
• Whipped up the crowd for Trump. “Is he going to win Pennsylvania in 2020, too?” asked Hannity, as the crowd said, “Yay!”
• Failed to press Trump when he at one point claimed to be one vote short in the Senate on Obamacare repeal and replace, and in nearly the same breath expressed confidence that he already had enough votes.
• Provided this lovely talking point about the Russia investigation: “I interviewed Julian Assange five times; I’ve talked to him other times. He has said it’s not Russia — there was no collusion, the [Democratic National Committee] emails did not come from them. Congressman Dana Rohrabacher met with him and he says he has proof-positive evidence that would show the Trump campaign never colluded with Russia. Is it in the best interests of the country that if he has that information, he should give it? … Does the country deserve to know the truth if he has that?”
• Failed to follow up when Trump, reflecting on the 2016 election, said, “I would rather have a popular vote. For me, the popular vote is easier.”
• Soaked up this Trump rant: “I’m so proud of you, you know I did this show … I did it a lot. … You have been so great and I’m very proud of you. And you know, I’m a ratings person. Have you seen his ratings? What you are doing to your competition is incredible. Number one, and I’m very proud of you, and it’s an honor to be on your show.” Any real journalist would be embarrassed by that moment. Hannity? Nah.

In a somewhat nostalgic moment, Hannity talked about those glorious days of the presidential election: “I remember one time we had an early conversation. … You said, ‘Well, I have all these things and maybe you want to play golf on my course one day.’ … We were friends long before you ever ran for office. And then when you ran, I said I only want one thing: Help our country, let’s help the forgotten men and women, let’s keep this country safe. And I think that’s our prayer for you and the country.”

Watch for Hannity to continue tipping into farce as the weeks speed past. As Trump’s outrages and shortcomings pile up, Hannity will continue to press the extremes of Trump sycophancy. That’s because his trajectory on this candidate leaves him no choice. Not that he’ll endure any ratings pain from doing so. In a rare case of accuracy, Trump correctly cited Hannity’s surge in the ratings; last week, for instance, he ruled all of cable news. “I think a lot of the news media is fake, except ‘Hannity,’ ” said a fellow interviewed by Hannity at the Trump event.

 

[GrumpyGran]

15 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Another airsick bag warning: "President Trump to Sean Hannity: ‘You have been so great’"

  Hide contents

On Wednesday, President Trump held an event to promote his tax plan to a crowd of truckers at an Air National Guard hangar in Middletown, Pa. Sean Hannity of Fox News showed up for this Trump event and interviewed some people. The results were shocking.

“Before you arrived here, I had an opportunity to interview a lot of people in this great crowd,” said Hannity to Trump as part of an edition of “Hannity” devoted almost entirely to a sit-down with the president. “And I asked them basically three different questions — what they thought of you. Overwhelmingly, there’s a lot of support for you here.”

Think of that — there’s a lot of support for Trump at a Trump-orchestrated event.

Hannity draws a hefty paycheck from one of the richest properties in all of media. Thanks to boosterish programming of this sort, Fox News pulls down north of $1.5 billion in profits. Though, really, the network deserves a little extra bonus from the Trump campaign for Hannity’s services.

In his Wednesday night special with Trump, Hannity:

• Called Trump’s tax plan “Reaganesque,” though the president said his cuts would be bigger than those of the 40th president.
• Assisted Trump in fending off criticism that his tax plan is a sop for the wealthy: “Every time I tune into anybody else in the media except Fox, [they say] ‘Tax cuts for the wealthy.’ The rate for some people goes down, but if you live in a state like New York or Illinois, New Jersey or California, you won’t be able to deduct your state or local income tax. In other words, if you elect politicians that want to raise taxes, you’re going to pay the penalty, so that’s not really true that this is a tax cut for the wealthy as they’re portraying it.”
• Whipped up the crowd for Trump. “Is he going to win Pennsylvania in 2020, too?” asked Hannity, as the crowd said, “Yay!”
• Failed to press Trump when he at one point claimed to be one vote short in the Senate on Obamacare repeal and replace, and in nearly the same breath expressed confidence that he already had enough votes.
• Provided this lovely talking point about the Russia investigation: “I interviewed Julian Assange five times; I’ve talked to him other times. He has said it’s not Russia — there was no collusion, the [Democratic National Committee] emails did not come from them. Congressman Dana Rohrabacher met with him and he says he has proof-positive evidence that would show the Trump campaign never colluded with Russia. Is it in the best interests of the country that if he has that information, he should give it? … Does the country deserve to know the truth if he has that?”
• Failed to follow up when Trump, reflecting on the 2016 election, said, “I would rather have a popular vote. For me, the popular vote is easier.”
• Soaked up this Trump rant: “I’m so proud of you, you know I did this show … I did it a lot. … You have been so great and I’m very proud of you. And you know, I’m a ratings person. Have you seen his ratings? What you are doing to your competition is incredible. Number one, and I’m very proud of you, and it’s an honor to be on your show.” Any real journalist would be embarrassed by that moment. Hannity? Nah.

In a somewhat nostalgic moment, Hannity talked about those glorious days of the presidential election: “I remember one time we had an early conversation. … You said, ‘Well, I have all these things and maybe you want to play golf on my course one day.’ … We were friends long before you ever ran for office. And then when you ran, I said I only want one thing: Help our country, let’s help the forgotten men and women, let’s keep this country safe. And I think that’s our prayer for you and the country.”

Watch for Hannity to continue tipping into farce as the weeks speed past. As Trump’s outrages and shortcomings pile up, Hannity will continue to press the extremes of Trump sycophancy. That’s because his trajectory on this candidate leaves him no choice. Not that he’ll endure any ratings pain from doing so. In a rare case of accuracy, Trump correctly cited Hannity’s surge in the ratings; last week, for instance, he ruled all of cable news. “I think a lot of the news media is fake, except ‘Hannity,’ ” said a fellow interviewed by Hannity at the Trump event.

 

This could not have made less since if they just put all of the words in a box, shook it up and then threw them out on the floor. So, Julian Assange has all of the information on the election. Of course he does, but it doesn't involve Russia!

The popular vote is easier. What is he talking about? He is just one vote short to repeal Obamacare but he has enough votes.

Was this an open event? Because if not, we need to make sure it is referred to as another campaign rally. I would be surprised if he doesn't have another one this weekend.