These people aren’t ideological right-wingers so much as they’re ideological bullies, and their only real loyalty is to whoever iskicking the kid who’s already down:
“He’s very intense,” Hannity said in a segment with conservative commentator Michelle Malkin. “And I’m watching this, and I’m thinking, alright, I don’t like it. He kicked one player there. But on the other hand, you now what, I kind of like old-fashioned discipline, on the other hand. I mean, have we become that politically incorrect? These are adults. They don’t want to play for that team, they can leave.”
Malkin seemed to agree, saying that “sports is a rough world.”
Hannity added that Rice was trying to discipline the players and draw out the team’s best performance.
“But I can understand, stop hitting them, maybe,” Hannity said. “But I like the intensity, I like the drive. I like that he’s pushing those kids and that he runs a tight ship. Maybe, maybe we need a little more discipline in society, and maybe we don’t have to be a bunch of wimps for the rest of our lives. My father hit me with a belt, I turned out okay. Except for the minds of liberals.”
Actually, you didn’t turn out okay. You turned out somebody who needs to belittle the abuse of others in order to feel better about your own experience. You turned out somebody who worships power and authority and brutality, and who has spent the past decade enthusiastically leg-humping war criminals because standing next to them made you feel a little less like the kid who got whipped with a belt.
A.
Uh, no, you didn’t turn out okay, Sean.
“…and maybe we don’t have to be a bunch of wimps for the rest of our lives.” In your case, Sean, that ship has already sailed. You’re always going to be a cowardly little pissant, and you’re always going to compensate by being a despicable bully.
That last sentence says it all. Hannity attempted to preempt the criticism he knows he’s going to get from everyone not an employee of his network. He knows full well that child abuse is no longer acceptable, if it ever were, at least among anyone who aren’t sociopaths.
Spot on.
Or else he’s just a shameless hack who knows his audience better than they know themselves and is saying exactly what they want to hear.
David Frum once wrote a column where he posed the hypothetical question (paraphrasing) “which wingnut talking head would turn 180 degrees if offered the right amount of money?” If I remember right, he said O’Reilly would turn, Beck would stand pat…and Sean Hannity would have to have it explained to him several times.
He got the last one right.
MichaelF
He was right about O’Reilly too. He didn’t change his mind on gay marriage for fun or because he was convinced by anything. He’s trying to save his ass from looking too backwards. The tides have turned, he’s now on the side that will keep him from being too out of touch and employed.